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1. Roosevelt was distantly related to both his wife and 11 other presidents.
An only child with maternal roots dating back to the Mayflower, Franklin D. Roosevelt spent a privileged childhood in Hyde Park, New York, prior to attending an elite Massachusetts boarding school. He then enrolled in Harvard College, where he began courting another Roosevelt, Anna Eleanor, his fifth cousin once removed as well as the niece (and goddaughter) of his fifth cousin, then-President Theodore Roosevelt, whom FDR greatly admired. When the couple married in 1905, Theodore Roosevelt took a break from his White House duties to give Eleanor away in lieu of her deceased father. "Well, Franklin," the president purportedly exclaimed at the wedding, "there's nothing like keeping the name in the family." Though Theodore was his closest relative to head the country, FDR claimed to have traced his family tree to 10 other presidents as well.

2. He had little love for the law.
After Harvard, FDR went on to Columbia Law School, where he promptly flunked contracts and civil procedure and had to make up the classes over the summer. "Franklin Roosevelt was not much of a student and nothing of a lawyer afterwards," one professor later recalled. "He didn't appear to have any aptitude for law, and made no effort to overcome that handicap by hard work." In fact, Roosevelt didn't even stick around to get his degree, leaving Columbia in 1907 upon passing the bar exam. Family connections landed him a job at Carter Ledyard and Milburn, a prestigious New York City firm. But although he had some minor successes there, he never quite took to the profession, preferring instead to talk politics. Luckily, his family connections also brought him into contact with local Democratic leaders, who in 1910 backed his successful campaign for a New York State Senate seat. Roosevelt's star only rose from there; he became assistant secretary of the Navy in 1913, a vice-presidential candidate in 1920, governor of New York in 1929 and a presidential candidate in 1932.

3. FDR won all of his presidential elections in landslides.
In what came to be called the "New Deal coalition," disparate groups such as Southern whites, Catholics, Jews, African-Americans, labor union members and small farmers united to comfortably elect Roosevelt to four terms in the White House. During his first presidential race in 1932, with the Great Depression at its height, he defeated unpopular incumbent Herbert Hoover by an electoral vote tally of 472-59. He then vanquished Kansas Governor Alf Landon in 1936 (523 electoral votes to eight), businessman Wendell Willkie in 1940 (449 electoral votes to 82) and New York Governor Thomas Dewey in 1944 (432 electoral votes to 99), winning at least 53.4 percent of the popular vote each time.

4. No president will ever serve longer (barring a constitutional change).
When George Washington decided in 1796 that eight years in office was enough, he established an unwritten rule that would stand for nearly a century and a half. A few presidents, including Theodore Roosevelt, tried to buck this precedent. But none succeeded until FDR, who ran for a third term in 1940 largely over concerns about the growing threat from Nazi Germany. In the end, he served in the White House for more than 12 years, a feat his political opponents disparaged as bad for democracy. With Roosevelt's tenure in mind, momentum grew for the 22nd amendment, ratified in 1951, which declared "no person shall be elected ... president more than twice."

5. His handicap was largely concealed from the public.
In the summer of 1921, while on vacation in Canada, 39-year-old Roosevelt fell ill with what was ultimately diagnosed as polio, a disease with no known cure. Paralyzed from the waist down, he underwent years of painstaking physical rehabilitation to try and regain the use of his legs. Yet although he made some progress, learning to move short distances with the help of steel leg braces and a cane (usually while holding the arm of a companion), he would remain wheelchair-dependent for the rest of his life. FDR could not even dress or bathe himself. The public never knew the full extent of his disability, however, in part because the media rarely mentioned it. At Roosevelt's request, most images from the time show him seated in an open car or standing at a podium. When the occasional photographer did try to catch him in his wheelchair, Secret Service agents reportedly tore the film out of their cameras.

6. Historians divide his New Deal into two parts.
In his 1932 speech accepting the Democratic nomination for president, Roosevelt famously promised to tackle the Great Depression with "a new deal for the American people." Wasting no time, he initiated a flurry of legislation during his first 100 days in office, much of which remains in effect to this day. To shore up the faltering financial sector, FDR closed insolvent banks and reorganized others, federally insured bank deposits, established stock market regulations and abandoned the gold standard. He also took steps to end Prohibition, to increase employment through large-scale public works projects, to institute agricultural subsidies and to bring electricity to rural areas. Related measures continued to pass throughout the rest of 1933 and 1934, after which Roosevelt took the New Deal in a more liberal direction, generally referred to as the "Second New Deal." This time around, Congress raised taxes on the wealthy, guaranteed labor unions the right to collectively bargain and approved unemployment and disability benefits, as well as Social Security for retirees. Try as he might, though, Roosevelt could not fully pull the country out of the Depression until it began mobilizing for World War II.

7. Roosevelt tried to increase the size of the Supreme Court.
Fed up with the U.S. Supreme Court for striking down several New Deal laws, Roosevelt in early 1937 proposed expanding it from nine to as many as 15 justices. Under this so-called "court-packing" plan, which critics derided as a separation of powers violation, a new justice would be added for each sitting justice above the age of 70 who refused to retire. But although FDR's fellow Democrats held large majorities in both houses of Congress, they for once balked at supporting his agenda. In losing the battle, though, Roosevelt won the war. Never again would the Supreme Court invalidate a piece of New Deal legislation, and by the time of his death, seven of the nine justices were his appointees.

