World War II, or the Second World War (often abbreviated as WWII or WW2), was a global military conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, which involved most of the world's nations, including all of the great powers: eventually forming two opposing military alliances, the Allies and the Axis. It was the most widespread war in history, with more than 100 million military personnel mobilised. In a state of "total war," the major participants placed their entire economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities at the service of the war effort, erasing the distinction between civilian and military resources. Marked by significant events involving the mass death of civilians, including the Holocaust and the only use of nuclear weapons in warfare, it was the deadliest conflict in human history, resulting in 50 million to over 70 million fatalities.

The war is generally accepted to have begun on 1 September 1939, with the invasion of Poland by Germany and Slovakia, and subsequent declarations of war on Germany by France and most of the countries of the British Empire and Commonwealth. Germany set out to establish a large empire in Europe. From late 1939 to early 1941, in a series of campaigns and treaties, Germany conquered or subdued much of continental Europe; amid Nazi-Soviet agreements, the nominally neutral Soviet Union fully or partially occupied and annexed territories of its six European neighbours. Britain and the Commonwealth remained the only major force continuing the fight against the Axis in North Africa and in extensive naval warfare. In June 1941, the European Axis launched an invasion of the Soviet Union, giving a start to the largest land theatre of war in history, which, from this moment on, was tying down the major part of the Axis military power. In December 1941, Japan, which had been at war with China since 1937, and aimed to dominate Asia, attacked the United States and European possessions in the Pacific Ocean, quickly conquering much of the region.

The Axis advance was stopped in 1942 after the defeat of Japan in a series of naval battles and after defeats of European Axis troops in North Africa and, decisively, at Stalingrad. In 1943, with a series of German defeats in Eastern Europe, the Allied invasion of Fascist Italy, and American victories in the Pacific, the Axis lost the initiative and undertook strategic retreat on all fronts. In 1944, the Western Allies invaded France, while the Soviet Union regained all territorial losses and invaded Germany and its allies.

The war in Europe ended with the capture of Berlin by Soviet troops and subsequent German unconditional surrender on 8 May 1945. The Japanese Navy was defeated by the United States, and invasion of the Japanese Archipelago ("Home Islands") became imminent.

The war ended with the total victory of the Allies over Germany and Japan in 1945. World War II altered the political alignment and social structure of the world. The United Nations (UN) was established to foster international cooperation and prevent future conflicts (such as World War III). The Soviet Union and the United States emerged as rival superpowers, setting the stage for the Cold War, which would last for the next 46 years. Meanwhile, the influence of European great powers started to decline, while the decolonization of Asia and Africa began. Most countries whose industries had been damaged moved toward economic recovery. Political integration emerged as an effort to stabilise postwar relations.

Chronology

The start of the war is generally held to be 1 September 1939, beginning with the German invasion of Poland; Britain and France declared war on Germany two days later. Other dates for the beginning of war include the Japanese invasion of Manchuria on 13 September 1931; the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War on 7 July 1937;.

Others follow A. J. P. Taylor, who held that there was a simultaneous Sino-Japanese War in East Asia, and a Second European War in Europe and her colonies. The two wars merged in 1941, becoming a single global conflict, at which point the war continued until 1945. This article uses the conventional dating.

The exact date of the war's end is not universally agreed upon. It has been suggested that the war ended at the armistice of 14 August 1945 (V-J Day), rather than the formal surrender of Japan (2 September 1945); in some European histories, it ended on V-E Day (8 May 1945). The Treaty of Peace with Japan was not signed until 1951.

Background

World War I radically altered the diplomatic and political situations in Eurasia and Africa, with the defeat of the Central Powers, including Austria-Hungary, Germany, and the Ottoman Empire; and the 1917 Bolshevik seizure of power in Russia. Meanwhile, the success of the Allied Entente powers including the United Kingdom, France, the United States, Italy, Serbia, and Romania, and the creation of new states from the collapse of Austria-Hungary and the Russian Empire, resulted in a major shift in the balance of power from central and eastern Europe to the Atlantic littoral. In the aftermath of the war, major unrest in Europe rose, especially irredentist and revanchist nationalism and class conflict. Irredentism and revanchism were strong in Germany because she was forced to accept significant territorial, colonial, and financial losses as part of the Treaty of Versailles. Under the treaty, Germany lost around 13 percent of its home territory and all of its overseas colonies, while German annexation of other states was prohibited, massive reparations were imposed, and limits were placed on the size and capability of Germany's armed forces. Meanwhile, the Russian Civil War had led to the creation of the Soviet Union. After Lenin's death in 1924, Joseph Stalin seized power in the USSR and repudiated the New Economic Policy favouring the Five Year Plans instead.

In the interwar period, domestic civil conflict occurred in Germany involving nationalists and reactionaries versus communists and moderate democratic political parties. A similar scenario occurred in Italy. Although Italy as an Entente ally made some territorial gains, Italian nationalists were angered that the terms of the Treaty of London upon which Italy had agreed to wage war on the Central Powers, were not fulfilled with the peace settlement. From 1922 to 1925, the Italian Fascist movement led by Benito Mussolini seized power in Italy with a nationalist, totalitarian, and class collaborationist agenda that abolished representative democracy, repressed political forces supporting class conflict or liberalism, and pursued an aggressive foreign policy aimed at forcefully forging Italy as a world power, and promising to create a "New Roman Empire." In Germany, the Nazi Party led by Adolf Hitler pursued establishing such a fascist government in Germany. With the onset of the Great Depression, Nazi support rose and, in 1933, Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany, and in the aftermath of the Reichstag fire, Hitler created a totalitarian single-party state led by the Nazis.

The Kuomintang (KMT) party in China launched a unification campaign against regional warlords and nominally unified China in the mid-1920s, but was soon embroiled in a civil war against its former Chinese communist allies. In 1931, an increasingly militaristic Japanese Empire, which had long sought influence in China as the first step of its right to rule Asia, used the Mukden Incident as justification to invade Manchuria and established the puppet state of Manchukuo. Too weak to resist Japan, China appealed to the League of Nations for help. Japan withdrew from the League of Nations after being condemned for its incursion into Manchuria. The two nations then fought several minor conflicts, in Shanghai, Rehe and Hebei, until signing the Tanggu Truce in 1933. Thereafter, Chinese volunteer forces continued the resistance to Japanese aggression in Manchuria, and Chahar and Suiyuan.

(left) and Adolf Hitler (right)]]

Adolf Hitler, after an unsuccessful attempt to overthrow the German government in 1923, became the Chancellor of Germany in 1933. He abolished democracy, espousing a radical, racially motivated revision of the world order, and soon began a massive rearmament campaign. Meanwhile, France, to secure its alliance, allowed Italy a free hand in Ethiopia, which Italy desired as a colonial possession. The situation was aggravated in early 1935 when the Territory of the Saar Basin was legally reunited with Germany and Hitler repudiated the Treaty of Versailles, speeding up his rearmament programme and introducing conscription.

Hoping to contain Germany, the United Kingdom, France and Italy formed the Stresa Front. The Soviet Union, concerned due to Germany's goals of capturing vast areas of eastern Europe, wrote a treaty of mutual assistance with France. Before taking effect though, the Franco-Soviet pact was required to go through the bureaucracy of the League of Nations, which rendered it essentially toothless. However, in June 1935, the United Kingdom made an independent naval agreement with Germany, easing prior restrictions. The United States, concerned with events in Europe and Asia, passed the Neutrality Act in August. In October, Italy invaded Ethiopia, with Germany the only major European nation supporting the invasion. Italy then revoked objections to Germany's goal of absorbing Austria.

Hitler defied the Versailles and Locarno treaties by remilitarizing the Rhineland in March 1936. He received little response from other European powers. When the Spanish Civil War broke out in July, Hitler and Mussolini supported fascist Generalissimo Francisco Franco's nationalist forces in his civil war against the Soviet-supported Spanish Republic. Both sides used the conflict to test new weapons and methods of warfare, and the nationalists won the war in early 1939. Mounting tensions led to several efforts to strengthen or consolidate power. In October 1936, Germany and Italy formed the Rome-Berlin Axis. A month later, Germany and Japan signed the Anti-Comintern Pact, which Italy would join in the following year. In China, after the Xi'an Incident the Kuomintang and communist forces agreed on a ceasefire in order to present a united front to oppose Japan.

Pre-war events

Invasion of Ethiopia

The Second Italo–Abyssinian War was a brief colonial war that began in October 1935 and ended in May 1936. The war was fought between the armed forces of the Kingdom of Italy (Regno d'Italia) and the armed forces of the Ethiopian Empire (also known as Abyssinia). The war resulted in the military occupation of Ethiopia and its annexation into the newly created colony of Italian East Africa (Africa Orientale Italiana, or AOI); in addition, it exposed the weakness of the League of Nations as a force to preserve peace. Both Italy and Ethiopia were member nations, but the League did nothing when the former clearly violated the League's own Article X.

Spanish Civil War

Germany and Italy lent support to the Nationalist insurrection led by general Francisco Franco in Spain. The Soviet Union supported the existing government, the Spanish Republic which showed leftist tendencies. Both sides used this war as an opportunity to test improved weapons and tactics. The Bombing of Guernica, a city of 5000 - 7000 inhabitants, was considered a horrifying attack at the time, with a propaganda figure of 1,654 people killed widely circulated in the west, leading to charges of "terror bombing". In reality the attack was tactical operation against a city with militarily important communications close to the front-line, and modern estimates yield no more than 300 - 400 dead at the high-end.

Japanese invasion of China

, 1937.]]

In July 1937, Japan captured the former Chinese imperial capital of Beiping after instigating the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, which culminated in the Japanese campaign to invade all of China. The Soviets quickly signed a non-aggression pact with China to lend materiel support, effectively ending China's prior cooperation with Germany. Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek deployed his best army to defend Shanghai, but after three months of fighting, Shanghai fell. The Japanese continued to push the Chinese forces back, capturing the capital Nanjing in December 1937 and committed the Nanking Massacre.

In June 1938, Chinese forces stalled the Japanese advance by flooding the Yellow River; although this manoeuvre bought time for the Chinese to prepare their defences at Wuhan, the city was taken by October. Japanese military victories, however, did not bring about the collapse of Chinese resistance that Japan had hoped to achieve, instead the Chinese government relocated inland to Chongqing to continue their resistance.

Japanese invasion of the Soviet Union and Mongolia

in Mongolia, 1939.]] On 29 July 1938, the Japanese invaded the USSR and were checked at the Battle of Lake Khasan. Although the battle was a Soviet victory, the Japanese dismissed it as an inconclusive draw, and on 11 May 1939 decided to move the Japanese-Mongolian border up to the Khalkin Gol River by force. After initial successes the Japanese assault on Mongolia was checked by the Red Army that inflicted the first major defeat on the Japanese Kwantung Army.

These clashes convinced the Japanese government that they should focus on conciliating the Soviet government to avoid interference in the war against China and instead turn their military attention southward, towards the US and European holdings in the Pacific. They also prevented the sacking of experienced Soviet military leaders such as Zhukov, who would later play a vital role in the defence of Moscow.

European occupations and agreements

, Daladier, Hitler, Mussolini, and Ciano pictured before signing the Munich Agreement.]] In Europe, Germany and Italy were becoming bolder. In March 1938, Germany annexed Austria, again provoking little response from other European powers. Encouraged, Hitler began pressing German claims on the Sudetenland, an area of Czechoslovakia with a predominantly ethnic German population; and soon France and Britain conceded this territory to him, against the wishes of the Czechoslovak government, in exchange for a promise of no further territorial demands. Soon after that, however, Germany and Italy forced Czechoslovakia to cede additional territory to Hungary and Poland. In March 1939, Germany invaded the remainder of Czechoslovakia and subsequently split it into the German Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia and the pro-German client state, the Slovak Republic.

Alarmed, and with Hitler making further demands on Danzig, France and Britain guaranteed their support for Polish independence; when Italy conquered Albania in April 1939, the same guarantee was extended to Romania and Greece. Shortly after the Franco-British pledge to Poland, Germany and Italy formalised their own alliance with the Pact of Steel.

In August 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union signed the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, a non-aggression treaty with a secret protocol. The parties gave each other rights, “in the event of a territorial and political rearrangement,” to “spheres of influence” (western Poland and Lithuania for Germany, and eastern Poland, Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Bessarabia for the USSR). It also raised the question of continuing Polish independence.

Course of the war

War breaks out in Europe

of German Wehrmacht and Soviet Red Army on 23 September 1939 in Brest, Eastern Poland at the end of the Invasion of Poland. At centre is Major General Heinz Guderian and at right is Brigadier Semyon Krivoshein.]]

On 1 September 1939, Germany and Slovakiaa client state in 1939attacked Poland. On 3 September 1939 after Germany failed to withdraw in accordance with French and British demands, France and Britain, followed by the countries of the Commonwealth, declared war on Germany but provided little military support to Poland other than a small French attack into the Saarland. On 17 September 1939, after signing a nonaggression pact with Japan, the Soviets launched their own invasion of Poland. By early October, Poland was divided among Germany, the Soviet Union, Lithuania and Slovakia, although Poland never officially surrendered and continued the fight outside its borders. At the same time as the battle in Poland, Japan launched its first attack against Changsha, a strategically important Chinese city, but was repulsed by late September.

Following the invasion of Poland and a German-Soviet treaty governing Lithuania, the Soviet Union forced the Baltic countries to allow it to station Soviet troops in their countries under pacts of "mutual assistance." Finland rejected territorial demands and was invaded by the Soviet Union in November 1939. The resulting conflict ended in March 1940 with Finnish concessions. France and the United Kingdom, treating the Soviet attack on Finland as tantamount to entering the war on the side of the Germans, responded to the Soviet invasion by supporting the USSR's expulsion from the League of Nations. and the region of Bessarabia in Romania.

troops by the Arc de Triomphe, Paris, after the 1940 fall of France.]] In Western Europe, British troops deployed to the Continent, but in a phase nicknamed the Phoney War by the British and "Sitzkrieg" (sitting war) by the Germans, neither side launched major operations against the other until April 1940. The Soviet Union and Germany entered a trade pact in February 1940, pursuant to which the Soviets received German military and industrial equipment in exchange for supplying raw materials to Germany to help circumvent a British blockade.

In April 1940, Germany invaded Denmark and Norway to secure shipments of iron ore from Sweden, which the Allies were about to disrupt. Denmark immediately capitulated, and despite Allied support, Norway was conquered within two months. In May 1940 Britain invaded Iceland. British discontent over the Norwegian campaign led to the replacement of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain by Winston Churchill on 10 May 1940.

Axis advances

Germany invaded France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg on 10 May 1940, the same day Neville Chamberlain resigned as British Prime Minister. The Netherlands and Belgium were overrun using blitzkrieg tactics in a few days and weeks, respectively. The French fortified Maginot Line was circumvented by a flanking movement through the thickly wooded Ardennes region, British troops were forced to evacuate the continent at Dunkirk, abandoning their heavy equipment by the end of the month. On 10 June, Italy invaded France, declaring war on both France and the United Kingdom; twelve days later France surrendered and was soon divided into German and Italian occupation zones, and an unoccupied rump state under the Vichy Regime. On 3 July, the British attacked the French fleet in Algeria to prevent its possible seizure by Germany.

With France neutralized, Germany began an air superiority campaign over Britain (the Battle of Britain) to prepare for an invasion. The campaign failed, and the invasion plans were canceled by September. Using newly captured French ports, the German Navy enjoyed success against an over-extended Royal Navy, using U-boats against British shipping in the Atlantic. Italy began operations in the Mediterranean, initiating a siege of Malta in June, conquering British Somaliland in August, and making an incursion into British-held Egypt in September 1940. Japan increased its blockade of China in September by seizing several bases in the northern part of the now-isolated French Indochina.

ended the German advance in Western Europe.]]

Throughout this period, the neutral United States took measures to assist China and the Western Allies. In November 1939, the American Neutrality Act was amended to allow 'cash and carry' purchases by the Allies. In 1940, following the German capture of Paris, the size of the United States Navy was significantly increased and, after the Japanese incursion into Indochina, the United States embargoed iron, steel and mechanical parts against Japan. In September, the United States further agreed to a trade of American destroyers for British bases. Still, a large majority of the American public continued to oppose any direct military intervention into the conflict well into 1941.

