Information for my son on Hitler, Stalin and Franco

My ten year old son wants to know more about Hitler, Stalin and Franco

Hitler

Photos from the Museum of Tolerance:
http://motlc.wiesenthal.org/albums/palbum/p02/a0142p1.html

Early History
Fuhrer (leader) of the Third German Reich. Born in Braunau, Austria, the son of a customs official from a smallholder family, Hitler spent his youth in the country of his birth. From 1900 to 1905 he attended the intermediate grades of the Realschule (secondary school), which concluded his formal education. Hitler's father died in 1903. In 1907 Hitler took the entrance test for the Vienna Academy of Art's School of Painting, and failed. His mother died that year of breast cancer; the doctor who treated her was a Jew named Eduard Bloch. In 1908 Hitler made Vienna his home, living on the orphan's stipend that he received. Antisemitism was rife in Vienna at the time. In Hitler's own words, the Vienna period of his life was formative and decisive in shaping his views.In 1913 Hitler moved to Munich. When World I broke out in 1914, he volunteered for the Bavarian army. He served as a dispatch runner in Belgium and France, was promoted to private first class (lance corporal) and was awarded medals for bravery.

Early Political Career
In his first political document (written on his return to Munich on September 19, 1919) Hitler stated that the final goal of antisemitism must be "the total removal of the Jews." He served as a political spokesman and agent for the Bavarian army, and in 1919 joined a small antisemitic party that in 1920 took the name Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (National Socialist Workers' Party, or NSDAP). The party's 1920 platform called for all the Jews of Germany to be deprived of their civil rights and for some of them to be expelled. Hitler gained attention as a public speaker, and in 1921 became the party chairman, with unlimited powers. In November 1923 he headed an attempt to bring the government down by an armed putsch, known asthe Munich (Beer-Hall) Putsch, for which he was sentenced in 1924 to five years' imprisonment. During his imprisonment in Landsberg, Hitler dictated the firstvolume of his book Mein Kampf (My Struggle). He was released after only nine months. In 1925 he reestablished the National Socialist party. Hitler aimed to use constitutional means to gain a parliamentary majority in order to destroy the constitution by due process.

From Chancellor to Dictator
In the Reichstag elections of July 1932, the National Socialist party received 37.3 percent, the highest it ever obtained in free elections, and it became the largest political party represented in the Reichstag. On January 30, 1933, Hitler was appointed chancellor of a minority government. Although his party held only three out of the eleven ministries, Hitler managed to set up a dictatorship. Following the Reichstag fire of February 27, basic civil rights were suspended and afterelections held on March 5, parliamentary rule was abolished by the Ermachtigungsgesetz (Enabling Law). This law transferred all legislative power from the Reichstag to the cabinet, where the conservatives held a solid majority. Eventually, by outmaneuvering them, Hitler became all powerful. Antisemitic riots took place in March, culminating in the boycott of April 1, 1933, and in a law, passed on April 7, that inaugurated the Jews' elimination from public life in Germany. On July 14, after thedissolution of the trade unions and the other political parties, the NSDAP became the only recognized party in the land. After president Hindenburg died, on August 2, 1934, Hitler also became head of state and commander in chief of the Wehrmacht, assuming the title of Fuhrer und Reichskanzler (Leader and Reich Chancellor). He was now the dictator of Germany.

Persecution of the Jews
The rearmament of the country was accelerated, as was the persecution of the Jews. The Nuremberg Laws were adopted on September 15, 1935, and many other decrees issued by Hitler or in his name led to the exclusion of the Jews from German society. After the Anschluss of Austria on March 13, 1938, nearly 200,000 Jews were added to the Reich.Hitler's radical racial Weltanschauung was combined with a Social Darwinism that saw the Jew as a source of danger to Germany and humanity, and as a central factor in the dynamic development of hostile ideological trends such as democracy, liberalism, and socialism. Even the Christian sources of ethnic politicalthinking in Western society were perceived by Hitler as manifestations of the infiltration of the Jewish spirit into western European civilization. On January 30, 1939, Hitler declared in the Reichstag that a new world war would lead to the destruction of the Jewish race in Europe. When the war began in Poland, on September 1 of the same year, the Germans embarked upon the destruction of Jews in that country, although for a while this was done in a haphazard rather than a methodical way. It was also at about this time that the systematic killing of the mentally ill with toxic gas was undertaken, on Hitler's orders. The systematic killing of Jews (the "Final Solution") began after the German invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941. According to Hitler's world view and his political strategy, the goal of the territorial expansion - to gain Lebensraum ("living space") in the east - and the destruction of the Jewish people as the central ideological enemy were connected and were the focal point of the whole struggle. The first massacres of Jews in the Soviet Union were carried out by the Einsatzgruppen in June 1941; the killing was then extended to include the rest of the Jews of Europe. On several occasions Hitler reminded the public about his prophecy concerning the destruction of the Jews, and on April 2, 1945, he boasted that he had "exterminated the Jews of Germany and central Europe". His political testament of April 29, 1945, ended with a call for "merciless resistance to the universal poisoner of all nations - international Jewry." The following day he committed suicide in Berlin.