8. He sanctioned the imprisonment of Japanese-Americans.
Anti-Japanese sentiment in the United States reached a fever pitch following the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941. In California, for example, the governor, the entire congressional delegation, numerous newspapers and top U.S. Army commanders all called for Japanese residents to be removed so that they could not commit acts of espionage and sabotage. Some government officials had misgivings about what's now considered one of the most shameful episodes in U.S. history. But not Roosevelt, a humanitarian in many other respects, who told the War Department to do what it thought best. In February 1942, he signed an executive order delineating "military areas ... from which any or all persons may be excluded." About 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry, two-thirds of whom were American citizens, were then forcibly removed to internment camps, their property sold off at bargain-basement prices. German-Americans and Italian-Americans were generally spared this fate. A few decades later, Congress issued a formal apology and awarded $20,000 to each surviving detainee.

9. FDR was the first sitting president to fly in a plane.
At a time when air travel was much more dangerous, Roosevelt flew to Chicago in 1932 to accept the Democratic nomination for president. He then became the first sitting president to journey via airplane-and the first sitting president to leave the country in wartime-when he took off from Miami in January 1943 aboard a Boeing 314 flying boat. After making stops in Trinidad, Brazil and Gambia, he got on a second plane, a TWA C-54, which brought him to Casablanca, Morocco, for a conference with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. More flights followed, including one from Malta to the Soviet Union just a couple of months before his death.
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9 Things You May Not Know About Franklin D. Roosevelt

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1. Roosevelt was distantly related to both his wife and 11 other presidents. An only child with maternal roots dating back to the Mayflower, Franklin D. Roosevelt spent a privileged childhood in Hyde Park, New York, prior to attending an elite Massachusetts boarding school.

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fact 1:   Roosevelt was distantly related to both 11 other presidents AND his WIFE.

fact 2:   Roosevelt won all of his presidential elections by ALOT.

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rise to power: defeated Herbert Hoover and became president during the Great Depression

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1. Winston Churchill's mother was an American.

In the late 19th century, it was rather common for British aristocrats to marry U.S. heiresses. One such relationship matched Lord Randolph Churchill, the third son of the seventh Duke of Marlborough, with Jennie Jerome, the Brooklyn-born daughter of a wealthy financier. The couple had two children together: Winston in 1874 and Jack in 1880. Yet the relationship purportedly soured, and Jennie was frequently absent. She remained in England following Lord Randolph's death in 1895 and would marry twice more, in both instances to men two decades her junior.
READ MORE: Meet the Woman Behind Winston Churchill
2. Churchill almost didn't make it into military school.

As a student, Churchill performed poorly in virtually every subject except history and English composition. He was particularly inept at foreign languages. In a memoir, he described taking a two-hour-long Latin test that he left completely blank apart from his name and the number of the first question, along with "a blot and several smudges." His plan to attend the Royal Military College at Sandhurst suffered a setback when he twice failed the entrance examinations. With the help of a military tutor, he finally qualified the third time around, but only for the cavalry class, which had lower standards than the infantry.

3. A daring escape from prison camp earned him instant fame.

After graduating from Sandhurst, Churchill took leave from the army and traveled to Cuba, where he reported on an uprising for a London newspaper. He subsequently served as a war correspondent and military officer, a dual role then permitted, in India, Sudan and South Africa. Upon arriving in South Africa in 1899, his armored train was ambushed by Boers, the descendants of Dutch settlers who were fighting the British at the time. Churchill was captured and marched to a prison camp, which he soon escaped from by scaling a wall at night, even as two of his fellow prisoners turned back. With no precise plan, Churchill luckily stumbled upon the house of a British coal mine manager, who hid him in a mineshaft for three days and then sent him on a wool-filled rail truck into Mozambique. From there, Churchill caught a ship back to South Africa and rushed to the front a newfound hero.

4. He organized a massive World War I attack that failed spectacularly.

Churchill's political career began in 1900 when he was elected to Parliament, a position he would hold for more than 60 years. He secured his first cabinet post in 1908, and by 1911 had advanced to become First Lord of the Admiralty (the British equivalent of U.S. Secretary of the Navy). In this capacity, he prepared an amphibious assault during World War I against the crumbling Ottoman Empire. Churchill believed such action would allow the British to link up with their Russian allies, put added pressure on Germany's eastern front and possibly even tip the balance of the entire conflict. But when Allied battleships entered the Dardanelles strait, located near present-day Istanbul, in March 1915, Ottoman fire sank three of them, severely damaged three others and sent the remainder into retreat. Allied troops similarly failed to gain ground during months of fighting on the adjacent Gallipoli Peninsula, suffering over 250,000 casualties in the process. Although Churchill lost his admiralty post as a result of the failure, he was eventually able to rehabilitate his reputation.
READ MORE: Winston Churchill's World War Disaster
5. Churchill was no fan of Gandhi.

Throughout much of his life, Churchill opposed any form of autonomy for India. He reserved particular dislike for nonviolent independence leader Mohandas Gandhi, at one point calling him "a seditious Middle Temple lawyer now posing as a fakir of a type well known in the East," and he even favored letting Gandhi die during a hunger strike. Churchill's imperialist attitude came through with regards to other British colonies as well. He once asserted, for example, that Zulus, Afghans and Dervishes were "savages and barbarous peoples."

6. Most of his famous speeches came within a few months of each other.

Churchill took over as prime minister in May 1940 after a disastrous start to World War II in which Nazi Germany conquered much of Europe. A master orator, he did his best to rally the nation in the face of near-certain attack, giving six major speeches in four months. During the first of those, he told Parliament that he had "nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat." On June 4, he similarly declared, "We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills. We shall never surrender." And on June 18, as France prepared to submit to the Nazis, he told his countrymen to "brace ourselves to our duties and so bear ourselves that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, "This was their finest hour.'"