At the end of September 1940, the Tripartite Pact united Japan, Italy and Germany to formalize the Axis Powers. The Tripartite Pact stipulated that any country, with the exception of the Soviet Union, not in the war which attacked any Axis Power would be forced to go to war against all three. During this time, the United States continued to support the United Kingdom and China by introducing the Lend-Lease policy authorizing the provision of materiel and other items and creating a security zone spanning roughly half of the Atlantic Ocean where the United States Navy protected British convoys. As a result, Germany and the United States found themselves engaged in sustained naval warfare in the North and Central Atlantic by October 1941, even though the United States remained officially neutral.

The Axis expanded in November 1940 when Hungary, Slovakia and Romania joined the Tripartite Pact. These countries participated in the subsequent invasion of the USSR, with Romania making the largest contribution to recapture territory ceded to the USSR and pursue its leader Ion Antonescu's desire to combat communism. In October 1940, Italy invaded Greece but within days was repulsed and pushed back into Albania, where a stalemate soon occurred. In December 1940, British Commonwealth forces began counter-offensives against Italian forces in Egypt and Italian East Africa. By early 1941, with Italian forces having been pushed back into Libya by the Commonwealth, Churchill ordered a dispatch of troops from Africa to bolster the Greeks. The Italian Navy also suffered significant defeats, with the Royal Navy putting three Italian battleships out of commission by carrier attack at Taranto, and neutralising several more warships at Cape Matapan. invading the Greek island of Crete, May 1941.]]

The Germans soon intervened to assist Italy. Hitler sent German forces to Libya in February, and by the end of March they had launched an offensive against the diminished Commonwealth forces. In under a month, Commonwealth forces were pushed back into Egypt with the exception of the besieged port of Tobruk. The Commonwealth attempted to dislodge Axis forces in May and again in June, but failed on both occasions. In early April, following Bulgaria's signing of the Tripartite Pact, the Germans intervened in the Balkans by invading Greece and Yugoslavia following a coup; here too they made rapid progress, eventually forcing the Allies to evacuate after Germany conquered the Greek island of Crete by the end of May.

The Allies did have some successes during this time. In the Middle East, Commonwealth forces first quashed a coup in Iraq which had been supported by German aircraft from bases within Vichy-controlled Syria, then, with the assistance of the Free French, invaded Syria and Lebanon to prevent further such occurrences. In the Atlantic, the British scored a much-needed public morale boost by sinking the German flagship Bismarck. Perhaps most importantly, during the Battle of Britain the Royal Air Force had successfully resisted the Luftwaffe's assault, and the German bombing campaign largely ended in May 1941.

In Asia, despite several offensives by both sides, the war between China and Japan was stalemated by 1940. In order to increase pressure on China by blocking supply routes, and to better position Japanese forces in the event of a war with the Western powers, Japan had seized military control of southern Indochina In August of that year, Chinese communists launched an offensive in Central China; in retaliation, Japan instituted harsh measures (the Three Alls Policy) in occupied areas to reduce human and material resources for the communists. Continued antipathy between Chinese communist and nationalist forces culminated in armed clashes in January 1941, effectively ending their co-operation. With the situation in Europe and Asia relatively stable, Germany, Japan, and the Soviet Union made preparations. With the Soviets wary of mounting tensions with Germany and the Japanese planning to take advantage of the European War by seizing resource-rich European possessions in Southeast Asia, the two powers signed the Soviet–Japanese Neutrality Pact in April 1941. By contrast, the Germans were steadily making preparations for an attack on the Soviet Union, amassing forces on the Soviet border.

The war becomes global

On 22 June 1941, Germany, along with other European Axis members and Finland, invaded the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa. The primary targets of this surprise offensive were the Baltic region, Moscow and Ukraine, with an ultimate goal of ending the 1941 campaign near the Arkhangelsk-Astrakhan line, connecting the Caspian and White Seas. Hitler's objectives were to eliminate the Soviet Union as a military power, exterminate Communism, generate Lebensraum ("living space") by dispossessing the native population and guarantee access to the strategic resources needed to defeat Germany's remaining rivals.

Although the Red Army was preparing for strategic counter-offensives before the war, Barbarossa forced the Soviet supreme command to adopt a strategic defence. During the summer, the Axis made significant gains into Soviet territory, inflicting immense losses in both personnel and materiel. By the middle of August, however, the German Army High Command decided to suspend the offensive of a considerably depleted Army Group Centre, and to divert the Second Panzer Group to reinforce troops advancing toward central Ukraine and Leningrad. The Kiev offensive was overwhelmingly successful, resulting in encirclement and elimination of four Soviet armies, and made further advance into Crimea and industrially developed Eastern Ukraine (the First Battle of Kharkov) possible.

, October 1941.]]

The diversion of three quarters of the Axis troops and the majority of their air forces from France and the central Mediterranean to the Eastern Front prompted Britain to reconsider its grand strategy. In July, the UK and the Soviet Union formed a military alliance against Germany The British and Soviets invaded Iran to secure the Persian Corridor and Iran's oil fields. In August, the United Kingdom and the United States jointly issued the Atlantic Charter.

By October, when Axis operational objectives in Ukraine and the Baltic region were achieved, with only the sieges of Leningrad and Sevastopol continuing, a major offensive against Moscow had been renewed. After two months of fierce battles, the German army almost reached the outer suburbs of Moscow, where the exhausted troops were forced to suspend their offensive. Large territorial gains were made by Axis forces, but their campaign had failed to achieve its main objectives: two key cities remained in Soviet hands, the Soviet capability to resist was not broken, and the Soviet Union retained a considerable part of its military potential. The blitzkrieg phase of the war in Europe had ended.

By early December, freshly mobilised reserves allowed the Soviets to achieve numerical parity with Axis troops. This, as well as intelligence data that established a minimal number of Soviet troops in the East sufficient to prevent any attack by the Japanese Kwantung Army, allowed the Soviets to begin a massive counter-offensive that started on 5 December along a front and pushed German troops west.

German successes in Europe encouraged Japan to increase pressure on European governments in south-east Asia. The Dutch government agreed to provide Japan oil supplies from the Dutch East Indies, while refusing to hand over political control of the colonies. Vichy France, by contrast, agreed to a Japanese occupation of French Indochina. The United States, United Kingdom and other Western governments reacted to the seizure of Indochina with a freeze on Japanese assets, while the United States (which supplied 80 percent of Japan's oil) responded by placing a complete oil embargo. That meant Japan was essentially forced to choose between abandoning its ambitions in Asia and the prosecution of the war against China, or seizing the natural resources it needed by force; the Japanese military did not consider the former an option, and many officers considered the oil embargo an unspoken declaration of war.

Japan planned to rapidly seize European colonies in Asia to create a large defensive perimeter stretching into the Central Pacific; the Japanese would then be free to exploit the resources of Southeast Asia while exhausting the over-stretched Allies by fighting a defensive war. To prevent American intervention while securing the perimeter it was further planned to neutralise the United States Pacific Fleet from the outset. On 7 December (8 December in Asian time zones), 1941, Japan attacked British and American holdings with near-simultaneous offensives against Southeast Asia and the Central Pacific. and the battle of Hong Kong.

saw 80,000 Allied soldiers captured and enslaved by the Japanese.]]

These attacks led the U.S., Britain, Australia and other Allies to formally declare war on Japan. Germany and the other members of the Tripartite Pact responded by declaring war on the United States. In January, the United States, Britain, Soviet Union, China, and 22 smaller or exiled governments issued the Declaration by United Nations, which affirmed the Atlantic Charter. The Soviet Union did not adhere to the declaration; it maintained a neutrality agreement with Japan, and exempted itself from the principle of self-determination. and Rabaul, inflicting severe losses on Allied troops and taking a large number of prisoners. Despite a stubborn resistance in Corregidor, the Philippines was eventually captured in May 1942, forcing the government of the Philippine Commonwealth into exile. Japanese forces also achieved naval victories in the South China Sea, Java Sea and Indian Ocean, and bombed the Allied naval base at Darwin, Australia. The only real Allied success against Japan was a Chinese victory at Changsha in early January 1942. These easy victories over unprepared opponents left Japan overconfident, as well as overextended.

Germany retained the initiative as well. Exploiting dubious American naval command decisions, the German navy ravaged Allied shipping off the American Atlantic coast. Despite considerable losses, European Axis members stopped a major Soviet offensive in Central and Southern Russia, keeping most territorial gains they achieved during the previous year. In North Africa, the Germans launched an offensive in January, pushing the British back to positions at the Gazala Line by early February, followed by a temporary lull in combat which Germany used to prepare for their upcoming offensives.

Axis advance stalls

engage the Mikuma at the Battle of Midway, June 1942.]] In early May 1942, Japan initiated operations to capture Port Moresby by amphibious assault and thus sever communications and supply lines between the United States and Australia. The Allies, however, intercepted and turned back Japanese naval forces, successfully preventing the invasion. Japan's next plan, motivated by the earlier bombing on Tokyo, was to seize Midway Atoll and lure American carriers into battle to be eliminated; as a diversion, Japan would also send forces to occupy the Aleutian Islands in Alaska. In early June, Japan put its operations into action but the Americans, having broken Japanese naval codes in late May, were fully aware of the plans and force dispositions and used this knowledge to achieve a decisive victory at Midway over the Imperial Japanese Navy.

With its capacity for aggressive action greatly diminished as a result of the Midway battle, Japan chose to focus on a belated attempt to capture Port Moresby by an overland campaign in the Territory of Papua. The Americans planned a counter-attack against Japanese positions in the southern Solomon Islands, primarily Guadalcanal, as a first step towards capturing Rabaul, the main Japanese base in Southeast Asia.

Both plans started in July, but by mid-September, the battle for Guadalcanal took priority for the Japanese, and troops in New Guinea were ordered to withdraw from the Port Moresby area to the northern part of the island, where they faced Australian and United States troops in the Battle of Buna-Gona. Guadalcanal soon became a focal point for both sides with heavy commitments of troops and ships in the battle for Guadalcanal. By the start of 1943, the Japanese were defeated on the island and withdrew their troops. In Burma, Commonwealth forces mounted two operations. The first, an offensive into the Arakan region in late 1942, went disastrously, forcing a retreat back to India by May 1943. The second was the insertion of irregular forces behind Japanese front-lines in February which, by the end of April, had achieved dubious results.

over the central plaza in Stalingrad, 1943.]]

On Germany's , the Axis defeated Soviet offensives in the Kerch Peninsula and at Kharkov, and then launched their main summer offensive against southern Russia in June 1942, to seize the oil fields of the Caucasus and occupy Kuban steppe, while maintaining positions on the northern and central areas of the front. The Germans split the Army Group South into two groups: Army Group A struck lower Don River while Army Group B struck south-east to the Caucasus, towards Volga River. The Soviets decided to make their stand at Stalingrad, which was in the path of the advancing German armies.

By mid-November the Germans had nearly taken Stalingrad in bitter street fighting when the Soviets began their second winter counter-offensive, starting with an encirclement of German forces at Stalingrad and an assault on the Rzhev salient near Moscow, though the latter failed disastrously. By early February 1943, the German Army had taken tremendous losses; German troops at Stalingrad had been forced to surrender and the front-line had been pushed back beyond its position before the summer offensive. In mid-February, after the Soviet push had tapered off, the Germans launched another attack on Kharkov, creating a salient in their front line around the Russian city of Kursk.

s moving to forward positions during the North African Campaign.]] By November 1941, Commonwealth forces had launched a counter-offensive, Operation Crusader, in North Africa, and reclaimed all the gains the Germans and Italians had made. In the West, concerns the Japanese might utilize bases in Vichy-held Madagascar caused the British to invade the island in early May 1942. This success was offset soon after by an Axis offensive in Libya which pushed the Allies back into Egypt until Axis forces were stopped at El Alamein. On the Continent, raids of Allied commandos on strategic targets, culminating in the disastrous Dieppe Raid, demonstrated the Western Allies' inability to launch an invasion of continental Europe without much better preparation, equipment, and operational security.

In August 1942, the Allies succeeded in repelling a second attack against El Alamein and, at a high cost, managed to deliver desperately needed supplies to the besieged Malta. A few months later, the Allies commenced an attack of their own in Egypt, dislodging the Axis forces and beginning a drive west across Libya. This attack was followed up shortly after by an Anglo-American invasion of French North Africa, which resulted in the region joining the Allies. Hitler responded to the French colony's defection by ordering the occupation of Vichy France; The now pincered Axis forces in Africa withdrew into Tunisia, which was conquered by the Allies in May 1943.

Allies gain momentum

by the Allies.]] Following the Guadalcanal Campaign, the Allies initiated several operations against Japan in the Pacific. In May 1943, Allied forces were sent to eliminate Japanese forces from the Aleutians, and soon after began major operations to isolate Rabaul by capturing surrounding islands, and to breach the Japanese Central Pacific perimeter at the Gilbert and Marshall Islands. By the end of March 1944, the Allies had completed both of these objectives, and additionally neutralised the major Japanese base at Truk in the Caroline Islands. In April, the Allies then launched an operation to retake Western New Guinea.

In the Soviet Union, both the Germans and the Soviets spent the spring and early summer of 1943 making preparations for large offensives in Central Russia. On 4 July 1943, Germany attacked Soviet forces around the Kursk Bulge. Within a week, German forces had exhausted themselves against the Soviets' deeply echeloned and well-constructed defences and, for the first time in the war, Hitler cancelled the operation before it had achieved tactical or operational success. This decision was partially affected by the Western Allies' invasion of Sicily launched on 9 July which, combined with previous Italian failures, resulted in the ousting and arrest of Mussolini later that month.

On 12 July 1943, the Soviets launched their own counter-offensives, thereby dispelling any hopes of the German Army for victory or even stalemate in the east. The Soviet victory at Kursk heralded the downfall of German superiority, giving the Soviet Union the initiative on the Eastern Front. The Germans attempted to stabilise their eastern front along the hastily fortified Panther-Wotan line, however, the Soviets broke through it at Smolensk and by the Lower Dnieper Offensives.

In early September 1943, the Western Allies invaded the Italian mainland, following an Italian armistice with the Allies. Germany responded by disarming Italian forces, seizing military control of Italian areas, and creating a series of defensive lines. German special forces then rescued Mussolini, who then soon established a new client state in German occupied Italy named the Italian Social Republic. The Western Allies fought through several lines until reaching the main German defensive line in mid-November.

German operations in the Atlantic also suffered. By May 1943, as Allied counter-measures became increasingly effective, the resulting sizable German submarine losses forced a temporary halt of the German Atlantic naval campaign. In November 1943, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill met with Chiang Kai-shek in Cairo and then with Joseph Stalin in Tehran. The former conference determined the post-war return of Japanese territory, By the end of January, a major Soviet offensive expelled German forces from the Leningrad region, ending the longest and most lethal siege in history. The following Soviet offensive was halted on the pre-war Estonian border by the German Army Group North aided by Estonians hoping to re-establish national independence. This delay slowed subsequent Soviet operations in the Baltic Sea region. By late May 1944, the Soviets had liberated Crimea, largely expelled Axis forces from Ukraine, and made incursions into Romania, which were repulsed by the Axis troops. The Allied offensives in Italy had succeeded and, at the expense of allowing several German divisions to retreat, on 4 June Rome was captured.

The Allies experienced mixed fortunes in mainland Asia. In March 1944, the Japanese launched the first of two invasions, an operation against British positions in Assam, India, and soon besieged Commonwealth positions at Imphal and Kohima. In May 1944, British forces mounted a counter-offensive that drove Japanese troops back to Burma, The second Japanese invasion attempted to destroy China's main fighting forces, secure railways between Japanese-held territory and capture Allied airfields. By June, the Japanese had conquered the province of Henan and begun a renewed attack against Changsha in the Hunan province.

Allies close in

, 6 June 1944]] On 6 June 1944 (known as D-Day), after 3 years of Soviet requests, the Western Allies invaded northern France. After reassigning several Allied divisions from Italy, they also attacked southern France. These landings were successful, and led to the defeat of the German Army units in France. Paris was liberated by the local resistance assisted by the Free French Forces on 25 August and the Western Allies continued to push back German forces in Western Europe during the latter part of the year. An attempt to advance into northern Germany spear-headed by a major airborne operation in the Netherlands ended with a failure. The Allies also continued their advance in Italy until they ran into the last major German defensive line.

