Les 5 plus important figures dans la deuxieme guerre mondiale

1. Les 5 plus important figures dans la deuxieme guerre mondiale

2. Winston Churchill • Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill (November 30, 1874 - January 24, 1965) Born at Blenheim Palace, Winston Churchill was a descendant of the first famous member of the Churchill family: John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough (whose father was also a "Sir Winston Churchill"). Winston's father, Lord Randolph Churchill, was the third son of the 7th Duke of Marlborough.

3. The first notable appearance of Winston Churchill was as a war-correspondent in the second Anglo-Boer war between Britain and self-proclaimed Afrikaaners in South Africa. He was captured in a Boer ambush of a British Army train convoy, but managed a high profile escape and eventually crossed the South African border to Lorenzo Marques (now Maputo in Mozambique).

4. Churchill used the status achieved to begin a political career which would last a total of sixty-one years. At first a member of the Conservative party, he soon 'crossed the floor' to the Liberals and entered the Cabinet in his early thirties. His early career was distinctly unimpressive. He was one of the political and military engineers of the tragic and disastrous Gallipoli landings on the Dardanelles during World War I, which led to his description as "the butcher of Gallipoli". He was a signatory of the Anglo-Irish treaty of 1921 which established the Irish Free State. The Liberal party was now was beset by internal division. After losing his seat in the 1922 General Election to Edwin Scrymgeour he rejoined the Conservative party. Two years later in the General Election of 1924 he was elected to represent Epping as a Conservative. He was appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1926 under Stanley Baldwin and was responsible for returning Britain to the Gold Standard. During the General Strike of 1926, Churchill was reported to have suggested that machine guns should be used on the striking miners. Churchill edited the Government's newspaper, the British Gazette, during the dispute he argued that "either the country will break the General Strike, or the General Strike will break the country.".

5. The Conservative government was defeated in the 1929 General Election. When Ramsay MacDonald formed the National Government in 1931 Churchill was not invited to join the Cabinet. He was now at the lowest point in his career in a period known as 'the wilderness years'. He spent much of next few years concentrating on his writing, including the History of the English Speaking Peoples. He became most notable for his outspoken opposition towards the granting of independence to India. Soon though, his attention was drawn to the rise of Adolf Hitler and Germany's rearmament. For a time he was a lone voice calling on Britain to re-arm itself and counter the belligerence of Germany. Churchill was a fierce critic of Neville Chamberlain's appeasement of Hitler.

6. At the outbreak of the Second World War Churchill was appointed First Lord of the Admiralty On Chamberlain's resignation in May, 1940, Churchill was appointed Prime Minister and formed an all-party government. He immediately made his friend and confidant, industrialist and newspaper baron, Max Aitken, (Lord Beaverbrook) in charge of aircraft production. It was Aitken's astounding business acumen that allowed Britain to quickly gear up aircraft production and engineering that eventually made the difference in the war. • His speeches at that time were a great inspiration to the embattled United Kingdom. His famous "I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat" speech was his first as Prime Minister. He followed that closely, prior to the Battle of Britain, with "We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender." • He paid the Royal Air Force the highest compliment after the Battle of Britain with "Never in field of human conflict has so much been owed by so many, to so few".

7. His good relationship with U.S. president Franklin Roosevelt secured the United Kingdom vital supplies via the North Atlantic Ocean shipping routes. Churchill had also established the Special Operations Europe (SOE) that attempted guerrilla operations in occupied France, with notable success. • Churchill was one of the driving forces behind the treaties that would re-draw post-WWII European and Asian boundaries. The boundary between North Korea and South Korea were proposed at the Yalta Conference, as well as the expulsion of Japanese from those countries. Proposals for European boundaries and settlements were discussed as early as 1943 by Roosevelt and Churchill; the settlement was officially agreed to by Truman, Churchill, and Stalin at Potsdam (Article XIII of the Potsdam protocol).

8. One of these settlements was the boundary between the future East Germany and Poland at the Oder-Neisse line, which was rationalized as compensation for Soviet gains in Ukraine. As part of the settlement was an agreement to continue the expulsion of ethnic Germans from the area, which arguably had begun as a program after 1920 when Poland had been given the Polish Corridor by Britain and France. The exact numbers and movement of ethnic populations over the Polish-German and Polish-USSR borders in the period between the end of World War I and the end of World War II is vastly difficult to determine. This is not least because, under the Nazi regime, many Poles were replaced in their homes by the conquering Germans in an attempt to consolidate Nazi power. In the case of the post-WWII settlement, Churchill was convinced that the only way to alleviate tensions between the two populations was the expulsion of the Germans, despite the fact that many of the ethnic Germans had lived in Poland for generations. As Churchill expounded in the House of Commons in 1944, "Expulsion is the method which, in so far as we have been able to see, will be the most satisfactory and lasting. There will be no mixture of populations to cause endless trouble...A clean sweep will be made. I am not alarmed by these transferences, which are more possible in modern conditions..."

