Evolution of Evil: The Story of Joseph Stalin and Hideki Tojo

[Music] so [Music] for 300 years the autocratic romanov dynasty have ruled the russian empire with an iron fist but a crushing defeat in the first world war and economic problems at home mean that the current ruler tsar nicholas ii is losing his grip on power [Music] the country is ripe for revolution when in october 1917 the communist bolshevik party storms the winter palace and takes over the country under revolutionary leader vladimir lenin a new marxist government fights a civil war to maintain control the civil war was a time when the bolshevik revolution was struggling to survive it was surrounded and beleaguered on every side by enemies the only way it was going to survive was by extremism by terror by ruthlessness among the men vying for a top position in lenin's regime is future soviet dictator joseph stalin people wanted to be president they want to be people's commissar for this the defense for foreign affairs they wanted the glorious jobs what they didn't realize was the stalin was going to eliminate all of them [Music] born joseph giugashvili the man who will become stalin isn't even a russian he's a georgian born into poverty in 1878 on the wild frontiers of the russian empire he was i believe five foot four he was short and he didn't like to be short but he was short and he had a napoleonic complex from day one he always wanted to be number one and he never conceded he was wrong he was always right he had this self-belief this huge self-belief young joseph gets the best education available at a russian orthodox seminary his mother wants him to become a priest but he has other ideas while he was at the seminary stalin first of all became an atheist then he started to study the works of marx german social philosopher and author of the communist manifesto karl marx is all the rage in radical european circles his writings opened stalin's mind to the possibility of revolution against the cyrus regime he was a bright young man who needed a cause not that different from those guys who were joining up to isis today his cause became that of communism [Music] when he is 20 years old stalin leaves the seminary to become a political activist in the illegal georgian marxist movement but trying to topple the tsar is a deadly game his secret police the okrana are on the lookout for subversives the life of an underground conspiratorial marxist um was a very strange one you changed your name constantly you moved house constantly you had very quick love affairs with people and then never saw them again you could trust nobody full of idealism stalin adopts the code name coba after a georgian robin hood and begins to organize industrial workers to destabilize the czarist regime [Music] he went to batumi which was an oil terminus on the black sea and there were thousands of workers work there and stalin immediately arranged a series of strikes [Music] it is here in batumi that he gets his first real taste for blood in 1902 his strikers confront the authorities and the police opened fire on them killing 15 and injuring many more stalin gets away unscathed but he does tend to the wounded the death toll does not worry him one bit in fact it teaches him a lesson he will never forget the strike is like an epiphany for him that he saw in the act of violence the way forward that is how you change russia and that's how you progress the revolutionary movement physical violence is of the essence stalin's activities get him noticed he's invited to meet the great leader of the movement vladimir lenin the man he considers to be the mountain eagle of the revolution lenin was really stalin's teacher in the practice of terror lenin sees in stalin a man of loyalty a man committed to the cause as lenin defines it and a man who's prepared to do the dirty work lenin gives stalin a key mission to raise money for the revolution he goes to the booming port town of baku full of newly rich oil barons and comfortably far from the center of tsarist power here he becomes a mobster and sets about fleecing the capitalists stalin ran a gang that was called something like the outfit they were a pretty motley bunch and he ran brothels more than one he's shaking people down he's pushing people around that meant bank robberies piracy protection rackets to stalin the law does not matter lives do not matter you do what is necessary this is the key leninist principle what is necessary at the moment you do regardless of consequences the only thing that matters is the revolution by now stalin is high up on the tsarist secret police's most wanted list but he is not yet the murderous psychopath he will become he falls in love with ekaterina svanitsa the sister of a fellow communist and in secret they marry she was what the georgians called the baba she she was the woman who was at home and just provided the creature comforts katarina bears stalin a son yakov but just months later she contracts typhus and dies when stalin's first wife died he was absolutely shattered [Music] he said that when she died all my feelings for people died with her she melted my stony heart now the shutters start to come down stalin decides that no one will be allowed into his heart again it's a trait which will serve him well on his rise to power [Music] by 1906 nicholas ii's regime is on the rocks after a wave of strikes economic chaos and an attempted revolution in a small concession to democracy he sets up a parliament called the duma lenin's so-called bolshevik party wins seats there though he continues his illegal struggle against the system stalin is still a wanted man spending years in prison and exile but his friend roman malinowski becomes the leader of the bolsheviks in the duma in 1912 stalin escapes from exile and heads for the capital looking for a safe base of operations he immediately came to see his friend malinowski stalin likes malinowski and trusts him a big mistake malinowski was in fact a zara's secret agent malinowski is the most highly paid double agent the tsar's okrana secret police has ever had he invites stalin to a fundraising dinner and stalin agrees to go [Music] malinowski must have been a very very good actor whether ifrana would have set up the meeting and they would have told him what to say and how to proceed so that there will be no suspicions aroused in stalin's mind the dinner is a trap he's betrayed by a party member he's betrayed by a fellow bolshevik he's sentenced to exile he takes with him this burning conviction that he'd given trust to someone who could not be trusted [Music] the betrayal has a colossal impact on starving he starts to believe that even those who are closest to him even the most loyal and committed communists may be traitors the interesting thing about the malinowski's story is it explains why later in stalin's life he distrusted everybody because virtually anybody even the leader of the bolshevik party in the in the douma could be a secret agent and a traitor consumed with bitterness stalin is sent into exile in siberia on the edges of the arctic circle he is largely ignored by his communist colleagues who this time do not bother to help him escape in stalin's mind there must have been a lot of anger about the way he'd been treated the way his comrades had betrayed him they didn't give him his jew so they belittled him if you like and they put him down so therefore all this will be stewing in stalin's mind how can i take revenge on