On 22 June, the Soviets launched a strategic offensive in Belarus (known as "Operation Bagration") that resulted in the almost complete destruction of the German Army Group Centre. Soon after that, another Soviet strategic offensive forced German troops from Western Ukraine and Eastern Poland. The successful advance of Soviet troops prompted resistance forces in Poland to initiate several uprisings, though the largest of these, in Warsaw, as well as a Slovak Uprising in the south, were not assisted by the Soviets and were put down by German forces. The Red Army's strategic offensive in eastern Romania cut off and destroyed the considerable German troops there and triggered a successful coup d'état in Romania and in Bulgaria, followed by those countries' shift to the Allied side.

In September 1944, Soviet Red Army troops advanced into Yugoslavia and forced the rapid withdrawal of the German Army Groups E and F in Greece, Albania and Yugoslavia to rescue them from being cut off. By this point, the Communist-led Partisans under Marshal Josip Broz Tito, who had led an increasingly successful guerrilla campaign against the occupation since 1941, controlled much of the territory of Yugoslavia and were engaged in delaying efforts against the German forces further south. In northern Serbia, the Red Army, with limited support from Bulgarian forces, assisted the Partisans in a joint liberation of the capital city of Belgrade on 20 October. A few days later, the Soviets launched a massive assault against German-occupied Hungary that lasted until the fall of Budapest in February 1945. In contrast with impressive Soviet victories in the Balkans, the bitter Finnish resistance to the Soviet offensive in the Karelian Isthmus denied the Soviets occupation of Finland and led to the signing of Soviet-Finnish armistice on relatively mild conditions, with a subsequent shift to the Allied side by Finland.

By the start of July, Commonwealth forces in Southeast Asia had repelled the Japanese sieges in Assam, pushing the Japanese back to the Chindwin River while the Chinese captured Myitkyina. In China, the Japanese were having greater successes, having finally captured Changsha in mid-June and the city of Hengyang by early August. Soon after, they further invaded the province of Guangxi, winning major engagements against Chinese forces at Guilin and Liuzhou by the end of November and successfully linking up their forces in China and Indochina by the middle of December.

In the Pacific, American forces continued to press back the Japanese perimeter. In mid-June 1944 they began their offensive against the Mariana and Palau islands, scoring a decisive victory against Japanese forces in the Philippine Sea within a few days. These defeats led to the resignation of Japanese Prime Minister Tōjō and provided the United States with air bases to launch intensive heavy bomber attacks on the Japanese home islands. In late October, American forces invaded the Filipino island of Leyte; soon after, Allied naval forces scored another large victory during the Battle of Leyte Gulf, one of the largest naval battles in history.

Axis collapse, Allied victory

and Soviet troops meet in April 1945, east of the Elbe River.]] On 16 December 1944, Germany attempted its last desperate measure for success on the Western Front by marshalling German reserves to launch a massive counter-offensive in the Ardennes to attempt to split the Western Allies, encircle large portions of Western Allied troops and capture their primary supply port at Antwerp in order to prompt a political settlement. By January, the offensive had been repulsed with no strategic objectives fulfilled. On 4 February, U.S., British, and Soviet leaders met in Yalta. They agreed on the occupation of post-war Germany, and when the Soviet Union would join the war against Japan.

In February, the Soviets invaded Silesia and Pomerania, while Western Allied forces entered Western Germany and closed to the Rhine river. In March, the Western Allies crossed the Rhine north and south of the Ruhr, encircling a large number of German troops, while the Soviets advanced to Vienna. In early April, the Western Allies finally pushed forward in Italy and swept across Western Germany, while Soviet forces stormed Berlin in late April; the two forces linked up on Elbe river on 25 April. On 30 April 1945, the Reichstag was captured, signalling the military defeat of Third Reich. , taken 3 July 1945.]]

Several changes in leadership occurred during this period. On 12 April, U.S. President Roosevelt died and was succeeded by Harry Truman. Benito Mussolini was killed by Italian partisans on 28 April. Two days later, Hitler committed suicide, and was succeeded by Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz.

German forces surrendered in Italy on 29 April and in Western Europe on 7 May. On the Eastern Front, Germany surrendered to the Soviets on 8 May. A German Army Group Centre resisted in Prague until 11 May.

In the Pacific theatre, American forces accompanied by the forces of the Philippine Commonwealth advanced in the Philippines, clearing Leyte by the end of April 1945. They landed on Luzon in January 1945 and seized Manila in March, leaving it in ruins. Fighting continued on Luzon, Mindanao and other islands of the Philippines until the end of the war.

at Nagasaki, 9 August 1945.]] In May 1945, Australian troops landed on Borneo, overrunning the oilfields there. British, American and Chinese forces defeated the Japanese in northern Burma in March, and the British pushed on to reach Rangoon by 3 May. American forces also moved toward Japan, taking Iwo Jima by March, and Okinawa by the end of June. American bombers destroyed Japanese cities, and American submarines cut off Japanese imports.

On 11 July, the Allied leaders met in Potsdam, Germany. They confirmed earlier agreements about Germany, and reiterated the demand for unconditional surrender of all Japanese forces by Japan, specifically stating that "the alternative for Japan is prompt and utter destruction". During this conference the United Kingdom held its general election, and Clement Attlee replaced Churchill as Prime Minister. When Japan continued to reject the Potsdam terms, the United States dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in early August. Between the two bombs, the Soviets, pursuant to the Yalta agreement, invaded Japanese-held Manchuria, and quickly defeated the Kwantung Army, which was the primary Japanese fighting force. The Red Army also captured Sakhalin Island and the Kuril Islands. On 15 August 1945 Japan surrendered, with the surrender documents finally signed aboard the deck of the American battleship USS Missouri on 2 September 1945, ending the war. Germany lost a quarter of its pre-war (1937) territory, the eastern territories: Silesia, Neumark and most of Pomerania were taken over by Poland; East Prussia was divided between Poland and the USSR, followed by the expulsion of the 9 million Germans from these provinces, as well as of 3 million Germans from the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia, to Germany. By the 1950s, every fifth West German was a refugee from the east. The USSR also took over the Polish provinces east of the Curzon line, Eastern Romania, (from which 2 million Poles were expelled) and part of eastern Finland and three Baltic states. Winston Churchill gives the "Victory" sign to crowds in London on Victory in Europe Day.]] In an effort to maintain peace, the Allies formed the United Nations, which officially came into existence on 24 October 1945, and adopted The Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, as a common standard for all member nations. The alliance between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union had begun to deteriorate even before the war was over, Germany had been de facto divided, and two independent states, Federal Republic of Germany and German Democratic Republic were created within the borders of Allied and Soviet occupation zones, accordingly. The rest of Europe was also divided onto Western and Soviet spheres of influence. Most eastern and central European countries fell into the Soviet sphere, which led to establishment of Communist led regimes, with full or partial support of the Soviet occupation authorities. As a result, Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Albania, and East Germany became Soviet Satellite states. Communist Yugoslavia conducted a fully independent policy causing tension with the USSR.

Post-war division of the world was formalised by two international military alliances, the United States-led NATO and the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact; the long period of political tensions and military competition between them, the Cold War, would be accompanied by unprecedented arms race and proxy wars. ensued, leading to the creation of Israel, the often bloody Decolonization of Asia and (somewhat later) of Africa.]] In Asia, the United States occupied Japan and administrated Japan's former islands in the Western Pacific, while the Soviets annexed Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands. Korea, formerly under Japanese rule, was divided and occupied by the US in the South and the Soviet Union in the North between 1945 and 1948. Separate republics emerged on both sides of the 38th parallel in 1948, each claiming to be the legitimate government for all of Korea, which led ultimately to the Korean War. In China, nationalist and communist forces resumed the civil war in June 1946. Communist forces were victorious and established the People's Republic of China on the mainland, while nationalist forces retreated to Taiwan in 1949. In the Middle East, the Arab rejection of the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine and the creation of Israel marked the escalation of the Arab-Israeli conflict. While the European colonial powers attempted to retain some or all of their colonial empires, their losses of prestige and resources during the war rendered this unsuccessful, leading to decolonisation.

The global economy suffered heavily from the war, although WWII participants were affected differently. The US emerged much richer than any other nation; it had a baby boom and by 1950 its gross domestic product per person was much higher than that of any of the other powers and it dominated the world economy. The UK and US pursued a policy of industrial disarmament in Western Germany in the years 1945 – 1948. Due to international trade interdependencies this led to European economic stagnation and delayed European recovery for several years. Recovery began with the mid 1948 currency reform in Western Germany, and was sped up by the liberalization of European economic policy that the Marshall plan (1948-1951) both directly and indirectly caused. The post 1948 West German recovery has been called the German economic miracle. Also the Italian and French economies rebounded. By contrast, the United Kingdom was in a state of economic ruin, and continued relative economic decline for decades. The Soviet Union, despite enormous human and material losses, also experienced rapid increase in production in the immediate post-war era. Japan experienced incredibly rapid economic growth, becoming one of the most powerful economies in the world by the 1980s. China returned to its pre-war industrial production by 1952.

Impact

Casualties and war crimes

Estimates for the total casualties of the war vary, because many deaths went unrecorded. Most suggest that some 60 million people died in the war, including about 20 million soldiers and 40 million civilians. Many civilians died because of disease, starvation, massacres, bombing and deliberate genocide. The Soviet Union lost around 27 million people during the war, almost half of all World War II deaths. One of every four Soviet citizens was killed or wounded in that war.

Of the total deaths in World War II approximately 85 percent—mostly Soviet and Chinese—were on the Allied side and 15 percent on the Axis side. Many of these deaths were caused by war crimes committed by German and Japanese forces in occupied territories. An estimated 11 to 17 million civilians died as a direct or indirect result of Nazi ideological policies, including the systematic genocide of around six million Jews during The Holocaust along with a further five million Roma, Slavs, homosexuals and other ethnic and minority groups. Roughly 7.5 million civilians died in China under Japanese occupation, and the Serbs were targeted by the Axis-aligned Croatian Ustaše.

The most well-known Japanese atrocity was the Nanking Massacre, in which several hundred thousand Chinese civilians were raped and murdered. Between 3 million to more than 10 million civilians, mostly Chinese, were killed by the Japanese occupation forces. Mitsuyoshi Himeta reported 2.7 million casualties occurred during the Sankō Sakusen. General Yasuji Okamura implemented the policy in Heipei and Shantung.

The Axis forces employed limited biological and chemical weapons. The Italians used mustard gas during their conquest of Abyssinia, while the Imperial Japanese Army used a variety of such weapons during their invasion and occupation of China (see Unit 731) and in early conflicts against the Soviets. Both the Germans and Japanese tested such weapons against civilians and, in some cases, on prisoners of war.

While many of the Axis's acts were brought to trial in the world's first international tribunals, incidents caused by the Allies were not. Examples of such Allied actions include population transfer in the Soviet Union and Japanese American internment in the United States; the Operation Keelhaul, expulsion of Germans after World War II, mass rape of German women by Soviet Red Army; the Soviet Union's Katyn massacre, for which Germans faced counter-accusations of responsibility. Large numbers of famine deaths can also be partially attributed to the war, such as the Bengal famine of 1943 and the Vietnamese famine of 1944–45.

It has also been suggested by some historians the mass-bombing of civilian areas in enemy territory, including Tokyo and most notably the German cities of Dresden, Hamburg, and Cologne by Western Allies, which resulted in the destruction of more than 160 cities and killing a total of more than 600.000 German civilians be considered war crimes.

Concentration camps and slave work

The Nazis were responsible for The Holocaust, the killing of approximately six million Jews (overwhelmingly Ashkenazim), as well as two million ethnic Poles and four million others who were deemed "unworthy of life" (including the disabled and mentally ill, Soviet POWs, homosexuals, Freemasons, Jehovah's Witnesses, and Romani) as part of a programme of deliberate extermination. About 12 million, most of whom were Eastern Europeans, were employed in the German war economy as forced labourers. after liberation, possibly political prisoners or Soviet POWs]] In addition to Nazi concentration camps, the Soviet gulags (labour camps) led to the death of citizens of occupied countries such as Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, as well as German prisoners of war (POWs) and even Soviet citizens who had been or were thought to be supporters of the Nazis. Sixty percent of Soviet POWs of the Germans died during the war. Richard Overy gives the number of 5.7 million Soviet POWs. Of those, 57 percent died or were killed, a total of 3.6 million. Soviet ex-POWs and repatriated civilians were treated with great suspect as potential Nazi collaborators, and some of them were sent to GULAG upon check by NKVD.

Japanese prisoner-of-war camps, many of which were used as labour camps, also had high death rates. The International Military Tribunal for the Far East found the death rate of Western prisoners was 27.1 percent (for American POWs, 37 percent), seven times that of POWs under the Germans and Italians. While 37,583 prisoners from the UK, 28,500 from the Netherlands, and 14,473 from United States were released after the surrender of Japan, the number for the Chinese was only 56.

According to historian Zhifen Ju, at least five million Chinese civilians from northern China and Manchukuo were enslaved between 1935 and 1941 by the East Asia Development Board, or Kōain, for work in mines and war industries. After 1942, the number reached 10 million. The U.S. Library of Congress estimates that in Java, between 4 and 10 million romusha (Japanese: "manual laborers"), were forced to work by the Japanese military. About 270,000 of these Javanese laborers were sent to other Japanese-held areas in South East Asia, and only 52,000 were repatriated to Java. , Austria, 1945]]

On 19 February 1942, Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, interning thousands of Japanese, Italians, German Americans, and some emigrants from Hawaii who fled after the bombing of Pearl Harbor for the duration of the war. The U.S. and Canadian governments interned 150,000 Japanese-Americans, as well as nearly 11,000 German and Italian residents of the U.S. Allied use of involuntary labor occurred mainly in the East, such as in Poland, but more than a million were also put to work in the West. In Hungary's case, Hungarians were forced to work for the Soviet Union until 1955. In the West Hungarians were used as forced labor by the Allies until 1947.

Home fronts and production

In Europe, before the outbreak of the war, the Allies had significant advantages in both population and economics. In 1938, the Western Allies (United Kingdom, France, Poland and British Dominions) had a 30 percent larger population and a 30 percent higher gross domestic product than the European Axis (Germany and Italy); if colonies are included, it then gives the Allies more than a 5:1 advantage in population and nearly 2:1 advantage in GDP. In Asia at the same time, China had roughly six times the population of Japan, but only an 89 percent higher GDP; this is reduced to three times the population and only a 38 percent higher GDP if Japanese colonies are included. While the Allies' ability to out-produce the Axis is often attributed to the Allies having more access to natural resources, other factors, such as Germany and Japan's reluctance to employ women in the labour force, Allied strategic bombing, and Germany's late shift to a war economy contributed significantly. Additionally, neither Germany nor Japan planned to fight a protracted war, and were not equipped to do so. To improve their production, Germany and Japan used millions of slave labourers; Germany used about 12 million people, mostly from Eastern Europe, Thus, the income from occupied nations was over 40 percent of the income Germany collected from taxation, a figure which increased to nearly 40 percent of total German income as the war went on.

In the East, the much hoped for bounties of Lebensraum were never attained as fluctuating front-lines and Soviet scorched earth policies denied resources to the German invaders. Unlike in the West, the Nazi racial policy encouraged excessive brutality against what it considered to be the "inferior people" of Slavic descent; most German advances were thus followed by mass executions. Although resistance groups did form in most occupied territories, they did not significantly hamper German operations in either the East or the West until late 1943.

In Asia, Japan termed nations under its occupation as being part of the Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere, essentially a Japanese hegemony which it claimed was for purposes of liberating colonised peoples. Although Japanese forces were originally welcomed as liberators from European domination in many territories, their excessive brutality turned local public opinions against them within weeks.

