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Conservative 1940 to 1945, 1951 to 1955

Winston Churchill was an inspirational statesman, writer, orator and leader who led Britain to victory in the Second World War. He served as Conservative Prime Minister twice - from 1940 to 1945 (before being defeated in the 1945 general election by the Labour leader Clement Attlee) and from 1951 to 1955.

Born

30 November 1874, Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire

Died

24 January 1965, London

Dates in office

1940 to 1945, 1951 to 1955

Political party

Conservative

Major acts

Education Act 1944: raised the school leavers age to 14; introduction of the 11+.

Interesting facts

Churchill was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1953 for his many published works. More information including archive footage can be found at the Churchill War Rooms.

Biography

David Cameron's Favourite Past Prime Minister
Winston Churchill was born on 30 November 1874, in Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire and was of rich, aristocratic ancestry. Although achieving poor grades at school, his early fascination with militarism saw him join the Royal Cavalry in 1895. As a soldier and part-time journalist, Churchill travelled widely, including trips to Cuba, Afghanistan, Egypt and South Africa.

Churchill was elected as Conservative MP for Oldham in 1900, before defecting to the Liberal Party in 1904 and spending the next decade climbing the ranks of the Liberal government. He was First Lord of the Admiralty (the civil/political head of the Royal Navy) by the time of the disastrous Gallipoli campaign, which he created. Heavily criticised for this error, he resigned from this position and travelled to the Western Front to fight himself.

The interwar years saw Churchill again 'cross the floor' from the Liberals, back to the Conservative Party. He served as Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1924, when he controversially opted for Britain to re-join the Gold Standard. Following the Tory electoral defeat in 1929, Churchill lost his seat and spent much of the next 11 years out of office, mainly writing and making speeches. Although he was alone in his firm opposition to Indian Independence, his warnings against the Appeasement of Nazi Germany were proven correct when the Second World War broke out in 1939.

Following Neville Chamberlain 's resignation in 1940, Churchill was chosen to succeed him as Prime Minister of an all-party coalition government.

Churchill, who also adopted the self-created position of Minister for Defence, was active both in administrative and diplomatic functions in prosecuting the British war effort. Some of his most memorable speeches were given in this period, and are credited with stimulating British morale during periods of great hardship. However, Labour leader Clement Attlee 's unexpected General Election victory in 1945 saw Churchill out of office and once again concentrating on public speaking. In his 1946 speech in the USA, the instinctive pro-American famously declared that "an iron curtain has descended across the Continent", and warned of the continued danger from a powerful Soviet Russia.

By his re-election in 1951, Churchill was, in the words of Roy Jenkins, "gloriously unfit for office". Ageing and increasingly unwell, he often conducted business from his bedside, and while his powerful personality and oratory ability endured, the Prime Minister's leadership was less decisive than during the war. His second term was most notable for the Conservative Party's acceptance of Labour's newly created Welfare State, and Churchill's effect on domestic policy was limited. His later attempts at decreasing the developing Cold War through personal diplomacy failed to produce significant results, and poor health forced him to resign in 1955, making way for his Foreign Secretary and Deputy Prime Minister, Anthony Eden.

Churchill died in 1965, and was honoured with a state funeral.

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Skip to main content We use some essential cookies to make this website work. We'd like to set additional cookies to understand how you use GOV.UK, remember your settings and improve government services. We also use cookies set by other sites to help us deliver content from their services.

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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.

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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.

# data[].attributes.headline
Winston Churchill was an inspirational statesman, writer, orator and leader who led Britain to victory in the Second World War. He served as Conservative Prime Minister twice - from 1940 to 1945 (before being defeated in the 1945 general election by the Labour leader Clement Attlee) and from 1951 to 1955.

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Winston Churchill was an inspirational statesman, writer, orator and leader who led Britain to victory in the Second World War. He served as Conservative Prime Minister twice - from 1940 to 1945 (before being defeated in the 1945 general election by the Labour leader Clement Attlee) and from 1951 to 1955.

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Assuming the Presidency at the depth of the Great Depression, Franklin D. Roosevelt helped the American people regain faith in themselves. He brought hope as he promised prompt, vigorous action, and asserted in his Inaugural Address, "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself."

Born in 1882 at Hyde Park, New York-now a national historic site-he attended Harvard University and Columbia Law School. On St. Patrick's Day, 1905, he married Eleanor Roosevelt.

