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1. He launched an invasion of Finland
2. He signed the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact

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Lenin died on 21 January 1924. Stalin was the successor to Linen and he came to power in 1924

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Joseph Stalin was the dictator of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) from 1929 to 1953. Under Stalin, the Soviet Union was transformed from a peasant society into an industrial and military superpower. However, he ruled by terror, and millions of his own citizens died during his brutal reign. Stalin became involved in revolutionary politics, as well as criminal activities, as a young man. After Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin died, Stalin outmaneuvered his rivals for control of the party. Stalin aligned with the United States and Britain in World War II but afterward engaged in an increasingly tense relationship with the West known as the Cold War. After his death, the Soviets initiated a de-Stalinization process.
WATCH: Hitler and Stalin: Roots of Evil on HISTORY Vault
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.
WATCH: Joseph Stalin
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.
READ MORE: Soviet Union Leaders: A Timeline
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.
READ MORE: How Joseph Stalin Starved Millions in the Ukrainian Famine
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.
READ MORE: FDR, Churchill and Stalin: Inside Their Uneasy WWII Alliance
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, partly the result of Stalin's bungled efforts at collectivization of agriculture. 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 Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) from 1929 to 1953. Under Stalin, the Soviet Union was transformed from a peasant society into an industrial and military superpower. However, he ruled by terror, and millions of his own citizens died during his brutal reign.

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1.  He ordered the execution of over 6 million jews
2. He was chancellor of nazi germany

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His rise to power began in the newly established Weimar Republic in September 1919 when Hitler joined the DAP.

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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.

Learn More

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. Roosevelt supervised the mobilization of the U.S. economy to support the war effort
2. He declared war on Japan after pearl harbor

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He was elected president of the United States in 1933

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When did World War II begin?
World War II formally began on September 1, 1939 when Germany invaded Poland without a formal declaration of war. In support of their mutual defense treaty obligations with Poland, France and Great Britain issued ultimatums to Hitler for the immediate withdrawal of German forces from Poland. When the ultimatum deadlines expired, Great Britain and France declared war on Germany on September 2, 1939.

When did the United States enter World War II?
On December 7, 1941 Japanese forces attacked Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, inflicting heavy casualties and severe damage to the United States naval forces anchored there. Before a Joint Session of Congress on December 8, 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt called the attack "a date which will live in infamy." Later that day, the United States formally declared that a state of war existed between the United States and the Japanese Empire.

When did America declare war on Germany?
As a result of the Tripartite Pact between Germany, Italy, and Japan (commonly known as the "Axis "), Germany and Italy declared war on the United States on December 11, 1941. Later that same day, the United States formally declared that a state of war existed with Germany and Italy.

When were Japanese Americans interned?
In the aftermath of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066 empowering military authorities to relocate residents of "military areas" to prevent sabotage and espionage. Although there were no reliable reports that Japanese-Americans on the United States West Coast presented a subversive threat, on March 2, 1942 the military declared California, Oregon and Washington State strategic areas from which Americans of Japanese decent were to be excluded. More than 110,000 Japanese-Americans (64% of whom were American-born citizens) were required to abandon their homes and jobs and to live in 10 relocation camps. The United States Supreme Court finally ruled that continued detention without cause was unconstitutional, and the military relocation order was rescinded in December 1944.

Did Japanese-Americans fight for the United States during World War II?
Despite discrimination and internment at home, Japanese-Americans served in the United States armed forces in great numbers with distinction and valor. For example, the 100th Battalion, composed of Japanese-Americans from Hawaii, suffered such a high rate of casualties in the 1944 Italian campaign that they were called the "Purple Heart Battalion."

The survivors of the 100th were integrated into the 442nd Regimental Combat Team and continued to sustain heavy casualties until the war's end. The unit won many commendations for valor, including a Congressional Medal of Honor, and became the most decorated unit in United States history. A recent review resulted in a decision to award 21 more Congressional Medals of Honor to members of the unit.