9. Although the importance of Churchill's role in World War II was undeniable, he produced many enemies in his own country. His expressed contempt for ideas such as public health care and for better education for the majority of the population in particular produced much dissatisfaction amongst the population, particularly those who had fought in the war. Immediately following the close of the war in Europe Churchill was heavily defeated at election by Clement Attlee. • At the beginning of the Cold War he coined the term the "Iron Curtain," a phrase that entered the public consciousness after a 1946 speech at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri when he famously declared "From Stettin on the Baltic to Trieste on the Adriatic, an Iron Curtain has descended across the continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia, all these famous cities and the populations around them lie in what I must call the Soviet sphere."

10. Following Labour's defeat in the General Election of 1951, Churchill again became Prime Minister. In 1953 he was awarded two major honors. He was knighted and became Sir Winston Churchill and he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature "for his mastery of historical and biographical description as well as for brilliant oratory in defending exalted human values". A stroke in June of that year led to him being paralyzed down his left side. He retired because of his health in 1955 but retained his post as Chancellor of the University of Bristol. • On January 15, 1965 Churchill suffered another stroke - a severe cerebral thrombosis - that left him gravely ill. He died nine days later on January 24, 1965. His body lay in State in Westminster Hall for three days and a state funeral service was held at St. Paul’s Cathedral. This was the first state funeral for a commoner since that of the Duke of Wellington over 100 years earlier. At Churchill's request, he was buried in the family plot at Saint Martin's Churchyard, Bladon, Woodstock, England.

11. Churchill is believed by several writers to have suffered from bipolar disorder and in his last years, Alzheimer's Disease; certainly he suffered from fits of depression that he called his "black dogs". • The United States Navy destroyer USS Winston Churchill (DD-81) is named in his honor. • Churchill is known as a great wit as well as a politician. Nancy Astor once told him "If I were your wife I'd poison your coffee," to which Churchill replied: "If I were your husband, madam, I would drink it." Another example relates to a report which he received from Admiral Pound, whom Churchill did not rate. On the report he wrote "Pennywise". • Churchill is included in the top 10 of the 2002 "100 Greatest Britons" poll sponsored by the BBC and voted for by the public.

12. Adolf Hitler • (April 20, 1889 - April 30, 1945) was the leader of the Nazi Party (from 1919) and dictator of Germany from 1933 to 1945. Widely regarded as a great orator and skillful propagandist, he inspired and mobilized many followers. He was appointed Reichskanzler (Reich Chancellor) on January 30, 1933 and assumed the twin titles of Führer und Reichskanzler (Leader and Reich Chancellor) after President Paul von Hindenburg's death on August 2, 1934. Under his leadership, Germany started World War II and committed the Holocaust, a major case of genocide.

13. Adolf Hitler was born on April 20, 1889 in Braunau am Inn, a small town in upper Austria on the Austro-German border. He was the third of five children from Alois Hitler and Klara Polzl. • Hitler was born in a family of a customs officer. Hitler's father, Alois (born 1837), was illegitimate and for a time bore his mother's name, Schicklgruber, but by 1876 he had established his claim to the surname Hitler. Adolf never used any other name, and the name Schicklgruber was revived only by his political opponents in Germany and Austria in the 1930s. • His boyhood was spent under the strict discipline of his retired civil-servant father. Adolf read books by James Fenimore Cooper and Karl May. On January 3, 1903, Hitler's father died. On December 21, 1907 Hitler's mother died. • Hitler tried unsuccessfully to become a fine arts student at the Vienna Arts Academy in 1907. He had developed a special interest in architecture. He then had several odd jobs, but never long enough to escape poverty and he lived on the streets, working as a street painter, and eating at soup kitchens.