Advances in technology and warfare

Aircraft were used for reconnaissance, as fighters, bombers and ground-support, and each role was advanced considerably. Innovation included airlift (the capability to quickly move limited high-priority supplies, equipment and personnel); and of strategic bombing (the bombing of civilian areas to destroy industry and morale). Anti-aircraft weaponry also advanced, including defences such as radar and surface-to-air artillery, such as the German 88 mm gun. The use of the jet aircraft was pioneered, and though late introduction meant it had little impact, it led to jets becoming standard in worldwide air forces. at the German navy memorial at Laboe. Between 1939 and 1945, 3,500 Allied merchant ships (gross tonnage 14.5 million) were sunk at a cost of 783 German U-boats.]] Advances were made in nearly every aspect of naval warfare, most notably with aircraft carriers and submarines. Although at the start of the war aeronautical warfare had relatively little success, actions at Taranto, Pearl Harbor, the South China Sea and the Coral Sea established the carrier as the dominant capital ship in place of the battleship. In the Atlantic, escort carriers proved to be a vital part of Allied convoys, increasing the effective protection radius and helping to close the Mid-Atlantic gap. Carriers were also more economical than battleships due to the relatively low cost of aircraft and their not requiring to be as heavily armoured. Submarines, which had proved to be an effective weapon during the First World War were anticipated by all sides to be important in the second. The British focused development on anti-submarine weaponry and tactics, such as sonar and convoys, while Germany focused on improving its offensive capability, with designs such as the Type VII submarine and Wolf pack tactics. Gradually, improving Allied technologies such as the Leigh light, hedgehog, squid, and homing torpedoes proved victorious.

Land warfare changed from the static front lines of World War I to increased mobility and combined arms warfare, wherein tight coordination was sought between the various elements of military forces. The tank, which had been used predominantly for infantry support in the First World War, had evolved into the primary weapon of these forces during the Second. In the late 1930s, tank design was considerably more advanced in all areas than it had been during World War I, and advances continued throughout the war in increasing speed, armour and firepower.

At the start of the war, most commanders saw that the threat of enemy tanks should be met by tanks with superior specifications. This line of thinking was challenged by the poor performance of the relatively light early tank guns against armour, and German doctrine of avoiding tank-versus-tank combat; the latter factor, along with Germany's use of combined arms, were among the key elements of their highly successful blitzkrieg tactics across Poland and France. and throughout the war, most infantry equipment was similar to that utilised in World War I.

Another advance was the spread of the portable machine gun, a notable example being the German MG42, and various submachine guns which were well suited to close-quarters combat in urban and jungle settings.

Most major belligerents attempted to solve the problems of complexity and security presented by using large codebooks for cryptography with the use of ciphering machines, the most well known being the German Enigma machine. SIGINT (signals intelligence) was the countering process of decryption, with the notable examples being the British ULTRA and the Allied breaking of Japanese naval codes. Another important aspect of military intelligence was the use of deception operations, which the Allies used on several occasions to great effect, such as operations Mincemeat and Bodyguard. Other technological and engineering feats achieved during, or as a result of, the war include the world's first programmable computers (Z3, Colossus, and ENIAC), guided missiles and modern rockets, the Manhattan Project's development of nuclear weapons, the development of artificial harbours and oil pipelines under the English Channel.

See also

Atlas of the World Battle Fronts

Battles (list)

Effects of World War II

List of World War II military operations

Declaration of war by the United Kingdom

Declaration of war by the United States

World War II in contemporary culture

Documentaries

The World at War (1974), a 26-part Thames Television series that covers most aspects of World War II from many points of view. It includes interviews with many key figures including Karl Dönitz, Albert Speer, and Anthony Eden.

Battlefield (documentary series), a television documentary series initially issued in 1994–1995 that explores many of the most important battles fought during the Second World War.

Notes

References

External links

World War II Military Situation Maps. Library of Congress

World War II Propaganda Leaflet Archive

Radio news from 1938 to 1945

The Art of War Online Exhibition at the UK National Archive

Deutsche Welle special section on World War II created by a German public broadcaster on both the war and the world 60 years after.

Category:1930s Category:1940s Category:20th-century conflicts Category:Conflicts in 1939 Category:Conflicts in 1940 Category:Conflicts in 1941 Category:Conflicts in 1942 Category:Conflicts in 1943 Category:Conflicts in 1944 Category:Conflicts in 1945 Category:Contemporary French history Category:Contemporary German history Category:Contemporary Italian history Category:Global conflicts Category:History of Montenegro Category:History of Russia Category:History of Serbia Category:History of the Soviet Union and Soviet Russia Category:History of the United States (1918–1945) Category:Modern Europe Category:Modern history Category:Nuclear warfare Category:Wars involving Albania Category:Wars involving Australia Category:Wars involving Austria Category:Wars involving Belgium Category:Wars involving Bolivia Category:Wars involving Brazil Category:Wars involving British India Category:Wars involving Bulgaria Category:Wars involving Burma Category:Wars involving Cambodia Category:Wars involving Canada Category:Wars involving Chile Category:Wars involving Colombia Category:Wars involving Costa Rica Category:Wars involving Croatia Category:Wars involving Cuba Category:Wars involving Czechoslovakia Category:Wars involving Denmark Category:Wars involving Ecuador Category:Wars involving Egypt Category:Wars involving El Salvador Category:Wars involving Estonia Category:Wars involving Ethiopia Category:Wars involving Finland Category:Wars involving France Category:Wars involving Germany Category:Wars involving Greece Category:Wars involving Guatemala Category:Wars involving Haiti Category:Wars involving Honduras Category:Wars involving Hungary Category:Wars involving Iceland Category:Wars involving Indonesia Category:Wars involving Italy Category:Wars involving Iran Category:Wars involving Iraq Category:Wars involving Japan Category:Wars involving Laos Category:Wars involving Latvia Category:Wars involving Lebanon Category:Wars involving Liberia Category:Wars involving Lithuania Category:Wars involving Luxembourg Category:Wars involving Mexico Category:Wars involving Mongolia Category:Wars involving Montenegro Category:Wars involving Norway Category:Wars involving Nicaragua Category:Wars involving Panama Category:Wars involving Paraguay Category:Wars involving Peru Category:Wars involving Poland Category:Wars involving Romania Category:Wars involving Saudi Arabia Category:Wars involving Serbia Category:Wars involving Slovakia Category:Wars involving Slovenia Category:Wars involving South Africa Category:Wars involving Sri Lanka Category:Wars involving Syria Category:Wars involving Thailand Category:Wars involving Turkey Category:Wars involving the Dominican Republic Category:Wars involving the Netherlands Category:Wars involving the Philippines Category:Wars involving the Republic of Macedonia Category:Wars involving the Republic of China Category:Wars involving the Soviet Union Category:Wars involving the United Kingdom Category:Wars involving the United States Category:Wars involving Uruguay Category:Wars involving Venezuela Category:Wars involving Vietnam

Name	The Edge
Background	solo_singer
Birth name	David Howell Evans
Born	August 08, 1961Barking, London, England
Origin	County Dublin, Ireland
Instrument	Guitar, vocals, keyboards, piano, bass guitar
Genre	Rock, post-punk, alternative rock
Occupation	Musician, songwriter, activist
Years active	1976–present
Label	Island (1980–2006)Mercury (2006–present)
Associated acts	U2, Passengers
Url	U2.com
Notable instruments	Gibson ExplorerFender StratocasterGibson Les PaulFender TelecasterFender JaguarEpiphone CasinoGretsch Country GentlemanGretsch White FalconRickenbacker 330/12

David Howell Evans (born 8 August 1961), more widely known by his stage name The Edge (or just Edge), is a musician best known as the guitarist, keyboardist, and backing vocalist of the rock band U2. A member of the group since its inception, he has recorded 12 studio albums with the band and has released one solo record. As a guitarist, The Edge has crafted a minimalistic and textural style of playing. His use of a rhythmic delay effect yields a distinctive ambient, chiming sound that has become a signature of U2's music.

The Edge was born in England to a Welsh family, but was raised in Ireland after moving there as an infant. In 1976, at Mount Temple Comprehensive School, he formed U2 with his fellow students and his older brother Dik. Inspired by the ethos of punk rock and its basic arrangements, the group began to write its own material. They eventually became one of the most popular acts in popular music, with successful albums such as The Joshua Tree and Achtung Baby. Over the years, The Edge has experimented with various guitar effects and introduced influences from several genres of music into his own style, including American roots music, industrial music, and alternative rock. With U2, The Edge has also played keyboards, co-produced their 1993 record Zooropa, and occasionally contributed lyrics. The Edge met his second and current wife, Morleigh Steinberg, through her collaborations with the band.

As a member of U2 and as an individual, The Edge has campaigned for human rights and philanthropic causes. He co-founded Music Rising, a charity to support musicians affected by Hurricane Katrina. He has collaborated with U2 bandmate Bono on several projects, including songs for Roy Orbison and Tina Turner, and the soundtracks to the musical and the Royal Shakespeare Company London's stage adaptation of A Clockwork Orange. In 2003, Rolling Stone magazine placed him at number 24 on its list of "The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time".

Personal life

David Howell Evans was born at the Barking Maternity Hospital, Essex, England to Welsh parents Garvin and Gwenda Evans. The band accepted both of them. This band went through several incarnations before emerging as U2 in March 1978 (Dik Evans left the band just before the name change). Shortly after deciding to remain with the band, he wrote a piece of music that later became "Sunday Bloody Sunday". The couple had three daughters together: Hollie in 1984, Arran in 1985 and Blue Angel in 1989.

Music style

Guitar playing

As a guitar player, The Edge has a sound typified by a low-key playing style, a chiming, shimmering sound (thanks in part to the sound of VOX AC-30s) that is achieved with extensive use of delay effects and reverb. The feedback delay is often set to a dotted eighth note (3/16 of a measure), and the feedback gain is adjusted until a note played repeats two or three times.

On 1987's The Joshua Tree, The Edge often contributes just a few simple lead lines given depth and richness by an ever-present digital delay. For example, the introduction to "Where the Streets Have No Name" is simply a repeated six-note arpeggio, broadened by a modulated delay effect. The Edge has said that he views musical notes as "expensive", in that he prefers to play as few notes as possible. He said in 1982 of his style,

"I like a nice ringing sound on guitar, and most of my chords I find two strings and make them ring the same note, so it's almost like a 12-string sound. So for E I might play a B, E, E and B and make it ring. It works very well with the Gibson Explorer. It's funny because the bass end of the Explorer was so awful that I used to stay away from the low strings, and a lot of the chords I played were very trebly, on the first four, or even three strings. I discovered that through using this one area of the fretboard I was developing a very stylized way of doing something that someone else would play in a normal way." He said in 1982 of this early experimentation, "I suppose the first link in the chain was a visit to the local jumble sale where I purchased a guitar for a pound. That was my first instrument. It was an acoustic guitar and me and my elder brother Dik both played it, plonking away, all very rudimentary stuff, open chords and all that."

Other instruments

He has played piano and keyboards on many of the band's songs, including "I Fall Down", "October", "So Cruel", "New Year's Day", "Running to Stand Still", "Miss Sarajevo", "The Hands that Built America", and "Original of the Species" and others. He plays the organ on "Please". In live versions of "New Year's Day", "The Unforgettable Fire", "Your Blue Room", and "Moment of Surrender", he plays both the piano and guitar parts alternately. In most live versions of "Original of the Species," piano is the only instrument played during the song.

Although The Edge is the band's lead guitarist, he occasionally plays bass guitar, including the live performances of the song "40" where The Edge and bassist Adam Clayton switch instruments.

Solo recordings

In addition to his regular role within U2, The Edge has also recorded with such artists as Johnny Cash, B. B. King, Tina Turner, Ronnie Wood, Jay-Z, and Rihanna.

The Edge connected with Brian Eno and Lanois collaborator Michael Brook (the creator of the infinite guitar, which he regularly uses), working with him on the score to the film Captive (1986). From this soundtrack the song "Heroine", the vocal of which was sung by a young Sinéad O'Connor was released as a single.

He also created the theme song for Season 1 and 2 of The Batman. He and fellow U2 member, Bono, wrote the lyrics to the theme of the 1995 James Bond film GoldenEye. The Edge, along with fellow bandmate Bono, recently composed a musical adaptation of Spider-Man.

Musical equipment

on stage in Foxborough for the U2 360° Tour.]] The Edge plays electric guitar, acoustic guitar, keyboards, piano, bass guitar (on "40" and "Race Against Time") and lap steel guitar.

Compared to many lead guitarists, The Edge is known for using many more guitars during a show. According to his guitar tech Dallas Schoo, a typical lead guitarist uses four or five different guitars in one night, whereas The Edge takes 45 on the road, and uses 17 to 19 in one 2.5-hour concert. He is estimated to have more than 200 guitars in the studio.

Philanthropy

In 2005, The Edge along with Bob Ezrin and Henry Juszkiewicz co-founded Music Rising, a charity that helped provide replacement instruments for those that were lost in Hurricane Katrina. The instruments were originally only replaced for professional musicians but they soon realized the community churches and schools needed instruments as well. The charity's slogan is "Rebuilding the Gulf Region note by note" and has so far helped over a hundred musicians who were affected by Hurricane Katrina. The Edge also serves on the board of the Angiogenesis Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to improving global health by advancing angiogenesis-based medicine, diets, and lifestyle.

See also

List of people on stamps of Ireland

Timeline of U2

References

;Footnotes

;Bibliography

External links

U2.com, official U2 site

Music Rising

The Edge – Album Credits

A Study of The Edge's Guitar Delay

The Edge: 'It's all about the vision'

Food Bank For New York City public service announcement

Comment on the mathematical analysis of The Edge's guitar sound

Category:Irish male singers Category:Irish rock guitarists Category:Irish people of Welsh descent Category:People from County Dublin Category:People associated with Dalkey Category:Lead guitarists Category:Slide guitarists Category:Grammy Award winners Category:Ivor Novello Award winners Category:Golden Globe Award winning musicians Category:Backing vocalists Category:Irish Christians Category:U2 members Category:1961 births Category:Living people

Playername	Ronaldinho
Caption	Ronaldinho with Brazil
Fullname	Ronaldo de Assis Moreira
Dateofbirth	March 21, 1980
Cityofbirth	Porto Alegre
Countryofbirth	Brazil
Height
Position	Forward / Attacking midfielder
Currentclub	Flamengo
Clubnumber	10
Youthyears1	1987–1998 |youthclubs1 = Grêmio
Years1	1998–2001 |clubs1 = Grêmio |caps1 = 44 |goals1 = 21
Years2	2001–2003 |clubs2 = Paris Saint-Germain |caps2 = 55 |goals2 = 17
Years3	2003–2008 |clubs3 = Barcelona |caps3 = 145 |goals3 = 69
Years4	2008–2011 |clubs4 = Milan |caps4 = 65 |goals4 = 20
Years5	2011– |clubs5 = Flamengo |caps5 = 0 |goals5 = 0
Nationalyears1	1999– |nationalteam1 = Brazil |nationalcaps1 = 88 | nationalgoals1 = 32
Medaltemplates	}}

| pcupdate = 15 May 2010 | ntupdate = 5 April 2009 }}

Ronaldo de Assis Moreira (born 21 March 1980 in Porto Alegre), commonly known as Ronaldinho () or Ronaldinho Gaúcho, is a Brazilian footballer who plays for Flamengo and the Brazilian national team. He is a free-kick specialist and has exceptional dribbling ability.

"Ronaldinho," the diminutive and term of endearment for "Ronaldo," is accompanied in Brazilian usage by the nickname "Gaúcho," in order to distinguish him from fellow footballer and countryman Ronaldo, who was known as "Ronaldinho" in Brazil beforehand. Ronaldo simply went by his first name upon his move to Europe, thereby allowing Ronaldinho to drop the "Gaúcho" and go by the name Ronaldinho abroad.

Prior to his move to Flamengo, he played for Paris Saint-Germain, FC Barcelona and Milan. With the Spanish club, he won his first Champions League in 2006 and the Ballon d'Or in 2005. He became a Spanish citizen in January 2007.

Biography

Ronaldinho was born in the city of Porto Alegre, the state capital of Rio Grande do Sul. His mother, Dona Miguelina de Assis, is a former salesperson who studied to become a nurse. His father, João Moreira, was a shipyard worker and footballer for local club Esporte Clube Cruzeiro (not to be confused with Cruzeiro). He suffered a fatal heart attack in the family swimming pool when Ronaldinho was eight. After Ronaldinho's older brother, Roberto, signed with Grêmio, the family moved to a home in the more affluent Guarujá section of Porto Alegre, which was a gift from Grêmio to convince Roberto to stay at the club. Roberto's career was ultimately cut short by injury.