these people i'm a much more important person than they think and i'm going to show them that for four years stalin is stuck in the frozen wasteland his heart becoming as cold and hard as the wilderness around him food was in very short supply and it said that every night the wolves gathered round looking for the bits of food that might be left the prowling wolves will haunt stalin to the end of his days a common theme in his doodles was with ravening wolves and he put them around the page the teeth bear changed churchill later said there's something wolf like about it and it may be that he wasn't that wasn't just a happy metaphor there was actually this wolverine element coming out in him so when the bolsheviks sees power in 1917 stalin returns to the capital ready to take his place in lenin's new communist government bringing with him a brutal mindset born of years of struggle violence is not merely a means to an end it is the end in itself you only win by smashing the enemy the budding tyrant abandons his birth name forever and becomes officially joseph stalin meaning man of steel he's one of lenin's most trusted leaders and a member of the communist party's central committee [Music] but he is neither the most senior nor the most popular when lenin hands out the top jobs stalin's rivals in the top tier of the party seem to get the best positions he didn't have that particular grain of academic intellectualism that lenin and trotsky had and i think it made him feel inferior the charismatic leon trotsky who snobbishly fails to recognize stalin at a party meeting gets foreign affairs and the red army trotsky made the great mistake of snubbing stalin trotsky didn't realize this he was singled out to be set aside and destroyed school teacher turned revolutionary lev kaminev gets to run moscow and is made lenin's deputy the conventional marxist intellectuals looked at stalin and they dismissed him they just had no idea of how much stalin could do because he admires his organizational skills the job lenin gives stalin is an administrative role the general secretary of the communist party nobody else wanted the job of general secretary the general secretary's job seems quite a boring one while trotsky and kamenev strut the political stage it seems stalin is assigned menial paperwork he is left working in the background while they take all the glory but it's not long before he realizes that in reality the general secretary holds the key to power a secretary decides who's going to come to the meeting who's going to be told about it what's going to be on the agenda the new soviet union is run by committee if you control the agenda you can control everything gradually he controlled appointments [Music] and by controlling appointments he could put his people into various committees and if you could get a majority in the center committee you were the number one man while lenin and his top team are distracted by all the problems of running a country that has been down trodden for years and just come through a civil war stalin builds his power base and bides his time all the while he plots his revenge against the snobbish intellectuals who dismissed him if you made a point of of humiliating comrade stalin your days were numbered there is no question about that [Music] in 1924 lenin the unquestioned leader of the revolution dies of a cerebral hemorrhage stalin is among the party leaders carrying lenin's casket to its final resting place but one important person is not there leon trotsky the general secretary hasn't invited him stalin sends the wrong date deliberately to prevent trotsky turning up at the funeral and because he didn't turn up what sort of leninist could he be this man who doesn't turn up with trotsky absent it falls to stalin to deliver the eulogy to the great lenin we owe all that we have to the great lenin uh we dedicate ourselves to the always to the great lenin a way of saying i am your heir [Music] stalin's plan works though officially just the general secretary enough of his supporters are in place to help establish him as the heir to lenin now he can turn on his rivals first up leon trotsky getting rid of trotsky was was was a refined delayed process drawn out for his own pleasure it was suggested to trotsky that he had no place in the capital he was dragged kicking and screaming to the train trotsky is forced to flee overseas and ends up in mexico [Music] eventually stalin sends an assassin to pick him off by the time of his 50th birthday celebrations five years after the death of lenin stalin is firmly in charge though he has kept the humble title general secretary he is effectively the top man in the soviet union [Music] but despite a decade of communist rule the country remains desperately backward stalin decides that what it needs is a dose of his ruthless marxist medicine the first area to fix is farming stalin was convinced that the russian peasant was unproductive and could be replaced with tractors and that led to the first the really murderous acts of stalin in december 1929 he unleashes the poorest peasants against the land owning farmers called kulaks all such class enemies are to be exterminated the order that stalin gave for the liquidation of the kulaks as a class is the first legal order of a state for the mass murder of its own citizens they were no more than rats they had to be wiped out they were vermin then in the name of liberating them stalin forces the peasants to work on vast collective farms [Music] to speed russia's rapid industrialization he confiscates the grain using it to feed factory workers in the cities and to sell abroad propaganda films portray the collective farms as a triumph [Music] but the truth is exactly the opposite production collapses and famine breaks out across the soviet union stalin must have foreseen there would be a famine he probably didn't foresee that it would kill probably 10 million [Music] people by 1933 you had cannibalism all over southern russia it was the most appalling man-made famine in history and it was done deliberately stalin does not care about the deaths in the countryside it's a price worth paying for his revolution stalin once said the death of one man is a tragedy the death of a million is a statistic a bolshevik like stalin and stalin prided himself on this could look at things harshly with toughness and as he said to lenin my hand will not tremble in the cities news of the famines is suppressed but it starts to leak out one night in the kremlin stalin is enjoying a dinner party with his second wife nadia he didn't want everybody particularly his family to know what was going on they would have regarded this annihilation of peasant classes as a betrayal of their ideals but nadya has heard the rumors about the extent of the famine they sort of gazed at each other across the table and she got up and flounced out hey she was very very upset later in her room she writes a note condemning stalin she didn't believe that anything stalin was doing in his policies were the right policies she couldn't go along with collectivization and the annihilation of the peasant classes this was certainly such a challenge thrown down stalin that he was wrong [Music] later that night nadia takes the only way out to stalin her suicide is not a tragedy it's a betrayal nobody was allowed to say that anything he said or did was wrong and she had made this ultimate gesture with her life to say what you're doing is wrong so it it made