7. Churchill was voted out of office before World War II's end.

In July 1945, after Germany had surrendered but not Japan, Britain held its first general election in a decade. To the surprise of many, Churchill's Conservative Party lost in a landslide, having been successfully portrayed by the Labour Party as anti-worker and anti-welfare. "They have a perfect right to kick us out," he purportedly said upon hearing the news. "That is democracy. That is what we have been fighting for." He returned to the premiership in 1951, remaining there until ill health induced him to resign three-and-a-half years later.

8. Churchill popularized the term "iron curtain."

Despite his misgivings about communism, Churchill gladly allied himself with the Soviet Union during World War II. Afterwards, however, he began to harbor serious misgivings about the Soviet Union's aims. In a March 1946 speech, he spoke of "an iron curtain [that] has descended across the continent." "Behind that line," he said, countries are subject "to a very high and, in many cases, increasing measure of control from Moscow." From that point forward, Western officials continuously mentioned the "iron curtain" when talking about the USSR.
WATCH NOW: Winston Churchill's Iron Curtain Speech
9. He was an award-winning author.

Churchill wrote volumes of books over the course of his life, the first of which detailed his army experiences in India, Sudan and South Africa. He later penned a biography of his father, a biography of the first Duke of Marlborough, numerous volumes on World War I and World War II, a history of English-speaking peoples and one novel that he urged his friends not to read. In 1953, while serving his second term as prime minister, he received the Nobel Prize in Literature for "his mastery of historical and biographical description as well as for brilliant oratory in defending exalted human values."

10. Churchill was extremely accident-prone.

As a youth, Churchill once suffered a concussion and ruptured a kidney while playfully throwing himself off a bridge. Later on, he nearly drowned in a Swiss lake, fell several times from horses, dislocated his shoulder while disembarking from a ship in India, crashed a plane while learning to fly and was hit by a car when he looked the wrong way to cross New York's Fifth Avenue. None of these incidents left him debilitated. He lived until age 90 before finally succumbing to a stroke.
Watch full episodes of World War II: Race to Victory.

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10 Things You May Not Know About Winston Churchill

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In the late 19th century, it was rather common for British aristocrats to marry U.S. heiresses. One such relationship matched Lord Randolph Churchill, the third son of the seventh Duke of Marlborough, with Jennie Jerome, the Brooklyn-born daughter of a wealthy financier. The couple had two children together: Winston in 1874 and Jack in 1880.

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fact 1: He almost didn't make it to military school

fact 2: Churchill's mother was actually american.

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rise to power:   After Chamberlain's resignation in 1940, Churchill was chosen to succeed him as Prime Minister

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Biography >>World War II for Kids

Joseph Stalin
by Unknown

Occupation: Leader of the Soviet Union

Born: December 18, 1878 in Gori, Georgia

Died: March 5, 1953 Kuntsevo Dacha near Moscow, Russia

Best known for: Fighting the Germans in WW2 and starting the Cold War

Biography:

Joseph Stalin became leader of the Soviet Union after the founder of the Soviet Union, Vladimir Lenin, died in 1924. Stalin ruled up until his own death in 1953. He was known as a brutal leader who was responsible for the deaths of over 20 million people.

Where did Stalin grow up?

He was born in Gori,Georgia (a country just south of Russia) on December 18, 1878. His birth name was Losif Jughashvili. Stalin's parents were poor and he had a rough childhood. At the age of 7 he got the disease smallpox. He survived, but his skin was covered in scars. He later went to seminary to become a priest, however, he was expelled for being a radical.

The Revolution

After leaving the seminary, Stalin joined up with the Bolshevik revolutionaries. This was an underground group of people that followed the communist writings of Karl Marx and were led byVladimir Lenin. Stalin became a leader within the Bolsheviks. He led riots and strikes and even raised money by robbing banks and other crimes. Soon Stalin became one of Lenin's top leaders.

In 1917, theRussian Revolution took place. This was when the government led by the Tsars was overthrown and Lenin and the Bolsheviks came into power. Russia was now called the Soviet Union and Joseph Stalin was a major leader in the government.

Lenin's Death

Stalin as a young man
from the book "Josef Wissarionowitsch Stalin-
Kurze Lebensbeschreibung"

In 1924 Vladimir Lenin died. Stalin had been General Secretary of the Communist Party since 1922. He had been growing in power and control. After Lenin's death, Stalin took over as sole leader of the Soviet Union.

Industrialization

In order to strengthen the Soviet Union, Stalin decided that the country should move away from agriculture and become industrialized. He had factories built through the country. These factories would help the Soviet Union to fight the Germans in World War II.

Purges and Murder

Stalin was one of the most brutal leaders in world history. He had anyone that didn't agree with him killed. He also caused famines in areas of the country so people he wanted dead would starve. Throughout his rule he would order purges where millions of people he thought were against him would be killed or put into slave labor camps. Historians aren't sure how many people he had killed, but they estimate between 20 to 40 million.

World War II

At the start ofWorld War II, Stalin formed an alliance with Adolf Hitler and Germany. However, Hitler hated Stalin and the Germans made a surprise attack on the Soviet Union in 1941. In order to fight off the Germans, Stalin joined the Allies of Britain and the United States. After a terrible war, where many on both sides died, the Germans were defeated.

After World War II, Stalin set up puppet governments in the Eastern European countries that the Soviet Union had "freed" from Germany. These governments were ran by the Soviet Union. This started the Cold War between the two world superpowers, the Soviet Union and the United States.

Interesting Facts

He got the name Stalin while he was a revolutionary. It comes from the Russian word for "steel" combined with "Lenin".

Before Lenin died he wrote a Testament where he recommended that Stalin be removed from power. Lenin referred to Stalin as a "course, brutish bully".