Ronaldinho's football skills began to blossom at an early age, and he was first given the nickname Ronaldinho because he was often the youngest and the smallest player in youth club matches. He developed an interest in futsal and beach football, which later expanded to organized football. His first brush with the media came at the age of thirteen, when he scored all 23 goals in a 23–0 victory against a local team. Ronaldinho was identified as a rising star at the 1997 U-17 World Championship in Egypt, in which he scored two goals on penalty kicks.

Today, Roberto acts as Ronaldinho's manager, while his sister Deisi works as his press coordinator. Ronaldinho became a father for the first time on 25 February 2005, after Brazilian dancer Janaína Mendes gave birth to their son, who was named João after Ronaldinho's late father.

Ronaldinho's 2005 Nike advertisement, where he is given a new pair of boots and then proceeds to juggle a football and repeatedly volley it against the crossbar of a goal and recover it without the ball touching the ground, went viral on YouTube, becoming the site's first video to reach one million views.

In 2010 during his vacations in Rio de Janeiro, where 50 Cent was on a concert, 50 Cent called Ronaldinho as a special guest for his concert where the Brazilian player danced with his characteristic big smile.

Club career

Early career

Ronaldinho's career began with the Grêmio youth squad. He made his senior side debut during the 1998 Copa Libertadores. In 2001, Arsenal expressed interest in signing Ronaldinho, but the move collapsed after he could not obtain a work permit because he was a non-EU player who had not played enough international matches. He considered playing on loan with Scottish Premier League side St. Mirren, which never happened due to his involvement in a fake passport scandal in Brazil. In 2001, Ronaldinho signed a five-year contract with French side Paris Saint-Germain in a €5.1 million transfer.

Paris Saint-Germain

Upon his arrival in Paris, Ronaldinho was given the number 21 shirt and inserted into a lineup that included fellow Brazilian Aloísio and midfielders Mikel Arteta and Jay-Jay Okocha. Ronaldinho made his league debut for the club on 4 August 2001 appearing as a substitute in a 1–1 draw with Auxerre. Ronaldinho spent the majority of the 2001 portion of the season alternated between the bench and starter's role. He scored his first goal for the club on 13 October in a 2–2 draw against Lyon converting the equalizing penalty in the 79th minute after having come on 10 minutes prior. After returning from the winter break, Ronaldinho went on a tear scoring a goal in four consecutive matches to open the new campaign. He recorded impressive goals against Monaco, Rennes, Lens and Lorient. On 16 March 2002, Ronaldinho recorded a double in PSG's 3–1 victory against relegation strugglers Troyes. He scored his final league goal of the season in the club's 2–0 win over Metz on 27 April.

Ronaldinho was also influential in the 2001–02 edition of the Coupe de la Ligue helping Paris Saint-Germain reach the semi-finals where they were eliminated by Bordeaux. In a Round of 16 match against Guingamp, Ronaldinho scored two second half goals in the game after having entered the match as a half-time substitute. Despite Ronaldinho's initial success with the club, the season was marred by controversy with Paris Saint-Germain manager Luis Fernández claiming that the Brazilian was too focused on the Parisian nightlife rather than football, and complained that his holidays in Brazil never ended at the scheduled times.

at NASA's Johnson Space Center.]]

With his contract expiring in 2008, Ronaldinho was offered an extension until 2014 that would have net him £85 million over nine years, but he turned it down. In September 2005, he signed a two-year extension that contained a minimum-fee release clause that allowed him to leave should a club make an offer to Barcelona of at least £85 million for him.

By the end of the 2004–05 season, Ronaldinho had started to accumulate a host of personal awards. He won the inaugural FIFPro World Player of the Year in September 2005, in addition to being included in the 2005 FIFPro World XI, and being named the 2005 European Footballer of the Year. Also that year, Ronaldinho added to his collection a second FIFA World Player of the Year with 956 points, more than triple the amount (306) of runner-up Frank Lampard. On 19 November, Ronaldinho scored twice as Barcelona defeated Real Madrid 3–0 on the road in the first leg of El Clásico. After he sealed the match with his second goal, he received a standing ovation from the Madrid fans.

Ronaldinho was chosen for the UEFA Team of the Year for the third consecutive time in January 2006, and he contributed one goal in Barcelona's elimination of Benfica in the 2005–06 Champions League quarterfinals with a 2–0 home victory. After a 1–0 semifinal aggregate win over Milan, in which Ronaldinho assisted the series' only goal by Ludovic Giuly, Barcelona progressed to the Champions League final, which they won on 17 May 2006 with a 2–1 defeat of Arsenal. Two weeks earlier, Barcelona had clinched their second straight La Liga title with a 1–0 win over Celta Vigo, giving Ronaldinho his first career double. He finished the season with a career-best 26 goals in all competitions, and was named the 2005–06 Champions League Player of the Year.

On 25 November 2006, Ronaldinho scored his 50th career league goal against Villarreal, then later scored a second time with an overhead bicycle kick. He later said to reporters that the latter was a goal he had dreamed of scoring since he was a boy. He scored once and set up two others in Barcelona's 4–0 Club World Cup win over Mexico's Club América on 14 December, but Barcelona were defeated 1–0 by Brazilian club Internacional in the final. Ronaldinho was nonetheless the recipient of the Bronze Ball Award for the competition.

The next day, Ronaldinho finished third in the running for the 2006 FIFA World Player of the Year, behind World Cup-winning captain Fabio Cannavaro and Zinedine Zidane. Ronaldinho was named among the UEFA Team of the Year for the third straight time in January 2007, receiving the highest number of votes with over 290,000 nominations. He was forced to miss a charity match on 13 March due to an injury he had picked up several days earlier in Barcelona's 3–3 El Clásico draw with Real Madrid.

He played his 200th career match for Barcelona in a league match against Osasuna on 3 February 2008. However, his 2007–08 campaign as a whole was plagued by injuries, and a muscle tear in his right leg on 3 April prematurely ended his season. On 19 May, Laporta stated that Ronaldinho needed a "new challenge," claiming that he needed a new club if he were to revive his career. Manchester City owner Thaksin Shinawatra confirmed on 6 June that he was interested in acquiring him.

Ronaldinho and Barcelona teammate Lionel Messi each captained a team of international stars in an anti-racism exhibition match in Venezuela on 28 June, which ended in a 7–7 draw. Ronaldinho finished with a pair of goals and two assists in what would be his last match as a Barcelona player. In preparation for the 2010 Joan Gamper Trophy, Ronaldinho sent an open letter to the fans and players of Barcelona, stating that his best years had been the five he spent in the Catalan club.

Milan

In July 2008, Ronaldinho turned down a £25.5 million offer from Manchester City to join Italian Serie A giants Milan on a three-year contract thought to be worth around £5.1 million (€6.5 million) a year, for a fee in the region of £14.5 million (€18.5 million). With the number 10 already occupied by teammate Clarence Seedorf, he selected 80 as his jersey number, because 1980 was his birth year.

Ronaldinho scored his first goal for Milan in a 1–0 derby victory over rival Internazionale on 28 September 2008. His first brace was in a 3–0 win over Sampdoria on 19 October 2008. He scored a 93rd-minute match-winner against Braga in the UEFA Cup group stage on November 6.

He finished his first season at Milan with 10 goals from 32 appearances in all competitions. After a good start to the season, Ronaldinho struggled with fitness, and was often played from the bench to end a disappointing first season for Milan.

His second season did not begin on a high note, although he started nearly every match before finding himself on the bench again. After a while, Ronaldinho rediscovered his form and has been arguably Milan's best player in the season. He has changed his role from an attacking midfielder to a left winger, a more familiar role.

On 10 January 2010, Ronaldinho scored two goals against Juventus in an away match, sealing a 3–0 victory for the Rossoneri. In the following match against Siena on 17 January 2010, Ronaldinho scored his first hat-trick for Milan when he converted a spot kick, scored with a header from a corner and finished with a wonder goal from 30 yards out.

On 16 February, Ronaldinho played his first match against Manchester United in a Champions League game. He scored early in the game to give Milan the lead. Milan ended up losing the game 3–2, with a goal from Paul Scholes and two goals from Wayne Rooney.

As of 13 April 2010, Ronaldinho is the assist leader of Serie A with a total of 13 assists. On a less positive note, Ronaldinho has so far missed three penalties in the 2009–10 season, to add to one botched kick the previous season. Ronaldinho ended the season scoring two goals against Juventus, Luca Antonini opened the scoring and Milan went on to win 3–0. It was Leonardo's last game in charge.

Flamengo

Ronaldinho joined Flamengo on 11 January 2011 with a contract ending in 2014 after being heavily linked with moves to Blackburn Rovers, Palmeiras and and his old club Grêmio.

International career

Ronaldinho is one of few Brazilian players to have played at every international age level. He was part of the first Brazilian team to win the FIFA U-17 World Championship in 1997, in which his first goal was a penalty against Austria in the first group match, which Brazil won 7–0. Ronaldinho finished with two goals and was awarded the Bronze Ball award as Brazil scored a total of twenty-one goals while only conceding two.

1999 was a busy year for Ronaldinho in terms of international play. He took part in the 1999 FIFA World Youth Championship, scoring his first goal in Brazil's last group match. In the round of sixteen, he scored two first-half goals in a 4–0 win over Croatia, and finished with three goals as Brazil were eliminated by Uruguay in the quarterfinals. On 26 June, three days before the start of the 1999 Copa América, he earned his first cap for Brazil in a 3–0 win over Latvia, and he scored one goal during Brazil's victorious Copa América campaign. One week after the conclusion of the Copa América, he was called up for the 1999 Confederations Cup, in which he scored in every match except the final, including a hat-trick in an 8–2 semifinal rout of Saudi Arabia. Ronaldinho did not score in the final, which Brazil lost 4–3 to Mexico. He won the Golden Ball award for the best player in tournament as well as the Golden Boot award for the tournament top-scorer.

In 2000, Ronaldinho participated in Summer Olympics in Sydney, Australia with Brazil U-23 team. Earlier that year, Ronaldinho led Brazil to win the Pre-Olympic Tournament, scoring nine goals in seven matches. However in the Olympics, Brazil was eliminated in the quarterfinal by Cameroon, who later won the gold medal. Ronaldinho appeared four times and scored only one goal, which came in the quarterfinal defeat by Cameroon.

Ronaldinho participated in his first World Cup in 2002, as part of a formidable offensive unit with Ronaldo and Rivaldo, who were also on the 1999 Copa América winning squad. He appeared in five matches and scored two goals, as well as contributing several important assists. His first goal came in the group stage match against China, which Brazil won 4–0. The second goal was a match-winning goal in the quarterfinal against England on 21 June. In the 50th minute, Ronaldinho took a free-kick from 35 metres, beating England goalkeeper David Seaman to give Brazil a 2–1 lead. However, seven minutes later, he was sent-off for a foul on England defender Danny Mills. He was suspended for the semifinal, but returned to Brazil's starting lineup for the 2–0 victory over Germany in the final as Brazil won the World Cup for the fifth time.

Ronaldinho's next international tournament was 2003 Confederations Cup. However, Ronaldinho did not manage to score any goals during the tournament as Brazil performed poorly and was eliminated in the group stage. The following year, he was left out from Brazil's 2004 Copa América squad, as coach Carlos Alberto Parreira decided to rest his stars and used a largely reserve squad.

He was the capitain of Brazil to its second Confederations Cup title in 2005, and was named Man of the Match in a 4–1 victory over archrivals Argentina in the final on 29 June. Ronaldinho scored three goals in the tournament and is tied with Cuauhtémoc Blanco as the tournament's all-time scorer with nine goals.

.]] Ronaldinho started in all five of Brazil's 2006 World Cup finals matches as part of a much-publicized "magic quartet" of offensive players, alongside Adriano, Ronaldo, and Kaká. However, the foursome finished with only five goals as Brazil disappointed as a whole in the tournament. Ronaldinho turned in his worst collective performance in his international career, going scoreless with only one assist, which was for Gilberto's goal in a 4–1 group stage victory over Japan. He was a non-factor as Brazil was eliminated by France 1–0 in the quarter-finals, in which Brazil had only one shot on goal for the entire match. The team was harshly criticized by Brazilian fans and media following their return home. On 3 July, two days after Brazil's elimination, vandals immolated and destroyed a 7.5-meter (23-foot) tall fiberglass and resin statue of Ronaldinho in Chapecó. The statue had been erected in 2004 to celebrate his first FIFA World Player of the Year award. That same day, Ronaldinho, joined by Adriano, returned to Barcelona and held a party at his home, which was continued into the early morning hours at a nightclub. This aggravated the hard feelings of many Brazilian fans, who believed that they were betrayed by the lack of effort from the squad.

On 24 March 2007, he scored twice in a 4–0 win over Chile, which marked his first goal since the 2005 Confederations Cup final and thus ended a scoreless streak that lasted nearly two years. He was not called up for the 2007 Copa América after asking to be excused from the tournament due to tiredness. On 18 October, he was controversially benched by Barcelona after he was late returning to Spain following Brazil's 5–0 friendly win over Ecuador. He and several Brazil players celebrated the win by partying through the night at a posh Rio de Janeiro nightclub. Ronaldinho left at 11 a.m. the next morning, allegedly in the trunk of a car in order to avoid the media.

On 7 July 2008, Ronaldinho was named to Brazil's 2008 Summer Olympics squad as one of the over-age players. Barcelona initially blocked the move because of his then-upcoming Champions League commitments with the club, but the decision was later nullified following Ronaldinho's transfer to Milan, who in turn permitted him to make the trip to Beijing. Ronaldinho scored his only two goals in a decisive 5–0 victory over New Zealand before Brazil were beaten by Argentina in the semifinal. Brazil finished with the bronze medal after defeating Belgium 3–0 in the bronze medal match.

Despite having returned to good form and being named as a member of the 30-man provisional squad that was submitted to FIFA on 11 May 2010, he was not named in Coach Dunga's final squad of 23 for the Brazilian squad in South Africa for the 2010 World Cup despite his deep desire to do so. Critics have claimed that the exclusion of players such as Ronaldinho, Alexandre Pato, Adriano and Ronaldo signals a move away from the classic Brazilian attacking "Joga Bonito" style of play.

