Dictators Whose Fault In History

Wendell Willkie, the Republican Presidential candidate in 1940, once said, “It is from weakness that people reach for dictators and concentrated government power.” In Germany, Italy, and Japan, the awful economic, political, and racial conditions leading up to World War II gave rise to three of the modern world’s fiercest dictators. Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, and Hideki Tojo have gone down in history for all the wrong reasons, and they will forever be remembered for the dark stain they have left on history. Adolf Hitler, possibly the most infamous of dictators, is one of the most known figures in history. Before Hitler came to power, Germany was in the midst of an economic depression, still trying to find money to pay its war reparations after losing World War I (Hitler, 1). After the signing of the Versailles Treaty in 1919, Germany was in an uproar. Called a “diktat” or a slave-treaty by the German people, the Versailles Treaty came to be blamed for everything from the poverty to the increasing unemployment in post WWI Germany (Pillar, 7). With as many as 30 political parties, not only was Germany in the midst of an economic
The European dictators, Hitler and Mussolini were well respected there, and Tojo felt that the future of Japan lay in their hands (Trueman, 3). During this time, Japan was “an aggressive, imperialist state that glorified war and sacrifice for Emperor and country” (Fisher, 1). Although Tojo was only Prime Minister, it was really he who controlled the Japanese government. The actual ruler of Japan, Emperor Hirohito, became more of a figurehead, than head of government. The Emperor was a quiet ruler who desired peace, and actually pushed for Japan to end the war in 1942, but Tojo was the one who was truly in control (Boyanowski, 10). Tojo was the person responsible for the attack on Pearl Harbor, and bringing the United States into WWII (Trueman,