Stalin created the Gulag slave labor camp. Criminals and political prisoners were sent to these camps to work as slaves.

Before he had the name Stalin, he used the name "Koba". Koba was a hero from Russian literature.

Stalin's right hand man was Vyacheslav Molotov.

Activities

Take a ten questionquiz about this page.

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Works Cited

Back to Biography for Kids Home Page

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Kids learn about the biography of Joseph Stalin, leader of the communist Soviet Union during World War II and beyond.

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fact 1:   Before Lenin died, he recommended that Stalin should be removed from power

fact 2: He made the Gulag slave labor camp

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rise to power:   He assumed leadership over the Soviet Union following Lenin's death in 1924

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fact 1:   Tojo became known as "Razor Tojo" for being efficient

fact 2:   Tojo was Kwantung Army chief of staff in 1937.

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Let's know more about Hideki Tojo!

Hideki Tojo was an Imperial Japanese Army general and Prime Minister of Japan through most of WWII, most famous for his attack on Pearl Harbor.

The Pearl Harbor attack marked the beginning of the Pacific War, which would continue until 1945.

America and Britain began to take action that suggested they were close to war with Japan in late 1941, prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Tojo became known as 'Razor Tojo' because he was efficient, and rose quickly up the army ranks.

Hideki Tojo led Japanese forces in Manchuria during the Sino-Japanese War in the 1930s.

Tojo became Kwantung Army chief of staff in 1937.

Key Facts

In 1938, Tojo became army vice minister and in 1940 he became army minister.

Tojo wanted an alliance between Japan, Germany and Italy and pushed for it in the government.

Tojo served as the Prime Minister and army minister during WWII, and in 1944 he took the additional command of chief of the Army General Staff.

Tojo wanted to create a dictatorship like those of Joseph Stalin in Russia and Adolf Hitler in Germany but he was not successful.

While serving as Prime Minister, Tojo also held the positions of Foreign Minister, Education Minister, Home Minister, and Minister of Commerce and Industry.

Hideki Tojo began to lose popularity in the later years of WWII. He was forced to resign on 18 July, 1944, after the fall of Saipan to the Allied Forces on 9 July, 1944.

Assassination plots began to surface in the summer of 1944, but they were not successful.

Many expected Tojo to commit suicide.

Tojo was tried for war crimes, found guilty and sentenced to death. Hideki Tojo was hanged on 23 December, 1948.

Prologue

A politician and a general of the Imperial Japanese Army, Hideki Tojo also served as Prime Minister of Japan and President of the Imperial Rule Assistance Association.

Tojo's voice was among the loudest concerning the preventive war against the United States during deliberations leading up to Pearl Harbor. Upon becoming Prime Minister, he presided over much of the conquest of the West's territories in Asia and the Pacific until the defeat of Japanese forces at Midway and Guadalcanal.

His years in power gave him the tools for perpetuating numerous war crimes including the systematic massacre and starvation of civilians and prisoners of war. But the war's tide increasingly turned against Japan, leading to Tojo's late resignation as Prime Minister. Japan's surrender was inevitable, soon after Tojo was sentenced to death by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East. He was hanged on 23 December 1948.

Hideki Tojo

Born in the Kojimachi district of Tokyo on 30 December, 1884, Tojo was the third son of Hidenori Tojo, a lieutenant general in the Imperial Japanese Army.

In this period, Japanese society was divided into four castes: Merchants, Artisans, Peasants and Samurai. After the Meiji Restoration in 1868, the caste system was slowly abolished, ending in 1871 but the distinctions remained and persisted. This somehow ensured the former Samurai caste's traditional prestige. Tojo's family came from such a caste, though they were relatively low warriors for the great daimyos.

His father was turned from samurai to army officer while his mother was the daughter of a Buddhist priest, making the family respectable, but poor.

The typical education for a Japanese youth in the Meiji era, including Tojo's, was the purpose of training boys to be soldiers as adults. This message was relentlessly drilled into Japanese students.

They made the generation believe that war was the most beautiful thing, that the Emperor was a living god and that the greatest honour was to die for him. The girls were taught that the highest honour for a woman was to have many sons so that they could die for the Emperor.

The schools in the Meiji era were very competitive, and there was no tradition of sympathy for failure. Failure was not tolerated and even the teachers would bully those who failed. Tojo didn't stand out with his grades in school, however he was known for his willingness to work extremely hard. One of his heroes was the shogun Tokugawa who issued the injunction: "Avoid the things you like, turn your attention to unpleasant duties."

He followed in his father's footsteps and graduated from the Japanese Military Academy. In 1905 he was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the infantry and was outraged upon hearing of the Treaty of Portsmouth which ended the war with Russia and thus did not end with Japan's annexation of Siberia.

The Treaty of Portsmouth can be considered the start of anti-American sentiments among the Japanese though they did not know that this war almost bankrupt their country. They saw the treaty as unfair for Japan's rightful gains.

In 1909, Tojo married and had three sons and 1918 went to serve in Siberia as part of the Japanese expeditionary force to intervene in the Russian Civil War. He also served as military attaché to Germany until 1922. The Japanese were very influenced by the intellectual developments of Germany and often imitated them in a sense. Also in 1922, Tojo took a train ride across the United States, his first and last visit. From his travels he deduced that the Americans were very materialistic, soft and devoted to money-making and other hedonistic pursuits.

In 1924, the Immigration Control Act was passed by the American Congress which banned all Asian immigration to the United States. The reason for this was that Asians worked harder than whites, a statement issued openly by Congressmen and Senators.

This was very offensive to the Japanese and Tojo wrote that American whites would never accept Asians as equals and that the act showed that they put their own interests first.