Courtesy of:"Encyclopedia of the Holocaust"©1990 Macmillan Publishing CompanyNew York, NY 10022

From http://motlc.wiesenthal.org/text/x10/xm1030.html

Extra info:
His early popularity stemmed from his firm opposition to the Treaty of Versailles (which he violated on March 16, 1935 by ordering Germany to rearm) and his initial success at economic consolidation. His German opponents, Jews, democrats and communists alike, had to flee the country or they were prosecuted and later killed in concentration camps. 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 and a desire for "living space", Germany remilitarized the Rhineland, sought union with and then incorporated Austria, and then, through diplomatic threats of war, connived to incorporate part of Czechoslovakia, followed by the taking of the rest of the nation. The major Western powers, fearing a second World War, gave in to these repeated coercions until the invasion of Poland, which ignited World War II. Hitler's vision, slavishly and opportunistically followed by others, notably Himmler the SS, 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 whom between 600,000 and 2 million were killed (about 70% of the population in German controlled areas), homosexuals (many of whom ended up in extermination camps) and Slavs, who were considered an inferior race and supposed to be partly exterminated and partly enslaved.

Under the systematic propaganda developed by Joseph Goebbels, a Fuhrer (leader) myth developed in the nation that led to widespread, often hysterical adulation of Hitler, particularly in the pre-war years. As the war led to greater austerity, and later increasing destruction, devestation and death following the massive German loss at Stalingrad, this myth began to lose some of its power, diminishing greatly in the latter days of the war.

World War II itself brought the death of tens of millions more, including 20 million casualties in the Soviet Union alone.

Convinced that if Germany couldn't win the war that it should not exist, on March 19, 1945, Hitler ordered that all industries, military installations, shops, transportation facilities and communications facilities in Germany be destroyed. Albert Speer limited such destruction in his role as Armaments Minister.

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.

From http://www.kids.net.au/encyclopedia-wiki/ad/Adolf_Hitler

Stalin

Josif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili (December 21, 1879 - March 5, 1953), better known as Joseph Stalin (Iosef Stalin in an alternative transliteration) was the second leader of the Soviet Union. He was also known as Koba (also Georgian folk hero; see: Koba[?]). The name Stalin (derived from combining Russian stal, "steel" with Lenin) originally was a conspiratorial 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.

Stalin is widely regarded as one of history's worst tyrants, responsible for massive repression of his people, and millions of deaths. However, many Russians, especially elderly Russians, see Stalin as a national hero and a great leader.

Childhood and early years
Born in Gori[?], Georgia to illiterate peasant parents (who had been serfs at birth), his harsh spirit has been blamed on 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 of 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).

Rise to power
Stalin spent his first years after the revolution secretly building his post as general secretary into the most powerful one in the communist party. After Lenin's death in 1924, a triumvirate of Stalin, Kamenev, and Zinoviev governed between 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 formalities 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.

Stalin and Changes in Soviet Society
Stalin replaced Lenin's market socialist New Economic Policy with a Five-Year Plan, which called for a highly ambitious program of state guided crash industrialization, and collectivization of agriculture. In spite of early breakdowns and failures, the first Five-Year Plan achieved rapid industrialisation from a very low economic base. Russia, generally ranked as the poorest nation in Europe before 1914, now became industrialized at a phenomenal rate, far surpassing Germany's pace of industrialization in the 19th century and Japan's earlier in the 20th. With no seed capital, little foreign trade, and barely any modern industry to start with, Stalin financed the Soviet Union's industrial revolution in much the same way that Russia's leaders had always financed things: by a ruthless extraction of wealth from the peasants, often to the point of starvation.

Stalin's regime placed heavy emphasis on the provision of basic medical services. Campaigns were carried out against typhus, cholera, and malaria; the number of doctors was increased as rapidly as facilities and training would permit; and death and infant mortality rates steadily decreased. Education was also dramatically expanded, with many more Russians learning to read and write, and higher education expanded.

The theory behind collectivisation was that it would replace the small-scale un-mechanised and inefficient farms, that were then commonplace in the Soviet Union, with large-scale mechanised farms that would produce food far more efficiently.