14. He spent some time in the public gallery of the Austrian Parliament. He later wrote that his observations there developed his contempt of democracy and what he saw as the contaminating dominance of Jews in parliament and society. He also cultivated his love of Germanism, and observed how political activists influenced the masses. • In Spring 1913, to avoid the Austrian Army's draft, Hitler moved to Munich and made a living selling paintings of landmarks to local shops. His draft evasion was detected, but after failing a medical exam back in Austria, he was let go and moved back to Munich.

15. In 1914, elated with Germany's entering into World War I, Hitler volunteered to the 16th Bavarian Infantry Regiment and fought on the western front. He was wounded once in the thigh and later in a gas attack at the end of the war. Hitler was an enthusiastic soldier, sometimes to the dismay of his compatriots. He was well liked by his peers and superiors but his lack of a sense of humor was notable. Later most of his comrades became Nazis. Corporal Hitler was awarded the Iron Cross, First Class for completing a dangerous delivery of a dispatch in 1918.

16. The war ended while Hitler was in the hospital recovering from his injuries due to gas. He was devastated by the news of German capitulation and wept. On discharge from the hospital he returned to his regiment in Munich, Germany. Bavaria was in the hands of a revolutionary government, the Rätrepublik; his barracks was governed by an elected council, to which he was elected. After the suppression of the revolutionary government, Hitler remained in the army and served as a propagandist in the reindoctination of the troops. He was noted for his talent in this work and at the request of the army joined a small political party, the German Workers' Party, Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, which was to become the Nazi Party, Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei .

17. In April 1919, while still in the army, he became the leader of the party (He was not discharged from the army until March 31, 1920). Due to Hitler's organizing and speaking talents the party gained increasing popularity. On November 8 and November 9, 1923, he was involved in an abortive coup known as the Munich Beer Hall Putsch. He was accused of state treason and received a five-year prison sentence and was jailed in Landsberg. During his imprisonment he wrote his political manifesto: Mein Kampf. After nine months he received amnesty and was released from prison. He soon rebuilt his party and again gained tremendous popularity.

18. Hitler became Chancellor of the Weimar Republic in 1933 through a coalition with conservative and right wing parties, who had hoped to use Hitler's popularity to gain power. Once in power he initiated what was called the "legal seizure of power." In the course of a few years he managed to consolidate dictatorial powers through parliamentary legislation. Later he turned out to be an erratic and unpredictable leader of the armed forces, often disregarding opinions of experienced generals and marshals. • Under Hitler's leadership, driven by a vision of a Nordic master race, Germany invaded several of its smaller neighbors, igniting World War II. This vision also drove an attempt to systematically exterminate other peoples--notably the Jews--later called the Holocaust, in which 5-10 million people were killed. Other hated peoples included the Romani or Tzigane (Gypsies) of which between 600,000 and 2 million were killed (about 70% of the population in German controlled areas) and Slavs, who were considered an inferior race and supposed to be partly exterminated and partly enslaved. • World War II itself brought the death of tens of millions more, including 20 million casualties in the Soviet Union alone.

19. After the Soviet Red Army reached Berlin, Adolf Hitler committed suicide together with Eva Braun (whom he had married just two days before) on April 30, 1945, in the Führerbunker (Leader's bunker). He was aged 56. • In the testament he left, he circumvented other Nazi leaders and appointed Admiral Karl Dönitz as his successor.

20. In her 1980 book "Am Anfang war Erziehung" (translated as "For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-rearing and the Roots of Violence"), Alice Miller attempts an explanation of Hitler's violent urges from childhood trauma. • His mother had married a man 23 years her elder whom she called "uncle Alois"; her three small children died in the course of a few years surrounding Adolf's birth, leading to extreme pampering of Adolf by his mother. He was regularly beaten and ridiculed by his father; once when Adolf tried to escape from home he was almost beaten to death. Adolf hated his father throughout his life and there are reports of him having nightmares about his father in late life. When Nazi Germany had occupied Austria, Hitler had the village where his father grew up destroyed.

21. Throughout Hitler's (and his father's) life, there were speculations that the father of his father was a Jew (his grandmother was a maid in a Jewish household which later paid alimony for her son); this would have been a great shame in the pervasive anti-semitism of the times. This insecurity correlates with Hitler's later command that every German prove their non-Jewish ancestry up to the third generation.