Ascension

By 1928, Tojo was already bureau chief of the Japanese Army and shortly after, colonel. He would often visit his men's homes and assisted them with their personal problems and made loans to officers who were short on money.

By 1934 he was promoted to major general and served as Chief of the Personnel Department within the army ministry.

Following the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931, Tojo wrote a chapter in

the book "Essays in time of national emergency".

He called for Japan to become totalitarian in order to prepare for the next war.

He attacked Britain, France and the United States for waging "ideological war" against Japan since 1919.

Politically, he was a nationalist and militarist, and was nicknamed "Razor" for his reputation as a strict by-the-book mentality as well as his cold-bloodedness.

Tesions

The relations between Japan and China reached a crisis point. In 1937, a skirmish at Beijing's Marco Polo Bridge, called the "China Incident", started the Second Sino-Japanese War over Western objections.

Japan successfully captured the Chinese capital Nanking. The army proceeded to systematically rape and kills its people for six weeks in what is known as the Rape of Nanking. Economic sanctions were imposed on Japan by the United States in order to cripple it, but it had a different effect.

The sanctions emboldened Japan to align against the US. Japan signed the Tripartite Pact with Germany and Italy in September 1940.

Japanese soldiers marched into Southeast Asia to secure strategic resources and France's Vichy regime allowed Japan to stage troops in northern Indochina aka Vietnam. This led to China's complete locking, preventing the import of arms and good through its southern neighbours.

By this time Tojo was appointed Army Minister in the second Fumimaro Konoe regime. Prince Konoe had chosen Tojo to secure his armies backing with foreign policy. Konoe favoured Germany in mediating an end to the Sino-Japanese War.

Tojo was a supporter of the Tripartite Pact and continued to expand the war with China. He declared that any withdrawal from Indochina would make them seem weak.

They were, however, unsure whether to wage war or pursue diplomatic negotiations in order to regain gasoline supplies.

In October, Konoe was politically isolated and resigned, with Tojo later assuming the command. In November, Emperor Hirohito received the plans for the attack on Pearl Harbor, and later approved the war with the West.

The Hull note was proposed to the Japanese by the American Secretary of State Cordell Hull, in which he proposed to Japan to withdraw all military forces from China and Indochina in exchange for the lifting of the oil embargo. However, some inconsistencies remained. Tojo chose to misinterpret the Hull Note as an ultimatum thus the war with the United States began.

World War II

It was now publicly announced that Japan would go to war with the United States, the British Empire and the Netherlands. Tojo continued to hold his position as Prime Minister while also concurrently serving as the minister of Home, Foreign, Education, Commerce and Industry.

Emperor Hirohito was advised by Konoe to choose Prince Naruhiko as Prime Minister, however he chose Tojo. Under Tojo's and his cabinet's advice, Hirohito consented to the Pearl Harbor attack and carried it out on 7 December leading to the official war with the United States and the British Empire.

Initially, the Japanese were overjoyed by their victory after victory experience. This greatly increased Tojo's popularity and made him solidify his power in 1942, by holding a special election to fill Japan's legislature with his pro-war supporters. Difficulties lay with the Japanese army, however. Throughout the war, Tojo was hamstrung by the ineffective bureaucracy and infighting among the armed forces.

While trying to consolidate power in his hands, he would be often criticised by people telling him that Germany's errors in the war were due to Hitler's micromanagement. Tojo reportedly said, "Hitler was an enlisting man. I am a general." Allied propaganda portrayed him as an equivalent to Hitler and Mussolini. His image became the poster for all of Japan's militarism and it was widely thought that he was solely responsible for all the atrocities and warmongering. Although one cannot blame one man
for these actions, some of Tojo's actions were indeed atrocious.

The death rate of Western prisoners in Japan, for example, was seven times higher than the ones in Germany. Biological experiments were consented upon the prisoners and Tojo also approved the forced prostitution of so-called 'comfort girls'. On the other hand, Tojo did approve the resettlement of Russian-Jewish refugees into Manchuria, despite German protestations.

The fall of Tojo Hideki

Japan's success in the war would soon come to an end. After the battle of Midway in June 1942, the tide turned to the American's advantage and thus Tojo's popularity rapidly declined. The Japanese were pushed back from all their conquered territories and confidence in the Prime Minister slipped even further. It became clear to many Japanese in positions of power that

Japan lost the war. They forced Tojo to resign due to the fact that he was in no position to negotiate a peace treaty or ensure the survival of Japan.

Tojo resigned on 18 July, 1944 after the Japanese suffered defeat at Saipan. Japan's unconditional surrender was announced by Emperor Hirohito on 15 August, 1945, but it was formalised on 2 September.

A week later, General Douglas MacArthur ordered the arrest of Tojo, who had gone into seclusion. He was easy to find but he did not submit and decided to kill himself. However, this failed as he missed his heart. He was nursed back in a military hospital and then
the trial arrived.

Branded as a class-A war criminal, Tojo was accused of murdering, ill-treating prisoners of war, imposing labour on civilians, destroying cities beyond justification, mass murder, pillage, torture and many other things upon the civilian population of the overrun countries. In a sense, Tojo achieved what he wished for. That is to die for his Emperor while taking all the blame of the war. He was sentenced to die on 12 November, 1948, and was hanged six weeks later.

