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Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was born in 1889, in Austria (a country south of Germany) to an extremely controlling Austrian father. After his father’s death in 1903, Hitler became rebellious and began failing at school. He dropped out of school and with the dream of becoming an artist, he moved to Vienna to become a painter. However, he failed to be accepted to the Academy of Fine Arts and ended up living a lonely life as a poor street artist painting post cards. Anti-Semitism was common in Vienna, and it is believed that this is where Hitler first developed his extreme hatred toward Jewish people.
When World War I began in 1914, Hitler joined in the German army and fought on the Western Front. Hitler said he that for the first time in his life he found acceptance and accomplishment when he was fighting the war. During the war, he won several awards for bravery, including the highly respected Iron Cross First Class, and was wounded several times. Hitler was in a military hospital recovering from his wounds when he heard that Germany had signed the armistice that ended the war.
Like many German soldiers, Hitler had a difficult time readjusting to life after the war in the chaos of post-war Germany. He got a job in the army keeping track of radical political organization. This is how he first came in contact with the National Socialist German Workers Party, called the Nazis. He joined Nazi Party and soon became its most well known speaker. Hitler’s speeches drew more people into the Nazi Party and, in 1921, Hitler became the Fuhrer, or leader, of the party.
In 1923, Germany suffered terrible hyperinflation (a period where money quickly loses its value) and many Germans were unhappy with the democratic government in Germany. Hitler believed he could use this to take power in Germany. Hitler organized the Nazi Party to violently overthrow the government. However, the rebellion was quickly put down by the local police and Hitler was charged with treason and sentenced to a year in prison. It was during his time in prison that Hitler wrote his book, Mien Kampf or “My Struggle” which described his goals of expanding Germany to make an empire and to make it a racially pure society – it would only be for Germans. After his release from prison, Hitler continued to lead the Nazi Party, but it was a marginal party in German politics.
It was the economic crisis of the Great Depression in the early 1930’s that made the Nazi Party a major political force in Germany. Unemployment in Germany reached 25% and millions of Germans found themselves living in poverty. These Germans were drawn to supporting radical political groups like the Nazis and the Communists. The Nazis and the Communists hated each other and their supporters fought pitched battles in the streets of German cities. In the 1932 election, both the Nazi and Communist parties did well, but the Nazis won the most seats in the Reichstag, or German Parliament. Hitler was made Chancellor of Germany. When the President of Germany died in 1934, Hitler used Emergency Powers to make himself Fuhrer, or leader, of Germany. After taking power, Hitler moved ruthlessly to eliminate other political parties by having their leaders arrested and even had many of the leaders of the Nazi Party who could challenge him killed in an event called the Night of the Long Knives.
Once Hitler had full control over Germany, he began to prepare Germany for wars of conquest to enlarge Germany. He put millions of unemployed people to work on rebuilding the German military. In addition, he began to turn Germany into racially pure country by forcing Jews to leave the country. He did this by enacting laws that banned Jews from doing professional work and from attending school. He also allowed his supporters to attack Jews openly in the Night of Broken Glass.
Hitler began to take over other countries to achieve his goal of gaining “living space” for the Germans. He envisioned a future German Empire that would cover most of Europe in which the other peoples of Europe would either be killed or forced to work as slave labor for Germans. In the late 1930’s, Hitler took over Austria and Czechoslovakia without having to fire a single shot. Then, in 1939, he began World War Two by attacking Poland. Then the next year he conquered France and began to bomb Britain. The year after that, he attacked the Soviet Union and his army got all the way to Moscow, the Soviet capital city. By the end of 1942, it looked to the world as if Hitler might achieve his goal of building a Nazi Empire. In the areas that Germany had taken over, Hitler ordered the Nazi forces to round up people to be used as slave labor and sent out death squads to kill Jews.
However
, at that point the war began to turn against Hitler. First, he had not fully defeated Britain and the Soviet Union. Both of these countries recovered from their earlier defeats and began to push back the German army. Second, Hitler had declared war on the United States and now the United States joined with Britain and the Soviet Union to defeat Nazi Germany. Beginning in 1943, the Allies began to win victories on all fronts and began to push the Nazi forces back. However, even in the face of defeat, Hitler did not give up his dream of creating a racially pure Germany and ordered the speeding up of killing Jews in specially built death camps.
As the war turned against Hitler, he became more isolated. He did not appear in public, he refused to listen to his military advisors and began to put resources into miracle weapons that would give him victory. In 1944, a group of military officers tried to kill Hitler with a bomb. After this, Hitler became increasing paranoid and determined to fight to the bitter end of the war, even if it meant the total destruction of Germany in the process. Under the slogan of "total victory or total ruin," Hitler ordered German army destroy everything as it retreated and that all men, even school boys and old men, be drafted into the army. Hitler’s secret police were ordered to kill any German who opposed these actions.