22. Hitler has frequently been used as a character in works of fiction. An early example of a cryptic depiction is in Bertolt Brecht's 1941 play, The Resistable Rise of Arturo Ui in which Hitler (in the persona of the principal character Arturo Ui), a Chicago racketeer in the cauliflower trade, is ruthlessly satirized. • Amongst many other film representations, Charlie Chaplin made fun of Hitler in his 1940 movie The Great Dictator. Alec Guinness's depiction of Hitler in Hitler: The Last Ten Days (1973) was, to say the least of it, a curiously idiosyncratic take on Hitler's persona. • The photomontage artist John Heartfield made frequent use of Hitler's image as a target for his brand of barbed satire. • Forged diaries of Hitler, known as The Hitler Diaries, were published in Germany in 1983.

23. Franklin Roosevelt • Franklin Delano Roosevelt (January 30, 1882 - April 12, 1945) was the 32nd (1933-1945) President of the United States. He was elected to an unprecedented four terms of office - the only U.S. president elected more than twice. • He was born on January 30, 1882 in Hyde Park, New York, and died on April 12 1945 in Warm Springs, Georgia of a cerebral hemorrhage. • He graduated from Harvard University(1903), and attended Columbia Law School. On St. Patrick's Day, 1905, he married Eleanor Roosevelt, a distant cousin. Government Positions include: Assistant Secretary of the Navy, 1913-1920; Governor of New York, 1929-1933.

24. In 1935-1936, the Supreme Court struck down eight of FDR's New Deal programs. In response Roosevelt submitted to Congress in February of 1937 a plan for "judicial reform," which proposed adding a justice for every justice over the age of 70 who refused to retire, up to a maximum of 15 total. This came to be known as his attempt to "pack" the Court. • Campaigning for reelection in 1940 against Wendell L. Willkie, Roosevelt said that he would not send American boys to fight in foreign wars. Some have suggested Roosevelt had prior knowledge of the December 7, 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and welcomed it as a way to get the U.S. into World War II. Others point out, that while U.S. code-breakers had broken Japanese codes in Washington, D.C. and knew something was about to happen, communication delays prevented the messages for getting to Pearl Harbor until 4 hours after the attack.

25. In hindsight, perhaps the most controversial decision Roosevelt made was Executive Order 9066 which resulted in the internment in concentration camps of 110,000 Japanese nationals and American citizens of Japanese descent on the West Coast. Considered a major violation of civil liberties, it was even opposed at the time by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover as well as Eleanor Roosevelt as well as many other groups. The Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the Executive Order. • Some have said of all the American Presidents of the 20th century, that he was the most loved and most hated. He was so well known, he was referred to by his initials, FDR. • One speech he is famous for delivering was his State of the Union Address in 1941. This speech is also known as the Four Freedoms Speech.

26. Joseph Stalin • (1879-1953) was the second leader of the Soviet Union. His real name was Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili, and he was also known as Koba (a Georgian folk hero) to his closest sphere. The name "Stalin" (derived from combining Russian stal, "steel" with "Lenin") originally was a conspirative nickname; however, it stuck to him and he continued to call himself Stalin after the Russian Revolution. Stalin is also reported to have used at least a dozen other names for the purpose of secret communications, but for obvious reasons most of them remain unknown.

27. Born in Gori, Georgia to illiterate peasant parents (who had been serfs at birth), his harsh spirit has been blamed on undeserved and severe beatings by his father, inspiring vengeful feelings towards anyone in a position to wield power over him (perhaps also a reason he became a revolutionary). His mother set him on a path to become a priest, and he studied Russian Orthodox Christianity until he was nearly twenty. • His involvement with the socialist movement began at seminary school, from which he was expelled in 1899. From there on he worked for a decade with the political underground in the Caucasus. He soon followed Vladimir Lenin's ideology about centralism and a strong party of "professional revolutionaries". His practical experience made him useful in Lenin's Bolshevik party leading up to the 1917 October Revolution (in which he played no direct part).

28. Stalin spent his first years after the revolution building his post as general secretary secretly into the most powerful one in the communist party. After Lenin's death in 1924, a triumvirate of Stalin, Kamenev, and Zinoviev governed against Trotsky (on the left wing of the party) and Bukharin (on the right wing of the party). Soon after, Stalin switched sides and joined with Bukharin. Together, they fought a new opposition of Trotsky, Kamenev, and Zinoviev. By 1928 (the first year of the Five-Year Plans) Stalin's supremacy was complete. From this year, he could be said to have exercised control over the party and the country (although the formailities were not complete until the Great Purges of 1936-1938). • The final stage of Stalin's rise to power was the ordered assassination of Trotsky in Mexico in 1940, where he had lived since 1936 (he was exiled from the Soviet Union in 1929.). Indeed, after Trotsky's death only two members of the "Old Bolsheviks" (Lenin's Politburo) remained - Stalin himself and his foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov.

