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Leader of Nazi Germany during WW2

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https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/how-did-adolf-hitler-happen

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Adolf Hitler (April 20, 1889 - April 30, 1945) was appointed chancellor of Germany in 1933 following a series of electoral victories by the Nazi Party. He ruled absolutely until his death by suicide in April 1945. Upon achieving power, Hitler smashed the nation's democratic institutions and transformed Germany into a war state intent on conquering Europe for the benefit of the so-called Aryan race. His invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, triggered the European phase of World War II. During the course of the war, Nazi military forces rounded up and executed 11 million victims they deemed inferior or undesirable-"life unworthy of life"-among them Jews, Slavs, homosexuals, and Jehovah's Witnesses.

Hitler had supreme authority as führer (leader or guide), but could not have risen to power or committed such atrocities on his own. He had the active support of the powerful German officer class and of millions of everyday citizens who voted for the National Socialist German Workers' (Nazi) Party and hailed him as a national savior in gigantic stadium rallies.

How were Hitler and the Nazis possible? How did such odious characters take and hold power in a country that was a world pacesetter in literature, art, architecture, and science, a nation that had a democratic government and a free press in the 1920s?

Hitler rose to power through the Nazi Party, an organization he forged after returning as a wounded veteran from the annihilating trench warfare of World War I. He and other patriotic Germans were outraged and humiliated by the harsh terms of the Treaty of Versailles, which the Allies compelled the new German government, the Weimar Republic, to accept along with an obligation to pay $33 billion in war reparations. Germany also had to give up its prized overseas colonies and surrender valued parcels of home territory to France and Poland. The German army was radically downsized and the nation forbidden to have submarines or an air force. "We shall squeeze the German lemon until the pips squeak!" explained one British official.

Paying the crushing reparations destabilized the economy, producing ruinous, runaway inflation. By September 1923, four billion German marks had the equal value of one American dollar. Consumers needed a wheelbarrow to carry enough paper money to buy a loaf of bread.

Hitler, a mesmerizing public speaker, addressed political meetings in Munich calling for a new German order to replace what he saw as an incompetent and inefficient democratic regime. This New Order was distinguished by an authoritarian political system based on a leadership structure in which authority flowed downward from a supreme national leader.

In the new Germany, all citizens would unselfishly serve the state, or Volk; democracy would be abolished; and individual rights sacrificed for the good of the führer state. The ultimate aim of the Nazi Party was to seize power through Germany's parliamentary system, install Hitler as dictator, and create a community of racially pure Germans loyal to their führer, who would lead them in a campaign of racial cleansing and world conquest.

Hitler blamed the Weimar Republic's weakness on the influence of Germany's Jewish and communist minorities, who he claimed were trying to take over the country. "There are only two possibilities," he told a Munich audience in 1922. "Either victory of the Aryan, or annihilation of the Aryan and the victory of the Jew." The young Hitler saw history as a process of racial struggle, with the strongest race-the Aryan race-ultimately prevailing by force of arms. "Mankind has grown great in eternal war," Hitler wrote. "It would decay in eternal peace."

Jews represented everything the Nazis found repugnant: finance capitalism (controlled, the Nazis believed, by powerful Jewish financiers), international communism (Karl Marx was a German Jew, and the leadership of the German Communist Party was heavily Jewish), and modernist cultural movements like psychoanalysis and swing music.

Nazi Party foreign policy aimed to rid Europe of Jews and other "inferior" peoples, absorb pure-blooded Aryans into a greatly expanded Germany-a "Third Reich"-and wage unrelenting war on the Slavic "hordes" of Russia, considered by Hitler to be Untermenschen (subhuman).

Once conquered, the Soviet Union would be ruled by the German master race, which would exterminate or subdue millions of Slavs to create lebensraum (living space) for their own farms and communities. In a conquered and racially cleansed Russia, they would work on model farms and factories connected to the homeland by new highways, called autobahns.

Hitler was the ideologue as well as the chief organizer of the Nazi Party. By 1921, the party had a newspaper, an official flag, and a private army-the Sturmabteilung SA (storm troopers)-made up largely of unemployed and disenchanted WWI veterans. By 1923, the SA had grown to 15,000 men and had access to hidden stores of weapons. That year, Hitler and WWI hero General Erich Ludendorff attempted to overthrow the elected regional government of Bavaria in a coup known as the Beer Hall Putsch.

