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Benito Mussolini
Benito Mussolini was an ardent socialist as a youth, following in his father's political footsteps, but was expelled by the party for his support of World War I. In 1919, he created the Fascist Party, eventually making himself dictator and holding all the power in Italy. He overextended his forces during World War II and was eventually killed by his own people, on April 28, 1945, in Mezzegra, Italy image -
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Harry Truman
imageHarry S. Truman was born in Missouri on May 8, 1884. He was Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s vice president for just 82 days before Roosevelt died and Truman became the 33rd president. In his first months in office he dropped the atomic bomb on Japan, ending World War II. His policy of communist containment started the Cold War, and he initiated U.S. involvement in the Korean War. Truman left office in 1953 and died in 1972. -
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Hideki Tojo
imagewas a general of the Imperial Japanese Army (IJA), the leader of the Imperial Rule Assistance Association, and the 40th Prime Minister of Japan during most of World War II, from October 17, 1941 to July 22, 1944. As Prime Minister, he was directly responsible for the attack on Pearl Harbor, which initiated war between Japan and the United States, although planning for it had begun before he entered office. After the end of the war, Tojo was arrested, sentenced to death -
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George S. Patton
imageGeorge Smith Patton, Jr. was a United States Army general, who commanded the Seventh United States Army, and later the Third United States Army, in the European Theater of World War II. -
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Adlof Hitler
imageBorn in Austria in 1889, Adolf Hitler rose to power in German politics as leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party, also known as the Nazi Party. Hitler was chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and served as dictator from 1934 to 1945. His policies precipitated World War II and the Holocaust. Hitler committed suicide with wife Eva Braun on April 30, 1945, in his Berlin bunker. -
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Dwight D. Eisenhower
imageDwight D. Eisenhower was born on October 14, 1890, in Denison, Texas. In 1945 he was appointed U.S. Army chief of staff. He became the first Supreme Allied Commander of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 1951. In 1952 he was elected U.S. president. He served two terms before retiring to Gettysburg in 1961. Eisenhower died on March 28, 1969, at the Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington, D.C. -
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Omar Bradley
imageOmar Nelson "Brad" Bradley was a United States Army field commander in North Africa and Europe during World War II, and a General of the Army -
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Vernon Baker
imageVernon Baker was a highly decorated soldier and the only living black WWII veteran to earn the Congressional Medal of Honor.
In 1941, Vernon Baker was assigned to the segregated 270th Regiment of the 92nd Infantry Division, the first black unit to go into combat in WWII. Baker, one of the most decorated black soldiers in the Mediterranean Theater, earned a Purple Heart, Bronze Star and Distinguished Service Cross. In 1996, he was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor -
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The Holocaust
imagethe Holocaust is used to describe the genocide of over 12 million people during WWII, approximately 6 million of which were Jews, between 1939 and 1945.
However some say that the word Holocaust is only meant to include the genocide of Jewish people. The Nazis had always been anti-semitic - in Hitler's autobiography 'Mein Kampf' (My Struggle) he had expressed strong anti-semitic views.
The Wall Street Crash in 1929 and subsequent Depression -
Flying Tigers
Flying Tigers. the nickname of U.S. fighter pilots, the American Volunteer Group (AVG), who fought against the Japanese in China during World War II. -
Executive Order 9066
Executive Order 9066 is a United States presidential executive order signed and issued during World War II by the United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt on February 19, 1942, authorizing the Secretary of War to prescribe certain areas as military zones. Eventually, EO 9066 cleared the way for the deportation of Japanese Americans, Italian Americans, and German Americans to internment camps. -
Bataan Death March
After the April 9, 1942, U.S. surrender of the Bataan Peninsula on the main Philippine island of Luzon to the Japanese during World War II (1939-45), the approximately 75,000 Filipino and American troops on Bataan were forced to make an arduous 65-mile march to prison camps. The marchers made the trek in intense heat and were subjected to harsh treatment by Japanese guards. Thousands perished in what became known as the Bataan Death March. -
Navajo Code Talkers
The Navajo Code Talkers were a group of Native Americans who served in the United States Marine Corps during World War II. Their mission was to send and receive secret coded messages that the enemy could not understand. -
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Battle Of Midway
imageThe Battle of Midway in the Pacific Theater of Operations was one of the most important naval battles of World War II. Between 4 and 7 June 1942, only six months after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, and one month after the Battle of the Coral Sea, the United States Navy (USN), under Admirals Chester W. Nimitz, Frank Jack Fletcher, and Raymond A. Spruance decisively defeated an attack by the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN), under Admirals Isoroku Yamamoto, Chuichi Nagumo, and Nobutake Kond -
Office Of War Information
The United States Office of War Information (OWI) was a United States government agency created during World War II to consolidate existing government information services and deliver propaganda both at home and abroad. OWI operated from June 1942 until September 1945. -
Manhattan Project
The Manhattan Project was a research and development project that produced the first atomic bombs during World War II. It was led by the United States with the support of the United Kingdom and Canada -
Merchant Marines
The Merchant Marine is the fleet of ships which carries imports and exports during peacetime and becomes a naval auxiliary during wartime to deliver troops and war materiel. -
D-Day Invasion
The day (June 6, 1944) in World War II on which Allied forces invaded northern France by means of beach landings in Normandy.
the day on which an important operation is to begin or a change to take effect. -
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Korematsu V. United States
imageDuring World War II, Presidential Executive Order 9066 and congressional statutes gave the military authority to exclude citizens of Japanese ancestry from areas deemed critical to national defense and potentially vulnerable to espionage. Korematsu remained in San Leandro, California and violated Civilian Exclusion Order No. 34 of the U.S. Army. -
Nuremberg Trails
Trials of Nazi leaders conducted after World War II. A court set up by the victorious Allies tried twenty-two former officials, including Hermann Goering, in Nuremberg, Germany, for war crimes. Goering and eleven others were sentenced to death. Many of the highest officials of Nazi Germany, including Adolf Hitler, Joseph Goebbels, and Heinrich Himmler, had committed suicide before they could be brought to trial, and Goering killed himself before he could be executed. -
the Potsdam Conference
The Big Three—Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill (replaced on July 26 by Prime Minister Clement Attlee), and U.S. President Harry Truman—met in Potsdam, Germany, from July 17 to August 2, 1945, to negotiate terms for the end of World War II. After the Yalta Conference of February 1945, Stalin, Churchill, and U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt had agreed to meet following the surrender of Germany to determine the postwar borders in Europe. Germany surrendered -
Atomic Bomb
On August 6, 1945, during World War II (1939-45), an American B-29 bomber dropped the world’s first deployed atomic bomb over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The explosion wiped out 90 percent of the city and immediately killed 80,000 people; tens of thousands more would later die of radiation exposure. Three days later, a second B-29 dropped another A-bomb on Nagasaki, killing an estimated 40,000 people. -
Hiroshima/Nasagaki
On August 1945, during the final stage of the Second World War, the United States dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The two bombings, which killed at least 129,000 people, remain the only use of nuclear weapons for warfare in human history.