Aftermath

The work done by General MacArthur was heavily criticised by the historians Herbert P. Bix and John W. Dower, who stated that MacArthur and his staff exonerated Emperor Hirohito and all the other members of the imperial family. According to them, MacArthur worked to protect the Emperor and shift ultimate responsibility onto Tojo. Tojo was survived by his descendants who would go on and pursue military or media careers. In the movie Pride, Tojo is portrayed as a national hero, forced against his will by the Hull Note into attacking America and executed after a rigged trial, a picture of Tojo that is widely accepted in Japan while causing offence abroad.
Image sources:

1. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HidekiTojoColor.jpg

2. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Japanese_Policeman_circa_1875.JPG

3. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Attack_on_Pearl_Harbor_Japanese_planes_view.jpg

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Hideki Tojo Facts, Worksheets, Military Life & Role in World War II

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Hideki Tojo was an Imperial Japanese Army general and Prime Minister of Japan through most of WWII, most famous for his attack on Pearl Harbor. The Pearl Harbor attack marked the beginning of the Pacific War, which would continue until 1945.

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rise to power:   Tojo was a minister of war and a later on Konoye resigned due to increasing tension with Tojo. Tojo then became he Prime Minister.

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1. Mussolini had a penchant for violence even as a youth.
Born on July 29, 1883, Mussolini gained a reputation for bullying and fighting during his childhood. At age 10 he was expelled from a religious boarding school for stabbing a classmate in the hand, and another stabbing incident took place at his next school. He also admitted to knifing a girlfriend in the arm. Meanwhile, he purportedly pinched people at church to make them cry, led gangs of boys on raids of local farmsteads and eventually became adept at dueling with swords. When the New York Times reported on Mussolini's May 1922 duel against a rival newspaper editor, it mentioned that he bore over 100 wounds received in battle.

2. Mussolini was a socialist before becoming a fascist.
Born to a socialist father, Mussolini was named after leftist Mexican President Benito Juárez. His two middle names, Amilcare and Andrea, came from Italian socialists Amilcare Cipriani and Andrea Costa. Early in Mussolini's life, for instance, those names seemed appropriate. While living in Switzerland from 1902 to 1904, he cultivated an intellectual image and wrote for socialist periodicals such as L'Avvenire del Lavoratore (The Worker's Future). He then served in the Italian army for nearly two years before resuming his career as a teacher and journalist. In his articles and speeches, Mussolini preached violent revolution, praised famed communist thinker Karl Marx and criticized patriotism. In 1912 he became editor of Avanti! (Forward!), the official daily newspaper of Italy's Socialist Party. But he was expelled from the party two years later over his support for World War I. By 1919 a radically changed Mussolini had founded the fascist movement, which would later become the Fascist Party.

3. Italy's leaders never called on the military to stop Mussolini's insurrection.
From 1920 to 1922, armed fascist squads faced minimal interference from the police or army as they roamed the country causing property damage and killing an estimated 2,000 political opponents. Many other citizens were beaten up or forced to drink castor oil. Then, on October 24, 1922, Mussolini threatened to seize power with a demonstration known as the March on Rome. Though Prime Minister Luigi Facta knew of these plans, he failed to act in any meaningful way. Finally, when fascists began occupying government offices and telephone exchanges on the night of October 27, Facta and his ministers advised King Victor Emmanuel III to declare a state of emergency and impose martial law. The wavering king refused to sign any such decree, however, and Facta was forced to resign.

4. Contrary to popular belief, Mussolini did not take power in a coup.
With Italy's leading non-fascist politicians hopelessly divided and with the threat of violence in the air, on October 29 the king offered Mussolini the chance to form a coalition government. But although the premiership was now his, Il Duce-a master of propaganda who claimed the backing of 300,000 fascist militiamen when the real number was probably far lower-wanted to make a show of force. As a result, he joined armed supporters who flooded the streets of Rome the following day. Mussolini would later mythologize the March on Rome's importance.

5. Mussolini did not become a true dictator until 1925.
After becoming prime minister, Mussolini reduced the influence of the judiciary, muzzled a free press, arrested political opponents, continued condoning fascist squad violence and otherwise consolidated his hold on power. However, he continued working within the parliamentary system at least somewhat until January 1925, when he declared himself dictator of Italy. Following a series of assassination attempts in 1925 and 1926, Mussolini tightened his grip even further, banning opposition parties, kicking out over 100 members of parliament, reinstating the death penalty for political crimes, ramping up secret police activities and abolishing local elections.

6. Mussolini was anti-Church before becoming pro-Church.
As a socialist youth, Mussolini declared himself an atheist and railed against the Catholic Church, going so far as to say that only idiots believed Bible stories and that Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene were lovers. He even authored an anti-clerical pulp novel. But after taking power, Il Duce began working to patch up that relationship. He outlawed freemasonry, exempted the clergy from taxation, cracked down on artificial contraception, campaigned for an increased birth rate, raised penalties for abortion, restricted nightlife, regulated women's clothing and banned homosexual acts among adult men. Despite having many mistresses himself, he also put in place harsh punishments for adultery. In 1929 Mussolini signed an agreement with the Vatican under which the Church received authority over marriage and was compensated for property that had been seized decades earlier. Pope Pius XI afterwards referred to Mussolini as the "man whom providence has sent us." Nonetheless, tensions between the two eventually resurfaced over such things as Mussolini's racial laws, where were similar to those in Nazi Germany.

7. Mussolini sought to establish an Italian empire.
Mussolini launched his first military action in 1923 when he bombarded and briefly occupied the Greek island of Corfu. Several years later, he authorized the use of concentration camps and poison gas to help put down a rebellion in Libya, which at that time was an Italian colony. Poison gas was again used illegally during the conquest of Ethiopia in 1935 and 1936, after which Il Duce declared that Italy finally had its empire. "It is a fascist empire, an empire of peace, an empire of civilization and humanity," he purportedly said. Three years later, Italy invaded and annexed Albania. In addition to those wars of expansion, conflict-loving Mussolini also propped up right-wing dissidents. During the Spanish Civil War, for example, he supplied troops and arms to General Francisco Franco's Nationalist movement.

