Some of these leaders were clearly the aggressors, while others led the war against aggression. Some leaders succeeded, while others failed to stand against stronger powers. Some leaders were caught in the middle between stronger countries and were forced to take a side, while others were able to remain neutral and save their nations from the war.
The Agressor leaders are Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini , and General Hideki Tojo
Adolf Hitler – Nazi dictator of Germany (1933-45), planned and started World War. Benito Mussolini, was the prime minister of Italy (1922-1943). A former journalist, he went to politics and formed the Fascist party, whose ideology, Fascism, called for a one-party state, total obedience, patriotic nationalism, and aggressive militarism. General Hideki Tojo – Prime minister of Japan (October 1941 – July 1944). With a long militarist tradition, Japan became extremely militarist and aggressive in the 1930s and was practically governed by military leaders. Tojo, an aggressive army General, became minister of war in July 1941 and prime minister in October 1941.
The Defender leaders are Winston Churchill, Joseph Stalin, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt
Winston Churchill kept warning of the Nazi danger in pre-war years. He was elected prime minister of Great Britain after the total collapse of the appeasement policy of his predecessor Neville Chamberlain. Chamberlain failed to understand that aggressors like Hitler can not be appeased. Churchill became prime minister on May 10, 1940, at the same day when the German Blitzkrieg invasion of France began.
Joseph Stalin was the very brutal Communist dictator of Russia (1928-1953). In the years before World War 2 Stalin murdered or imprisoned almost all of Russia’s senior military officers, and millions of other Russian citizens, in a paranoid and unprecedented wave of political terror. This clearly weakened Russia and further encouraged Hitler to attack it. The pre-war pacifist strategy, military weakness, and anti-Communism of Britain and France led Stalin in August 1939 to decide that making a deal with Hitler is a better way to protect Russia from Hitler than making an alliance with Britain and France against him.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, president of the United States of America (1933-1945) initially followed a very strong political demand to remain neutral and isolate the country from foreign wars, but he realized that the Nazi aggression was a global threat and the total opposite to the values of democracy and freedom, and persuaded the Congress to allow selling weapons to Britain and France, later declaring that the US will become the “arsenal of democracy”.
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