What restrictions were placed on Italians during World War II?
Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, approximately 600,000 Italian legal aliens in the United States were placed under restrictions. Among the restrictions were prohibitions on travel more than five miles from home; curfews from 8:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m.; confiscation of shortwave radios, firearms, cameras, flashlights, and other "signaling devices"; and evacuation from coastal towns.

About 1,600 Italians were interned in a network of camps across the United States, but primarily in Missoula, Montana. The restrictions against the Italians were lifted in October 1942, although it was not until the Italian surrender in September 1943 that most internees were released.

What restrictions were placed on Germans in the United States during World War II?
Restrictions similar to those imposed on Italian legal aliens were also placed on German legal aliens in the United States during World War II. Such restrictions included curfews, confiscation of personal property, travel restriction, and evacuation from coastal towns. Approximately 10,905 Germans were interned in camps across the United States, including Missoula , Montana and Crystal City, Texas. The last German internees were released in 1948.
What major conferences were held during World War II?
Who were "The Big Three"?
The "Big Three" was a term used after the summer of 1941 to denote the leaders of the three major powers opposing Germany, Italy, and Japan during World War II: Roosevelt (United States), Churchill (Great Britain), and Stalin (the Soviet Union). They term was also used in reference to the three Allied countries themselves. The Big Three was expanded to the Big Four when China joined the Allies, and the Big Four nations later played a major role in establishing the United Nations.

What was the Lend-Lease program?
In December 1940, Churchill advised FDR that Great Britain could not guarantee up-front payments for further arms and supplies after June 1941 as was required by United States law. Fearing the loss of Britain to Nazi Germany, FDR announced in a Fireside Chat on December 29, 1940 that America must become "the Arsenal of Democracy" through a Lend-Lease Program.

Lend-Lease was a method by which the United States could provide Great Britain and any other nation that the president decided was vital to US security, with arms, supplies and material. Signed into law in March 1941, the Lend-Lease Act gave the President the discretion to set any repayment terms necessary in order to keep supplies flowing to nations needing them for survival without formally involving the United States as a belligerent.

In Press Conference No. 702 held on December 17, 1940, FDR described the Lend-Lease Program as similar to loaning a garden hose to a neighbor whose house was on fire, thereby protecting one's own house.

What was the Atlantic Charter?
The Atlantic Charter was the statement of principles agreed to by President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill of Great Britain at their first wartime conference held on board naval vessels anchored Placentia Bay, off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada. The Charter was not an official document, but rather a joint statement expressing the war aims of the two countries: one belligerent and one technically neutral.

The Charter expressed the two countries' beliefs in the rights of self-determination, of all people to live in freedom from fear and want, and of freedom of the seas, as well as the belief that all nations must abandon the use of force and work collectively in the fields of economics and security.

What role did FDR play in creating the atomic bomb?
Nuclear fission was discovered in February 1939 by scientists in Germany. FDR was informed personally of the discovery and its potential in October 1939 when scientist Alexander Sachs read aloud Albert Einstein's letter warning the president of fission's military implications. Based on Einstein's letter and concepts of scientists working in Britain, FDR set up a joint Anglo-American effort to produce atomic bombs for potential use during the war. The result was the Manhattan Project that would ultimately create the weapon. In August 1943 at the Quebec Conference, FDR and Churchill signed a secret agreement governing collaboration between the two countries on the development of the atomic bomb. FDR also foresaw that atomic weapons would become the basis for post-war military and diplomatic policy, and on September 18, 1944 he and Churchill signed the Hyde Park Aide-Memoire committing the two powers to a monopoly on atomic information in the hopes of keeping the peace in a post-war world. FDR did not live to see the use of the weapon in August 1945 against Japan.

What were the Four Freedoms?
In his Annual Message to Congress delivered on January 6, 1941 FDR warned the Congress and the nation of the peril faced by the United States and the world's democracies from the aggression abroad. Roosevelt declared that "in future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms." They are Freedom of Speech and Expression, Freedom of Worship, Freedom from Want, and Freedom from Fear.