Career statistics

International career

{| class="wikitable collapsible collapsed" style="font-size:90%" |- !colspan="7"|International appearances and goals |- ! # !! Date !! Venue !! Opponent !! Result !! Goal !! Competition |- !colspan="7"|1999 |- | 1. || June 26, 1999 || Curitiba, Brazil || || 3 – 0 || 0 || Friendly |- | 2. || June 30, 1999 || Ciudad del Este, Paraguay || || 7 – 0 || 1 || Copa América 1999 |- | 3. || July 3, 1999 || Ciudad del Este, Paraguay || || 2 – 1 || 0 || Copa América 1999 |- | 4. || July 6, 1999 || Ciudad del Este, Paraguay || || 1 – 0 || 0 || Copa América 1999 |- | 5. || July 15, 1999 || Ciudad del Este, Paraguay || || 2 – 0 || 0 || Copa América 1999 |- | 6. || July 24, 1999 || Guadalajara, Mexico || || 4 – 0 || 1 || 1999 FIFA Confederations Cup |- | 7. || July 28, 1999 || Guadalajara, Mexico || || 1 – 0 || 1 || 1999 FIFA Confederations Cup |- | 8. || July 30, 1999 || Guadalajara, Mexico || || 2 – 0 || 1 || 1999 FIFA Confederations Cup |- | 9. || August 1, 1999 || Guadalajara, Mexico || || 8 – 2 || 3 || 1999 FIFA Confederations Cup |- | 10. || August 4, 1999 || Mexico City, Mexico || || 3 – 4 || 0 || 1999 FIFA Confederations Cup |- | 11. || September 4, 1999 || Buenos Aires, Argentina || || 0 – 2 || 0 || Friendly |- | 12. || September 7, 1999 || Porto Alegre, Brazil || || 4 – 2 || 0 || Friendly |- | 13. || October 9, 1999 || Amsterdam, Netherlands || || 2 – 2 || 0 || Friendly |- style="background:#cfc;" | || November 14, 1999 || Sydney, Australia || || 2 – 0 || 0 || Friendly (Brazil U-23/Olympic) |- style="background:#cfc;" | || November 17, 1999 || Melbourne, Australia || || 2 – 2 || 1 || Friendly (Brazil U-23/Olympic) |- style="background:#cfc;" | || December 10, 1999 || Cuiabá, Brazil || || 3 – 0 || 0 || Friendly (Brazil U-23/Olympic) |- style="background:#cfc;" | || December 14, 1999 || Campo Grande, Brazil || || 3 – 3 || 0 || Friendly (Brazil U-23/Olympic) |- !colspan="7"|2000 |- style="background:#cfc;" | || January 12, 2000 || Florianópolis, Brazil || || 7 – 0 || 2 || Friendly (Brazil U-23/Olympic) |- style="background:#cfc;" | || January 15, 2000 || Maringá, Brazil || || 4 – 1 || 0 || Friendly (Brazil U-23/Olympic) |- style="background:#cfc;" | || January 19, 2000 || Londrina, Brazil || || 1 – 1 || 0 || 2000 Olympic Games qualification (Brazil U-23/Olympic) |- style="background:#cfc;" | || January 23, 2000 || Londrina, Brazil || || 2 – 0 || 1 || 2000 Olympic Games qualification (Brazil U-23/Olympic) |- style="background:#cfc;" | || January 26, 2000 || Londrina, Brazil || || 3 – 0 || 2 || 2000 Olympic Games qualification (Brazil U-23/Olympic) |- style="background:#cfc;" | || January 30, 2000 || Londrina, Brazil || || 9 – 0 || 2 || 2000 Olympic Games qualification (Brazil U-23/Olympic) |- style="background:#cfc;" | || February 2, 2000 || Curitiba, Brazil || || 4 – 2 || 3 || 2000 Olympic Games qualification (Brazil U-23/Olympic) |- style="background:#cfc;" | || February 4, 2000 || Curitiba, Brazil || || 3 – 1 || 1 || 2000 Olympic Games qualification (Brazil U-23/Olympic) |- style="background:#cfc;" | || February 6, 2000 || Curitiba, Brazil || || 2 – 2 || 0 || 2000 Olympic Games qualification (Brazil U-23/Olympic) |- | 14. || February 23, 2000 || Bangkok, Thailand || || 7 – 0 || 1 || 2002 FIFA World Cup qualification |- | 15. || March 28, 2000 || Bogotá, Colombia || || 0 – 0 || 0 || 2002 FIFA World Cup qualification |- | 16. || June 28, 2000 || Rio de Janeiro, Brazil || || 1 – 1 || 0 || 2002 FIFA World Cup qualification |- | 17. || July 26, 2000 || São Paulo, Brazil || || 3 – 1 || 0 || 2002 FIFA World Cup qualification |- style="background:#cfc;" | || August 9, 2000 || Ovalle, Chile || || 5 – 3 || 2 || Friendly (Brazil U-23/Olympic) |- style="background:#cfc;" | || August 12, 2000 || Florianópolis, Brazil || || 3 – 0 || 0 || Friendly (Brazil U-23/Olympic) |- | 18. || September 3, 2000 || Rio de Janeiro, Brazil || || 5 – 0 || 0 || 2002 FIFA World Cup qualification |- style="background:#cfc;" | || September 14, 2008 || Brisbane, Australia || || 3 – 1 || 0 || 2000 Olympic Games (Brazil U-23/Olympic) |- style="background:#cfc;" | || September 17, 2008 || Brisbane, Australia || || 1 – 3 || 0 || 2000 Olympic Games (Brazil U-23/Olympic) |- style="background:#cfc;" | || September 20, 2008 || Brisbane, Australia || || 1 – 0 || 0 || 2000 Olympic Games (Brazil U-23/Olympic) |- style="background:#cfc;" | || September 23, 2008 || Brisbane, Australia || || 1 – 2 || 1 || 2000 Olympic Games (Brazil U-23/Olympic) |- !colspan="7"|2001 |- | 19. || March 3, 2001 || Pasadena, United States || || 2 – 1 || 1 || Friendly |- | 20. || March 7, 2001 || Guadalajara, Mexico || || 3 – 3 || 0 || Friendly |- | 21. || March 28, 2001 || Quito, Ecuador || || 0 – 1 || 0 || 2002 FIFA World Cup qualification |- !colspan="7"|2001–2002 |- | 22. || November 14, 2001 || São Luís, Brazil || || 3 – 0 || 0 || 2002 FIFA World Cup qualification |- | 23. || March 27, 2002 || Fortaleza, Brazil || || 1 – 0 || 0 || Friendly |- | 24. || April 17, 2002 || Lisbon, Portugal || || 1 – 1 || 1 || Friendly |- style="background:#8fcfdf;" | || May 18, 2002 || Barcelona, Spain || Catalonia || 3 – 1 || 2 || Unofficial friendly |- | 25. || May 25, 2002 || Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia || || 4 – 1 || 0 || Friendly |- | 26. || June 3, 2002 || Ulsan, South Korea || || 2 – 1 || 0 || 2002 FIFA World Cup |- | 27. || June 8, 2002 || Seogwipo, South Korea || || 4 – 0 || 1 || 2002 FIFA World Cup |- | 28. || June 17, 2002 || Kobe, Japan || || 2 – 0 || 0 || 2002 FIFA World Cup |- | 29. || June 21, 2002 || Fukuroi, Japan || || 2 – 1 || 1 || 2002 FIFA World Cup |- | 30. || June 30, 2002 || Yokohama, Japan || || 2 – 0 || 0 || 2002 FIFA World Cup |- !colspan="7"|2002–2003 |- | 31. || August 21, 2002 || Fortaleza, Brazil || || 0 – 1 || 0 || Friendly |- | 32. || November 20, 2002 || Seoul, South Korea || || 3 – 2 || 1 || Friendly |- | 33. || February 12, 2003 || Guangzhou, China PR || || 0 – 0 || 0 || Friendly |- | 34. || March 29, 2003 || Porto, Portugal || || 1 – 2 || 1 || Friendly |- | 35. || April 30, 2003 || Guadalajara, Mexico || || 0 – 0 || 0 || Friendly |- | 36. || June 11, 2003 || Abuja, Nigeria || || 3 – 0 || 0 || Friendly |- | 37. || June 19, 2003 || Saint-Denis, France || || 0 – 1 || 0 || 2003 FIFA Confederations Cup |- | 38. || June 21, 2003 || Lyon, France || || 1 –0 || 0 || 2003 FIFA Confederations Cup |- | 39. || June 23, 2003 || Saint-Étienne, France || || 2 – 2 || 0 || 2003 FIFA Confederations Cup |- !colspan="7"|2003–2004 |- | 40. || September 10, 2003 || Manaus, Brazil || || 1 – 0 || 1 || 2006 FIFA World Cup qualification |- | 41. || February 18, 2004 || Dublin, Ireland || || 0 – 0 || 0 || Friendly |- | 42. || March 31, 2004 || Asunción, Paraguay || || 0 – 0 || 0 || 2006 FIFA World Cup qualification |- | 43. || April 28, 2004 || Budapest, Hungary || || 4 – 1 || 1 || Friendly |- | 44. || May 20, 2004 || Saint-Denis, France || || 0 – 0 || 0 || Friendly |- style="background:#8fcfdf;" | || May 25, 2004 || Barcelona, Spain || Catalonia || 5 – 2 || 0 || Unofficial friendly |- !colspan="7"|2004–2005 |- | 45. || August 18, 2004 || Port-au-Prince, Haiti || || 6 – 0 || 3 || Friendly |- | 46. || September 5, 2004 || São Paulo, Brazil || || 3 – 1 || 1 || 2006 FIFA World Cup qualification |- | 47. || September 8, 2004 || Berlin, Germany || || 1 – 1 || 1 || Friendly |- | 48. || October 9, 2004 || Maracaibo, Venezuela || || 5 – 2 || 0 || 2006 FIFA World Cup qualification |- | 49. || October 13, 2004 || Maceió, Brazil || || 0 – 0 || 0 || 2006 FIFA World Cup qualification |- | 50. || November 17, 2004 || Quito, Ecuador || || 0 – 1 || 0 || 2006 FIFA World Cup qualification |- | 51. || February 9, 2005 || Hong Kong || || 7 – 1 || 1 || Friendly |- | 52. || March 27, 2005 || Goiânia, Brazil || || 1 – 0 || 0 || 2006 FIFA World Cup qualification |- | 53. || March 30, 2005 || Montevideo, Uruguay || || 1 – 1 || 0 || 2006 FIFA World Cup qualification |- | 54. || June 5, 2005 || Porto Alegre, Brazil || || 4 – 1 || 2 || 2006 FIFA World Cup qualification |- | 55. || June 8, 2005 || Buenos Aires, Argentina || || 1 – 3 || 0 || 2006 FIFA World Cup qualification |- | 56. || June 16, 2005 || Leipzig, Germany || || 3 – 0 || 0 || 2005 FIFA Confederations Cup |- | 57. || June 19, 2005 || Hanover, Germany || || 0 – 1 || 0 || 2005 FIFA Confederations Cup |- | 58. || June 22, 2005 || Cologne, Germany || || 2 – 2 || 1 || 2005 FIFA Confederations Cup |- | 59. || June 25, 2005 || Nuremberg, Germany || || 3 – 2 || 1 || 2005 FIFA Confederations Cup |- | 60. || June 29, 2005 || Frankfurt, Germany || || 4 – 1 || 1 || 2005 FIFA Confederations Cup |- !colspan="7"|2005–2006 |- style="background:#8fcfdf;" | || September 6, 2005 || Seville, Spain || Sevilla FC || 1 – 1 || 0 || Unofficial friendly |- | 61. || October 12, 2005 || Belém, Brazil || || 3 – 0 || 0 || 2006 FIFA World Cup qualification |- | 62. || November 12, 2005 || Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates || || 8 – 0 || 0 || Friendly |- style="background:#8fcfdf;" | || May 30, 2006 || Basel, Switzerland || FC Lucerne Selection || 8 – 0 || 0 || Unofficial friendly |- | 63. || June 4, 2006 || Geneva, Switzerland || || 4 – 0 || 0 || Friendly |- | 64. || June 13, 2006 || Berlin, Germany || || 1 – 0 || 0 || 2006 FIFA World Cup |- | 65. || June 18, 2006 || Munich, Germany || || 2 – 0 || 0 || 2006 FIFA World Cup |- | 66. || June 22, 2006 || Dortmund, Germany || || 4 – 1 || 0 || 2006 FIFA World Cup |- | 67. || June 27, 2006 || Dortmund, Germany || || 3 – 0 || 0 || 2006 FIFA World Cup |- | 68. || July 1, 2006 || Frankfurt, Germany || || 0 – 1 || 0 || 2006 FIFA World Cup |- !colspan="7"|2006–2007 |- | 69. || September 5, 2006 || London, England || || 2 – 0 || 0 || Friendly |- style="background:#8fcfdf;" | || October 7, 2006 || Kuwait City, Kuwait || Al Kuwait Selection || 4 – 0 || 0 || Unofficial friendly |- | 70. || October 10, 2006 || Stockholm, Sweden || || 2 – 1 || 0 || Friendly |- | 71. || November 15, 2006 || Basel, Switzerland || || 2 – 1 || 0 || Friendly |- | 72. || March 24, 2007 || Gothenburg, Sweden || || 4 – 0 || 2 || Friendly |- | 73. || March 27, 2007 || Stockholm, Sweden || || 1 – 0 || 0 || Friendly |- | 74. || June 1, 2007 || London, England || || 1 – 1 || 0 || Friendly |- | 75. || June 5, 2007 || Dortmund, Germany || || 0 – 0 || 0 || Friendly |- !colspan="7"|2007–2008 |- | 76. || August 22, 2007 || Montpellier, France || || 2 – 0 || 1 || Friendly |- | 77. || September 9, 2007 || Chicago, United States || || 4 – 2 || 1 || Friendly |- | 78. || September 12, 2007 || Boston, United States || || 3 – 1 || 0 || Friendly |- | 79. || October 14, 2007 || Bogotá, Colombia || || 0 – 0 || 0 || 2010 FIFA World Cup qualification |- | 80. || October 17, 2007 || Rio de Janeiro, Brazil || || 5 – 0 || 1 || 2010 FIFA World Cup qualification |- | 81. || November 18, 2007 || Lima, Peru || || 1 – 1 || 0 || 2010 FIFA World Cup qualification |- | 82. || November 21, 2007 || São Paulo, Brazil || || 2 – 1 || 0 || 2010 FIFA World Cup qualification |- !colspan="7"|2008–2009 |- style="background:#cfc;" | || July 28, 2008 || Singapore || || 3 – 0 || 1 || Friendly (Brazil U-23/Olympic) |- style="background:#cfc;" | || August 1, 2008 || Hanoi, Vietnam || || 3 – 0 || 0 || Friendly (Brazil U-23/Olympic) |- style="background:#cfc;" | || August 7, 2008 || Shenyang, China PR || || 1 – 0 || 0 || 2008 Olympic Games (Brazil U-23/Olympic) |- style="background:#cfc;" | || August 10, 2008 || Shenyang, China PR || || 5 – 0 || 2 || 2008 Olympic Games (Brazil U-23/Olympic) |- style="background:#cfc;" | || August 13, 2008 || Qinhuangdao, China PR || || 3 – 0 || 0 || 2008 Olympic Games (Brazil U-23/Olympic) |- style="background:#cfc;" | || August 16, 2008 || Shenyang, China PR || || 2 – 0 || 0 || 2008 Olympic Games (Brazil U-23/Olympic) |- style="background:#cfc;" | || August 19, 2008 || Beijing, China PR || || 0 – 3 || 0 || 2008 Olympic Games (Brazil U-23/Olympic) |- style="background:#cfc;" | || August 22, 2008 || Shanghai, China PR || || 3 – 0 || 0 || 2008 Olympic Games (Brazil U-23/Olympic) |- | 83. || September 7, 2008 || Santiago, Chile || || 3 – 0 || 0 || 2010 FIFA World Cup qualification |- | 84. || September 10, 2008 || Rio de Janeiro, Brazil || || 0 – 0 || 0 || 2010 FIFA World Cup qualification |- | 85. || February 10, 2009 || London, England || || 2 – 0 || 0 || Friendly |- | 86. || March 29, 2009 || Quito, Ecuador || || 1 – 1 || 0 || 2010 FIFA World Cup qualification |- | 87. || April 1, 2009 || Porto Alegre, Brazil || || 3 – 0 || 0 || 2010 FIFA World Cup qualification |- !colspan="7"|2010–2011 |- | 88. || November 17, 2010 || Doha, Qatar || || 0 – 1 || 0 || Friendly |}

Honours

Club

;Grêmio

South Cup: 1999

Rio Grande do Sul State Championship: 1999

;Paris Saint-Germain

UEFA Intertoto Cup: 2001

;Barcelona

La Liga (2): 2004–05, 2005–06

Supercopa de España (2): 2005, 2006

UEFA Champions League (1): 2005–06

International

;Brazil U-17

FIFA U-17 World Cup (1): 1997

;Brazil

Copa América (1): 1999

FIFA World Cup (1): 2002

FIFA Confederations Cup (1): 2005

Individual

FIFA Confederations Cup Golden Ball: 1999

FIFA Confederations Cup Golden Shoe: 1999

Rio Grande do Sul State Championship Top Scorer: 1999

FIFA World Cup All-Star Team: 2002

FIFA 100

Don Balón Award (2): 2003-04, 2005–06

EFE Trophy (1): 2004

FIFA World Player of the Year (2): 2004, 2005

UEFA Club Best Forward (1): 2004-05

European Footballer of the Year (1): 2005

FIFPro World Player of the Year (2): 2005, 2006

UEFA Club Footballer of the Year (1): 2005-06

UEFA Team of the Year (3): 2003-04, 2004–05, 2005–06

FIFPro World XI (3): 2004-05, 2005–06, 2006–07

Golden Foot (1): 2009

References

External links

Tactical Profile - Football-Lineups.com

European Champions Cup/UEFA Champions League Winning Squads

Ronaldinho Gaúcho Official Website

Ronaldinho profile at FC Barcelona website

Ronaldinho profile at AC Milan website

Ronaldinho profile at FIFA website

FootballDatabase career stats

Ronaldinho profile at BBC Sport website

Ronaldinho career stats at Futpédia

Category:1980 births Category:Living people Category:People from Porto Alegre Category:1999 Copa América players Category:1999 FIFA Confederations Cup players Category:2002 FIFA World Cup players Category:2003 FIFA Confederations Cup players Category:2005 FIFA Confederations Cup players Category:2006 FIFA World Cup players Category:Brazilian footballers Category:Brazilian people of Black African descent Category:Brazil international footballers Category:Brazilian expatriate footballers Category:Brazilian expatriates in France Category:Brazilian expatriates in Spain Category:Expatriate footballers in France Category:Expatriate footballers in Spain Category:Expatriate footballers in Italy Category:European Footballer of the Year winners Category:FC Barcelona footballers Category:FIFA 100 Category:FIFA Confederations Cup-winning players Category:FIFA World Cup-winning players Category:FIFA World Player of the Year winners Category:Association football forwards Category:Footballers at the 2000 Summer Olympics Category:Clube de Regatas do Flamengo players Category:Grêmio Foot-Ball Porto Alegrense players Category:La Liga footballers Category:People with acquired Spanish citizenship Category:Naturalised citizens of Spain Category:Spanish people of Brazilian descent Category:Olympic footballers of Brazil Category:Paris Saint-Germain F.C. players Category:A.C. Milan players Category:Footballers at the 2008 Summer Olympics Category:Olympic bronze medalists for Brazil Category:Serie A footballers Category:Ligue 1 players

Name	Peter Schiff
School tradition	Austrian School
Color	firebrick
Image name	SchiffSpeaking.png
Birth date	March 23, 1963
Nationality	United States
Field	Financial Economics
Religion	Jewish
Alma mater	U.C. Berkeley (B.B.A.), 1987 Alan Greenspan, Ben Bernanke, Paul Krugman, Christopher Dodd, Barack Obama,
Signature

Peter David Schiff (; born March 23, 1963) is an American investment broker, author, financial commentator, and was a candidate in the 2010 Republican primary candidate for the United States Senate. and CEO of Euro Pacific Precious Metals, LLC, a gold and silver dealer based in New York City. He frequently appears as a guest on CNBC, Fox News, and Bloomberg Television and is often quoted in major financial publications and is a frequent guest on internet radio as well as the host of the former podcast Wall Street Unspun, which is now broadcast on terrestrial radio and known as The Peter Schiff Show. Schiff graduated from the University of California, Berkeley in 1987 with a Bachelor's degree in finance and accounting. In 1996 Schiff and a partner acquired a small brokerage firm that had been founded in 1980, reincorporated it in California and renamed it Euro Pacific Capital. The company today has more than 15,000 clients and six offices nationwide, with its headquarters in Westport, Connecticut.

