Hideki Tojo was a prominent Japanese soldier, who became prime minister of Japan during World War II, between 1941 and 1944. He held other important positions as Minister of War (1940-1944), Minister of Foreign Affairs (1942), Minister of Education (1942) or Chief of the Army Staff (1944).
He was the intellectual architect of the Japanese invasion of Manchuria, which eventually led to the war against China and, later, the Second World War. Tojo had a charismatic personality and of great preponderance in the Japanese Army. During World War II, while he was prime minister, numerous war crimes, such as the execution of prisoners or even the use of chemical and biological weapons, were executed in the Japanese-occupied territories. In metropolitan Japan itself, the military police and other security forces turned the country into a real police state, while political life was reduced around the para-fascist movement Taisei Yokusankai, or the Imperial Regime Support Association . As a result of the cascade of military defeats that followed one another from 1942 and 1943, Tojo was forced to resign from all positions in July 1944.
After the end of the war, despite a failed attempt to kill himself, he was arrested by the American authorities. He was tried in the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, which sentenced him to death, being hanged on December 23, 1948.