The artist Norman Rockwell depicted each of the Four Freedoms in paintings later used by the Office of War Information for popular posters during WW II.
Who were FDR's commanders during World War II?
General Omar N. Bradley was General Eisenhower's top commander in the European theater. Bradley commanded the US First Army in the D-Day landings. Bradley led his Twelfth Army Group (later known as the Central Group of Armies) consisted of about one million men in over 40 combat divisions. The Twelfth Army Group invaded Normandy and liberated Paris, was the first to cross the Rhine into Central Germany, and the first Allied troops on the Western front to make contact with Soviet troops.

General Dwight David (Ike) Eisenhower was the Allied Commander in the European theater. In 1942, FDR selected Ike over 366 other senior officers to command US Army forces in Europe. He commanded forces in Operation Torch, the invasion of French Northwest Africa, and in 1943 his forces seized Sicily and invaded southern Italy. Ike earned high regard from FDR and Churchill because of his abilities to produce military victories, to work out differences between senior Allied officers, and to negotiate effective resolutions to diplomatic problems. In December 1943, FDR and Churchill entrusted Ike with the position of Supreme Allied Commander of Operation Overlord, the invasion of Europe.

Admiral William Frederick (Bull) Halsey, Jr. was a friend of FDR's from the days of Roosevelt's service as Assistant Secretary of the Navy during the Wilson Administration. Halsey took over the South Pacific command in 1942 playing a vital role in the victories at Guadalcanal, the Philippines, and Leyte Gulf. In March 1945, a month before FDR's death, the President awarded Halsey the Gold Star. Halsey's flagship the Battleship Missouri was the site of the formal Japanese surrender on September 2, 1945.

General Thomas Holcomb was appointed Commandant of the Marine Corps prior to WWII. He served in this capacity until he retired at the end of 1943.

Admiral Ernest J. King was appointed Commander in Chief of the U.S. Fleet following the attack on Pearl Harbor. In March 1942, FDR made King Chief of Naval Operations, and he was the first officer to hold both positions simultaneously. King's strategic decisions included the battles of Guadalcanal and the Solomon Islands that seriously weakened the Japanese naval power in the Pacific as well as the destroyer escort convoy system that defeated the German U-boat offensive in the Atlantic.

Admiral William Daniel Leahy was appointed Chief of Staff to the President in July 1942.

General Curtis E. LeMay became the commander of the 21st Bomber Command in the Pacific B29 offensive on Japan

General Douglas MacArthur retired as Chief of Staff of the army in late 1935. From autumn of 1935 until mid-1941 he served as military advisor to the Philippine Commonwealth. Roosevelt federalized the Philippine army in July 1941 and appointed MacArthur to command U.S. armed forces in the Far East. In 1942 MacArthur went to Australia and assumed command of Allied ground, sea, and air forces in the new Southwest Pacific Theater. He was elevated the five-star general in late 1944, and the following spring was named commander of all American Army forces in the Pacific. He was chosen by President Truman to be Supreme Allied Commander over the occupation of Japan, and he supervised the signing of the formal surrender on September 2, 1945 aboard the USS Missouri.

Admiral Chester Nimitz was appointed commander of the Pacific fleet and Pacific Ocean areas after the attack on Pearl Harbor. On September 2, 1945, Nimitz signed the Japanese instrument of surrender as representative of the United States.

General George C. Marshall was appointed chief of staff for the army in 1939. He served FDR in that capacity until the President's death and continued under Truman until November 1945. Marshall accompanied FDR on all of his wartime conferences, and he was such a valuable military advisor that FDR chose Eisenhower as Supreme Allied Commander in Europe rather than Marshall so that Marshall would not leave Washington, DC. Upon the President's death Eleanor Roosevelt asked Marshall to arrange the details of the funeral.

General George S. Patton, Jr. commanded the Second U.S. Corps in Africa, the Seventh Army in the invasion of Sicily, and the Third Army in the French campaign.

