PRESENTATION OUTLINE
Early life: Adolf Hitler was born on April 20, 1889 in Braunau-am-Inn on the Austrian German border. His father was a customs official. Hitler left school at the age of 16 with no qualifications and struggled to make a living as a painter in Vienna. In 1913, he moved to Munich and, on the outbreak of World War One, enlisted in the German army, where he was wounded and decorated.
Rise to power: In 1919, Hitler joined the fascist German Workers' Party. He played to the resentments of right-wingers, promising extremist 'remedies' to Germany's post-war problems which he and many others blamed on Jews and Bolsheviks. By 1921 he was the unquestioned leader of what was now the National Socialist German Workers' Party, or Nazi Party.
Role as a leader: In 1923, Hitler attempted an unsuccessful armed uprising in Munich and was imprisoned for nine months. On his release he began to rebuild the Nazi Party and used new techniques of mass communication, backed up with violence, to get his message across. Against a background of economic depression and political turmoil, the Nazis grew stronger and in the 1932 elections became the largest party in the German parliament. In January 1933, Hitler became chancellor. He quickly took dictatorial powers and began to institute anti-Jewish laws. He also began the process of German militarization and territorial expansion that would eventually lead to World War II. He allied with Italy and Japan to create the Axis Powers.
Later years in life: Hitler's invasion of Poland in September 1939 began World War II. After military successes in Denmark, Norway and Western Europe, and failure in Britain in 1941, Hitler ordered the invasion of the Soviet Union. The Jewish populations of the countries conquered by the Nazis were rounded up and killed. Millions of others who the Nazis considered racially inferior were also killed or worked to death. In December 1941, Hitler declared war on the United States. The war on the eastern front drained Germany's resources. In June 1944, the British and Americans landed in France. With Soviet troops poised to take the German capital, Hitler committed suicide in his bunker in Berlin on April 30, 1945.
Early Life: His father was a cobbler and Stalin grew up in modest circumstances. He studied at a theological seminary where he began to read Marxist literature. He never graduated,he spent his time devoting to the revolutionary movement against the Russian monarchy. He spent the next 15 years as an activist and on a number of occasions he was arrested and exiled into Siberia.
Rise to Power: In 1922, he was made general secretary of the Communist Party, a post not considered particularly significant at the time but which gave him control over appointments and allowed him to build up a base of support. After Lenin's death in 1924, Stalin promoted himself as his political heir and gradually advantaged his rivals. By the late 1920s, Stalin was effectively the dictator of the Soviet Union.
Role as a leader: He was the general secretary of the Communist Party, and it gave him control over appointments and build a base of support. When he became dictator, the population began to suffer during "the great terror of the 1930s", and there were many exiles and people going to slave labor camps.
Later years in life: After World War Two, the Soviet Union entered the nuclear age and ruled over an empire which included most of eastern Europe. Increasingly paranoid, Stalin died of a stroke on 5 March 1953.
Early life: Franklin D. Roosevelt was born in 1882 at Hyde park, New York. Roosevelt attended Harvard University and Columbia law school. In 1905 on St. Patricks Day he married Eleanor Roosevelt.
Rise to power: Following the example of his fifth cousin, President Theodore Roosevelt whom he admired greatly, Franklin D. Roosevelt entered public services through politics but as a democrat. President Wilson appointed him as assistant secretary of the navy. He was democrat Roosevelt was elected in November 1932, to the first four terms.
Role as a leader: In Roosevelt's first "hundred days", he proposed a a sweeping program to bring recovery to business and agriculture, relief to the unemployed and to those in danger of losing their farms and homes, congress enacted. By 1935 the nation had achieved some measure of recovery. Businessmen and bankers were turning more and more against Roosevelt's new deal, they feared his experiments. In 1936 he was re-elected by a top-heavy margin.
Later years in life: While vacationing in Campobello island, he was diagnosed as having contracted polio, he was 39 at this time. Over the next several years, he taught himself how to walk short distances in in his braces and made sure he wasn't seen in public using his wheelchair. In March 1944 hospital tests indicated that he had atherosclerosis, coronary artery disease and congestive heart failure. Despite this there was no doubt Roosevelt would run for another term s president. In April of 1945 he passed away.
Early life: Churchill was born into the aristocratic family of the Dukes of Marlborough, a branch of the Spencer family. His father, Lord Randolph Churchill, was a charismatic politician who served as Chancellor of the Exchequer; his mother, Jennie Jerome, was an American socialite. As a young army officer, he saw action in British India, the Sudan, and the Second Boer War.
Rise to power: He gained fame as a war correspondent and wrote books about his campaigns. At the forefront of politics for fifty years, he held many political and cabinet positions. Before the First World War, he served as President of the Board of Trade, Home Secretary, and First Lord of the Admiralty as part of Asquith's Liberal government.
Role as a leader: During the war, he continued as First Lord of the Admiralty until the Gallipoli Campaign. He then briefly resumed active army service on the Western Front as commander of the 6th Battalion of the Royal Scots Fusiliers. He returned to government as Minister of Munitions, Secretary of State for War, and Secretary of State for Air. In 1921–1922 Churchill served as Secretary of State for the Colonies, then Chancellor of the Exchequer in Baldwin's Conservative government of 1924–1929.
Later years in life: Churchill accept a knighthood as Garter Knight. After leaving the premiership, Churchill spent less time in parliament until he stood down at the 1964 general election. As a mere "back-bencher," Churchill spent most of his retirement at Chartwell and at his home in Hyde Park Gate, in London, and became a habitué of high society on the French Riviera. On January 15, 1965 Churchill suffered a severe stroke that left him gravely ill. He died at his London home nine days later, at age 90, on the morning of Sunday January 24, 1965.