According to a 2005 article in The Advocate of Stamford, Connecticut Schiff relocated the firm to Darien, Connecticut to find brokers "who think like him". The New York Metropolitan Area, Schiff says, has the biggest concentration of brokers in the country, making it easier to recruit employees. The company has offices in Newport Beach, California as well as in Scottsdale, Arizona, Palm Beach, Florida, Los Angeles and New York. Euro Pacific Capital also holds the exclusive rights to broker some Perth Mint gold products in the United States.

Economic forecasting

Schiff attributes his economic forecasts to an understanding of the Austrian School, a school of economic thought generally categorized as heterodox (or non-mainstream). Schiff voices strong support for the Austrian School, and says it was first introduced to him by his father, Irwin Schiff.

U.S. bear market

In his 2007 book, Crash Proof, Schiff writes that the current United States economic policies are fundamentally unsound, and predicts that in the future the United States dollar will lose much of its value. As a remedy Schiff favors increased personal savings and production which he says will stimulate economic growth. Schiff cites the U.S.'s low personal savings rate as one of the causes of the its transformation from the world's largest creditor nation in the 1970s to the largest debtor nation in the year 2000. Schiff attributes the low savings rate to higher inflation and the artificially low interest rates set by the Federal Reserve.

In a 2002 interview with Southland Today, Schiff predicted that the economic downturn triggered by the bursting of the stock market bubble would lead to a bear market likely to last "another 5 to 10 years." until reversing course in 2008, when the Dow, NASDAQ, and S&P; 500 began a decline to less than half of their peak 2008 values, followed in 2009 by the Dow climbing 61% from its low point over the following year. After interviewing Schiff in 2009, journalist and finance author Eric Tyson, referenced various Schiff predictions during the 2000s and stated that "On all of these counts, Schiff wasn't just wrong but ended up being hugely wrong." Schiff later released a video stating that, "When I gave that interview in 2002, I had no way of knowing how irresponsible the Fed was going to be ... But I recognized that early: back in 2003 and 2004 I changed my forecast ... if you look at what happened to the Dow in terms of gold [and not U.S. dollars], my forecast was extremely accurate." On December 31, 2006 in debate on Fox News, Schiff forecast that "what's going to happen in 2007" is that "real estate prices are going to come crashing back down to Earth". to indeed be contributing factors to the housing crisis of 2007-2009. On December 13, 2007 in a Bloomberg interview on the show Open Exchange, Schiff further added that he felt that the crisis would extend to the credit card lending industry. Following this observation, it was soon reported on December 23, 2007 by the Associated Press that "The value of credit card accounts at least 30 days late jumped 26 percent to $17.3 billion in October from a year earlier at 17 large credit card trusts examined by the AP... At the same time, defaults -- when lenders essentially give up hope of ever being repaid and write off the debt -- rose 18 percent to almost $961 million in October, according to filings made by the trusts with the Securities and Exchange Commission."

Since 2007, Schiff has stated many times that if the government doesn't change course there will be hyperinflation in the US. Schiff is one of a minority of economists credited with accurately predicting the financial crisis of 2007–2010 while "nearly all [macroeconomists] failed to foresee the recession despite plenty of warning signs". In his book Crash Proof, he described several aspects of the U.S. economy that would lead to a recession. The video consists of a compilation of clips of his many appearances on various financial news programs from networks including CNBC, Fox News, MSNBC and Bloomberg, most of which took place from 2005 to 2007. In the segments Schiff explains specifically the fundamental problems he saw with the United States economy at that time. Schiff's warnings of a coming economic collapse earned him the moniker "Dr. Doom." and in late 2008, he predicted the automotive industry crisis and the crisis in the banking and financial markets. Schiff does weekly video blogs on youtube which are closely followed by over 30,000 subscribers. His videos can usually receive 45,000 views within a week's time. In addition, he does a weekly radio show that is streamed on the web. Due to his extreme popularity and fans calling for more airtime in late 2010 early 2011 Schiff will begin doing a daily radio program in Connecticut for 2–3 hours with plans to syndicate it nationwide.

Investment advice

Despite predictions regarding the housing bubble and automotive industry difficulties coming to fruition, as early as 2009 Schiff was receiving criticism due to the performance of some of his client's accounts in 2008, as well as controversies over the predictions themselves. In January 2009, economic blogger and investment adviser Michael Shedlock reported, "I have talked with many who claim they have invested with Schiff and are down anywhere from 40% to 70% in 2008." Other criticisms followed, including the aforementioned Eric Tyson post

The Director of Communications at Schiff's investment firm responded to the original Shedlock piece by saying, "While it is true, that our accounts have suffered badly in 2008, a fact that we have never disputed or ran from, [Shedlock's] estimates for the size our of typical client losses are exaggerated and unfair." Schiff personally responded to Shedlock's criticism by saying, "to examine the effectiveness of my investment strategy immediately following a major correction by looking only at those accounts who adopted the strategy at the previous peak is unfair and distortive" and called Shedlock's blog entry "nothing more than an overt advertisement (and a highly deceptive one at that) to use my popularity to advance his career," adding that losses were felt mostly by recent clients and not by others.

Schiff responded similarly to criticisms made by Wade Slome of Sidoxia Capital Management, LLC. in a September 2009 blog entry entitled, "The Emperor Schiff Has No Clothes." Schiff stated not only were the losses suffered by his clients in 2008 highly exaggerated, but also that most of those losses have already been recouped, stating that many who where down then are now up, and most long-term clients were never down at all, but merely temporarily lost some of the profits they had earned over the years. The Wall Street Journal also published a letter written by Schiff in response to his critics saying: "My central investing premise, a weakening dollar and safety in gold, commodities and foreign stocks, didn't materialize in 2008. But all the ingredients were (and remain) present for those movements to occur. Over the past year, market reactions that I didn't foresee—massive global deleveraging, a knee-jerk 'flight to quality' into U.S. Treasuries and a sharp counter trend rally in the U.S. dollar—have kept the scenario from playing out."

In a November 2009 videoblog, Schiff said that five stocks he picked for Fortune Magazine in January 2009 had gained a total of 360%.

In a March 2009 speech Schiff said that it would be impossible for the U.S. debt to China to be repaid unless the U.S. dollar's value is substantially diluted through inflation.

Gold predictions

In September 2009 Schiff said that "I would not be surprised to see [gold] at $5,000 over the next several years" and that the 2009 stock market rally was a "bear market rally".

Political career

Schiff was an economic adviser to Ron Paul's 2008 presidential campaign. In support of Paul's economic revitalization plan, he said: "We need a plan that stimulates savings and production, not more of the reckless borrowing and consumption that got us into this mess in the first place. Ron Paul's plan is the only one that amounts to a step in the right direction. If you want meaningful change—for the better that is—Ron Paul is the only candidate capable of delivering it."

In 2008, Schiff also endorsed Murray Sabrin for the U.S. Senate seat in New Jersey.

In an interview in February 2009, Schiff's position was summarized as a nonpartisan critique of American policymakers, comparing former presidents George W. Bush to Herbert Hoover and President Barack Obama to former president Franklin D. Roosevelt, with neither of the more recent incumbents comparing favorably to the earlier ones.

Schiff supports the reduction of government economic regulation, and is concerned that President Obama's administration may increase such regulation.

Schiff says that the current economic crisis provides an opportunity to transition from borrowing and spending, to saving and producing. Schiff is critical of the U.S. government's efforts to "ease the pain" with economic stimulus packages and bailouts. According to Schiff, the U.S. government's approach of replacing "legitimate savings with a printing press" could result in hyperinflation.

2010 U.S. Senate campaign

In December 2008, Connecticut citizens created a website encouraging Schiff to campaign against the incumbent Senator Christopher Dodd. Approximately 5,000 people made campaign contributions using the web site. In a May 2009 video blog, Schiff said that he was seriously considering a run for the senate and when questioned by a Washington Post reporter, he said the chance of him entering politics was “better than 50-50". In June 2009 Schiff commissioned a poll of likely voters which indicated that he trailed Dodd in popularity by four percentage points. On July 9, 2009, Schiff launched an exploratory committee and an official campaign website. Schiff officially announced his candidacy for the Republican nomination on September 17, 2009, during the MSNBC Morning Joe show. By October 2009 Schiff had received more than 10,000 telephone calls and letters

In the Republican primary, held on August 10, 2010, Schiff lost the nomination to Linda McMahon.

The results were:

49% Linda McMahon

28% Rob Simmons

23% Peter Schiff

Ultimately, the election was won by the Democratic Party primary winner, Richard Blumenthal.

Books

Peter Schiff is the author of five books published by John Wiley & Sons. His book, Crash Proof 2.0, appeared on both the New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller lists.

Crash Proof: How to Profit from the Coming Economic Collapse, February 2007, ISBN 978-0-470-04360-8 1

The Little Book of Bull Moves in Bear Markets: How to Keep your Portfolio Up When the Market is Down, 2008, ISBN 978-0-470-38378-0 2

Crash Proof 2.0: How to Profit From the Economic Collapse, 2nd Edition, September 2009, ISBN 978-0-470-47453-2 3

The Little Book of Bull Moves, Updated and Expanded: How to Keep Your Portfolio Up When the Market Is Up, Down, Or Sideways, 2010, ISBN 0470643994 4

How an Economy Grows and Why It Crashes, 2010, ISBN 978-0-470-52670-5 5

Notes

References

External links

Euro Pacific Capital US Brokerage Firm Website

Euro Pacific Precious Metals Coin Company Website

Schiff for Senate Official Campaign Website

Peter Schiff Online, Official book site for Peter Schiff

Peter Schiff Blog

Peter Schiff radio, Schiff's daily radio show

Social media

Peter Schiff's Official YouTube channel

Category:American economics writers Category:American economists Category:American finance and investment writers Category:American Jews Category:American libertarians Category:American money managers Category:Austrian School economists Category:Classical liberals Category:Connecticut Republicans Category:Financial analysts Category:Libertarian economists Category:Microeconomists Category:People from New Haven, Connecticut Category:People from New York City Category:Stock and commodity market managers Category:University of California, Berkeley alumni Category:Writers from Connecticut Category:1964 births Category:Living people

Name	Kataklysm
Landscape	yes
Background	group_or_band
Origin	Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Genre	Death metal, Melodic Death Metal
Years active	1991–present
Label	Nuclear Blast
Associated acts	Dechrist, Ex Deo
Url	kataklysm.swizcorp.com
Current members	Maurizio IaconoJean-Francois DagenaisStephane BarbeMax Duhamel
Past members	Sylvain HoudeMartin MuraisNick MillerAriel Saied

Kataklysm is a Canadian death metal band. They call their musical style "northern hyperblast" after an advertisement in M.E.A.T. magazine describing another band, Fear Factory, as "hyperblast". The term refers to the extremely fast blast beats that Kataklysm's drummer, Max Duhamel, fuses into the music.

Biography

Kataklysm was formed in 1991. At the beginning of their career they were mostly known for being one of the fastest, most chaotic metal bands. However, their music changed after Sylvain Houde left the band, and bassist/backing vocalist Maurizio Iacono took over Houde's vocal duties, and another full-time bassist was recruited.

In 1998, the band released Victims of this Fallen World, an album which was noted as being a change in musical style from previous albums. The following album The Prophecy (Stigmata of the Immaculate), however, saw the band return to its previous style, though less chaotic and with a touch of thrash metal.

Drummer Max Duhamel is said to have been forced out of the band because of injuries. Eventually, Duhamel recovered from his injuries and participated on Kataklysm's eighth album, In the Arms of Devastation.

Kataklysm's line-up has remained relatively stable compared to many other bands within the metal genre. The band only has one missing original member, Sylvain Houde. Drummers make out most of the band's "former members" list.

Music

Kataklysm is well known for their incorporation of movie-quote samples in their music.

Kataklysm is ranked 7th on AOL Radio's list of the 10 best Death Metal bands.

Members

Current members

Maurizio Iacono – Vocals (1998-Present), Bass guitar (1991-1998)

Jean-Francois Dagenais – Guitars (1991-Present)

Stephane Barbe – Bass (1997-Present)

Max Duhamel – Drums (1994-Present)

Former members

Sylvain Houde (1991-1998) – Vocals

Martin Maurais (2004-2005) – Drums

Jean-François Richard (2002-2004) - Drums

Nick Miller (1996-1998) – Drums

Mark-Anthony Marino (1992) - Drums

Ariel Saied (Martinez)(1991-1992) – Drums

Discography

Studio albums

Sorcery (1995)

Temple of Knowledge (1996)

Victims of this Fallen World (1998)

The Prophecy (Stigmata of the Immaculate) (2000)

(2001)

Shadows & Dust (2002)

Serenity in Fire (2004)

In the Arms of Devastation (2006)

Prevail (2008)

Heaven's Venom (2010)

Live albums

Northern Hyperblast Live (1998)

Live in Deutschland - The Devastation Begins (2007)

Demos / EPs / Other

The Death Gate Cycle of Reincarnation (1992)

The Mystical Gate of Reincarnation (1993)

Vision the Chaos (1994)

Sorcery & the Mystical Gate of Reincarnation (1998)

Cross the Line of Redemption (single) (2010)

Music videos

"The Awakener" (1996), directed by Maurice Deverault

"In Shadows & Dust" (2002), directed by SVBell

"As I Slither" (2004), directed by Joe Lynch

"Crippled & Broken" (2006), directed by Maurice Swinkels

"To Reign Again" (2006), directed by Maurice Swinkels

"Taking The World By Storm" (2008), directed by David Brodsky

"Blood In Heaven" (2009), directed by Maxime Hebert

"Push The Venom" (2010), directed by Ivan Colic

References

External links

Official website

Official Myspace

Nuclear Blast's official website

Kataklysm live pictures

Category:Canadian death metal musical groups Category:Musical groups established in 1991 Category:Musical groups from Montreal

Edward John "Eddie" Izzard (born 7 February 1962) is an English stand-up comedian, actor and voice-over artist. His comedy style takes the form of rambling, whimsical monologue and self-referential pantomime.