him completely furious he was heard to say she went away as an enemy nadya's death is reported as due to appendicitis with her female influence gone stalin becomes more isolated and more paranoid the days of the great terror are about to begin [Music] in january 1934 joseph stalin summons the supreme decision-making body of the soviet union the party congress it's the largest meeting of soviet leaders in four years [Music] one of those summoned is his loyal supporter sergey kirov kirov thinks he is the closest thing stalin has to a friend the general secretary himself gives kirov the choice position of leningrad party boss but the paranoid leader believes kirov has become too popular among the party delegates popular enough that he can one day become a rival or betray the revolution like malinowski keira was a threat his very existence as a popular figure in the party there might be a rallying round kirov in opposition to stalin stalin had no fear by 1934 but he did fear friendship and loyalty do not matter to stalin not if someone is a potential threat to his power if kiroth is a threat then remove him that's that's the simple way it's done in revolutionary terms on december the 1st 1934 sergey kirov walks into his office in leningrad [Music] at the time his death is an outrage and a mystery what no one realizes is that kirov's murder is part of stalin's master plan the assassination of kirov was the beginning of stalin establishing himself as the absolute ruler the party leader decides to seize the opportunity and get rid of all his old rivals at once the best way to do it is a purge and the best way to do that is to demonstrate that his arch enemies were responsible for the beloved kirov's death he begins by arresting lenin's old deputy lev kaminev and his supporters he accuses them of being traitors and of conspiring to murder kirov the trouble is kamenev is a party member with impeccable credentials one of lenin's original team he has to show to the soviet people that the accusations are true because it seems incredible that they could have been traitors that they could have been anti-socialist anti-marxist anti-linders all along to make the absurd accusations credible stalin needs a confession kaminev and other top party leaders are taken from prison to the kremlin where he makes them an offer they cannot refuse if you accept your fate and say what the party requires of you then i can guarantee that your family will not suffer now is it worth your family suffering and of course being committed to their families they back off with their confessions in the bag stalin puts kaminev and 15 other senior party members on trial foreign press are invited to view the proceedings they attended the show trials and they expressed pleasure the system was so perfect that the accused voluntary confessed and they were listened to and treated very humanely stalin's plan works perfectly his old rival kamenev and the other alleged conspirators are shot he stages two more show trials for the most senior party members others lower down are simply arrested and executed he wipes out over a thousand of the leading party members who get on the congress and of the committee the polit bureau made up of 45 members within two years only 11 of them are remaining the great purge wipes out anyone who might challenge stalin's power including more than half of the army's top brass he was in a tree left standing in the forest after leonard's death no one could contradict his narrative about the revolution the 1920s and 1930s no one living but even now he does not feel secure there are other witnesses to his failures as leader the soviet people millions of them lived through the revolution and the years that followed and they might remember the truth now they must be forced to forget after the great purge he unleashes the great terror stalin's dreaded secret police the nkvd predecessors of the kgb are given the job of cleansing the country of what he says are traitors you would set targets for arrests they were called the limits every city every province had its limits they didn't care who they were they wanted numbers killed because that's how bolshevik did things five thousand here ten thousand there i'll prove about a quarter were to be shot straight away stalin personally signs the death warrants of those senior enough in the party structure there are 44 000 names uh on which you have stalin's initials and ticks he would add words like scum prostitute deserves it he was enjoying it enormously stalin by that point is by any normal standards a psychopath an incurable psychopath the soviet tyrant doesn't stop with the adult population he wants to break down any loyalty that is not to him to do that he attacks the most fundamental human social unit the family children were made to see themselves as children of style in first and of their parents second and if their parents were suspect they were asked by their teachers to report back and there are scores hundreds in the end of stories of children actually betraying their own parents [Music] soviet society collapses under stalin's relentless onslaught fear is at the heart of it [Music] you are putting fear distrust into the heart of society and then you can achieve anything at least 700 000 people are executed millions are sent to slave labor camps known as the gulag no one in the country dares even to think of challenging stalin's leadership he is now effectively the tsar of the soviet union [Applause] but outside the soviet union a new enemy is rising adolf hitler is the only man who might match stalin's lack of empathy and disregard for humanity he is hell-bent on wiping out communism nevertheless in 1939 stalin cuts a deal with hitler they divide up eastern europe between them and agree that they will not attack each other stalin didn't trust anyone but he trusted hitler because he saw hitler as a great leader a very strong leader he had this belief that if the soviet union and germany can work together then they can conquer the world even after the nazis take france in 1940 stalin believes that the soviet union is safe because hitler will not want to fight on two fronts a big mistake in summer 1941 stalin had the first real big shock of his life hitler launches operation barbarossa and invades russia nazi tanks plough towards moscow in a devastating advance they capture more than a hundred thousand men in the first week suddenly stalin is facing the fight of his life hitler's panzer army is cutting through russia like a knife through butter supreme leader joseph stalin is dumbfounded [Music] he retreats to his country house known as a dasher we sat in a chair looking at the wall he said in his dasher outside moscow and refused to comment when news came to him it seemed to be an attack of depression he did nothing for something like three weeks the german tanks close in on moscow a delegation of stalin's deputies muster up the courage to go and find him he was extremely shaken he said lennon built this date we're going to lose it and he you know he was close to panic had he stayed paralytic for another two three days refusing to allow proper response on the soviet side he may well have lost the war they said comrade stalin we need you we need your leadership [Music] and he came back and he regained his his vitality and he led the country after that [Music] back in charge stalin tries to take full control of the war [Music] he would interfere forbid generals to