General Henry Harley (Hap) Arnold was Chief/Commanding General, U.S. Army Air Corps/U.S. Army Air Forces, from 1938 to 1946.

Admiral Harold Raynsford Stark was FDR's Chief of Naval Operations at the time of the attack on Pearl Harbor, serving in that post from 1939 to 1942 at which time he was appointed to command US naval forces in Europe.

General Joseph Warren (Vinegar Joe) Stilwell commanded American forces in the China-Burma-India theater from 1942 to 1944. He commanded the Tenth US Army in Okinawa in 1945. Stilwell died of cancer in 1946, just five months prior to his retirement.

General Alexander Archer Vandegrift commanded troops at the successful invasions of Guadalcanal and Bougainville in the Solomon Islands. In November 1943, he was appointed Commandant of the US Marine Corps. Vandegrift was the first Marine Corps officer to hold the rank of full general.

Russell Randolph Waesche was United States Coast Guard Commandant from 1936 to 1945. During World War II the Coast Guard was part of the Navy.

Who were the Tuskegee Airmen and what other roles did African Americans play in World War II?
The Tuskegee Airmen were African-American fighter pilots of the 99th Fighter Squadron who flew escort missions for American bombers during the Italian Campaign. They were called "Red Tailed Black Angels" by the bomber crews because they did not lose a single plane to German fighters.

While the Tuskegee Airmen are the most famous, by December 1945 over 2.5 million African-American men and women registered for the draft or volunteered for service. Unfortunately, at the outbreak of the war, discriminatory barriers were still in place in the armed forces, often keeping African-Americans in servile roles or denying them enlistment. In December 1942, FDR issued Executive Order 9279 forcing all services to end officially such restrictions. While change was slow, by the end of 1944 there were 700,000 African-Americans in the Army; 165,000 in the Navy; 5,000 in the Coast Guard; and 17,000 in the Marine Corps.

Also by the end of 1944, over 5,000 African-Americans were commissioned officers including Benjamin O. Davis, the first African-American general. On the Home Front, thousands of African-American men and women served their country by filling the gaps in the labor force left by men sent off to war.

What effects did World War II have on the United States Home Front?
World War II had many effects on the United States home front, including the following:

Industry
Increase production during wartime completed the economic recovery started by FDR's New Deal. However, with millions of American men entering the armed forces, a serious gap in the labor force occurred. This had serious implications for America's continued ability to produce war materials and other goods.

Women
Women entered into the work force to replace the departed men. They worked in factories in many capacities, including as riveters, welders, and heavy machinery operators. While many African Americans also enlisted in the armed forces, many also entered the labor force at home in large numbers to replace enlisted workers. In the workplace, Americans were urged to work to their best abilities in support of the war effort and the troops overseas.

Farms
Like the factories, America's farms also suffered a labor shortage as a result of wartime enlistment. Here again, women took over tasks previously done by men. Farmers also used workers deferred from the military services.

Hollywood
Hollywood and the entertainment industry joined in the war effort, producing many patriotic movies and songs. The United Service Organization (USO) sent volunteer celebrities, such as Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, and Marlene Dietrich to perform for the troops, and provide recreation (Canteens) for off duty service men and women.

Shortages
The war made many items scarce or unavailable, particularly items of Pacific origin such as sugar oil, fruit, and other fruit stuffs. New cars and appliances were not produced because factories were converted to the production of military equipment. Sugar, gasoline, and shoes were among the many items placed under severe rationing. Many Americans grew Victory gardens to produce vegetables and to increase the available food supply. The shortage of metal, rubber, and silk led to many scrap collection drives. Even fat from butcher shops was collected for use in making ammunitions.

Price Controls
Price controls were introduced to keep down the price of items that were in short supply as a result of the war.

Civil Defense
Blackouts were introduced along the United States coasts so enemy submarines could not use the lights to illuminate or pinpoint targets. Civil Defense Wardens enforced blackout compliance.

War Bonds
War Bonds and Stamps were sold to help pay for the war and to foster a sense of Home Front participation and sacrifice. . Schools and industries joined in supporting the many bond and stamp drives.