8. Italy's army performed disastrously during World War II.
For all his bluster, Mussolini did not enter World War II until June 1940, by which time his Nazi Germany allies had already swept through much of Europe. It soon became apparent that Italy lacked adequate military equipment and that its pace of production was pitiful. In fact, the United States could manufacture more planes in a week than Italy could in a year. Mussolini did not help matters by repeatedly changing his war plans and stretching his forces too thin. His poorly executed attack on France made little progress until the French asked the Germans for an armistice. Later that year, Italian troops invaded Greece, only to be pushed back into neighboring Albania. Italy's North Africa campaign likewise stalled, although in both cases Germany temporarily came to the rescue.

9. Mussolini was deposed without a fight.
Having already snatched away Libya and Ethiopia, Allied forces invaded Italy proper in 1943 and began dropping bombs on Rome. On July 25 of that year, King Victor Emmanuel informed Mussolini that he would be replaced as prime minister. Il Duce was then arrested and imprisoned in various places, including a remote mountain ski resort from which German commandos rescued him a month and a half later. From September 1943 to April 1945, Mussolini headed a puppet government in German-occupied northern Italy. At the end of the war, he tried to sneak over the Swiss border wearing a German greatcoat and helmet. But an Italian partisan recognized him and shouted out, "We've got Big-Head!" Mussolini was executed the following day, and his corpse was strung upside down in a Milan square.

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9 Things You May Not Know About Mussolini

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1. Mussolini had a penchant for violence even as a youth. Born on July 29, 1883, Mussolini gained a reputation for bullying and fighting during his childhood. At age 10 he was expelled from a religious boarding school for stabbing a classmate in the hand, and another stabbing incident took place at his next school.

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fact 1: Mussolini was anti-church before becoming pro-church

fact 2: Mussolini was a socialist before becoming a facist

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rise to power:  Prime Minister from 1922-1925 and then was a dictator from 1925-1943

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link to more info

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Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) is unquestionably the central figure in the story of the Holocaust. It was the combination of his virulent hatred of Jews and his success in creating a political movement that was able to seize control of Germany that made the campaign to exterminate the Jews possible.

Hitler's origins: Hitler was born in a small town in Austria in 1889. He was the son of a local customs official and his much younger third wife. Hitler's father was an illegitimate child and it is uncertain who his father was, but there is no evidence for the legend that this unidentified grandfather was Jewish. Hitler's father was harsh and distant. He had a closer relationship with his mother, and her death from cancer when he was 17 was traumatic for him.
Hitler had a normal education. As a young man, he showed no special talents. He wanted to study art, and moved to Vienna after his mother's death in hope of being accepted to art school, but was turned down for lack of talent.

Sources of Hitler's anti-semitism: Because we have very little reliable information about Hitler's early life, it is hard to determine exactly when he became a confirmed anti-semite. His own account, in his book Mein Kampf, is not entirely accurate: by the time he wrote it, he wanted to make it appear that he had adopted anti-semitic ideas quite early in his life. Prejudice against Jews was widespread in the early 20 th century, but there is no evidence that Hitler's family was particularly anti-semitic. Discussions of Hitler's antisemitism focus on three periods in his life:

The Vienna years (1909-1913): Hitler later claimed this was when he developed his antisemitic outlook. Vienna had a large Jewish minority (about 10% of the population when Hitler lived there). It was also a hotbed of ethnic conflict, as members of all the different populations of the Austrian Empire (Czechs, Poles, Croats, Hungarians) migrated to the rapidly growing capital. Hitler observed the success of the city's popular mayor, Lueger, who was regularly re-elected on a virulently anti-semitic program. He also probably read some of the widely circulated racist and anti-semitic literature that was easily available in the city. Many of these pamphlets also claimed that Jews were the main architects of modern capitalism, and that they lived off the sweat of honest non-Jewish workers. On the other hand, Hitler was a regular visitor in at least one Jewish family's home, and his efforts to support himself by selling paintings were made possible primarily by Jewish art dealers. In other words, Hitler had not yet made anti-semitism the center of his life during this period, despite his later claims.

The war years and the defeat of Germany (1914-1919): although he was an Austrian citizen, Hitler volunteered to serve in the German Army at the start of World War I. He served through all four years of the conflict, although he rose only to the rank of corporal. He identified completely with the German cause, and was deeply disturbed by the defeat of 1918. Like many disappointed soldiers, he believed that the army had been "stabbed in the back" by traitors. Although German Jews had loyally supported their country during the war, they were more likely than other Germans to welcome the new, democratic Weimar Republic established after the defeat. This led to accusations that Jews were responsible for Germany's defeat. In addition, the war had led to the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the establishment of the Bolshevik or Communist regime there, devoted to the overthrow of capitalism. In 1919, there was a short-lived attempt to create a Communist government in Germany as well. Enemies of the Communists pointed to the role of a few Jews in this movement and labeled Communism a Jewish conspiracy. Modern scholars, particularly Hitler biographer Ian Kershaw, tend to see these years, rather than the Vienna period, as the time when Hitler's ideas about Jews really became fixed. This focuses attention on the impact of the war, rather than the ethnic hatreds in pre-war Austria.