Hitler spent the last few months of his life living in a bunker in the center of the bombed out ruins of Berlin, still desperately believing that he could win the war and build his Nazi Empire. It was only when the Soviet army was attacking Berlin that Hitler recognized that all was lost and wrote his will in which he blamed the Jews for starting the war. After this, he married his long-time mistress Eva Braun and then committed suicide.
Winston Churchill
Winston Churchill was born in 1874 in England. His father was a member of the British Parliament and his mother was an American heiress. Churchill was sent to school to get military training. In school he was not a good student, but was popular and had a tendency to get in trouble. He went on to study at the Royal Military Academy and graduate to become a military officer. After graduating, Churchill traveled to Cuba, India, Sudan and South Africa as a war reporter for a British newspaper.
When he was 25, Churchill returned to England and was elected to British Parliament. As a young Member of Parliament, Churchill was very outspoken and active, working to both reduce taxes and improve the lives of the poor. As a result of his hard work, in 1911, he was promoted to be the First Lord of the Admiralty, which meant that he was in charge of the British Navy. Churchill was worried that the Germans were building a navy to be stronger than the British Navy and so he spent the next three years working to build up the strength of the British Navy. As a result, the British Navy was prepared for war when World War One began in 1914.
As the First Lord of the Admiralty, Churchill was involved in planning the British strategy in World War One. The first significant setback in his life was his plan to attack the Ottoman Empire in the Battle of Gallipoli. The Ottoman Empire was seen as being weak and Churchill thought it was would be easy to defeat them. However, the Ottoman defense to the British attack was strong and the British were forced to retreat. After this, Churchill was forced to resign his position in the government. After this, Churchill joined the British Army and served as the commander of a unit on the Western Front in France. While he did not participate in any major battles, he did spend a significant amount of time on the front line. In 1917, he returned to government and was made Minister of Munitions (weapons).
After World War One, Churchill was a leader in the Conservative Party and held different positions in the British Government. However, he spend more time on personal interests such a writing books, painting and even learning how to do brick work.
In the late 1930’s, Churchill began to speak out against Hitler and said that Britain needed to stand up to Nazi Germany. Churchill argued that the British policy of giving in to Hitler’s aggression would make Hitler stronger and would lead to war. The war Churchill feared began in 1939 when Germany attacked Poland. Churchill’s stance against Hitler and Nazi Germany made him very popular with the people of Britain.
After Germany attacked France in May 1940, Churchill became the Prime Minister and began to rally the British people to a long war against England. He gave many speeches to Parliament, such as his famous “Blood, Toil, Tears and Sweat” speech to inspire the British to keep fighting against a seemingly invincible enemy. After the defeat of France, Britain was alone in its war against Germany. It was a time when Britain doggedly fought on against Germany even though seemed to be winning and German air force was bombing British cities in the Battle of Britain. It was during this period that Churchill proved to be a strong leader by telling the British people that Britain would “never surrender”. Churchill became known as the "British Bulldog".
In 1941, Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union and declared war on the United States. Churchill joined Britain, the Soviet Union and the United States. During the war, Churchill worked closely with Franklin Roosevelt, President of the United States, and Joseph Stalin, leader of the Soviet Union, to coordinate that Allies’ war against Nazi Germany. However, Churchill never fully trusted Stalin and tried to prevent Stalin from gaining too much territory at the end of the war. However, by the end of the war, Britain was weak and it was no longer the world power it had been before World War One.
Recognizing the weakness of Britain, Churchill now tried to rally the United States to take on the role of standing up to Stalin and the Soviet Union. In 1946, Churchill spoke in the United States in which he used the phrase “Iron Curtain” to describe how the countries of Eastern Europe that were taken over by the Soviet Union in the end of World War Two are prisoners of Soviet control.
Churchill also argued for more unity among the countries of Europe to prevent another war. He said that the countries should form a “United States of Europe” and supported many of the early parts of building the European Union.
After the war, Churchill, who was then 70, resigned as Prime Minister. However, six years later, he was again elected Prime Minister and served until he was 80 years old, when because of poor health he had to retire. He continued to be very active, spending his time writing, speaking and painting. In his later life he won the Nobel Prize for Literature and was made an honorary citizen of the United States. He died in 1965 from a stroke.
Georgy Zhukov
Georgy Zhukov was born in Russia in 1896 to a family of peasants. In 1915, Zhukov was drafted into the Russian army and fought in World War One. He was awarded for his bravery and was badly wounded in battle. After the October Revolution, Zhukov joined Lenin's Bolshevik Party and became an officer in the Red Army in the Russian Civil War. After the Civil War, Zhukov became an army commander of the Soviet Army in Siberia. Because he was so far away from the capital
of Moscow, Zhukov was able to survive Stalin's "Great Purge" of the army (when Stalin ordered the secret police to arrest and kill the leaders of the army). As the commander of the Soviet Army in Siberia, Zhukov defeated the Japanese in a short war between the Soviet Union and Japan over the region of Mongolia (part of China) in 1939. Stalin rewarded Zhukov by making him a commander of the overall Soviet Army in January 1941.