The regular army crushed the rebellion and Hitler spent a year in prison-in loose confinement. In Landsberg Prison, Hitler dictated most of the first volume of his political autobiography, Mein Kampf (My Struggle). The book brought together, in inflamed language, the racialist and expansionist ideas he had been propagating in his popular beer-hall harangues.

By 1932, the Nazis were the largest political party in the Reichstag. In January of the following year, with no other leader able to command sufficient support to govern, President Paul von Hindenburg appointed Hitler chancellor of Germany. Shortly thereafter, a fire broke out in the Reichstag building in Berlin, and authorities arrested a young Dutch communist who confessed to starting it.

Hitler used this episode to convince President Hindenburg to declare an emergency decree suspending many civil liberties throughout Germany, including freedom of the press, freedom of expression, and the right to hold public assemblies. The police were authorized to detain citizens without cause, and the authority usually exercised by regional governments became subject to control by Hitler's national regime.

Almost immediately, Hitler began dismantling Germany's democratic institutions and imprisoning or murdering his chief opponents. When Hindenburg died the following year, Hitler took the titles of führer, chancellor, and commander in chief of the army. He expanded the army tremendously, reintroduced conscription, and began developing a new air force-all violations of the Treaty of Versailles.

Hitler's military spending and ambitious public-works programs, including building a German autobahn, helped restore prosperity. His regime also suppressed the Communist Party and purged his own paramilitary storm troopers, whose violent street demonstrations alienated the German middle class.

This bloodletting-called the "Night of the Long Knives"-was hugely popular and welcomed by the middle class as a blow struck for law and order. In fact, many Germans went along with the full range of Hitler's policies, convinced that they would ultimately be advantageous for the country.

In 1938, Hitler began his long-promised expansion of national boundaries to incorporate ethnic Germans. He colluded with Austrian Nazis to orchestrate the Anschluss, the annexation of Austria to Germany. And in Hitler's most brazenly aggressive act yet, Czechoslovakia was forced to surrender the Sudetenland, a mountainous border region populated predominantly by ethnic Germans.

The Czechs looked to Great Britain and France for help, but hoping to avoid war-they had been bled white in World War I-these nations chose a policy of appeasement. At a conclave held at Munich in September 1938, representatives of Great Britain and France compelled Czech leaders to cede the Sudetenland in return for Hitler's pledge not to seek additional territory. The following year, the German army swallowed up the remainder of Czechoslovakia.

British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, one of the signers of the Munich pact, had taken Hitler at his word. Returning to Britain with this agreement in hand, he proudly announced that he had achieved "peace with honor. I believe it is peace for our time."

A year later, German troops stormed into Poland.

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After being released from prison, Hitler vowed to work within the parliamentary system to avoid a repeat of the Beer Hall Putsch setback. In the 1920s, however, the Nazi Party was still a fringe group of ultraextremists with little political power. It received only 2.6 percent of the vote in the Reichstag elections of 1928.

But the worldwide economic depression and the rising power of labor unions and communists convinced increasing numbers of Germans to turn to the Nazi Party. The Nazis fed on bank failures and unemployment-proof, Hitler said, of the ineffectiveness of democratic government. Hitler pledged to restore prosperity, create civil order (by crushing industrial strikes and street demonstrations by communists and socialists), eliminate the influence of Jewish financiers, and make the fatherland once again a world power.

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How Did Adolf Hitler Happen? | The National WWII Museum | New Orleans

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Adolf Hitler was appointed chancellor of Germany in 1933 following a series of electoral victories by the Nazi Party. He ruled absolutely until his death by suicide in April 1945.

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1. Died in the Fuhrerbunker in Berlin 1945
2. He ordered the mass execution of at least 6 million Jewish men, women, and children.

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1. He ordered the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7th 1941
2. He also committed various war crimes against POWs and citizens, which later lead to his execution during the Tokyo trials

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In 1932 the Nazis were the largest political party in the Reichstag. In January of the following year, with no other leader able to command sufficient support to govern, President Paul von Hindenburg appointed Hitler chancellor of Germany. Almost immediately, Hitler began destroying Germany’s democratic institutions. When Hindenburg died the following year, Hitler took the titles of führer, chancellor, and commander in chief of the army.