Prisoners of War
Many enemy prisoners of war were transported to the United States and housed in prison camps throughout the country.

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World War II Facts - FDR Presidential Library & Museum

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When did World War II begin? World War II formally began on September 1, 1939 when Germany invaded Poland without a formal declaration of war. In support of their mutual defense treaty obligations with Poland, France and Great Britain issued ultimatums to Hitler for the immediate withdrawal of German forces from Poland.

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1.  He signed the Pact of Steel with Adolf Hitler.
2. He was an Italian political leader who became the fascist dictator of Italy from 1925 to 1945

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He declared himself prime minister in 1922. Then he became the fascist dictator of Italy from 1925 to 1945.

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Benito Mussolini was born on July 29, 1881, in Dovia di Predappio to parents Alessandro and Rosa Mussolini. Blacksmith Alessandro Mussolini was a devoted socialist who named his son after Benito Juarez, the leftist Mexican revolutionary. Following his father's example, Benito began his political life as a socialist. His politics began to change, however, when World War I broke out across Europe. During the war, Mussolini split with the socialists over his support for Italian military participation. He became an ardent Italian nationalist, believing in a national struggle that transcended class lines, rather than a class struggle. By 1918, Mussolini was a committed fascist.

Italian Fascism

In 1919, Mussolini founded the Italian Fa scist movement, which eventually became the Partito Nazionale Fascista (National Fascist Party). By 1921, Mussolini had won election to the Italian Chamber of Deputies. Despite this success, Mussolini and his supporters, known as the blackshirts, were frustrated with the electoral process. Rather than work through the parliamentary system, Mussolini decided to seize power by force. The March on Rome was staged on the night of October 27-28, 1922. Demanding the resignation of Italian Prime Minister Luigi Facta, approximately 30,000 armed Fascists marched into Rome, while Mussolini remained in Milan. Facta ordered martial law in Rome, but King Victor Emmanuel III refused to countersign the order. Instead, the King invited Mussolini to Rome to form a new government.

While Mussolini became the Prime Minister in 1922, he was still dependent on a coalition government to remain in power. The Acerbo Law, passed in 1923, was designed to give Mussolini and the Fascists complete control over the Italian parliament and government. The Acerbo Law stated that whichever party obtained the greatest number of votes would receive two thirds of the seats in Parliament, even if they did not receive two thirds of the vote. With the help of the Acerbo Law, the 1924 elections decisively gave power to the Fascists.

Over the course of 1925, Mussolini pulled off a coup d'etat in which he ended Italian democracy in favor of a personal dictatorship. The coup began on January 3, 1925, with Mussolini's address to the Chamber of Deputies and culminated on December 24, 1925, with the "Decree on Powers of the Head of Government." This decree declared the Prime Minister was now the "Head of Government" and the Head of Government was not responsible to Parliament. Only the king could remove the Head of Government, and nothing could be placed on Parliament's agenda without the consent of the Head of Government, giving Mussolini the ability to block all dissent.

World War II

Mussolini and Hitler met for the first time in 1934. Despite their shared fascism, the two men did not particularly like one another personally. Moreover, their nationalist ambitions for Italy and Germany would inevitably conflict at some point. For the moment, the two states needed each other as they both attempted to rework the organization of Europe in their favor. The alliance between the two was solidified in 1939 with the Pact of Steel, which committed Italy and Germany to support one another militarily and economically in event of war. A few months later, Germany invaded Poland and World War II began, bringing Italy in on the side of the Axis powers.

Despite initial Axis military successes, the Italian military position quickly spun out of control, especially in North Africa. As the Italian situation worsened and Mussolini lost the confidence of his own party, King Victor Emmanuel removed Mussolini from power in 1943. Mussolini was arrested shortly thereafter by Italian police. After two months in prison, Mussolini escaped with German help and established a competing Italian government known as the Italian Social Republic, or the Sal ò Republic, which was essentially a German puppet state.