Following the example of his fifth cousin, President Theodore Roosevelt, whom he greatly admired, Franklin D. Roosevelt entered public service through politics, but as a Democrat. He won election to the New York Senate in 1910. President Wilson appointed him Assistant Secretary of the Navy, and he was the Democratic nominee for Vice President in 1920.

In the summer of 1921, when he was 39, disaster hit-he was stricken with poliomyelitis. Demonstrating indomitable courage, he fought to regain the use of his legs, particularly through swimming. At the 1924 Democratic Convention he dramatically appeared on crutches to nominate Alfred E. Smith as "the Happy Warrior." In 1928 Roosevelt became Governor of New York.

He was elected President in November 1932, to the first of four terms. By March there were 13,000,000 unemployed, and almost every bank was closed. In his first "hundred days," he proposed, and Congress enacted, a sweeping program to bring recovery to business and agriculture, relief to the unemployed and to those in danger of losing farms and homes, and reform, especially through the establishment of the Tennessee Valley Authority.

By 1935 the Nation had achieved some measure of recovery, but businessmen and bankers were turning more and more against Roosevelt's New Deal program. They feared his experiments, were appalled because he had taken the Nation off the gold standard and allowed deficits in the budget, and disliked the concessions to labor. Roosevelt responded with a new program of reform: Social Security, heavier taxes on the wealthy, new controls over banks and public utilities, and an enormous work relief program for the unemployed.

In 1936 he was re-elected by a top-heavy margin. Feeling he was armed with a popular mandate, he sought legislation to enlarge the Supreme Court, which had been invalidating key New Deal measures. Roosevelt lost the Supreme Court battle, but a revolution in constitutional law took place. Thereafter the Government could legally regulate the economy.

Roosevelt had pledged the United States to the "good neighbor" policy, transforming the Monroe Doctrine from a unilateral American manifesto into arrangements for mutual action against aggressors. He also sought through neutrality legislation to keep the United States out of the war in Europe, yet at the same time to strengthen nations threatened or attacked. When France fell and England came under siege in 1940, he began to send Great Britain all possible aid short of actual military involvement.

When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, Roosevelt directed organization of the Nation's manpower and resources for global war.

Feeling that the future peace of the world would depend upon relations between the United States and Russia, he devoted much thought to the planning of a United Nations, in which, he hoped, international difficulties could be settled.

As the war drew to a close, Roosevelt's health deteriorated, and on April 12, 1945, while at Warm Springs, Georgia, he died of a cerebral hemorrhage.

For more information about President Roosevelt, please visit Franklin D. Roosevelt Library and Museum

Learn more about Franklin D. Roosevelt's spouse, Anna Eleanor Roosevelt.

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Assuming the Presidency at the depth of the Great Depression as our 32nd President (1933-1945), Franklin D. Roosevelt helped the American people regain faith in themselves.

# data[].attributes.headline
He was elected President in November 1932, to the first of four terms. By March there were 13,000,000 unemployed, and almost every bank was closed. In his first “hundred days,” he proposed, and Congress enacted, a sweeping program to bring recovery to business and agriculture, relief to the unemployed and to those in danger of losing farms and homes, and reform, especially through the establishment of the Tennessee Valley Authority.

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He was elected President in November 1932, to the first of four terms. By March there were 13,000,000 unemployed, and almost every bank was closed. In his first “hundred days,” he proposed, and Congress enacted, a sweeping program to bring recovery to business and agriculture, relief to the unemployed and to those in danger of losing farms and homes, and reform, especially through the establishment of the Tennessee Valley Authority.

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He served as governor from 1929 to 1933, promoting programs to combat the economic crisis besetting the United States. In the 1932 presidential election, Roosevelt defeated Republican incumbent Herbert Hoover and began his presidency in the midst of the Great Depression.

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He served as governor from 1929 to 1933, promoting programs to combat the economic crisis besetting the United States. In the 1932 presidential election, Roosevelt defeated Republican incumbent Herbert Hoover and began his presidency in the midst of the Great Depression.

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The man who turned the Soviet Union from a backward country into a world superpower at unimaginable human cost. Stalin was born into a dysfunctional family in a poor village in Georgia. Permanently scarred from a childhood bout with smallpox and having a mildly deformed arm, Stalin always felt unfairly treated by life, and thus developed a strong, romanticized desire for greatness and respect, combined with a shrewd streak of calculating cold-heartedness towards those who had maligned him. He always felt a sense of inferiority before educated intellectuals, and particularly distrusted them.