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In 1937, he was made chief of staff of the Kwantung Army in Manchuria, China. When he returned to his homeland, Tojo assumed the office of vice-minister of war and quickly took the lead of the military. In July 1940, he was made minister of war and soon clashed with the prime minister, Prince Fumimaro Konoye. In October, Konoye resigned because of increasing tension with Tojo, who succeeded him as prime minister. Tojo kept his offices of army minister and war minster giving complete power.

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https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/tojo-makes-himself-military-czar#:~:text=In%20July%201940%2C%20he%20was,succeeded%20him%20as%20prime%20minister.

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Prime Minister of Japan during WW2

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Fascist Dictator of Italy during WW2

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1. He was friends with Nazi Germany and Adolf Hitler
2. He was removed from power and killed by his own citizens in 1943

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https://www.britannica.com/video/213452/Top-questions-and-answers-for-Benito-Mussolini#:~:text=In%201922%20Mussolini%20led%20a,(%22The%20Leader%22).

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Learn about Benito Mussolini, his rise to power, and role in World War II Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

Transcript

Benito Mussolini

How did Benito Mussolini rise to power?

Mussolini amassed a large following as an editor of a popular socialist magazine. During World War I his politics took a hard right turn as he stopped decrying the war and instead started advocating for it. After the war, he organized groups to wage campaigns of terrorism and intimidation against Italy's leftist institutions.

In 1922 Mussolini led a coalition of fascist leaders to Rome and forced the king to yield the government. Mussolini was appointed prime minister. By 1925 he had dismantled Italy's democratic government and, acting as a dictator, declared himself Il Duce ("The Leader").

What were Benito Mussolini's political beliefs?

Mussolini was a Fascist dictator. However, initially his work was primarily socialist, organizing with trade unions and writing for leftist publications. During World War I, his politics shifted right and were characterized by themes of racial superiority, xenophobia, and imperialism.

Where did the word fascism come from?

Mussolini's paramilitary groups were called fasci di combattimento, from which his movement derived its own name, fascismo. This came from the Latin word fasces, a bundle of wooden sticks topped with an ax-head that ancient Roman authority figures' attendants would carry to distinguish their rank.

What was Benito Mussolini's role in World War II?

In 1939 the Pact of Steel was formalized between Mussolini and Hitler. Later that year, at the onset of World War II, Mussolini was hesitant to join the fighting. However, he entered the war in 1940. Due to preexisting resource scarcity and economic constraint, Italy fared poorly. When the Allies invaded Sicily in 1943, Mussolini's own government arrested him.

What was Benito Mussolini's personal life like?

Mussolini was born poor, to working-class parents in northern Italy. He had two wives and many mistresses. He abandoned his first wife and their child and had five children with his second wife. He was executed in 1943 alongside his mistress Clara Petacci while attempting to flee to Switzerland. Their bodies were hung upside down in Milan.

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Benito Mussolini How did Benito Mussolini rise to power? Mussolini amassed a large following as an editor of a popular socialist magazine. During World War I his politics took a hard right turn as he stopped decrying the war and instead started advocating for it.

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In 1922 Mussolini led a group of fascist leaders to Rome and forced the king to yield the government. Mussolini was appointed prime minister. By 1925 he had dismantled Italy's democratic government and, acting as a dictator, declared himself Il Duce

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Leader of Communist Russia during WW2

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https://www.history.com/topics/european-history/joseph-stalin

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Young Joseph Stalin

Joseph Stalin was born Josef Vissarionovich Djugashvili on December 18, 1878, or December 6, 1878, according to the Old Style Julian calendar (although he later invented a new birth date for himself: December 21, 1879). He grew up in the small town of Gori, Georgia, then part of the Russian empire. When he was in his 30s, he took the name Stalin, from the Russian for "man of steel."

Did you know? In 1925, the Russian city of Tsaritsyn was renamed Stalingrad. In 1961, as part of the de-Stalinization process, the city, located along Europe's longest river, the Volga, became known as Volgograd. Today, it is one of Russia's largest cities and a key industrial center.