By the spring of 1945, it was clear that the German defeat was imminent, so Mussolini attempted to escape to neutral Switzerland with his mistress Clara Petacci. They were caught before they reached Switzerland and promptly arrested by communist partisans. Mussolini was summarily executed on April 28, 1945. Mussolini's body was then brought to Milan, where it was hung upside down in public alongside other leading Fascists to prove to the Italian people that Mussolini was dead.

Last Edited: Sep 17, 2018

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Benito Mussolini was born on July 29, 1881, in Dovia di Predappio to parents Alessandro and Rosa Mussolini. Blacksmith Alessandro Mussolini was a devoted socialist who named his son after Benito Juarez, the leftist Mexican revolutionary. Following his father's example, Benito began his political life as a socialist.

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1. He was the prime minister of Japan
2. He ordered the plan for pearl harbor

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He was chosen to be the next Prime Minister due to his expressions of loyalty to the Emperor and because of his pro-war stance against the United States.

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How did Tōjō Hideki change the world?

Where was Tōjō Hideki educated?

Where is Tōjō Hideki buried?

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Tōjō Hideki, (born December 30, 1884, Tokyo, Japan-died December 23, 1948, Tokyo), soldier and statesman who was prime minister of Japan (1941-44) during most of the Pacific theatre portion of World War II and who was subsequently tried and executed for war crimes.

Early life and rise to power

A graduate of the Imperial Military Academy and the Military Staff College, Tōjō served briefly as military attaché in Japan's embassy in Berlin after World War I. He was an esteemed administrator and skillful field commander and became noted as a stern disciplinarian. In 1928 he was made commander of the 1st Infantry Regiment, members of which participated in a mutiny of the Tokyo garrison in late February 1936 that he helped suppress. In 1937 he was named chief of staff of the Kwantung Army in Manchuria.

He returned to Tokyo in 1938 as vice-minister of war and was one of the leading advocates of Japan's Tripartite Pact with Germany and Italy (1940). In July 1940 he was appointed minister of war in the cabinet of Prime Minister Konoe Fumimaro. Tōjō succeeded Konoe as prime minister on October 18, 1941, and pledged his government to a Greater East Asia program, a "New Order in Asia." He retained control of the Ministry of War and was also minister of commerce and industry from 1943.

World War II and conviction for war crimes

A hardworking and efficient bureaucrat, Tōjō was also one of the most aggressive militarists in the Japanese leadership. He led his country's war efforts after the attack on the U.S. military base at Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941, and under his direction smashing victories were initially scored throughout Southeast Asia and the western Pacific region. After a series of Japanese military reverses in the Pacific, Tōjō assumed virtual dictatorial powers, taking over the post of the chief of the General Staff. The successful Allied invasion of the Mariana Islands so weakened his government, however, that he was removed as chief of staff on July 16, 1944, and on July 18 he and his entire cabinet announced their resignation. Four days later he was succeeded as prime minister by Koiso Kuniaki. Tōjō spent the remainder of the war in the military reserve, effectively banned from power.

On September 11, 1945, after Japan's formal surrender, Tōjō shot himself in a suicide attempt, but he was nursed back to health and on April 29, 1946, with other Japanese wartime leaders, was indicted for war crimes before the International Military Tribunal for the Far East in Tokyo. At the trial he was found guilty and then hanged. Tōjō's legacy continued, as he was one of those convicted of war crimes who also had been included among Japan's military dead commemorated in the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo. Periodic visits to the shrine by various Japanese prime ministers and other government officials have sparked strong protests from China, South Korea, and other countries that were under Japanese occupation during the war.

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica Michael Ray.

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Tojo Hideki | Biography, Early Years, World War II, Facts, & Death

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Tojo Hideki, soldier and statesman who was prime minister of Japan (1941-44) during most of the Pacific theater portion of World War II and who was subsequently tried and executed for war crimes. Learn more about Tojo's early life, military career, and political leadership in this article.