Sent by his mother to the seminary in Tiflis (now Tbilisi), the capital of Georgia, to study to become a priest, the young Stalin never completed his education, and was instead soon completely drawn into the city's active revolutionary circles. Never a fiery intellectual polemicist or orator like Lenin or Trotsky, Stalin specialized in the humdrum nuts and bolts of revolutionary activity, risking arrest every day by helping organize workers, distributing illegal literature, and robbing trains to support the cause, while Lenin and his bookish friends lived safely abroad and wrote clever articles about the plight of the Russian working class. Although Lenin found Stalin's boorishness offensive at times, he valued his loyalty, and appointed him after the Revolution to various low-priority leadership positions in the new Soviet government.

In 1922, Stalin was appointed to another such post, as General Secretary of the Communist Party's Central Committee. Stalin understood that "cadres are everything": if you control the personnel, you control the organization. He shrewdly used his new position to consolidate power in exactly this way--by controlling all appointments, setting agendas, and moving around Party staff in such a way that eventually everyone who counted for anything owed their position to him. By the time the Party's intellectual core realized what had happened, it was too late--Stalin had his (mostly mediocre) people in place, while Lenin, the only person with the moral authority to challenge him, was on his deathbed and incapable of speech after a series of strokes, and besides, Stalin even controlled who had access to the leader. The General Secretary of the Party became the de facto leader of the country right on up until Mikhail Gorbachev.

After Lenin's death in 1924, Stalin methodically went about destroying all the old leaders of the Party, taking advantage of their weakness for standing on arcane intellectual principle to simply divide and conquer them. At first, these people were removed from their posts and exiled abroad. Later, when he realized that their sharp tongues and pens were still capable of inveighing against him even from far away, Stalin switched tactics, culminating in a vast reign of terror and spectacular show trials in the 1930s during which the founding fathers of the Soviet Union were one by one unmasked as "enemies of the people" who had supposedly always been in the employ of Capitalist intelligence services and summarily shot. The particularly pesky Leon Trotsky, who continued to badger Stalin from Mexico City after his exile in 1929, had to be silenced once and for all with an ice pick in 1940. The purges, or "repressions" as they are known in Russia, extended far beyond the Party elite, reaching down into every local Party cell and nearly all of the intellectual professions, since anyone with a higher education was suspected of being a potential counterrevolutionary. This depleted the Soviet Union of its brainpower, and left Stalin as the sole intellectual force in the country--an expert on virtually every human endeavor.

Driven by his own sense of inferiority, which he projected onto his country as a whole, Stalin pursued an economic policy of mobilizing the entire country to achieve the goal of rapid industrialization, so that it could stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the Capitalist powers. To this end, he forcefully collectivized agriculture (one of the Bolsheviks' key policy stances in 1917 was to give the land to the peasants; collectivization took it back from them and effectively reduced them to the status of serfs again), instituted the Five-Year Plans to coordinate all investment and production in the country, and undertook a massive program of building heavy industry. Although the Soviet Union boasted that its economy was booming while the Capitalist world was experiencing the Great Depression, and its industrialization drive did succeed in rapidly creating an industrial infrastructure where there once had been none, the fact is that all this was done at exorbitant cost in human lives. Measures such as the violent expropriation of the harvest by the government, the forced resettlement and murder of the most successful peasants as counterrevolutionary elements, and the discovery of a source of cheap labor through the arrest of millions of innocent citizens led to countless millions of deaths from the worst man-made famine in human history and in the camps of the Gulag.

As war clouds were gathering on the horizon in 1939, Stalin felt that he had scored a coup by striking a non-aggression pact with Hitler, in which they agreed to divide up Poland and then leave each other alone. Stalin so strongly believed that he and Hitler had an understanding that he refused to listen to his military advisors' warnings in 1941 that the Wehrmacht was massing for an attack, and purged any one who dared utter such blasphemy. As a result, when the attack came, the Soviet army was completely unprepared and suffered horrible defeats, while Stalin spent the first several days after the attack holed up in his office in shock. Because the military had been purged of its best minds in the mid-1930s, it took some time, and many lives, before the Soviets were able to regroup and make a credible defense. By then, all of the Ukraine and Belarus were in German hands, Leningrad had been surrounded and besieged, and Nazi artillery was entrenched only a few miles from the Kremlin. After heroic efforts on the part of the whole country, the tide eventually turned at Stalingrad in 1943, and soon the victorious Red Army was liberating the countries of Eastern Europe--before the Americans had even begun to pose a serious challenge to Hitler from the west with the D-Day invasion.

