The aggressors

Adolf Hitler - Nazi dictator of Germany (1933-45)

General Hideki Tojo - Prime minister of Japan (October 1941 - July 1944).

Benito Mussolini, was the prime minister of Italy (1922-1943).

The defenders
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.

Joseph Stalin was the very brutal Communist dictator of Russia (1928-1953).

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, president of the United States of America (1933-1945)

The victims
Edouard Daladier was prime minister of France three times in 1933,1934, and again in April
1938. Daladier was replaced by Paul Reynaud, but remained in government as war minister.
Shortly before the French surrender, prime minister Reynaud replaced war minister Daladier
with Charles De Gaulle, which was just a tank division commander, but he was the only
commander in the French military which had some success against the invading Germans, and
warned before the war of the weaknesses of the French military.

King Zog of Albania

King George II of the politically unstable Greece and his dictatorial prime minister Ioannis
Metaxas

King Leopold III of Belgium –

Queen Wilhelmina of Holland

King Haakon VII of Norway

Edward Smigly-Rydz, the military dictator of Poland

Dr. Edvard Benes was the elected president of Czechoslovakia between 1935 and October
1938 when he resigned when the appeasement policy of his French and British allies led them to
support Hitler's demand to annex parts of Czechoslovakia. His successor, was Dr. Emil Hacha.

King Christian X of Denmark

Allies and Neutrals
General Jan Smuts, prime minister of South Africa (1919-1924,1939-1948).

William King, prime minister of Canada joined World War 2 beside Great Britain when the
war started.

Robert Menzies, prime minister of Australia, joined World War 2 beside Great Britain when
the war started.

Michael Savage, prime minister of New Zealand joined World War 2 beside Great Britain
when the war started.

King Boris III of Bulgaria allied with Hitler's Germany in March 1941.

Mao Tse Tung and Chiang Kai Shek, the two rival leaders in China's civil war, suspended
their domestic struggle when Japan, which already occupied North-East China and Korea,
invaded China's coastal region and heartland in 1937 and occupied a large part of them.

General Francisco Franco, the Fascist military dictator of Spain (1939-1975) wisely managed
to keep his country neutral.

Antonio Salazar, the dictator of Portugal (1932-1968), remained neutral in World War 2.

Ion Antonescu, the defense minister of Romania was made prime minister in September 1940.
Shortly after becoming prime minister he met Adolf Hitler, allied with him, mainly to protect
Romania from a possible Russian invasion because of their hostile territorial conflict, and
allowed the German military to deploy in Romania.

Admiral Miklos Horthy, the dictator of Hungary (1920-1944) initially remained neutral, but
his fear of Stalin's Communist Russia pushed him to ally with Hitler's Germany and join the war
beside it in late 1940.

Carl Mannerheim, was a key figure and the top military leader of Finland for three decades in
various roles. Mannerheim was chairman of the national defense council in 1931-1939, then
commander in chief until 1944 under president Risto Ryti, when he finally agreed to be a
candidate and was elected president of Finland until his retirement in 1946.

Per Hansson was the prime minister of the neural Sweden.

Switzerland is a federation led in rotation by a group of seven elected members. Famous for its
neutrality, its high mountains, and as a banking and diplomatic center.

Pibul Songgram was the pro-Japanese military dictator of Thailand during World War 2.
Reza Pahlavi, the dictator (self-declared king) of oil-rich Iran declared neutrality but
maintained strong commercial relations with Germany which worried its neighbors Russia and
Britain.

Manuel Quezon was re-elected as president of the Philippines in November 1941, but a month
later his country, a US ally with US military presence, was invaded and occupied by the
Japanese. Quezon formed a exiled government in the US where he died in 1944. The Philippines
were liberated in 1945 by US forces.

Prince-Regent Paul of Yugoslavia was an ally of Germany and Italy. In March 27, 1941 he was
replaced in a pro-allies military coup, and ten days later the German Luftwaffe massively
bombarded Belgrade, the capital of its former ally, and the German military invaded and
occupied the country until the end of the war.

http://www.2worldwar2.com/leaders.htm
3 5 Major Causes of World War II

The Treaty of Versailles solved nothing

 Reparations left many people in the victorious nations feeling guilty.  
 The loss of all that land to other countries simply made Hitler's early
aggression look justified.  
 Self-determination surrounded Germany by a lot of small nation states that fell
easy prey to Germany.  
 Most of all, the Treaty made the Germans angry, just waiting their chance for
revenge.

The League of Nations failed to keep the peace 

 It was weak from the beginning, and had spectacular failures in Manchuria and
Abyssinia, and it failed to prevent Hitler breaking the Treaty of Versailles.  
 It failed to achieve disarmament, which resulted in an arms race.  
 Countries left the failing League, and realised that they would have to fight a
war.
 Britain and France abandoned collective security, and turned instead to
appeasement.

Appeasement encouraged aggression 

 Appeasement encouraged war. It made Hitler think no one would dare stop
him, which encouraged him to go further and further until in the end he went too
far.  
 The Sudetenland led Stalin to make the Nazi-Soviet Pact, because he believed
he could not trust Britain.

Hitler was expansionist  

 Many historians still think that the Second World War was Hitler's personal
war, and that he always intended to fight a war - as a re-run of a First World War
he did not believe that German had lost fairly.

Events (the Eight Steps to War)

 In addition, the events leading up to the war played a part in starting the fighting.  Each
event created anger in the allies. This anger grew until Chamberlain declared war on Hitler
on 3rd September 1939.
http://www.johndclare.net/RoadtoWWII7a.htm
5
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ww2_poster_oct0404.jpg

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