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1. He was Great Britain's  prime minister
2. He led Britain to victory in the Second World War.

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On May 10, 1940, with the Germans attacking western Europe, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain resigned and King George VI asked Churchill to become Prime Minister and form a government.

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Table of Contents

What did Winston Churchill do during World War II?

What was Winston Churchill's family background?

Where was Winston Churchill educated?

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Winston Churchill, in full Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill, (born November 30, 1874, Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire, England-died January 24, 1965, London), British statesman, orator, and author who as prime minister (1940-45, 1951-55) rallied the British people during World War II and led his country from the brink of defeat to victory.

After a sensational rise to prominence in national politics before World War I, Churchill acquired a reputation for erratic judgment in the war itself and in the decade that followed. Politically suspect in consequence, he was a lonely figure until his response to Adolf Hitler's challenge brought him to leadership of a national coalition in 1940. With Franklin D. Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin he then shaped Allied strategy in World War II, and after the breakdown of the alliance he alerted the West to the expansionist threat of the Soviet Union. He led the Conservative Party back to office in 1951 and remained prime minister until 1955, when ill health forced his resignation.

In Churchill's veins ran the blood of both of the English-speaking peoples whose unity, in peace and war, it was to be a constant purpose of his to promote. Through his father, Lord Randolph Churchill, the meteoric Tory politician, he was directly descended from John Churchill, 1st duke of Marlborough, the hero of the wars against Louis XIV of France in the early 18th century. His mother, Jennie Jerome, a noted beauty, was the daughter of a New York financier and horse racing enthusiast, Leonard W. Jerome.

The young Churchill passed an unhappy and sadly neglected childhood, redeemed only by the affection of Mrs. Everest, his devoted nurse. At Harrow his conspicuously poor academic record seemingly justified his father's decision to enter him into an army career. It was only at the third attempt that he managed to pass the entrance examination to the Royal Military College, now Academy, Sandhurst, but, once there, he applied himself seriously and passed out (graduated) 20th in a class of 130. In 1895, the year of his father's tragic death, he entered the 4th Hussars. Initially the only prospect of action was in Cuba, where he spent a couple of months of leave reporting the Cuban war of independence from Spain for the Daily Graphic (London). In 1896 his regiment went to India, where he saw service as both soldier and journalist on the North-West Frontier (1897). Expanded as The Story of the Malakand Field Force (1898), his dispatches attracted such wide attention as to launch him on the career of authorship that he intermittently pursued throughout his life. In 1897-98 he wrote Savrola (1900), a Ruritanian romance, and got himself attached to Lord Kitchener's Nile expeditionary force in the same dual role of soldier and correspondent. The River War (1899) brilliantly describes the campaign.

Political career before 1939

The five years after Sandhurst saw Churchill's interests expand and mature. He relieved the tedium of army life in India by a program of reading designed to repair the deficiencies of Harrow and Sandhurst, and in 1899 he resigned his commission to enter politics and make a living by his pen. He first stood as a Conservative at Oldham, where he lost a by-election by a narrow margin, but found quick solace in reporting the South African War for The Morning Post ( London). Within a month after his arrival in South Africa he had won fame for his part in rescuing an armoured train ambushed by Boers, though at the price of himself being taken prisoner. But this fame was redoubled when less than a month later he escaped from military prison. Returning to Britain a military hero, he laid siege again to Oldham in the election of 1900. Churchill succeeded in winning by a margin as narrow as that of his previous failure. But he was now in Parliament and, fortified by the £10,000 his writings and lecture tours had earned for him, was in a position to make his own way in politics.

A self-assurance redeemed from arrogance only by a kind of boyish charm made Churchill from the first a notable House of Commons figure, but a speech defect, which he never wholly lost, combined with a certain psychological inhibition to prevent him from immediately becoming a master of debate. He excelled in the set speech, on which he always spent enormous pains, rather than in the impromptu; Lord Balfour, the Conservative leader, said of him that he carried "heavy but not very mobile guns." In matter as in style he modeled himself on his father, as his admirable biography, Lord Randolph Churchill (1906; revised edition 1952), makes evident, and from the first he wore his Toryism with a difference, advocating a fair, negotiated peace for the Boers and deploring military mismanagement and extravagance.