During the Teheran, Yalta, and Potsdam Conferences, Stalin proved a worthy negotiator with the likes of Roosevelt and Churchill, and managed to arrange for the countries of Eastern Europe, which had been liberated by the Red Army to remain in the Soviet sphere of influence, as well as securing three seats for his country in the newly formed UN. The Soviet Union was now a recognized world superpower, with its own permanent seat on the Security Council, and the respect that Stalin had craved all his life. Still, he was not finished. Returning soldiers and refugees were arrested and either shot or sent to the labor camps as traitors, entire nationalities that had been deported during the War, also as traitors, were not allowed to return to their homes, and in 1953, a plot to kill Stalin was ostensibly uncovered in the Kremlin itself. A new purge seemed imminent, and was cut short only by Stalin's death. He remained a hero to his people until Khrushchev's well-known "secret" speech to a Party Congress in 1956, in which Stalin's excesses, at least as far as power grabbing in the Party itself, were denounced.

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The man who turned the Soviet Union from a backward country into a world superpower at unimaginable human cost. Stalin was born into a dysfunctional family in a poor village in Georgia.

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Serving in the Russian Civil War before overseeing the Soviet Union's establishment in 1922, Stalin assumed leadership over the country following Lenin's death in 1924.

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Serving in the Russian Civil War before overseeing the Soviet Union's establishment in 1922, Stalin assumed leadership over the country following Lenin's death in 1924.

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Occupation: Leader of the Soviet Union.Born: December 8, 1878 in Gori, Georgia.Died: 5 March 1953 Kuntsevo Dacha near Moscow, Russia.Best known for: Fighting the Germans in WW2 and starting the Cold War.

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Occupation: Leader of the Soviet Union.Born: December 8, 1878 in Gori, Georgia.Died: 5 March 1953 Kuntsevo Dacha near Moscow, Russia.Best known for: Fighting the Germans in WW2 and starting the Cold War.

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In October 1922, a storm was gathering over Italy. Fascism-a political movement that harnessed discontent with a potent brew of nationalism, populism, and violence-would soon engulf the embattled nation and much of the world.

Benito Mussolini, the leader of the Italian movement, had amassed a strong following and began to call for the government to hand over power.

"We are at the point when either the arrow shoots forth or the tightly drawn bowstring breaks!" he said during a speech at a rally in Naples on October 24 of that year. "Our program is simple. We want to govern Italy." He told supporters that if the government did not resign, they must march on Rome. Four days later, they did just that-leaving chaos in their wake as Mussolini seized control.

Mussolini's name is still often invoked in the country as a brutal dictator though some still revere him as a hero. But how did he rise to power and what exactly happened during that fateful march that toppled Italy's government? Here's what you need to know.

How Mussolini founded Italian fascism

Fascism galvanized a growing nationalist movement in Europe born in the face of the First World War and the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, in which Russian socialists overthrew the Russian Empire. (Learn more about the causes and effects of WWI.)

In Italy, Mussolini led the way to fascism. Born on July 29, 1883, in small-town southern Italy to a blacksmith father and a schoolteacher mother, he grew up on his socialist father's stories of nationalism and political heroism. Shy and socially awkward, he ran into trouble at an early age due to his intransigence and violence against his classmates. As a young adult, he moved to Switzerland and became an avowed socialist. Eventually, he made his way back to Italy and established himself as a socialist journalist.

When war broke out across Europe in 1914, Italy at first remained neutral. Mussolini wanted Italy to join the war-putting him at odds with the Italian Socialist Party, which expelled him due to his pro-war advocacy. In response, he formed his own political movement, the Fasces of Revolutionary Action, aimed at encouraging entry into the war. (Italy eventually joined the fray in 1915.)

In ancient Rome, the word fasces referred to a weapon consisting of a bundle of wooden rods, sometimes surrounding an ax. Used by Roman authorities to punish wrongdoers, the fasces came to represent state authority. In the 19th century, Italians had begun to use the word for political groups bound by common aims.

Mussolini was increasingly convinced that society should organize itself not along lines of social class or political affiliation, but around a strong national identity. He believed that only a "ruthless and energetic" dictator could make a "clean sweep" of Italy and restore it to its national promise.