Stalin's regime moved to force collectivisation of agriculture. Theoretically landless peasants were to be the biggest beneficiaries from collectivisation, it promised an opportunity to take an equal share in the labour, and in its rewards. For those with property, however, collectivisation meant giving it up to the collective farms and selling most of the food that they produced at artificially low prices (set by the state) with only the bare minimum left for themselves.
Collectivisation meant the destruction up of a centuries old way of life, and also a drastic drop in living standards for most peasants, as the food they produced was effectively commandeered with little compensation by the state. Collectivisation faced widespread and often violent resistance from the peasantry.

In an attempt to overcome this resistance. Between 1929 and 1933 Stalin's regime assembled shock brigades[?], who used indescriminate violence against the peasantry, to force them to enroll into collective farms. In response to this many peasants preferred to destroy their animals rather than give them over to collective farms, which produced a major drop in food production.

Stalin blamed this drop in food production on Kulaks (rich peasants) who he believed were capitalistic parasites who were organising resistance to collectivisation. He ordered all Kulags to be either shot or transported to Gulag prison camps. In reality however, the term "Kulak" was a loose term to describe anyone who opposed collectivisation, which included many poor peasants. Many millions of people lost their lives during this anti-kulag campaign.
Most historians agree that the disruption caused by collectivization, was largely responsible for major "man-made famines" in 1932-33, particularly in Ukraine, responsible for up to 5 million deaths.

Purges
Stalin consolidated near-absolute power afterwards with the Great Purges against his suspected 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 possibly Sergei Kirov). The period between 1936-1937 is often called the Great Terror[?] when thousands of people even suspected of opposing Stalin's regime were killed or imprisoned. Stalin is reputed to have personally signed 40,000 death warrants of suspected political opponents.

During this period, the practice of mass arrest, torture, and imprisonment or execution without trial, of anyone suspected by the secret police of opposing Stalin's regime became commonplace. By the KGB's own estimates, 681,692 people were shot during 1937-38 (although many historians think that this was an undercount), and millions of people were transported to Gulag work camps.

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.

It is believed by most historians that with the purges, famines, state terrorism, labor camps, and forced migrations, Stalin was responsible for the deaths of millions. How many millons that died under Stalin is greatly disputed. Although no official figures have been released by the Soviet or Russian government, most estimates put the figure at between eight and twenty million. The most extreme estimates put the figure as high as 50 million.

World War II
In 1939 Stalin agreed to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact with Nazi Germany which divided Eastern Europe between the two powers. In 1941, however, Hitler broke the pact and invaded the Soviet Union (see Operation Barbarossa). Stalin had not expected this and the Soviet Union was largely unprepared for this invasion. The Nazis initially made huge advances, and many experienced generals in the Red Army had been killed during the purges. This had a negative effect on Russia's ability to organise defences. Under Stalin's leadership the Soviet Red Army put up fierce resistance, but were largely ineffective against the better-equipped and trained advancing Nazi forces. The Red Army had some success in slowing the German advance by following a scorched earth strategy in which retreating Soviet troops destroyed the infrastructure and food supplies of areas before the Germans could seize them. Unfortunately, this, along with abuse by German troops, caused starvation and suffering among the civilian population that was left behind.

Stalin was, up to this point, very wary of the Germans, and would not permit his armies even to 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 forces (recently weakened by purges).

Under Stalin, the Soviets bore the brunt of World War II and the West did not open up a second front in Europe until D-Day. Approximately 21 million Soviets, among them 7 million civilians, were killed in "Operation Barbarossa", the invasion of the Soviet Union by Germany. Civilians were rounded up and burned or shot in many cities conquered by the Nazis. The Nazis considered the Slavs to be "sub-human" so many feel that this was ethnically targeted mass murder, or genocide.

Soviet casualties in the war were estimated at 22 million (13% of the population). 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.

Post-war era
Following World War II Stalin's regime installed friendly Communist satellite governments in the countries that the Soviet army had occupied, including Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria. These countries would eventually form the Warsaw Pact or "Communinist Bloc". Stalin saw this as a necessary step to protect the Soviet Union, and ensure that it was surrounded by countries with freindly "puppet" governments, to act as a "buffer" against any future invaders.

But this action convinced many in the west that the Soviet Union intended to spread communism across the world. The relations between the Soviet Union and its former World War II western allies soon broke down, and gave way to a prolonged period of tension and distrust between east and west known as the Cold War.

At home Stalin presented himself as a great wartime leader who had lead the USSR to victory against the Germans. Internally his repressive policies continued, but never reached the extremes of the 1930s.