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As Liberal minister

In 1904 the Conservative government found itself impaled on a dilemma by Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain's open advocacy of a tariff. Churchill, a convinced free trader, helped to found the Free Food League. He was disavowed by his constituents and became increasingly alienated from his party. In 1904 he joined the Liberals and won renown for the audacity of his attacks on Chamberlain and Balfour. The radical elements in his political makeup came to the surface under the influence of two colleagues in particular, John Morley, a political legatee of W.E. Gladstone, and David Lloyd George, the rising Welsh orator and firebrand. In the ensuing general election in 1906 he secured a notable victory in Manchester and began his ministerial career in the new Liberal government as undersecretary of state for the colonies. He soon gained credit for his able defense of the policy of conciliation and self-government in South Africa. When the ministry was reconstructed under Prime Minister Herbert H. Asquith in 1908, Churchill was promoted to president of the Board of Trade, with a seat in the cabinet. Defeated at the ensuing by-election in Manchester, he won an election at Dundee. In the same year he married the beautiful Clementine Hozier; it was a marriage of unbroken affection that provided a secure and happy background for his turbulent career.

At the Board of Trade, Churchill emerged as a leader in the movement of Liberalism away from laissez-faire toward social reform. He completed the work begun by his predecessor, Lloyd George, on the bill imposing an eight-hour maximum day for miners. He himself was responsible for attacking the evils of "sweated" labour by setting up trade boards with power to fix minimum wages and for combating unemployment by instituting state-run labour exchanges.

When this Liberal program necessitated high taxation, which in turn provoked the House of Lords to the revolutionary step of rejecting the budget of 1909, Churchill was Lloyd George's closest ally in developing the provocative strategy designed to clip the wings of the upper chamber. Churchill became president of the Budget League, and his oratorical broadsides at the House of Lords were as lively and devastating as Lloyd George's own. Indeed Churchill, as an alleged traitor to his class, earned the lion's share of Tory animosity. His campaigning in the two general elections of 1910 and in the House of Commons during the passage of the Parliament Act of 1911, which curbed the House of Lords' powers, won him wide popular acclaim. In the cabinet his reward was promotion to the office of home secretary. Here, despite substantial achievements in prison reform, he had to devote himself principally to coping with a sweeping wave of industrial unrest and violent strikes. Upon occasion his relish for dramatic action led him beyond the limits of his proper role as the guarantor of public order. For this he paid a heavy price in incurring the long-standing suspicion of organized labour.

In 1911 the provocative German action in sending a gunboat to Agadir, the Moroccan port to which France had claims, convinced Churchill that in any major Franco-German conflict Britain would have to be at France's side. When transferred to the Admiralty in October 1911, he went to work with a conviction of the need to bring the navy to a pitch of instant readiness. His first task was the creation of a naval war staff. To help Britain's lead over steadily mounting German naval power, Churchill successfully campaigned in the cabinet for the largest naval expenditure in British history. Despite his inherited Tory views on Ireland, he wholeheartedly embraced the Liberal policy of Home Rule, moving the second reading of the Irish Home Rule Bill of 1912 and campaigning for it in the teeth of Unionist opposition. Although, through his friendship with F.E. Smith (later 1st earl of Birkenhead) and Austen Chamberlain, he did much to arrange the compromise by which Ulster was to be excluded from the immediate effect of the bill, no member of the government was more bitterly abused-by Tories as a renegade and by extreme Home Rulers as a defector.

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Winston Churchill | Biography, World War II, Quotes, Books, & Facts

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Winston Churchill, in full Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill, (born November 30, 1874, Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire, England-died January 24, 1965, London), British statesman, orator, and author who as prime minister (1940-45, 1951-55) rallied the British people during World War II and led his country from the brink of defeat to victory.