Support for fascism grows

Mussolini was not alone: In the wake of the war, many Italians were chagrined by the Treaty of Versailles. They felt the treaty, which carved up the territory of the aggressor nations, disrespected Italy by awarding it far too little land. This "mutilated victory" would shape Italy's future. (How the Treaty of Versailles ended WWI and started WWII.)

In 1919, Mussolini founded a paramilitary movement he called the Italian Fasces of Combat. A successor to the Fasces of Revolutionary Action, this combat-focused squad aimed to mobilize war-hardened veterans who could return glory to Italy.

Mussolini hoped to translate the nation's discontent into political success, but the young party suffered a humiliating defeat in that year's parliamentary election. Mussolini only garnered 2,420 votes compared with the Socialist Party's 1.8 million, delighting his enemies in Milan who held a fake funeral in his honor.

Undeterred, Mussolini began courting other groups who were at odds with socialists: industrialists and businessmen who feared strikes and slowdowns, rural landowners who feared losing their land, and members of political parties who feared socialism's growing popularity.

Mussolini's powerful new allies helped finance his movement's paramilitary wing, known as "the Blackshirts." Though Mussolini professed to stand against oppression and censorship of all kinds, the group quickly became known for its willingness to use violence for political gain.

The Blackshirts terrorized socialists and Mussolini's personal enemies nationwide. The year 1920 was bloody, with fascists marching through towns, beating and even killing labor leaders, and effectively taking over local authority. But the Italian government, which shared the fascists' enmity with socialists, did little to stem the violence.

Mussolini's rise to power

Though in reality Mussolini only controlled a fraction of the militia members, their tough image helped build his reputation as a powerful, authoritative leader capable of backing up his words with violent and decisive action. Known as Il Duce, (the Duke), he exercised a powerful influence over Italians, seducing them with his personal charm and persuasive rhetoric.

In 1921, Mussolini won a seat in parliament and was even invited to join the coalition government by Italy's Prime Minister Giovanni Giolitti-who assumed that Mussolini would bring his Blackshirts to heel once he was given a share of the political power.

But Giolitti had misjudged Mussolini, who instead intended to use his Blackshirts to seize absolute control. In late 1921, Mussolini transformed the group into the National Fascist Party, translating a movement that had numbered about 30,000 in 1920 into a political party 320,000 members strong. Although he had effectively declared war against the state, the Italian government was powerless to dissolve the party and stood by as fascists took over most of northern Italy.

Mussolini saw his opening in summer 1922. Socialists had announced a strike that historian Ararat Gocmen writes was "not in the name of workers' emancipation but in a desperate cry for the state to bring an end to fascist violence." Mussolini positioned the strike as proof that the government was weak and incapable of rule. With new supporters who wanted law and order, Mussolini decided it was time to seize power.

The March on Rome

On October 25, 1922, a day after his rally in Naples, Mussolini appointed four party leaders to lead members into the nation's capital. Poorly trained and outfitted, these men would likely have lost a battle with Italy's army. But Mussolini intended to intimidate the government into submission.

Fascist battalions were to congregate outside of Rome. If the prime minister did not give the fascists power-and King Victor Emmanuel III did not subsequently recognize his authority-his waiting men would march into the capital and seize control.

While Mussolini lingered in Milan, his supporters gathered. They left chaos in their wake, taking over government buildings in towns they passed through en route to Rome. Though the party consistently overstated their numbers, historian Katy Hull notes, fewer than 30,000 men joined the march.

Luigi Facta, then the prime minister, attempted to impose martial law. But the king thought Mussolini could usher in stability and refused to sign the order that would have mobilized Italian troops against the fascists.

In protest, Facta and his cabinet resigned the morning of October 28. Armed with a telegram from the king inviting him to form a cabinet, Mussolini boarded a sleeper car and took a leisurely, 14-hour journey from Milan to Rome. On October 30, he became prime minister-and ordered his men to parade before the king's residence as they left the city.

The fall of Mussolini-and fascism's legacy

The king, exhausted by the world war and a state of near civil war in Italy, had assumed Mussolini would impose order. But within three years, the strongman would be an outright dictator-and Victor Emmanuel let him do as he pleased.

Over the years, Mussolini increased his own power while chipping away at the population's civil rights and forming a propagandistic police state. His agenda also went beyond domestic affairs. Mussolini's imperial ambitions led Italy to occupy the Greek island of Corfu, invade Ethiopia, and ally itself with Nazi Germany, eventually resulting in the murder of 8,500 Italians in the Holocaust.

Mussolini's ambition would be his downfall. Though he led Italy into World War II as an Axis power aligned with the seemingly unstoppable Adolf Hitler, he presided over the destruction of much of his country. Victor Emmanuel III convinced Mussolini's closest allies to turn against him and, on July 25, 1943, they finally succeeded in removing him from power and placing him under arrest. (Subscriber exclusive: Hear stories from the last voices of World War II.)

After a dramatic prison break, Mussolini fled to German-occupied Italy, where, under pressure from Hitler, he formed a weak and short-lived puppet state. On April 28, 1945, as an Allied victory neared, Mussolini attempted to flee the country. He was intercepted by communist partisans, who shot him and dumped his body in a public square in Milan.

Soon, a crowd gathered, desecrating the dictator's corpse and venting years of hatred and loss. His barely recognizable body was eventually deposited in an unmarked grave. Il Duce was dead. But his legacy still haunts Italy today-and the fascist movement he pioneered remains alive both in Italian politics and the international imagination.

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How Mussolini led Italy to fascism-and why his legacy looms today

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Although ultimately disgraced, the Italian dictator's memory still haunts the nation a century after toppling the government and ushering in an age of brutality.

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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 

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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 

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Mussolini had a penchant for violence even as a youth. ...Mussolini was a socialist before becoming a fascist. ..

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Mussolini had a penchant for violence even as a youth. ...Mussolini was a socialist before becoming a fascist. ..

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Whilst still an Austrian citizen, Adolf Hitler was accepted into the Bavarian army. He served in the infantry at the First Battle of Ypres, where the new infantry divisions suffered casualties as high as one third to a half.

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Whilst still an Austrian citizen, Adolf Hitler was accepted into the Bavarian army. He served in the infantry at the First Battle of Ypres, where the new infantry divisions suffered casualties as high as one third to a half.

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Adolf Hitler, byname Der Führer (German: "The Leader"), (born April 20, 1889, Braunau am Inn, Austria-died April 30, 1945, Berlin, Germany), leader of the Nazi Party (from 1920/21) and chancellor ( Kanzler) and Führer of Germany (1933-45). He was chancellor from January 30, 1933, and, after President Paul von Hindenburg's death, assumed the twin titles of Führer and chancellor (August 2, 1934).

Hitler's father, Alois (born 1837), was illegitimate. For a time he bore his mother's name, Schicklgruber, but by 1876 he had established his family claim to the surname Hitler. Adolf never used any other surname.

Early life

After his father's retirement from the state customs service, Adolf Hitler spent most of his childhood in Linz, the capital of Upper Austria. It remained his favourite city throughout his life, and he expressed his wish to be buried there. Alois Hitler died in 1903 but left an adequate pension and savings to support his wife and children. Although Hitler feared and disliked his father, he was a devoted son to his mother, who died after much suffering in 1907. With a mixed record as a student, Hitler never advanced beyond a secondary education. After leaving school, he visited Vienna, then returned to Linz, where he dreamed of becoming an artist. Later, he used the small allowance he continued to draw to maintain himself in Vienna. He wished to study art, for which he had some faculties, but he twice failed to secure entry to the Academy of Fine Arts. For some years he lived a lonely and isolated life, earning a precarious livelihood by painting postcards and advertisements and drifting from one municipal hostel to another. Hitler already showed traits that characterized his later life: loneliness and secretiveness, a bohemian mode of everyday existence, and hatred of cosmopolitanism and of the multinational character of Vienna.

In 1913 Hitler moved to Munich. Screened for Austrian military service in February 1914, he was classified as unfit because of inadequate physical vigour; but when World War I broke out, he petitioned Bavarian King Louis III to be allowed to serve, and one day after submitting that request, he was notified that he would be permitted to join the 16th Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment. After some eight weeks of training, Hitler was deployed in October 1914 to Belgium, where he participated in the First Battle of Ypres. He served throughout the war, was wounded in October 1916, and was gassed two years later near Ypres. He was hospitalized when the conflict ended. During the war, he was continuously in the front line as a headquarters runner; his bravery in action was rewarded with the Iron Cross, Second Class, in December 1914, and the Iron Cross, First Class (a rare decoration for a corporal), in August 1918. He greeted the war with enthusiasm, as a great relief from the frustration and aimlessness of civilian life. He found discipline and comradeship satisfying and was confirmed in his belief in the heroic virtues of war.

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Adolf Hitler | Biography, Rise to Power, & Facts

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Adolf Hitler, the infamous dictator of Nazi Germany, rose to power with his radical ideology and orchestrated one of history's darkest periods through World War II and the Holocaust.

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Hitler demanded to be appointed as chancellor. German President Paul von Hindenburg initially resisted this demand. However, he gave in and appointed Hitler as Chancellor of Germany on January 30, 1933. Hindenburg appointed Hitler to this position as the result of a political deal.

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Hitler demanded to be appointed as chancellor. German President Paul von Hindenburg initially resisted this demand. However, he gave in and appointed Hitler as Chancellor of Germany on January 30, 1933. Hindenburg appointed Hitler to this position as the result of a political deal.

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ww2dbaseHideki Tojo was born in Kojimachi District (now Chiyoda), Tokyo, Japan to the Japanese Army infantry Lieutenant (later Lieutenant General) Hidenori Tojo. He followed his father's footsteps and attended the Army Cadet School in 1899 and then the Japanese Military Academy in 1904. In Mar 1905, he completed the courses at the military academy and was commissioned a second lieutenant in the infantry. In 1909, he married Katsuko Ito; they had three sons and four daughters. In 1912, he entered the Army Staff College, completing the program in 1915 and rose to the rank of captain and the commanding officer of the 3rd Imperial Guards Regiment. In Aug 1919, he served in Switzerland as a military attaché. On 10 Aug 1920, he was promoted to the rank of major. In Jul 1921, he served as a military attaché in Germany. On 28 Nov 1922, he became an instructor at the Army Staff College. In 1924, he was promoted to the rank of lieutenant colonel. On 8 Mar 1928, he was assigned as a bureau chief in the Japanese Army. On 10 Aug 1928, he was promoted to the rank of colonel. On 1 Aug 1929, he became the commanding officer of the 1st Infantry Regiment; around this time, he became active in militarist politics. In Aug 1931, he became a staff officer with the Army Chief of Staff. On 18 Mar 1933, he was promoted to the rank of major general and served as the Chief of the Personnel Department. In Aug 1934, he became the commanding officer of the 24th Infantry Brigade.

ww2dbaseOn 21 Sep 1935, Tojo was assigned to the Kwantung Army as the head of its military police. Nicknamed Kamisori, or "Razor", he was known for his decisiveness. On 1 Dec 1935, he was promoted to the rank of lieutenant general. During the Feb 26 Incident, he stood against the rebels, and emerged the Army's leading political figure. On 1 Mar 1937, he became the chief of staff of the Kwantung Army. He led units of the 1st Independent Mixed Brigade during Operation Chahar in Jul 1937, and deployed his troops to Hobei Province, China after the Second Sino-Japanese War began; with the Kwantung Army, he also played a key role in efficiently utilizing Manchuria's natural resources to feed the hungry Japanese industrial machine. Returning to Japan in May 1938, he became Vice War Minister and Chief of Army Aviation under War Minister Seishiro Itagaki, who was a member of Fumimaro Konoe's cabinet. As head of the Japanese Army's aviation program, he adopted an aggressive stance in conducting pre-emptive strikes against China and Russia. On 22 Jul 1940, he was appointed War Minister by Prime Minister Konoe. In this role, he expanded the Second Sino-Japanese War and was instrumental in forming the alliance between Japan, Germany, and Italy. Japan's expansionist philosophies, which were heavily influenced by Tojo, eventually led to an economic sanctions and then an oil embargo, conducted by several western powers including the United States and Britain. In the cabinet meeting of 14 Oct, which was to be Konoe's last, Tojo noted that

For the past six months, ever since April, the foreign minister has made painstaking efforts to adjust relations. Although I respect him for that, we remain deadlocked.... The heart of the matter is the imposition on us of withdrawal from Indochina and China.... If we yield to America's demands, it will destroy the fruits of the China incident. Manchukuo will be endangered and our control of Korea undermined.

