Titans of History

After Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia in March 1939, putting paid to hopes of peace sparked by the Munich Agreement of the previous year, Mussolini ordered the invasion of neighboring Albania, his troops brushing aside the tiny army of King Zog. In May, Hitler and Mussolini declared a Pact of Steel, pledging to support the other in the event of war—a move that sent shudders of fear across Europe.

Italy did not enter the Second World War until the fall of France in June 1940, when it looked like Germany was on course for a quick victory, but the Italian war—beginning with a botched assault on Greece in October, then humiliating routs in North Africa—was an unmitigated disaster. For all the puffed-up militarism of his regime, Mussolini’s army was disastrously unprepared for a war on this scale, hemorrhaging troops in the Balkans and Africa. Following the Anglo-American arrival on the shores of Sicily in June 1943, Mussolini’s fascist followers abandoned him and had him arrested, only for German commandos to rescue him from imprisonment and place him at the head of a puppet protectorate in the north of Italy. On April 27, 1945, as the Allies closed in, Mussolini—disguised as a German soldier—was captured by Italian partisans at the village of Dongo, near Lake Como. He was shot the following day, along with his mistress. Their bodies were taken to Milan and hung upside down from meat hooks in Piazza Loreto.

TOJO

1884–1948

The Greater East Asian War was justified and righteous.

Hideki Tojo, after his failed suicide bid in September 1945

General Hideki Tojo, nicknamed the Razor, was prime minister of Japan during much of the Second World War, the architect of its imperial aggressions, and the force behind its appalling policy of aggrandizement and brutality that cost the lives of millions and destroyed his own country. Yet it is futile to lay the blame for Japan’s atrocities and aggression on one man: Tojo was merely the representative of a prevalent mindset and conduct amongst a Japanese nobility, bureaucracy and military, supported enthusiastically by the public. New research has shown that the Emperor Hirohito was himself fully involved in the commands that led directly to the murder of so many.

Tojo, the son of a general, embarked on a military career at a young age, serving as an infantry officer, a military attaché and an instructor at the military staff college. By 1933 he was a major general. Prior to this Tojo had become a member of a hard-right militaristic group that expounded fanatical ultra-nationalism. However, during the attempted coup by ultra-nationalists on February 26, 1936 Tojo remained loyal to Emperor Hirohito and assisted in its suppression.

Tojo’s loyalty was rewarded in 1937 when he was named chief of staff of the Kwantung Army in Manchuria. In this position he played an important role in launching the Second Sino-Japanese War—an eight-year conflict that would leave millions dead as the Japanese military ignored both human decency and the laws of war in pursuit of imperial conquest in China. Noncombatants—men, women and children—were deliberately targeted, resulting in such atrocities as the so-called Rape of Nanking, in which, between December 1937 and March 1938, Japanese troops butchered between 250,000 and 350,000 Chinese civilians.

As the war in China progressed, the Japanese army tightened its control over the civilian government, and Tojo became more deeply immersed in politics. In May 1938 he was appointed deputy minister of war in the government of Prince Fumimaro Konoe. In that role he was one of the more vocal advocates of a pact with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, and also pushed for a preventive strike against the Soviet Union.

In July 1940 Tojo became minister of war, and proceeded to oversee Japan’s formal entry into the Axis alliance with Germany and Italy. By July 1941 Tojo had convinced Vichy France to endorse Japanese occupation of several key bases in Indo-China—a move that paved the way for US sanctions against Japan and increased tensions between the two countries. When Fumimaro Konoe was finally pushed into retirement in October 1941, Tojo, while holding on to his portfolio as minister of war, stepped up to replace him as prime minister. He immediately declared his commitment to the creation of a New Order in Asia. Initially, he supported the efforts of his diplomats to bring this about through agreement with the United States. But as it became clear that no deal was possible with the USA on the terms desired, he authorized the attack on the American naval base at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 that unleashed the war in the Pacific.