29. Stalin consolidated his power base with the Great Purges against his political and ideological opponents, most notably the old cadres and the rank and file of the Bolshevik Party. Measures used against them ranged from imprisonment in work camps (Gulags) to assassination (such as that of Leon Trotsky and Sergei Kirov). Several show trials were held in Moscow, to serve as examples for the trials that local courts were expected to carry out elsewere in the country. There were four key trials from 1936 to 1938, The Trial of the Sixteen was the first (December 1936); then the Trial of the Seventeen (January 1937); then the trial of Red Army generals, including Marshal Tukhachevsky (June 1937); and finally the Trial of the Twenty One (including Bukharin) in March 1938.

30. Under the pretext of constructing `socialism in one country', Stalin terrorized large segments of the Soviet population, such as the Kulaks, a term for prosperous farmers who were disinherited when agriculture was collectivized. He also orchestrated a massive famine in the Ukraine in which an estimated 5 million people died. It is believed that with the purges, forced famines, state terrorism, labor camps, and forced migrations, Stalin was responsible for the death of as many as 40 million people within the borders of the Soviet Union. According to former National Security Advisor to US President Jimmy Carter, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Stalin murdered an estimated 20 million people.

31. In 1939 Stalin made the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact with Nazi Germany which divided Eastern Europe between the two powers. The official Allied' version has been: In 1941, however, Hitler broke the pact and invaded the Soviet Union (see Operation Barbarossa). Under Stalin's leadership the Soviet Red Army put up fierce resistance, but were ineffective against the advancing Nazi forces. • Stalin was up to this point very wary of the Germans, and would not permit his armies to even assume defensive positions for fear of sending the wrong signals to Hitler. Up to the final moment, and the invasion by the Germans, he held out hope that the Molotov-Rippentrop Pact would buy him time to modernize and strengthen his military (recently weakened by purges).

32. The Germans reached the outskirsts of Moscow in December, but were stopped by an early winter and a Soviet counter-offensive. At the battle of Stalingrad in 1942-43, after sacrificing an estimated 1 million men, the Red Army was able to regain the initiative of the war. With military eqipment aid of their allies the Soviet forces were able to regain their lost territory and push their over-stretched enemy back to Germany itself. • From the end of 1944 large sections of eastern Germany came under Stalin's Soviet Union occupation and on May 2nd 1945, the capital city Berlin was taken. • By some estimates, one quarter of the Russian population was wiped out in the war. There was, then, a huge shortage of men of the fighting-age generation in Russia. As a result, to this day, World War II is remembered very vividly in Russia, and May 9, Victory Day, is one of its biggest national holidays.

33. Following World War II Stalin continued his genocidal policies while exerting ruthless control over the Soviet Union and its satellite states until his death in 1953. Over fifteen million Germans were removed from eastern Germany and pushed into central Germany (later called GDR German Democratic Republic) and western Germany (later called FRG Federal Republic of Germany). Russians, Ukrainians, Poles, Czech etc. were then moved onto German land. Other ethnic groups, like the Crimerian Tartars and Volga Germans, were moved to the Asian part of the Soviet Union. Millions of German POWs and Soviet ex-POWs were sent to the Gulags. The eastern European states occupied by the Red Army were established as communist Satellite states.

34. Stalin is often credited with successfully industrializing the Soviet Union. What can be said without controversy is that by the time of World War II, the Soviet economy had been industrialized to the point that the Soviets could resist the German invasion. That Stalin or his policies are to be credited for this is contended. • Stalin is also generally credited with destroying the concept of communal socialism (communism) and with "stealing the revolution" (although Lenin started this work).

35. Isoroku Yamamoto • (April 4, 1884 - April 18, 1943) was the outstanding Japanese naval commander of World War II. Born Isoroku Sadayoshi in the village of Kushigun Sonshomura on Hokkaido. He enrolled at the Naval Academy at Etajima, Hiroshima in 1896, graduating in 1904. In 1905 during the war with Russia he saw action as an ensign on the cruiser Nisshin in at the Battle of Tsushima against the Russian Baltic Fleet and was slightly injured. After the war he went with various ships all over the Pacific.