ww2dbaseOn 16 Oct 1941, Konoe resigned from his post as prime minister. On the next day, Emperor Showa summoned Tojo to the Imperial Palace. "I thought I was summoned because the Emperor was angry at my opinion", said Tojo in his diary, but his initial reaction could not be further from the truth. As it would turn out, on the next day, 18 Oct 1941, Tojo was named the 40th Prime Minister of Japan. His first task was to conduct a careful evaluation of whether war was still avoidable; on 2 Nov, Tojo and Chiefs of Staff Hajime Sugiyama and Osami Nagano reported their failure in searching for a potential peaceful solution with the western powers. Upon receiving this report, Emperor Showa consented to the notion of war on 5 Nov. Through the month of Nov, Tojo made a last ditch effort in averting war; meanwhile, he and his staff presented war plans to Emperor Showa, who formally approved "war against the United States, England, and Holland" during the Imperial Conference of 1 Dec 1941. The Pacific War began as Japanese aircraft attacked the American naval base of Pearl Harbor on 7 Dec 1941.

ww2dbaseOver the course of his tenure as prime minister, Tojo gradually placed himself in direct charge of the army, foreign affairs, commerce, education, and the munitions industry. As Education Minister, he continued militaristic and nationalist indoctrination in the national education system. Although support for his government was high through 1942, starting in early 1943 support gradually waned. In Feb 1944, he assumed the role of the commander-in-chief of the General Staff, effectively gaining dictatorial powers, in order to secure his political position. However, even with absolute power, the loss of Saipan in the Mariana Islands spelled the end of his tenure as prime minister. On 18 Jul 1944, Tojo submitted his resignation to Emperor Showa.

ww2dbaseOn 8 Sep 1945, after the Japanese surrender, Tojo attempted to commit suicide by shooting himself in the chest with a pistol; he survived as the bullet missed his heart. He was arrested while recovering from the gunshot wound, and moved to the Sugamo Prison after he had recovered. He was tried by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East for war crimes. He was found guilty of count 1 (waging unprovoked wars of aggression and war or wars in violation of international law), count 27 (waging war against China), count 29 (waging aggressive war against the United States), count 31 (waging aggressive war against the British Commonwealth), count 32 (waging aggressive war against the Netherlands), count 33 (waging aggressive war against French Indochina), and count 54 (ordering, authorizing, and permitting inhumane treatment of POWs and others). Accepting his responsibilities as a Class A war criminal, he stated that

[I]t is natural that I should bear entire responsibility for the war in general, and, needless to say, I am prepared to do so. Consequently, now that the war has been lost, it is presumably necessary that I be judged so that the circumstances of the time can be clarified and the future peace of the world be assured.

ww2dbaseTojo was sentenced to death by hanging on 12 Nov 1948, which was carried out on 23 Dec 1948. Before he was hanged, he apologized for atrocities committed by the Japanese Army, though claimed that he was simply following orders from Emperor Showa for the cases where he was implicated with war crimes; he also urged the American occupation to show compassion toward the Japanese people. After the execution was carried out, Tojo's remains, along with the remains of other war criminals executed on that date, were transferred to US Army Major Luther Frierson, who then supervised the cremation process. While 1940s US Army official policy after military executions was to bury the remains or to give the remains to the next of kin, Frierson was given orders to break that particular rule. Using an Eighth Army liaison aircraft, Frierson personally scattered the ashes of the war criminals at sea, about 30 miles east of Yokohama, Japan. The decision to scatters the ashes at sea was an attempt to avoid having places of burial, which could then be used as physical locations for the executed to be worshipped as martyrs. That ultimate goal was not achieved, however, as the Americans failed to realize that enshrinement at the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo did not require physical remains. Tojo's enshrinement continues to stir controversy today.

ww2dbase Source: Wikipedia
Last Major Revision: Mar 2022 Hideki Tojo Interactive Map Hideki Tojo Timeline Photographs See all 27 photographs of Hideki Tojo

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# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
ww2dbaseHideki Tojo was born in Kojimachi District (now Chiyoda), Tokyo, Japan to the Japanese Army infantry Lieutenant (later Lieutenant General) Hidenori Tojo. He followed his father's footsteps and attended the Army Cadet School in 1899 and then the Japanese Military Academy in 1904.

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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.

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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.

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In July 1940, he was made minister of war and soon clashed with the prime minister, Prince Fumimaro Konoye, who had been fighting for reform of his government, namely, demilitarization of its politics. In October, Konoye resigned because of increasing tension with Tojo, who succeeded him as prime minister.

# data[].attributes.subject
In July 1940, he was made minister of war and soon clashed with the prime minister, Prince Fumimaro Konoye, who had been fighting for reform of his government, namely, demilitarization of its politics. In October, Konoye resigned because of increasing tension with Tojo, who succeeded him as prime minister.