When the German army invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, Stalin ordered Zhukov to attack the Germans and not retreat. While he disagreed with Stalin's orders, Zhukov obeyed the orders and the result was heavy Soviet losses. Stalin removed Zhukov from command when Zhukov argued against defending the city of Kiev in Ukraine, and instead recommended that the Soviet Army retreat. Stalin ignored Zhukov's advice and the Germans captured 600, 000 Soviet soldiers when they captured Kiev. After the loss of Kiev, Stalin realized that Zhukov had been right, and so he put Zhukov in command of the defense of Moscow, the Soviet Union’s capital. By December of 1941, the Germany army was closing in on Moscow and it looked as if they might capture the city. Even Stalin made plans to evacuate the city.
Zhukov planned to defend Moscow by moving the Soviet forces from Siberia to Moscow to defend the city. The Siberian soldiers were well equipped and were experienced with fighting in winter conditions. They were able to stop the German advance and push the Germany army back 150 miles, saving Moscow from being captured. After the successful defense of Moscow, Zhukov was put in command of organizing the defense of the city of Stalingrad. The Battle of Stalingrad was one of the most important battles of World War Two. Zhukov led an attack on the German army at Stalingrad and surrounded the Germans, forcing them to surrender in February 1943. Then in the summer of 1943, Zhukov lured the German army into the Battle of Kursk, the largest tank battle of the war, which was another crushing defeat for the Germans. The combined defeats at Stalingrad and Kursk broke the German army.
After the victories at Stalingrad and Kursk, Zhukov lead the Soviet Army as it drove the Germans out of the Soviet Union. Stalin was so pleased with Zhukov's military ability that he gave him the special honor of leading the Soviet attack on the Nazi capital of Berlin in 1945. After a ferocious battle to capture the city, which ended when Hitler committed suicide before the Soviets could capture him, Zhukov oversaw the surrender of the rest of the Nazi German government.
After the war, Stalin was threatened by Zhukov's popularity with the Soviet military and the general population. Ever paranoid, Stalin removed Zhukov from his position as supreme military commander and assigned him to run the military in a region in the southwest of the Soviet Union. After Stalin died, Zhukov was made the defense minister in the Soviet Union. He died in 1974.
Charles de Gaulle
Charles de Gaulle was born in 1890 in France. His father was a math teacher who had fought in the Franco-Prussian War, which ended in defeat for France. De Gaulle's father greatly influenced De Gaulle's life-long goal of restoring France to being the most powerful country in Europe.
In 1909, De Gaulle enrolled as a student in a military academy and graduated as a lieutenant in the French army. He led a front line unit in World War One and awarded medals for bravery in battle. He was badly wounded in the battle of Verdun and was left for dead. However, he was revived when his body was collected by the Germans to be buried. The Germans took him prisoner, and despite many escape attempts, he was held in a German maximum-security prison for the rest of the war.
After World War I, De Gaulle returned to the French military. However, he got in trouble for constantly criticizing his superiors. His superiors supported the ideas of trench warfare that had been used in World War One. In contrast, De Gaulle thought the French army should become more modern by using armored tanks and a strategy of mobile war (similar to the Blitzkrieg tactics designed by the Germans). The French military ignored De Gaulle's ideas - the Germans read about De Gaulle’s ideas and planned to use them.
When Germany attacked France in 1940, De Gaulle was put in command of a tank unit, which was able to slow the German attack. However, because other parts of the French army retreated, De Gaulle was also forced to retreat. After six weeks of fighting, the French government and military decided to surrender to the Germans instead of continuing to fight. However, while he was not a top French commander,
De Gaulle refused to surrender. He said, "France has lost a battle, but France has not lost the war." De Gaulle fled to England where he began to organize the Free French, a French government in exile that was run out of Britain. De Gaulle also supported the British in their war against Germany by organizing soldiers from French colonies to fight on the Allied side. From England, De Gaulle was able to lead the French resistance to the German occupation and he spoke to the French people by radio broadcast from England.
After the Allies landed in France on D-Day in June 1944, De Gaulle returned to France as a hero and was elected the premier, or leader, of the country. However, De Gaulle often fought against the other national leaders, many of whom he saw as traitors because they had collaborated with the Germans while the Germans were occupying France. In 1946, De Gaulle resigned his position. However, he remained an active force in French politics and became the president of France from 1958 to 1969. He died in 1970.
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