On March 1, 1953, after an all-night dinner with secret police chief Lavrenti Beria[?], immediate successor Georgi Malenkov[?], future premier Nikita Khrushchev, and Nikolai Bulganin[?], Stalin collapsed. He died four days later, on March 5, 1953, at the age of 73. Officially, the cause of death was listed as a cerebral hemorrhage[?]. The political memoirs of Vyacheslav Molotov, published in 1993, claimed Beria had boasted to Molotov that he poisoned Stalin.
Policies and accomplishments

Under Stalin the Soviet Union was industrialized to the point that by the time of World War II the Soviet industrial-military complex was able to help resist the German invasion. Unfortunately, this had been achieved at a staggering cost in human lives.

From http://www.kids.net.au/encyclopedia-wiki/jo/Joseph_Stalin


Franco

Generalísimo Francisco Franco, more fully Francisco Paulino Hermenegildo Teodulo Franco y Bahamonde (December 4, 1892 - November 20, 1975) was the dictator of Spain from 1939 until his death in 1975.

Franco graduated from the military academy in Toledo. Because of his performance in the Morocco war, at the age of 23 he became the youngest major in the Spanish army, thanks to King Alfonso XIII. He was made general in 1926, and from 1933 onwards he was Commander of the Spanish Army.

The leftist Government of the Second Spanish Republic suspected him of subversion and sent him to Canary Islands. But on July 17, 1936, he flew to Spanish Morocco[?] where he made the Spanish troops in Northern Africa rise against the Republic. This began the Spanish Civil War and accompanying revolution. During the war, he achieved the supreme command of the Nacional army. He also managed to fuse the Falange[?] and the Carlist[?] parties under his rule. The war ended with his conquest of Madrid on March 28, 1939. After this he was the dictator of Spain until his death in 1975. Like all dictators, Franco took absolute personal control.
Interestingly, though the head of a republican government, Franco never assumed the title of "President." He was referred to only as the "Generalissimo" or the "Head of State." This move, along with his panache for "royal" uniforms, allowed him to court Spain's large pro-monarchy demographic.

Adolf Hitler sought to bring Spain into World War II, but Franco's demands (Gibraltar, French North Africa[?],...) were unacceptable, and Spain remained neutral during the war. Franco sent voluntary troops (División Azul) against the Soviet Union and gave facilities to German ships. In 1947 he proclaimed Spain a monarchy. In 1969 he designated Prince Juan Carlos de Borbón with the new title of Prince of Spain as his successor. This was a surprise for the Carlist[?] pretender to the throne. By 1973 Franco gave up the function of Prime Minister, remaining only as head of the country and as chief commander of the military forces.

Franco didn't have a strong ideology. He initially sought support from Fascism (nacionalsindicalismo) and the Catholic Church (nacionalcatolicismo). In the 1960s, he allied the United States in Cold War and launched the so called "Spanish Miracle[?]" developing Spain from autarchy[?] into capitalism. During his rule trade unions and all other political opponents (right across the spectrum, from communist and anarchist organisations to those who advocated liberal democracy, and nationalists, especially Basque[?] and Catalan[?]) were suppressed.

From http://www.kids.net.au/encyclopedia-wiki/fr/Francisco_Franco


Comments from surfing for this information:
http://www.headlinehistory.co.uk is a useful site for kids' history - kids can look at British newspapers

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/forkids/ is another site to bookmark

Classic Russian stove as in folk tales

Here is a picture of a classic Russian stove: http://www.realiaproject.org/realia/image/538.jpg
From the text attached to the picture:
"This is the type of multi-purpose stove celebrated in Russian literature. There are places for boots and gloves to dry out, for the samovar to be attached, for bread to be baked, soups to be cooked, etc. The honored person(s) in the household could sleep atop the stove (the corner of the sleeping area is visible on the right)."

From another site:
"One of the things that really defined Russian cuisine was the pech'the Russian stove. It took up a good third of the Russian peasant's cottage. You probably know from reading Russian fairytales that the pech' is almost a living entity in them. People could sleep on the tops and take baths within the hearth. The properties of the stove allow it to get extremely hot for baking breads and pies, so Russians learned to extend a scarcity of products by wrapping them in doughthat way, they could feed many more people with a smaller amount of food. Then, as the temperature began to fall in the stove, they would make the really wonderful grains and soups that are so important to the cuisine." http://wso.williams.edu/orgs/culturecounter/9811/russian_cuisine.shtml

Does homework have an educational value?

I am concerned whether homework is really worth all the hassle and taking up all my post-work time? Found out about a book called The End of Homework via its website www.endhomework.com