retreat even when it made military sense to retreat stalin is an expert at killing helpless people but he knows nothing about how to run a real war he lost army after army division after division hundreds of thousands of soviet soldiers are slaughtered as the nazis conquer vast swathes of russia it wasn't for a year or two that stalin finally learned that you leave the army to get on with the job and you concentrate on supplying them with tanks one thing that stalin does not relinquish is his hardness his first born son yakov is fighting at the front in july 1941 he's captured by the germans the germans thought they had a trophy so they they negotiated to get some german generals back in exchange for yakov the man of steel shows hitler how ruthless he really is and stalin said i don't swap generals for a soldier that of course impressed the germans enormously and yakov eventually threw himself on the electrified barbed wire and died [Music] yakov is one of more than 20 million soviet citizens who give their lives in the fight against the nazis to their leader they're just another statistic despite his early interference a combination of winter and the extraordinary bravery of the troops turns the tide of war all invaders of russia except the mongols have made one mistake they don't believe the weather reports napoleon wouldn't believe it hitler wouldn't believe it so general january general february are the biggest generals in the russian army the soviet army slowly pushes the nazis back mile by bloody mile through eastern europe hitler's forces are broken on may the 2nd 1945 russian troops overwhelmed berlin the war is over but a new conflict is about to begin in the summer of 1945 stalin meets u.s president truman and british prime ministers churchill and then atlee to discuss the details of the piece western leaders are hoping for a golden era and an end to all war but stalin will later reveal his hand no one will ever be able to invade the soviet union again because he is going to keep every inch of the territory his army has taken after five long years of war the west doesn't have the stomach to oppose him he would agree to democratic elections of course but as stalin said it's not important who votes it's important who counts the votes and that was something he was going to do himself stalin builds the iron curtain 90 million people who thought they would be free are now yoked to stalin's brutal ideology the cold war begins [Music] by the time of stalin's 70th birthday celebrations his shadow has fallen across an empire from eastern europe to kamchatka [Music] along with 180 million people in the soviet union a further 90 million in conquered eastern europe are now forced to live in servitude to stalin if anyone objects the great terror is repeated across country after country stalin had total power he probably had more power than any individual uh in the world up to that point the cold war will run for almost half a century but by now the soviet dictator has cardiac problems and his health is declining in old age he could not be as active he could not control things as well he's just losing it you know and and that's the way life is and he hadn't figured on that he spends more and more time at his dashes gardening but he's still paranoid and looking for new threats he starts to focus on a new enemy towards the end of his life of course he becomes more and more anti-semitic violently anti-semitic the hated traitor trotsky originally bronstein had been a jew and lev kamanev had a jewish father there's one thing that stalin shared with hitler suspicion of jews because they don't owe loyalty to one country they could easily be spies in silence view in january 1953 stalin launches another purge he arrests the country's top medical men accusing them of treachery and conspiring to destroy the soviet leadership in what has become known as the doctor's plot most of the accused are jewish they're taken and tortured for confessions stalin goes beat them beat them beat them with death blows i want those confessions one of the doctors had to be carried into an interrogation on a stretcher because he had been beaten so badly he couldn't walk some scholars believe that stalin may have been planning a massive purge of soviet jews stalin had already approved the building of four major new concentration camps in the far east the speculation is that these concentration camps were being built for the jews but stalin's last purge will never happen on march the 1st 1953 the father of the nation is alone in his room he was sitting on a sofa he well oiled he drunk a lot he appears to have had a heart attack [Music] and he fell over on one side and made burbling noises for an hour or two the most feared man in russia lies alone for almost a day absolutely no one dares to enter the room finally his deputies gain the courage to come in [Music] they find stalin lying in a pool of his own urine but still they don't dare touch the body they're standing around in terror looking at this body as it may be and a little cleaning lady comes in and she pushed away between people and said get out of my way and she looked at all he's dead come on let me let you start the hoover underneath [Music] when the news is revealed the soviet union is convulsed with grief many find it hard to believe that joseph stalin the beloved father of the nation for 30 years is dead for three days the tyrant's body is displayed in moscow while millions file past to pay their respects [Music] the feeling at stalin's funeral was that the strong man that held this country together has gone and he's left us with a number of ghastly incompetents who will fight and rip the country apart despite 30 million deaths and decades of savage brutality at the time stalin's propaganda has cemented him in the public imagination as the embodiment of all that is good in soviet russia all the press all the media is directed to elevate and exalt stalin's name and every textbook that's published every play that's written whatever the theme has to have some reference to the greatness of stalin he's projected himself as a son the state was stalin stalin was a state stalin was a soviet union without him the soviet union would fail stalin had in some ways transplanted the religion that he'd been brought up in he transferred that to socialism and he had become the god of that so-called paradise which he had built up over nearly 30 years the name stalin becomes in itself almost a prayer and people chant it what no one is told is that even in death stalin is a powerful destructive force 500 people are crushed to death by the crowds of hysterical mourners stalin's brutality does make him one of the most terrifying people in history i think he was an evil man i think for him you know human liberty and human human life was worth very little stalin got away with it and sent the system that he created basically went on for another 50 years even now you'll still hear people in russia who can remember his time who say that for all his failings he made the soviet union an achievement which he could have got by no other means there are many elements of stalinist thinking that are still alive in this world and if we don't understand how precious our liberal democracy is yes there will be another joseph stalin [Applause] times square august 14th 1945 americans have a lot to cheer about as they celebrate vj day but 7 000 miles away a bizarre private drama is playing out in a tokyo suburb [Music] with his house surrounded by u.s forces there to arrest him for war crimes general hideki tojo japan's disgraced prime minister prepares to die by his own hand suicide is something every samurai views as an honorable act but his action is different he goes to his doctor and he asks him where is the heart and the doctor the charcoal brush puts them across over this heart tojo the man who waged war on the us is a battlefield virgin he's more accustomed to a fountain pen than a pistol he takes a pistol very badly aimed and he shoots himself [Music] they break him when they hear the shark and he's lying there bleeding profusely he shoots into his stomach and not into the heart it's the start of a pathetic final chapter for japan's most evil warlord a man with a demented vision of what his country should be who in trying to make it a reality takes millions to their deaths his journey to this moment starts decades earlier when japan and america were allies it's 1904 japan is an emerging power flexing its muscles it thinks it's the natural leader of asia [Music] an empire waiting to happen they have the smartest people the hardest fighters and an emperor who is a living god one of the rising stars of the imperial japanese army is a young second lieutenant hideki tojo he's exceptionally hard working and has an unusually sharp intellect his colleagues nickname him the razor he's born into a military family all he knows really our military standards his private life his family life although he married had children it meant nothing to him japan was the cause the empire and the emperor of the cause japan was going somewhere and he would be its servant but he'd need to rise in the system in order to be an effective servant dojo earns a reputation as a tough disciplined operator putting him on track to be a general as part of his training he tours europe and is especially impressed by what he sees in germany he dreams of a japan that can one day be a kind of asian prussia supremely disciplined with a proud military tradition but instead when tojo returns to japan he watches his beloved homeland descend into chaos a brief flirtation with western-style democracy in the 1920s is hit hard by an economic slump that follows the wall street crash [Music] the nation's political elite can't cope with the onset of the great depression in 1930 there is social unrest and protests on the streets increasingly people start looking to the emperor and the army for leadership there is a feeling that the military needs to do something to save japan but of course they're also rather self-serving because they want to put themselves into a position of power and push their own agenda which is imperial expansion the army believes the answer lies in creating an empire it's split into two factions each bitterly at odds with the other you have the the the kodoha um are known as the imperial way faction in english now these guys they're most interested in trying to knock off the soviet union incredibly japan and the soviet union have been great rivals for centuries over the control of northeast asia and the kodoha want to settle old schools [Music] the other side the tall sehar known as the control group are primarily interested in a war in china they know that invading china will provide essential natural resources japan desperately needs to build an empire the toseha also favor more modern technocratic european style military methods and tactics these ideas resonate with tojo who has been inspired by german militarism and a leading member of the toseha major general tetsuan nagata becomes a close friend and mentor nagata however is deeply hated by the rival faction and as tension rises between the two sides a young kodaha officer lieutenant colonel saburo aizawa decides to take matters into his own hands the whole of japanese society is horrified and most of all the emperor to have officers in the imperial army the country's most revered institution murdering each other is unthinkable the authorities need someone ruthlessly efficient to restore order and discipline the obvious choice is razer tojo tojo really comes out the woodwork he's very much siding with the control party he then basically eradicates the opposing faction tojo starts his inexorable rise to power his task is to identify those behind the assassination and to bring the conspirators to justice his methods involve intimidation and torture the emperor hirohito is very pleased tojo is promoted to major general he's well on his way now to become a very very serious power player and he's got the eyes and ears of the emperor upon him which is very very important along with his promotion tojo is rewarded with command of japan's military police the kempeitai who are already notorious for their brutality kempeitai in japanese means law soldiers so it gives you a clue immediately they're a kind of political legal soldier what began as a military police force now grows into something like adolf hitler's gestapo seeking out possible subversives right across japan and its territories i would say the kempei thai were probably the most paranoid military unit that ever existed they basically suspected everybody the first thing that would happen to you if you were hauled in by the kempeitai for questioning was they would beat you very very very severely before they even ask you any questions under tojo the kempeitai become one of the most sadistic paramilitary enforcers in human history comparable in brutality to anything the nazis produced they are masters of all forms of foul and horrible torture and we're greatly feared by the ordinary japanese people a highly immoral organization run by extremely questionable people whose loyalty is only to the central military authorities tojo uses the kempei tie to target all who could oppose his ambitions for a japanese empire [Music] they go after communists they also take on the social democrats and the christians any other group that basically is opposed these are a strict emperor worshiping empire building megalomaniacs who are currently in charge of the of the government there so you say the wrong thing you can be hauled off by them for anti-war statements and pacifist statements tojo's thought police now bend every soul in the country to their master's will and pretty soon civilians are policing each other with every scrap of information being fed back to tojo japan is a surveillance society people report on each other dossiers are hell tojo one of his skills as an admin figure is to draw up a dossier on all those who are suspect in the system either in the army or politically and of course if you have information you have power so tojo uses that to advance his own career by 1937 tojo's power base is growing hitler and the nazi party tojo is drawn by one key nazi idea the territorial expansion is justified by racial superiority there's a very similar kind of idea like the german laban's realm living space that somehow the japanese have a right to expand into china and to use the chinese as cheap labor slave labour and also steal all the mineral resources that are there they see the chinese as being sub-humans the same way as the nazis view the slavic peoples as a mention this belief gives the imperial japanese army the right to invade china and they start with a horrific terror campaign to show the chinese who's boss the world looks on in shock while tojo though not directly involved is beyond delight [Music] to him it's proof of the awesome might of the japanese army and confirmation of its racial superiority this six-week descent into hell becomes known as the rape of nanjing within a three-week period three hundred thousand chinese are butchered [Music] not really killed but killed in the most brutal way some disembowel some have petrol poured over them and set fire some are buried alive some are beheaded the lucky ones are shot [Music] and with that celestial treatment of civilians serial rape of what twenty thousand women over a three week period and bayoneting of the rape woman following the serial butchery it's beggars belief beggar's description indeed [Applause] tojo was well informed of this and his position we know that the actual process of murder took place over several weeks so this is not just an initial thing of victor's arriving and going crazy for a couple of days this was an organized assault for tojo nanjing is just what japan should be doing and the more of it the better as part of his scheme to impress the emperor he starts banging the table for japan to bring not just china but the whole of asia under its boot his plan works the emperor is impressed and promotes him to minister for war now he's the army's man in the cabinet and the most politically influential soldier in the country as soon as he's in the cabinet as minister of war he then has a platform now he was very articulate very loudly spoken gave strong opinions at meetings of the cabinet tojo did all the talking with his newfound powers tojo means to consolidate japan's control over the chinese by crushing any form of resistance [Music] guerrilla strikes by the chinese have proved highly successful in stopping the imperial japanese army the local general proposes a radical policy to deal with the problem and tojo signs it off the chinese communist party are fighting a guerrilla warfare in which they rely on the support of the local population to provide them labor to provide them with food to provide them with refuge the reaction of the japanese authorities is to try to defeat guerrilla warfare by attacking those who support the guerrillas you terrorize the peasantry tojo calls the new policy the three alls it means burn all loot all kill all the three all's policy involves the burning of the property of those who are suspected of supporting the chinese forces the seizing of their food and the killing of them and their families so it's a policy of terror and there are large numbers of people who died the three horse policy supposedly killed up to three million people but if you look at the total number of deaths caused by japan and china in the second world war the figure could easily be between 20 and 30 million one really has no exact way of know for tojo china is just the beginning he has promised japan a mighty empire and he means to deliver [Applause] he argues that japan's lack of natural resources will soon bring the country's economy to a grinding halt [Music] to succeed japan must adopt large-scale imperial expansion like the nazis in europe the japanese thought they wouldn't be able to feed themselves within a generation and that their oil and rubber supplies in particular were so vital and they couldn't provide them unless they took them from areas in asia if they weren't provided willingly by the local population they have to be taken tojo identifies the european colonial territories of southeast asia as the best suppliers of oil and rubber thanks to hitler's dazzling successes in europe those territories are now extremely vulnerable france has been defeated the british look as if they're going to be defeated and the dutch are also on the way out and reliant on the british those are the countries that control southeast asia southeast asia contains all the raw materials that are needed so in essence all they need to do is to reach out their hand and grab it there's only one big obstacle left in tojo's way the united states of america [Music] he's convinced it will never accept a japanese empire from the early 30s japan expects to have to go to war with the united states and by 1939 tojo is convinced that war is unavoidable not everyone agrees opposing tojo's lust for war is the civilian prime minister fumimaro kono who is a peacemaker and a diplomat but when kono is unable to overcome tojo's popularity in cabinet and with the emperor and with war looking inevitable he chooses to resign [Music] tojo the emperor's favorite minister takes his place he is now not just the most powerful soldier in the country but also its most powerful politician at last he can make his vision a reality throughout 1941 prime minister tojo continues pretending to seek a peaceful solution with the us but it's all a lie secretly in meticulous detail he is rehearsing a sneak attack that he believes will [ __ ] the us in the pacific to help him in the coming war he does something that is truly horrific he starts investigating ways of killing people more efficiently his secret police the kempe thai set up a lab to research toxins like anthrax the project is called unit 731 unit 731 it's a japanese chemical biological weapons institution its primary goal is human experimentation so it uses a lot of chinese people some allied prisoners of war later on and russians as well unit 731 causes the excruciating deaths of some 12 000 innocent people in experiments that defy comprehension they held on sight thousands of people men women and children people were vivisected alive without anesthetic because the anesthetic would interfere with the final results tojo's scientists carry out experiments of unimaginable cruelty systematically investigating the extremes of human suffering largely what we know today about frostbite comes from unit 731 because they're able to experiment on humans so freezing of limbs in various forms and seeing how frostbite spreads the prime minister is regularly updated on these experiments and ensures the unit is routinely supplied with live victims they're taking men women and children tying them to posts outside uh rangers which then bombing with aircraft they're testing flamethrowers on human beings it would be the worst horror film you could ever imagine seriously beyond comprehension they really plumbed the absolute depths of human cruelty in the name of science by the end of 1941 tojo's preparations for war with the us are completed the time has come to end the pretence of negotiations [Music] when the decision for wars be made there is a sense of pride of self-belief this emphasis on morale a belief that japan is semi-divine it cannot be defeated in conflict so in a sense they've become the victims of their own propaganda tojo starts his assault on america as he means to continue he attacks the naval base pearl harbor without warning his first act of war is a crime the japanese justification as they put it for pearl harbor was that we don't need to declare war because the war itself will be a declaration now it breaks every rule but there's a logic a bitter vicious logic in tokyo excitement and jubilation is at fever pitch [Music] the success of the attack on pearl harbor makes tojo a national hero he now puts in motion the second phase of his plan [Music] the japanese army sweeps down the british controlled peninsula of malaya at its tip is one of japan's most sought after prizes singapore japan has never signed the geneva convention and in a field manual written by tojo it is clearly stated that surrender in war is a dishonorable act because of this japanese soldiers show little mercy to the allies just one example is the alexandra hospital when british casualties and medical staff try to surrender [Applause] ah these guys may have been lying in hospital beds previously wounded in battle but the japanese don't care these extremes of viciousness are fueled by tojo's potent brew of japanese nationalism and racist ideology picked up from the nazis the japanese felt enormous anger and xenophobia and enormously pent up feelings of revenge against the western allies it was a race war they simply are killing people in very large numbers to work off some of this pent-up xenophobic rage that they have towards the west again and again as tojo's war machine spreads across southeast asia the same pattern of senseless savagery plays out in december 1941 japan invades the philippines swiftly forcing the unprepared u.s and filipino forces back to the bataan peninsula the battle for bataan results in a massive u.s surrender those captured by the japanese are forced to march to pow camps the idea is to march them to a rail head at a particular town and then put them onto trains cattle trains and then take them off to a series of pow camps but the japanese turn into a death march the japanese military regard their new captives with contempt and the abuse of prisoners becomes standard no soldier is honorable if he surrenders it's tied in with this samurai notion of honour and an honorable soldier will die rather than surrender so when prisoners were taken the brutalizing of prisons was done deliberately it wasn't just an offshoot it was done deliberately what follows is a 60-mile forced march of 80 000 pows from battlefield to prison camp that will see the deliberate murder of thousands of men it will become known as the bataan death march [Music] they were worked to death literally they were not given medical treatment and this was deliberate policy it wasn't simply an excess of war where things could happen this is the strongest argument against tojo and the military regime in japan that they actually actively encourage brutality as a policy [Music] the treatment of the us and filipino troops by the japanese after the battle of bhutan goes down in history as one of tojo's most horrific acts [Music] so we see an awful lot of random killings happen very early on uh for example anybody who was quite tall was generally singled out and abused or killed because the taller you are the more anglo-saxon you are in the eyes of the japanese they deliberately deny the men water the only water they're allowed to touch comes from filthy buffalo wallows which is ridden with diseases every time they step out of line uh they're either beaten or shot or bayoneted it's just an entire process of thinning out the ranks if you like they kill off pretty much anybody who can't get there under his own power anybody who's sick wounded or injured in some way it's one of the most appalling episodes in the in the surrender of ally pows the extent of the murder committed by the japanese army is really quite unique and quite extraordinary literally every single place where they occupied there were astonishing scenes brutality and not just against soldiers you could possibly understand that but nuns priests local natives who'd really done nothing at all they would be heads and break them and torture them in very extraordinary ways the atrocities are undoubtedly condoned by tojo he as much as anyone has openly promoted the loathing of foreigners and inferior peoples as an obsessive intelligence gatherer he receives regular detailed reports of all activities you have the red cross passing on information that there have been accusations of ill treatment of pows so tojo is aware that these accusations are being made who's aware these events are taking place does he step in to indicate that this is unacceptable behavior there was no evidence to suggest that action had been taken as the imperial japanese army surges through asia it takes thousands of american british dutch and australian prisoners of war bloated with race hatred tojo's forces treat their captives worse than pack animals starving torturing and murdering at will a hundred and forty thousand allied personnel are captured some thirty thousand die from starvation disease and mistreatment now at the height of his popularity tojo is expecting a u.s surrender any day so he makes a move to seize even more political power already prime minister and minister for the army he takes every significant government post for himself he becomes the home secretary becomes defense minister war minister minister of munitions he is as powerful as any single figure could be under the emperor the war has become tojo's personal project and it seems to be going beautifully but that delusion is about to be shattered two and a half thousand miles out in the pacific a vital us base on the tiny atoll of midway becomes the setting for japan's first naval defeat in 75 years the battle of midway strips japan of its naval dominance in the pacific for tojo the man whose power rests on promising his emperor victory it's a personal and political disaster his career his future his belief is tied to success in war there's no room for maneuver he can't explain away defeat and that's tojo's great dilemma tojo is entering uncharted waters and so he turns to that guiding principle of the japanese army the samurai spirit which confronts defeat with suicide [Music] in the name of the emperor he tells japan's civilian population they must fight to the death everyone must get ready to die even children he still believes in ultimate victory but he begins to qualify and he says it might take longer it might need greater effort on our part which is why the argument we must militarize the whole society becomes so powerful while you train the kids at school you give them wooden rifles to parade with and you tell them even as children need to become soldiers of the empire arming kids doesn't solve tojo's problem u.s forces in the pacific are closing in on the japanese mainland at an alarming rate once again tojo looks to germany and hitler for inspiration [Music] he isn't just going to run japan politically he will take personal control of the army as well even though he has minimal battlefield experience in february 1944 he actually gets rid of general tsuyama who's head of the army and takes on that role as well as chief of the army so this is an extraordinary concentration of power which speaks a lot of i would say jojo's totalitarian abilities in the in the same way as a stalin or a putin let's say the situation he faces would challenge even the most experienced soldier u.s forces are cutting off japan's newly won oil fields and the pressure's on to seize new resources and so he endorses a completely hair-brained scheme to invade the rich and heavily defended subcontinent of india [Music] his plan is to knock the british out of the wall [Music] tojo's ignorance of how to fight a war is clear right from the start the army simply doesn't have the supplies or support systems for the job their logistic train involves basically marching thirty thousand cattle in with them which are very soon used up they expected to capture the allied supply dumps which they don't and then of course the wheels come off very quickly off their offensive in a series of brutal battles on the indian border at kohima and impala tojo's underfed and