Stalin grew up poor and an only child. His father was a shoemaker and an alcoholic who beat his son, and his mother was a laundress. As a boy, Stalin contracted smallpox, which left him with lifelong facial scars. As a teen, he earned a scholarship to attend a seminary in the nearby city of Tblisi and study for the priesthood in the Georgian Orthodox Church.

While there he began secretly reading the work of German social philosopher and Communist Manifesto author Karl Marx, becoming interested in the revolutionary movement against the Russian monarchy. In 1899, Stalin was expelled from the seminary for missing exams, although he claimed it was for Marxist propaganda.

After leaving school, Stalin became an underground political agitator, taking part in labor demonstrations and strikes. He adopted the name Koba, after a fictional Georgian outlaw-hero, and joined the more militant wing of the Marxist Social Democratic movement, the Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin.

Stalin also became involved in various criminal activities, including bank heists, the proceeds from which were used to help fund the Bolshevik Party. He was arrested multiple times between 1902 and 1913, and subjected to imprisonment and exile in Siberia.

Children

In 1906, Stalin married Ekaterina "Kato" Svanidze, a seamstress. The couple had one son, Yakov, who died as a prisoner in Germany during World War II. Ekaterina perished from typhus when her son was an infant.

In 1918 (some sources cite 1919), Stalin married his second wife, Nadezhda "Nadya" Alliluyeva, the daughter of a Russian revolutionary. They had two children, a boy and a girl (Stalin's only daughter, Svetlana Alliluyeva, caused an international scandal when she defected to the United States in 1967). Nadezhda committed suicide in her early 30s. Stalin also fathered several children out of wedlock.

Rise to Power

In 1912, Lenin, who was then in exile in Switzerland, appointed Stalin to serve on the first Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party. Three years later, in November 1917, the Bolsheviks seized power during the Russian Revolution. The Soviet Union was founded in 1922, with Lenin as its first leader.

During these years, Stalin had continued to move up the party ladder, and in 1922 he became secretary general of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, a role that enabled him to appoint his allies to government jobs and grow a base of political support.

After Lenin died in 1924, Stalin eventually outmaneuvered his rivals and won the power struggle for control of the Communist Party. By the late 1920s, he had become dictator of the Soviet Union.

The Soviet Union Under Stalin

Starting in the late 1920s, Joseph Stalin launched a series of five-year plans intended to transform the Soviet Union from a peasant society into an industrial superpower. His development plan was centered on government control of the economy and included the forced collectivization of Soviet agriculture, in which the government took control of farms.

Millions of farmers refused to cooperate with Stalin's orders and were shot or exiled as punishment, particularly the kulaks, the more-prosperous farmers who owned land and hired paid workers. The forced collectivization soon led to widespread famine across the Soviet Union that killed millions.

Stalin ruled by terror, with a totalitarian grip in order to eliminate anyone who might oppose him. He expanded the powers of the secret police, encouraged citizens to spy on one another and had millions of people killed or sent to the Gulag system of forced labor camps.

During the second half of the 1930s, Stalin instituted the Great Purge, a series of campaigns designed to rid the Communist Party, the military and other parts of Soviet society from those he considered a threat.

Additionally, Stalin built a cult of personality around himself in the Soviet Union. Cities were renamed in his honor. Soviet history books were rewritten to give him a more prominent role in the revolution and mythologize other aspects of his life.

Stalin was the subject of flattering artwork, literature and music, and his name became part of the Soviet national anthem. He censored photographs in an attempt to rewrite history, removing former associates executed during his many purges. His government also controlled the Soviet media.

Joseph Stalin and World War II

In 1939, on the eve of World War II, Joseph Stalin and Germany's Nazi Party dictator Adolf Hitler signed the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact. Stalin then proceeded to annex parts of Poland and Romania, as well as the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. He also launched an invasion of Finland.

Then, in June 1941, Germany broke the Nazi-Soviet pact and invaded the USSR, making significant early inroads. (Stalin had ignored warnings from the Americans and the British, as well as his own intelligence agents, about a potential invasion, and the Soviets were not prepared for war.)

