People in World War II
Joseph Stalin was born on December 18, 1878 in Gori which was part of the Russian empire. He was the only child and grew up very poor. His father was a shoemaker and his mother was a laundress. He attended a seminary and studied to be a priest in a Georgian Orthodox Church. He was expelled from the seminary for missing exams. He then became an underground political agitator and took part in labor demonstrations and strikes. In 1909 he joined the militant Marxist Social Democratic movement and was arrested several times for various criminal activities. He served as dictator of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republic from 1929-1953. Under his leadership the Soviet Union was transformed from a peasant society into an industrial and military world power. He centered on government control of the economy and forced collectivization of Soviet agriculture. The government took control of farms. He expanded powers of secret police, encouraged people to spy on one another and sent many others to labor camps. He ruled by terror and unfortunately millions of his own citizens died during his brutal reign. Stalin aligned with the United States and Britain in World War ll from 1939-1945. Soviet troops helped to liberate countries in Eastern Europe which helped Stalin’s popularity from his successes during WW ll. This led to a strong position and negotiated a free hand in reorganizing their governments. Stalin died on March 5, 1953.
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Franklin D. Roosevelt was born on January 30, 1882, in Hyde Park, New York. He was an only child and was born into a wealthy family. He attended Harvard University and in his final year became engaged to his fifth cousin, Eleanor Roosevelt. After attending law school and passing the bar exam Roosevelt practiced law, bur found it restrictive and boring. He became New York’s state senate in 1910 and was in his second term as governor of New York when he became the 32nd president in 1932. He is the only American president in history to be elected four times. During the Great Depression, Roosevelt acted to restore public confidence. His ambitious plan of New Deal programs and reforms redefined the role of the federal government in the lives of all Americans. He led the United States from isolationism to victory over Nazi Germany and its allies in World War ll. He headed the successful wartime alliance between Britain, the Soviet Union and the United States. He also helped lay the groundwork for the post-war peace organization which would later become the United Nations. Franklin Roosevelt died in office on April 12, 1945 from a massive cerebral hemorrhage.
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Winston Churchill was born on November 30, 1874 to an aristocratic family. He grew up in Dublin, Ireland but was sent to a boarding school near London in 1888. He then joined the Harrow Rifle Corps, which put him on a path to his military career. He served in the Forth Hussars in 1895 and served in the Battle of Omdurman in 1898. He left the army in 1899 and worked as a war correspondent for a conservative daily newspaper. In 1900 Churchill became a Member of Parliament in the Conservative Party in a town in Manchester. He then switched to the Liberal Party in 1904. In 1908 he was appointed to the Prime Minister’s Cabinet of President of the Board of Trade. From 1919-1922 Churchill served as the Minister of war and Air and Colonial Secretary. When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, Churchill helped to lead a successful Allied strategy with US President Franklin D. Roosevelt and General Secretary Joseph Stalin during World War ll. Together they defeated the Axis powers and activated post-war peace. After the alliance, he warned the West to the expansionist threat of Soviet communism. Churchill died on January 24, 1965 in London after suffering a stroke.
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Adolf Hitler was born on April 20, 1889, in Austria. He grew up in Germany, where he began his interest in German nationalism. When Adolf was 14 years old he dropped out of school and moved to Vienna to become a watercolor painter and laborer. He was accepted into the German army in 1914. After World War I he took control of the German government. He established concentration camps to inter Jews and others who felt were a threat to Aryan supremacy. Over 6 million people died in the Holocaust. In 1939, his attack on Poland started WW ll. By 1941 Germany occupied most of Europe and South Africa by 1941. The flow of the war turned following an invasion of Russian and U.S. access into the battle. The allies closed in on Germany. Hitler, along with his wife committed suicide in 1945, shortly before Germany’s defeat.
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Solomon Radasky was born on May 17, 1910, in Warsaw, Poland. He worked in the family fur coat business during the war. During the Warsaw Ghetto uprising Solomon was shot in the ankle and was deported to Umschlagplatz, to heal. He only stayed a week and was then sent to Majdanek concentration camp, where he was stripped of his clothes and forced to work in a dirty field. After almost being hung because one of the other workers were smoking he was transferred to Auschwitz, where was sent to work on building railroad tracks. After collapsing from exhaustion, Solomon was sent to work in the coal mines, where he met an officer who exchanged information to for food . He then moved to Gross-Rosen for a short time and then on to Dachau. He was then put on a train where the Nazi’s shot at them. He survived and the Americans found the train and set everyone free. He was fiven food and clothing. He returned to Germany and got married. Four years later he moved to the United States and had two children. Solomon passed away on August 2, 2002.
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Hirohito was born on April 29, 1901, in the Aoyama Palace in Tokyo. He attended a school set up for the children of nobility from the age of 7 to 19. He became the first crown prince of Japan in 1921. He married Princess Nagako in 1924 and had seven children. In September 1945 Hiroshima and Nagasaki were attacked with atomic bombs. Japan lost 2.3 million soldiers and 800,000 civilians in WW ll. General McArthur was sent to Japan to oversee its rehabilitation. The country was occupied by the U.S. who introduced democratic reforms. Hirohito remained an active figure in Japan, which attained political stability and became an economic leader. He died on January 7, 1989 of cancer. His son Akihito succeeded him to the throne.
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Chiang Kai-shek was born in Chiang, China on October 30, 1887. He was the son of a salt merchant. Chiang received a traditional Chinese schooling, which was centered the religious system of Confucianism. In 1905 he went to Ningpo to study, but decided to pursue a career in the military. When the revolution broke out in China, Chiang fought under Ch'en. In May 1923, Chiang became commandant of the Whampoa Military Academy. There along with Soviet advisers he organized the military elite group called the Whampoa Clique. He became a bold Chinese political leader and the major figure of Chinese history from 1927-1928. He led the Chinese Republic during WWII. He was able to join the Great Powers in the world diplomatic councils, because of Franklin Roosevelt, but he received little respect from Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin. Eventually, he was forced from power by the Chinese Communists. Chiang Kai-shek suffered a fatal heart attack on April 5, 1975.
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Anne Frank was born on June 12, 1929 in Frankfurt, Germany. Her father, Otto was a lieutenant in the German army during World War I. She had an older sister, Margot. The Franks were a German-Jewish upper-middle class family. During World War II Anne and her family lived in Amsterdam. Fleeing Nazi persecution of Jews, the family went into hiding for two years. During this time Anne wrote about her experiences and wishes. She was only 15 years old when her family was found. Her and Margot were sent to a concentration camp. After months of hard labor, very little food, and unsanitary conditions, Anne and her sister both came down with typhus and died within one day of each other. More than 1 million Jewish children died in the Holocaust. Her work, The Diary of Anne Frank, is read by millions each year
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