exhausted troops are shattered rather than let them retreat to save his career he demands that they fight to the bitter end it ends up with the japanese just expending their armed services in basically futile attacks frontal attacks which are then beaten back with huge losses the next day they'll do exactly the same thing again in the same spot at the same time and again and again and again and it shows you how little they care for the lives of their men as well the ordinary japanese soldier is just simply a tool of the emperor he's something to be thrown away if necessary in the defense of those ideals [Music] finally tojo's defeated army pulls back broken by their commander-in-chief's demented vision and colossal incompetence cut off and with no supplies they lose more than a third of their men [Music] the japanese sicken very rapidly because they don't have the medical facilities we have so they're all dying of dysentery and malaria and everything else [Music] after the battle of impal it's estimated that 36 000 japanese soldiers died of starvation and disease on the retreat that's out of an army of 90 000 soldiers it's a pattern playing out across the japanese campaign in southeast asia tojo's cruelty to his enemies is matched by total indifference to the suffering of his own men if you look at the campaigns in the south pacific for every japanese soldier killed by a bullet or by a mortar or by a bomb ten of them died of disease and starvation at least ten to one their army is starved to death back in tokyo it's becoming clear that the war cannot be won tojo is under mounting political pressures and desperately tries to keep descent under control there are even growing rumors of assassination plots simply things are getting beyond his control there's increasing carping about him from every element of the government he's a defeated political leader he's a defeated warlord certainly by 1944 time is running out but instead of seeking peace tojo decides to up the ante as his indian adventure crumbles he turns his attention to the pacific front and if it means sacrificing civilians as well as soldiers so be it [Music] in june 1944 the us fleet attacks the island of saipan it's the gateway to japan's home islands and a battle the tojo absolutely cannot afford to lose but saipan does fall and the japanese general defending it follows tojo's orders to fight to the death along with most of his men out of a force of 31 000 japanese troops 24 000 are killed in battle and 5000 commit suicide only a handful are taken prisoner in tokyo the loss of saipan is kept a secret from the japanese people but for the high command it triggers panic nobody expected saipan to fall so quickly this was a huge loss of face the emperor even offers to abdicate and all talk is now of negotiating a settlement with the us but tojo is having none of it far worse is in store on saipan and the horror to come will be almost entirely his handiwork [Music] american forces on saipan are astonished as wave after wave of japanese civilians commits suicide many by jumping off cliffs to a man and woman they chose to kill themselves rather than be taken prisoner the american troops found this extraordinary they offered them quarter and they broadcast for days without speakers you can surrender in their thousands on saipan they prefer to jump to their death rather than submit to the american troops the mass suicide of japanese civilians is incomprehensible it is suspected that tojo may have persuaded the emperor to order the suicides his perverse reasoning is that if they surrender they'll be well looked after the only thing worse than saipan falling is the japanese people finding out that the us is not evil there was a great fear that the americans would treat japanese civilians well and that could potentially cause some kind of revolutionary activity in japan as many as 20 000 civilians on saipan die by their own hands on the direct orders of tojo and hirohito it's a tragedy a terrible tragedy on on a terrible scale and it shows how callous and heartless the japanese military actually was and extending these kind of policies not just from soldiers but to civilians but those needless deaths do not save the razor the emperor finally loses patience prime minister tojo's last task in office is to broadcast the news of the fall of saipan to a shocked and frightened nation his popularity was so high when the war was going well and it's almost a complete inverse when the war goes badly and saipan is the key one it swings totally against him on july the 18th 1944 tojo resigns as prime minister but even though his career may be finished he's built a war machine that can't be switched off and the civilian suicides on saipan are just the beginning now although he's no longer leading japan after july 44. his legacy the military legacy which he was the great spokesman for is that you will die in the cause of the emperor and the empire what he's left after four years of leadership is this notion that's become part of the culture of japan that the samurai end is the only way tojo's legacy will be pointless banzai charges kamikaze pilots and the senseless slaughter of hundreds of thousands of japanese soldiers and civilians for another terrible year [Music] by february 1945 the us has invaded the philippine islands of laity and luzon forcing the japanese out of the capital manila in one of the bloodiest urban battles of the war now america sets its sights on japan's home islands [Music] landing troops first on iwo jima [Music] and then okinawa the fighting is brutal as the japanese forces outgunned and outnumbered cling desperately to the mentality the tojo had so fervently enforced no surrender at this point america has a terrifying new weapon capable of bringing japan to its senses [Music] when japan does not respond to a warning and a demand for unconditional surrender the first atomic bomb is dropped on hiroshima on august the 6th 1945 [Music] killing over 66 000 people it takes a second bomb on nagasaki before an utterly defeated japan accepts it must surrender in the end both atomic bombs claim well over 100 000 lives it's 1946 tojo survives his botched suicide attempt and is put on trial he's found guilty of seven war crimes at the trial together does not apologize for the war says that the war was was an honorable war it was dedicated to japan's survival as a nation and that although things may have happened in the war which he might now regret but he didn't specify he did not regret the war he'd not regret pearl harbor and he believed that he'd acted honorably to the end tojo will not admit his guilt he is hanged on december 23rd 1948. he dies despised by the nation he abused and by the emperor he claimed to serve today he is almost entirely forgotten and a relevance to japan you

Channel: criminals and crime fighters

Views: 181,467

Rating: 4.672677 out of 5

Keywords: Evolution of Evil, Evolution of Evil Series, Evolution of Evil Full Episode, Evolution of Evil Documentary, Evolution of Evil Joseph Stalin, Evolution of Evil Stalin, Evolution of Evil Germany, Evolution of Evil Dictator Documentary, Evolution of Evil Hideki Tojo, Evolution of Evil Tojo Documentary, Evolution of Evil Dictatorship Documentary, Evolution of Evil War Documentary, Evolution of Evil History Documentary, Evolution of Evil Russia, Evolution of Evil Japan

Id: 6seCCCru-iU

Length: 97min 18sec (5838 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 05 2021