36. In 1913 he went to the Naval Staff College at Tsukiji, a sign that he was being groomed for the high command. Upon graduation in 1916, he was appointed to the staff of the Second Battle Squadron and was adopted by the Yamamoto family. From 1919-1921 he studied at Harvard University. Promoted to Commander apon his return to Japan he taught at the staff college before being sent to the new air-training centre at Kasumigaura in 1924 to direct it and to learn to fly. From 1926 to 1928, he was naval attache to the Japanese embassy in Washington. He was then appointed to the Naval Affairs bureau and made Rear Admiral, he attended the London Naval Conference in 1930. Back to Japan he joined the Naval Aviation bureau and from 1933 headed the bureau and directed the entire navy air program.

37. In December 1936, Yamamoto was made vice minister of the Japanese navy, from which position he argued passionately for more naval air power and opposed the construction of new battleships. He also opposed the invasion of Manchuria and the army hopes for an alliance with Germany. When Japanese planes attack a US gunboat on the Yangtze River in December 1937 he apologised personally to the American Ambassador. He became the target for right-wing assassination attempts, the entire Naval ministry had to be placed under constant guard. However on August 30, 1939 Yamamoto was promoted to full Admiral and appointed commander-in-chief of the entire fleet. • Yamamoto did not soften his logical anti-conflict stance, when the Japan signed the Tripartite Pact with Germany and Italy in September 1940, Yamamoto warned Premier Konoe Fumimaro not to consider war with the United States: "If I am told to fight... I shall run wild for the first six months... but I have utterly no confidence for the second or third year." He also accurately envisaged the "island-hopping" and air dominance tactics such a war would have. His foresight also led him to believe that a pre-emptive strike against US Navy forces would be vital if war did occur.

38. Following the invasion of Indochina and the freezing of Japanese assets by the US in July 1941, Yamamoto won the argument over tactics and when in December war was declared the entire First Fleet air arm under Admiral Nagumo Chuichi was directed against the American fleet at Pearl Harbor, attacking on December 7. With around 350 planes launched from six carriers, eighteen American warships were sunk or disabled. Nagumo's failure to order a second search-and-strike against the American carriers and Yamamoto's disinclination to press him turned a tactical victory into a strategic defeat. • In the movies Tora! Tora! Tora! and Pearl Harbor, Yamamoto's character says, after the attack on Pearl Harbor, "I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve." Considerable doubt exists, though, whether he actually ever said (or wrote) anything like that; it was probably invented for the movies.

39. Yamamato directed operations for the Battle of Java Sea on February 27-28, 1942. Without airpower playing a significant role and fought almost entirely by cruisers the Japanese defeated a combined force of Dutch, British, and American ships, thereby enabling Japan to seize Java. • Yamamoto then decided on an ambitious plan to defeat the American Pacific Fleet in a decisive battle. He chose the atoll of Midway Island as a strategic target that if the Japanese occupied it would draw out the American carriers. Yamamoto intended to drawn the Americans into a ambush to destroy the carriers. Yamamoto believed that if Japan did not soon win a decisive battle, defeat was simply a matter of time.

40. Yamamoto had at his disposal a massive fleet of some 250 ships, including eight carriers. Yamamoto's strategy was a very complex series of feints and diversionary attacks to trap the Americans. Unfortunately for the Japanese the Americans were well aware of the plan. Decoded intercepts of communications meant that by the end of May, the United States knew the date and place of the operation, as well as the composition of the Japanese forces. Compounding this there was poor communication on the Japanese side and the commanders were inadequately prepared. • The Battle of Midway, from June 4 to 6, 1942, was another aircraft only clash and a disaster for the Japanese, losing four carriers to the American loss of one and 3,500 men to only around 300 American dead.

41. Yamamoto never recovered from the defeat at Midway although he remained in command. He directed the Solomons campaign and realizing the strategic importance of Battle of Guadalcanal, he initiated the efforts to remove the American troops who had landed on August 7, 1942. Yamamoto's forces suffered huge losses before he conceded that he could not could not dislodge the Americans. On January 4, 1943, he ordered the evacuation of the island. The actual evacuation was a tactical masterwork. • To boost morale following Guadalcanal, Yamamoto decided to make a inspection tour throughout the South Pacific. In April 1943, U.S. intelligence intercepted and decrypted reports of the tour. Eighteen American P-38 aircraft flew from Henderson Field, Guadalcanal to ambush Yamamoto in the air. On April 18, his transport aircraft was shot down near Kahili in Bougainville.

42. http://history.searchbeat.com/ww2people.htm