The first years of the Weimar Republic (1919-1923): After the war, Hitler lived in Munich, a city overrun with bitter ex-soldiers and others angry at the new democratic government in Berlin. He began to associate with some of the many groups formed to agitate against all the evils affecting Germany: capitalism, Communism, the unpopular Treaty of Versailles, democracy, and the Jews. By September 1919, Hitler had clearly come to see the Jews as the organizing force behind these problems. He also began to speak of Germany's need to conquer additional territory-Lebensraum or "living space"-for itself, at the expense of the "Jewish Bolsheviks" in Russia. There was nothing original about his ideas. He did begin to make a name for himself, however, because of his unusual speaking ability. By 1920, he had become one of the most popular agitational speakers in Munich. He took over one of the many small ultra-right-wing groups, the German Workers' Party (later renamed National Socialist German Workers' Party, or Nazis for short) and built it up into a larger group, although its support was still mostly limited to Munich and surrounding areas. Anti-semitism was a regular part of Hitler's message throughout this period. By 1923, he thought anger against the Weimar Republic was widespread enough to make the overthrow of the government possible; he wanted to set up a right-wing government, but did not yet imagine himself as its leader. This Beer Hall Putsch (Nov. 9, 1923) failed when the army and the police refused to support it. Hitler was arrested, and his movement seemed to have failed. During this period, Hitler became an effective propagandist for anti-semitism, but his ideas on the subject had formed earlier.

The Stages of Hitler's Rise to Power (1924-1933)
After the Beer Hall Putsch in 1923, Hitler was tried and sentenced to prison. Most observers assumed that his political career was over. The extreme economic problems that had weakened the Weimar Republic in its first few years eased starting in 1924, and fewer people were attracted to political extremism.

1924: In prison, Hitler writes Mein Kampf, setting out his ideas. In his absence, it becomes clear that no one else can create a successful ultra-right-wing movement

1925-28: Hitler, released from prison, reconstitutes the Nazi Party under his exclusive leadership. The Party does very poorly in elections, but this period allows Hitler to recruit a small but devoted group of followers, including many who would be leading figures in the Nazi regime after it came to power.

1929-32: the start of the world economic depression following the crash of the United States stock market in October 1929 gives Hitler a chance. As unemployment skyrockets in Germany, voters turn against parties associated with the Weimar Republic. The Nazis score a series of successes in state elections. Hitler benefits from the deep divisions among the other German political parties. The Communists hope to profit from the Depression. They blame Germany's problems on capitalism, call for a revolution, and refuse to cooperate with any of the others parties. Conservative nationalist parties blame parliamentary democracy and the Versailles treaty for Germany's problems. They hope to use the economic crisis to overturn the constitution and restore an authoritarian system similar to the pre-war monarchy. They see Hitler as a potentially useful ally. The Social Democratic Party is the strongest defender of the democratic system, but blames the "bourgeois" pro-capitalist parties for the economic crisis. The Catholic Center party has the greatest weight in the government, but has no remedy for the Depression. By contrast, the Nazis offer a simple explanation of the crisis-it's the fault of the Jews-and a simple program for ending it. In national parliamentary elections in September 1930, the Nazis score an unexpected success, winning 18% of the vote and becoming the second-largest party (after the Social Democrats). In 1932, Hitler runs for president against the celebrated war hero Hindenburg and wins 37% of the vote.

1932-1933: An unpopular coalition government led by the Center Party fails to gain support, and new parliamentary elections are called in July 1932; Hitler's party wins 37% of the vote, while the Communists get 16%. No majority coalition in favor of democracy can be established any more. Various right-wing politicians compete with each other to create a government that will rule by decree. Hitler is offered a place in one of these schemes, engineered by von Schleicher, in August 1932, but refuses because he would not have full control. New elections are held in November 1932 to break the deadlock. For the first time since 1929, the Nazis' share of the vote goes down, to 32%. Fearing that his moment may be about to pass, Hitler becomes more conciliatory to Schleicher. On January 30, 1933, an agreement is announced: Hitler will be named Chancellor (prime minister). Despite the broad support for the Nazis, the party will have only four seats in the cabinet. Schleicher and other conservatives expect Hitler's extremism to undermine his popularity; they will then be able to dismiss him and keep power themselves.

Significant points about Hitler's rise to power: (1) Hitler's success owed a great deal to the weakness of democracy in Germany; (2) it took the Great Depression to create the conditions in which Hitler could come to power; (3) although his party did become the largest in Germany, Hitler was not elected to office; the Nazis never won an absolute majority of votes, even in the final elections held after they came to power in March 1933; (4) Hitler became Chancellor thanks to the calculations of right-wing nationalist politicians who thought they could use his popularity to destroy the Weimar system.

The best biographies of Hitler: historians rely on the three serious and thoroughly researched biographies of Hitler. There are other good books about Hitler, but there is also an enormous literature of very dubious quality dealing with him, which often relates rumor as if it was fact. The three essential books about Hitler are:

Alan Bullock, Hitler: A Study in Tyranny. Originally published in 1952, this book is now somewhat dated but still very readable and essentially accurate on the stages of Hitler's rise to power.

Joachim Fest, Hitler. Originally published in 1973, this is the most important examination of Hitler's life by a German scholar.

Ian Kershaw, Hitler (2 vs., 1999 and 2000): Even longer and more detailed than Bullock and Fest, Kershaw's recent biography incorporates the latest research on topics such as Hitler's early life, and shows why many of the stories about Hitler included in earlier biographies are no longer considered reliable. This will undoubtedly be the standard biography of Hitler for many years to come.

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Hitler: Essential Background Information | University of Kentucky College of Arts & Sciences

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Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) is unquestionably the central figure in the story of the Holocaust. It was the combination of his virulent hatred of Jews and his success in creating a political movement that was able to seize control of Germany that made the campaign to exterminate the Jews possible.

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Hitler was a chancellor for some time up until August of 1934, Hindenburg died. Hitler claimed himself to be the dictator of Germany.

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fact 1:   A British soldier spared Adolf Hitler when he was injured during WW1

fact 2:   He was rejected twice by the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts