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On February 27, 1933, the German parliament ( Reichstag) building burned down due to arson. The Nazi leadership and its German Nationalist coalition partners exploited the fire to persuade President Paul von Hindenburg that Communists were planning a violent uprising to derail Germany's "national renewal." They claimed that emergency legislation was needed to prevent this. Commonly known as the Reichstag Fire Decree, the resulting act "For the Protection of the People and State" abolished a number of constitutional protections and paved the way for Nazi dictatorship.

Using emergency constitutional powers, Adolf Hitler 's cabinet had issued a Decree for the Protection of the German People on February 4, 1933. This decree placed constraints on the press and authorized the police to ban political meetings and marches, effectively hindering electoral campaigning. A temporary measure, it was followed by a more dramatic and permanent suspension of civil rights following the February 27 burning of the parliament building.

Though the origins of the fire are still unclear, in a propaganda maneuver, the coalition government (Nazis and the German Nationalist People's Party) blamed the Communists. They exploited the Reichstag fire to secure President von Hindenburg's approval for an emergency decree, the decree "For the Protection of the People and State" of February 28, one day after the burning of the Reichstag. Popularly known as the Reichstag Fire Decree, the regulations suspended the right to assembly, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and other constitutional protections, including all restraints on police investigations.

Justified on the false premise that the Communists were planning an uprising to overthrow the state, the Reichstag Fire Decree permitted the regime to arrest and incarcerate political opponents without specific charge, dissolve political organizations, and to suppress publications. It also gave the central government the authority to overrule state and local laws and overthrow state and local governments.

The Nazi press described the Reichstag fire as the work of the Communists and a signal for their planned uprising. Even the US independent Fox Movie Tones newsreel reflected the German government version. Although the Communists had not, in fact, developed any plans for an uprising, the impact of propaganda and terror on existing fears of a Communist takeover convinced many Germans that Hitler's decisive action had saved the nation from "Bolshevism."

Within months, for example, the Nazi regime destroyed Germany's previously vigorous free press. By 1941, the Nazi Party's Eher publishing house had become the largest ever in German history, and its main daily newspaper, the Völkischer Beobachter (The National Observer) had reached a circulation of over 1,000,000.

Author(s): United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC

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On February 27, 1933, the German parliament ( Reichstag) building burned down due to arson. The Nazi leadership and its German Nationalist coalition partners exploited the fire to persuade President Paul von Hindenburg that Communists were planning a violent uprising to derail Germany's "national renewal." They claimed that emergency legislation was needed to prevent this.

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FDR was elected as President in 1931, and served three consecutive terms.

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Declared war on Japan in 1941 after Peal Harbor

Began the Lend Lease program, which sent valuable resources to the Allies

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President of the United States of America

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Adolf Hitler was elected Chancellor of Germany, and after a false flag attack on the Reichstag, Hitler and his Nazis abolished various portions of the German Constitution, establishing a dictatorial one-party state in 1933.

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Adolf Hitler started World War II in 1939 when he ordered the invasion of Poland.

Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party organized the executions of millions of innocent Jews, Roma, Homosexuals, and many other "Non-Aryans"

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Dictator of Nazi Germany

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https://www.whitehouse.gov/about-the-white-house/presidents/franklin-d-roosevelt/

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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.

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Dictator of the Soviet Union

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During the buildup to WW2, Stalin signed a pact of non-aggression with Nazi Germany, where they agreed to split Poland between them.

Josef Stalin purged many of his officers, which led to problems within the command of the Soviet Army during the war

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After the death of Lenin, Stalin consolidated his power by executing or exiling his rivals such as Leon Trotsky. Originally he ruled in alliance with two other leaders, but he expelled them both from power, ruling as a dictator

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After Lenin's death, in January 1924, Stalin promoted an extravagant, quasi-Byzantine cult of the deceased leader. Archpriest of Leninism, Stalin also promoted his own cult in the following year by having the city of Tsaritsyn renamed Stalingrad (now Volgograd). His main rival, Trotsky (once Lenin's heir apparent), was now in eclipse, having been ousted by the ruling triumvirate of Zinovyev, Lev Kamenev, and Stalin. Soon afterward Stalin joined with the rightist leaders Nikolay Bukharin and Aleksey Rykov in an alliance directed against his former co-triumvirs. Pinning his faith in the ability of the Soviet Union to establish a viable political system without waiting for the support hitherto expected from worldwide revolution, the Secretary General advocated a policy of "Socialism in one country"; this was popular with the hardheaded party managers whom he was promoting to influential positions in the middle hierarchy. His most-powerful rivals were all dismissed, Bukharin and Rykov soon following Zinovyev and Kamenev into disgrace and political limbo pending execution. Stalin expelled Trotsky from the Soviet Union in 1929 and had him assassinated in Mexico in 1940.

In 1928 Stalin abandoned Lenin's quasi-capitalist New Economic Policy in favour of headlong state-organized industrialization under a succession of five-year plans. This was, in effect, a new Russian revolution more devastating in its effects than those of 1917. The dictator's blows fell most heavily on the peasantry, some 25 million rustic households being compelled to amalgamate in collective or state farms within a few years. Resisting desperately, the reluctant muzhiks were attacked by troops and OGPU (political police) units. Uncooperative peasants, termed kulaks, were arrested en masse and shot, exiled, or absorbed into the rapidly expanding network of Stalinist concentration camps and worked to death under atrocious conditions. Collectivization caused a great famine in Ukraine, and Stalin's policies, some of which targeted Ukraine specifically, compounded the death and misery. Stalin continued to export the grain stocks that a less cruel leader would have rushed to the famine-stricken areas. In Ukraine this famine came to be known as the Holodomor, from the Ukrainian words for hunger ( holod) and extermination ( mor). Some 10 million peasants may have perished through Stalin's policies during these years.

Crash industrialization was less disastrous in its effects, but it, too, numbered its grandiose failures, to which Stalin responded by arraigning industrial managers in a succession of show trials. Intimidated into confessing imaginary crimes, the accused served as self-denounced scapegoats for catastrophes arising from the Secretary General's policies. Yet Stalin was successful in rapidly industrializing a backward country-as was widely acknowledged by enthusiastic contemporary foreign witnesses, including Adolf Hitler and such well-known writers as H.G. Wells and George Bernard Shaw.

Among those who vainly sought to moderate Stalin's policies was his young second wife, Nadezhda Alliluyeva, whom he had married in 1919 and who committed suicide in 1932. They had two children. The son, Vasily, perished as an alcoholic after rising to unmerited high rank in the Soviet Air Force. The daughter, Svetlana, became the object for her father's alternating affection and bad temper. She emigrated after his death and later wrote memoirs that illuminate Stalin's well-camouflaged private life.

In late 1934-just when the worst excesses of Stalinism seemed to have spent themselves-the Secretary General launched a new campaign of political terror against the very Communist Party members who had brought him to power; his pretext was the assassination, in Leningrad on December 1, of his leading colleague and potential rival, Sergey Kirov. That Stalin himself had arranged Kirov's murder-as an excuse for the promotion of mass bloodshed-was strongly hinted by Nikita Khrushchev, first secretary of the party, in a speech denouncing Stalin at the 20th Party Congress in 1956.

Stalin used the show trial of leading Communists as a means for expanding the new terror. In August 1936, Zinovyev and Kamenev were paraded in court to repeat fabricated confessions, sentenced to death, and shot; two more major trials followed, in January 1937 and March 1938. In June 1937, Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky, at the time the most influential military personality, and other leading generals were reported as court-martialed on charges of treason and executed.

Such were the main publicly acknowledged persecutions that empowered Stalin to tame the Soviet Communist Party and the Soviet elite as a whole. He not only "liquidated" veteran semi-independent Bolsheviks but also many party bosses, military leaders, industrial managers, and high government officials totally subservient to himself. Other victims included foreign Communists on Soviet territory and members of the very political police organization, now called the NKVD. All other sections of the Soviet elite-the arts, the academic world, the legal and diplomatic professions-also lost a high proportion of victims, as did the population at large, to a semi-haphazard, galloping persecution that fed on extorted denunciations and confessions. These implicated even more victims until Stalin himself reduced the terror, though he never abandoned it. Stalin's political victims were numbered in tens of millions. His main motive was, presumably, to maximize his personal power.

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After Lenin's death, in January 1924, Stalin promoted an extravagant, quasi-Byzantine cult of the deceased leader. Archpriest of Leninism, Stalin also promoted his own cult in the following year by having the city of Tsaritsyn renamed Stalingrad (now Volgograd).

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Dictator of Fascist Italy

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Unsuccessfully led his army in WW2 during the campaigns in Greece, North Africa, and Sicily.

Was given the title "Sword of Islam" by his subjects in Libya.

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In 1922, Mussolini and his followers march on Rome, and force the King to give them power. The King agrees, and makes Mussolini the Prime Minister. After 3 years, Mussolini gains enough power to become dictator of Italy

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

Transcript

Benito Mussolini

How did Benito Mussolini rise to power?

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

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

What were Benito Mussolini's political beliefs?

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

Where did the word fascism come from?

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

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

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

What was Benito Mussolini's personal life like?

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

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

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Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

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Inspired his people to fight against Germany with rousing speeches.

Opposed Neville Chamberlain's appeasement policy towards Nazi Germany

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After previous PM Neville Chamberlain resigned due to health problems, Winston Churchill assumed the position of Prime Minister

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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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Prime Minister of Imperial Japan

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Tojo was Chief of Staff of the Kwantung Army, which ruled the occupied Chinese region of Manchuria before and during WW2.

Led the Japanese war effort against the United States during the pacific war.

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Tojo began his government career as the Minister of War. He was a hard working politician and was one of the advocates for Japan's alliance with Germany and Italy. He was appointed Prime Minister in 1941, two months before Pearl Harbor.

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How did Tōjō Hideki change the world?

Where was Tōjō Hideki educated?

Where is Tōjō Hideki buried?

This article was most recently revised and updated by

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.