As German troops approached the Soviet capital of Moscow, Stalin remained there and directed a scorched earth defensive policy, destroying any supplies or infrastructure that might benefit the enemy. The tide turned for the Soviets with the Battle of Stalingrad from August 1942 to February 1943, during which the Red Army defeated the Germans and eventually drove them from Russia.

As the war progressed, Stalin participated in the major Allied conferences, including the Tehran Conference (1943) and the Yalta Conference (1945). His iron will and deft political skills enabled him to play the loyal ally while never abandoning his vision of an expanded postwar Soviet empire.

Later Years

Joseph Stalin did not mellow with age: He initiated a reign of terror, purges, executions, exiles to labor camps and persecution in the postwar USSR, suppressing all dissent and anything that smacked of foreign-especially Western-influence.

He established communist governments throughout Eastern Europe, and in 1949 led the Soviets into the nuclear age by exploding an atomic bomb. In 1950, he gave North Korea's communist leader Kim Il Sung permission to invade United States-supported South Korea, an event that triggered the Korean War.

How Did Joseph Stalin Die?

Stalin, who grew increasingly paranoid in his later years, died on March 5, 1953, at age 74, after suffering a stroke. His body was embalmed and preserved in Lenin's mausoleum in Moscow's Red Square until 1961, when it was removed and buried near the Kremlin walls as part of the de-Stalinization process initiated by Stalin's successor Nikita Khrushchev (1894-1971).

How Many People Did Joseph Stalin Kill?

By some estimates, Joseph Stalin was responsible for the deaths of 6 million to 20 million people during his brutal rule, either though political executions or indirectly as a result of Stalin's policies. The killings first began in the 1930s, as a wave of executions swept the Soviet Union during Stalin's Great Purge.

"In some cases, a quota was established for the number to be executed, the number to be arrested," said Stanford University history professor Norman Naimark in a 2010 interview. "Some officials overfulfilled as a way of showing their exuberance."

Millions more were killed in the horrific famine that struck Ukraine in 1932-1933 and the Kazakh region from 1930 to 1933, as a of Stalin's cruel efforts to impose collectivism of agriculture and tamp down Ukrainian nationalism. Estimates vary, but about 4 million men, women and children are believed to have starved to death during the Holodomor (a combination of the Ukrainian words for "starvation" and "to inflict death").

Sources

Joseph Stalin (1879-1953). PBS.
Joseph Stalin: National hero or cold-blooded murderer? BBC.
Stalin killed millions. A Stanford historian answers the question, was it genocide? Stanford News.

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Joseph Stalin: Death, Quotes & Facts - HISTORY

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Joseph Stalin was the dictator of the Soviet Union from 1929 to 1953. Through terror, murder, brutality and mass imprisonment, he modernized the Soviet economy.

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1. He started on the side of Hitler signing a non-aggression pact, the 2 split up the country of Poland, but switched sides when Hitler attacked Russia.
2. Stalin also killed around 9 million people during his dictatorship

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In 1912, Lenin appointed Stalin to serve on the first Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party. Three years later, in November 1917, the Bolsheviks seized power during the Russian Revolution. The Soviet Union was then found in 1922, with Lenin as its first leader. In 1922 he became secretary general of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, a role that enabled him political support. When Lenin died Stalin won the power struggle for control of the Communist Party. By the late 1920s, he had become dictator of the Soviet Union.

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President of the U.S.A. during WW2

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1. He did not enter WW2 until after the Bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941.
2. He enacted the Lend Lease Act (1941)
which propelled the Nation into action and the U.S became a global military superpower.

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Franklin D Roosevelt was elected president in 1932 and lasted until 1945, which is the longest tenure in American history. He remained for so long because the people of America trusted him to help them through times of depression and war.

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https://millercenter.org/president/fdroosevelt/impact-and-legacy

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British Prime Minister During WW2

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1. Churchill was voted out of office before World War II’s end.
2. Was outspoken about Hitler and appeasement before the outbreak of war.

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Following Neville Chamberlain's resignation in 1940, Churchill was chosen to succeed him as Prime Minister of an all-party coalition government. He was liked by the people of Britain and didn't have many opposers.

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https://www.gov.uk/government/history/past-prime-ministers/winston-churchill#:~:text=Following%20Neville%20Chamberlain's%20resignation,an%20all%2Dparty%20coalition%20government.