Izzard's works include stand-up sets Unrepeatable, Definite Article, Glorious, Dress to Kill, Circle, Sexie and Stripped. He had a starring role in the television series The Riches as Wayne Malloy and has appeared in many motion pictures such as Ocean's Twelve, Ocean's Thirteen, Mystery Men, The Cat's Meow, Across the Universe, and Valkyrie.

He has cited his main comedy role model as Monty Python, and John Cleese once referred to him as the "Lost Python". He is also known for his transvestism.

In 2009 he completed 43 marathons in 51 days for Sport Relief in spite of having no prior history of long distance running.

Early life

Izzard was born in Aden, Yemen, then the Colony of Aden in the Aden Protectorate. He was the youngest son of British parents Dorothy Ella, a midwife and nurse, and Harold John Izzard, an accountant who was working in Aden with British Petroleum. A year after his birth, the family moved to Bangor in Northern Ireland and lived there until he was five. The family then moved to Skewen in South Wales. Within a year, his mother fell ill and died of cancer in March 1968. Izzard was six and his brother Mark was eight. Following his mother's death, Izzard attended St John's School in Porthcawl, St Bede's Preparatory School, and Eastbourne College.

Early career

Izzard began to toy with comedy at the University of Sheffield with partner and friend Rob Ballard. After leaving his accountancy degree course, they took their act to the streets, often in Covent Garden. After his split with Ballard, Izzard spent a great deal of the early 1980s working as a street performer in Europe and the United States, Izzard moved his act into the stand-up comedy venues of Britain. After his first solo apperance at the Edinburgh Festival in 1987, where he met then partner and actress Sarah Townsend, in the same year made his first appearance at The Comedy Store, London. He refined his material throughout the 1980s and in the early 1990s, in part at his own club "Raging Bull" in Soho, he finally began earning some measure of recognition through his edgy improvisation.

Success as a comedian

In 1991, Izzard got a spot on the Fry and Laurie produced AIDS benefit Hysteria 3, where he did his "Wolves" sketch, which broke him into the mainstream comedy circuit and television. His resultant stand-up work brought him British Comedy Awards in 1993 (for Live at the Ambassadors), a part in "Filth" which was a stand up presentation by left-wing sympathetic comedians in aid of raising money for the Terence Higgins Trust in 1994, and 1996 (for Definite Article).

In 1996, he got a part in his first United States-produced film, The Secret Agent, where he met and befriended Robin Williams. Williams already knew of Izzard's act, and discussed bringing his act to the United States. As a result, Izzard took Definite Article on a successful stint in New York City in the same year, and as a support act to Williams took Dress to Kill to San Francisco in 1998. His U.S. breakthrough came in 1999, when Dress to Kill was shown on the American television channel HBO, about a year or so after he performed the show on tour in the USA, UK and France. Suddenly, America was aware of Izzard, and the show went on to earn him two Emmy Awards in 2000 (for performance and writing).

In 1999, after complaints that his act recycled jokes appearing on his DVDs, the BBC's consumer programme Watchdog investigated Izzard's live act. Izzard explained that like most comedy performers, he used some of his most successful routines in each show. Nonetheless, Izzard was issued a warning by the Department of Trade and Industry. Since then, Izzard has rarely performed his stand-up act on television, saying that it uses up material at too high a rate, whereas stage material can be continually re-used in front of different audiences for several months.

In 2005, Izzard used his rambling style to provide the voice-over for the British government's television advertisements promoting recycling. The tagline of the ads was "Recycle. The possibilities are endless!" Izzard also performed on stage with Scottish musician Midge Ure at Live8 in Edinburgh, Scotland. He played the piano on the song "Vienna".

In January 2006, the U.S. television network FX announced the production of a new drama series called The Riches (formerly Low Life). Izzard and British actress Minnie Driver star as a married couple, Wayne and Dahlia Malloy, who have been part of a caravan of con-artist Irish travellers swindling their way across the U.S. with their children. After finding another family killed in a car accident, the Malloys assume their identities and start a new life as law-abiding suburbanites in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The youngest son has shown a preference for wearing girls' clothing, leading to some speculation that the role was based upon Izzard's experiences. Izzard has stated in several interviews that the character of Sam had been given transvestite tendencies long before he was cast as Wayne Malloy, but he has contributed his perspective to keep the character believable.

Theatrical, TV and film appearances

In 1994, Izzard made his West End drama debut as the lead in the world premiere of David Mamet's The Cryptogram with Lindsay Duncan, in the production at London's Comedy Theatre. The success of that role led to his second starring role in David Beaird's black comedy 900 Oneonta. In 1995, he portrayed the title character in Christopher Marlowe's Edward II.

In 1998 Izzard appeared briefly on stage with the Monty Python team in The American Film Institute's Tribute to Monty Python (also referred to as Monty Python Live at Aspen). He walked on stage with the five surviving Pythons and he was summarily escorted off by Eric Idle and Michael Palin as he attempted to participate in a discussion about how the group got together.

Izzard portrayed comedian Lenny Bruce in the 1999 production of Julian Barry's 1971 play Lenny. In 2001, he replaced Clive Owen in Peter Nichols' 1967 play A Day in the Death of Joe Egg at the Comedy Theatre. Izzard and Victoria Hamilton then repeated their lead roles when the show was brought to Broadway in 2003, with The Roundabout Theatre Company production. The revival received four Tony Award nominations including Best Revival of a Play, Best Leading Actor and Actress for its stars Izzard and Hamilton in their Broadway debuts, and Best Direction for Laurence Boswell.

Izzard has appeared in numerous films, starting with 1996's The Secret Agent. He has appeared as several real-life individuals, including Charlie Chaplin in The Cat's Meow, actor Gustav von Wangenheim in Shadow of the Vampire and General Erich Fellgiebel in Valkyrie. Other roles have included Mr. Kite in Across the Universe, Lussurioso in Revengers Tragedy and criminal expert Roman Nagel in Ocean's Twelve and Ocean's Thirteen. Voice work has included the titular It in Five Children and It, Nigel in The Wild and the mouse warrior Reepicheep in . He said in 2009 that he would not be reprising his role as Reepicheep and the role was ultimately played by Simon Pegg in .

Izzard appeared in the BBC science fiction miniseries The Day of the Triffids based on the 1951 novel, alongside Jason Priestley, Vanessa Redgrave, Joely Richardson, Dougray Scott and Brian Cox.

In June 2010, Izzard is replacing actor James Spader in David Mamet's new play "RACE", on Broadway.

Izzard is scheduled to join Showtime's United States of Tara in 2011. He will play the role of a brilliant psychology professor skeptical about a disease.

Comic style

Izzard's style is heavily influenced by Monty Python, especially in his use of a stream-of-consciousness delivery that jumps between topics as he free associates on stage. He does not generally work from a script, owing to his dyslexia. Instead, he interrupts himself with new joke ideas, the characters he portrays turn into other characters, and he nonchalantly leaps from historical analysis to musings about household appliances. This often results in brief pauses in the routine which he fills with 'so, yeah', and other verbal tics that have become his trademarks. Thinking aloud is also part of Izzard's ongoing attempt to make the process of writing the show itself part of the humour. As he put it in a 2004 interview with The Guardian, "It's the oral tradition. Human beings have been doing it for thousands of years". He frequently notes the reaction to a joke midstream by pretending to write on his hand ("Should be funnier"; "Lost them there"; "They didn't believe me"; "They didn't follow, never do that again"), asks the audience questions, and verbally engages with hecklers.

Among Izzard's comic talents are mimicry and mime. He portrays God as an authority figure using the voice of James Mason and casts Sean Connery as Noah; these impersonations appear in many of his performances. Izzard also imitates activities such as sawing wood, vacuum cleaning, and mowing the lawn, anthropomorphising the machines with accents and personalities. Successful impressions, such as his Scottish clarinet teacher, Mrs. Badcrumble, become running gags which recur in different shows. He tackles topics both contemporary and historic, including frequent re-imaginings of historical events which result in scenes like 'Cake or Death: Church of England runs the Inquisition', or 'Jesus Ministers to the Dinosaurs'.

When asked about his comedy style by George Stroumboulopoulos, host of CBC Television's talk show, The Hour, Izzard described his use of history by saying,

"I just talk complete bullshit. The history, the politics, I noticed that no one was using history, so there's a lot of history lying about the place, and it's all free, and it's on Wikipedia! You know, I use Wikipedia like a crazy idiot, now. Then I take all this stuff, and I regurgitate it into a weird angle".

In 2008, in his Stripped tour, Izzard began using Wikipedia itself as part of his stand-up act, reading from a live copy of an article (via an iPhone) and mocking Wikipedia's self-referential editorial style.

Traditionally, Izzard has focused on the creative possibilities of thinking through absurd situations in real time. He also turns much of the attention on himself and his personality, including his cross-dressing ("It is my manifest destiny to wear a dress on all seven continents"). Contemporary pop culture (Harry Potter, Star Wars, etc.) is also a frequent subject, brought up both to critique its weaknesses and to enhance his anecdotes.

His bent towards the surreal even went so far as to produce a sitcom called Cows in 1997 for Channel 4, a live action comedy with actors dressed in cowsuits.

Transvestism

, October 17, 2003]] In his show, Dress to Kill, Izzard describes himself as an "executive", "action" and "professional" transvestite, as "a male tomboy" rather than a drag queen or a "weirdo" transvestite (he cites J. Edgar Hoover and Hermann Göring as examples of the latter). He regularly cross-dresses both on and off stage and makes it clear that cross-dressing is, for him, neither a part of his performance nor a sexual fetish. He remarks in his show Unrepeatable, "Women wear what they want and so do I". According to Izzard, "Most transvestites fancy women". [Dress to Kill, 1999] He dismisses claims that he is a male homosexual, saying he is "a straight transvestite or a male lesbian". He has also described himself as "a lesbian trapped in a man's body", transgender, and "a complete boy plus half a girl".

He has also campaigned unsuccessfully against the closure of the departments of Drama and Languages, Linguistics and Translation at the University of East Anglia, although the department of Drama was later reprieved. In 1998, Izzard was named in a list of the biggest private financial donors to the Labour Party. He appeared in a party political broadcast for the Labour Party in the run up to the 2005 general election. He donated nearly £10,000 to the party in 2008, appeared again in a party political broadcast for the 2009 European election and again in a 2010 election video entitled 'Brilliant Britain'.

On 20 July 2006, he received an honorary doctorate in Letters from the Faculty of Arts at the University of Sheffield, where he spent one year on an Accounting and Financial Management course in the early 80s. During his time at the University he established the now-defunct Alternative Productions Society in the Union of Students with the aim of promoting fringe-based arts. On 4 March 2010 he was elected as the Honorary President of the University of Sheffield Union of Students.

On 7 July 2007, Izzard was one of the presenters from the London leg of Live Earth. During an interview for the 2008 Stripped tour, Izzard spoke about becoming more active in European politics as well as running for political office in Europe within the next decade. Izzard added a stop in New Orleans during his 2008 Stripped tour. All proceeds from the performance of 23 June 2008 were donated to Neighborhood Housing Services of New Orleans.

Marathons

On 27 July 2009, with only 5 weeks training and no significant prior history of running, Izzard began seven weeks of back-to-back marathon runs (with Sundays off) across the UK to raise money for Sport Relief. He ran from London to Cardiff, to Belfast, to Edinburgh, and back to London carrying flags of England, Scotland or Wales depending on which country he was in, and carried a self-designed green flag bearing a white dove when in Northern Ireland. The blog Eddie Iz Running was a document of his road running marathon, in which he ran 43 marathons in 51 days. He completed the run on 15 September 2009, after having run at least 27 miles each day, 6 days a week for 7 weeks straight, covering more than 1,100 miles across the UK. Izzard received a special award at BBC Sports Personality of the Year 2009 for his achievements.

Izzard ran his final marathon in five hours and 30 seconds, narrowly outside his projected time. However, had he not stopped and waited 20 minutes for his film crew to catch up with him he could have finished well under his target time. In March 2010, Izzard took part in the Sport Relief Mile event.

Following the completion of the marathon runs, Izzard has started training to take part in an Ironman Triathlon, saying he has become fascinated with fitness "because there's no point in throwing away all that training".

Personal life

During his Stripped tour, Izzard said he realised he was an atheist. "I was warming the material up in New York, where one night, literally on stage, I realised I didn’t believe in God at all. I just didn’t think there was anyone upstairs."

He keeps his romantic life private, saying one of the reasons is due to the wishes of his companions not wanting to become content for his show. In a 2005 poll to find The Comedian's Comedian, Izzard was voted amongst the top 20 greatest comedy acts ever by fellow comedians and comedy insiders. He was number 75 in Comedy Central's 100 Greatest Stand-ups of All Time.

During the 1999 television special It's... the Monty Python Story, which Izzard hosted, John Cleese said Izzard was the "Lost Python"; Izzard furthered that idea via his substitution for Graham Chapman in public performance of Python material with the rest of the original members of the troupe. He also made a cameo appearance in the Python reunion interview Monty Python Live At Aspen.

In 2008, Izzard received the James Joyce Award of the Literary and Historical Society of UCD, Dublin, Ireland. In March 2010, the Students Union of the University of Sheffield overwhelmingly elected him their honorary President.

Discography and appearances

Stand-up

Live at the Ambassadors (15 November, 1993)

Unrepeatable (1994)

Definite Article (21 October, 1996)

Glorious (17 November, 1997)

Dress to Kill (9 November, 1998)

Circle (18 November, 2002)

Sexie (26 November, 2003)

Stripped (23 November, 2009)

Stage

900 Oneonta (1994)

The Cryptogram (1994)

Edward II (1995)

Lenny (1999)

A Day in the Death of Joe Egg (2001–2002, 2003)

Trumbo (2003)

Filmography

The Oncoming Storm (1995) as Luthor Keeton

The Secret Agent (1996) as Vladimir

Velvet Goldmine (1998) as Jerry Devine

The Avengers (1998) as Bailey

Mystery Men (1999) as Tony P

The Criminal (1999) as Peter Hume

Circus (2000) as Troy

Shadow of the Vampire (2000) as Gustav von Wangenheim

The Cat's Meow (2001) as Charlie Chaplin

All the Queen's Men (2001) as Tony Parker

Revengers Tragedy (2002) as Lussurioso

Alien Invasion (2003) as Brik

Blueberry aka Renegade (2004) as Prosit

Five Children and It (2004) as It (voice)

Romance & Cigarettes (2004) as Gene Vincent

Ocean's Twelve (2004) as Roman Nagel

The Aristocrats (2005) as Himself

The Wild (2006) as Nigel (voice)

My Super Ex-Girlfriend (2006) as Professor Bedlam

Ocean's Thirteen (2007) as Roman Nagel

Across the Universe (2007) as Mr. Kite

(2008) as Reepicheep (voice)

Igor (2008) as Dr. Schadenfreude (voice)

Valkyrie (2008) as Erich Fellgiebel

Rage (2009) as Tiny Diamonds

Every Day (2009) as Garrett

The Other Side (2009) as Dean Bellamy

(2009) as Himself

TV appearances

Barf Bites Back (Amnesty International Gala) (1991) - ITV

Open Fire (1994)

Have I Got News for You (1994, 1995 and 1996) - BBC Two

Aristophanes: The Gods are Laughing (1995)

Whose Line Is It Anyway? (1995)

Tales from the Crypt (1996) - HBO

Clive Anderson Talks Back (1996)

Inspector Derrick (1997)

Channel Izzard (1997)

Roseanne Barr Show (1998)

Rex the Runt (1998) - BBC

Shooting Stars (1998) - BBC

Parkinson (3 times)

Dennis Miller Live (1999) - HBO

Pythonland (1999) - BBC

Python Night (1999) - BBC

Good News Week (2000) - Network 10

Mongrel Nation (2002) - Discovery Channel

The Caroline Rhea Show (2002)

The Tonight Show with Jay Leno (2002, 2004 and 2007)

The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien (2009)

40 (2003) - Channel 4

Late Night with Conan O'Brien (2003, 2008) NBC

QI (Unaired pilot- 2002 or 2003, and 2010)

Top Gear (2004) - BBC Two

Last Call with Carson Daly (2005)

The Sharon Osbourne Show (2006)

Late Show with David Letterman (6 times)

Late Late show with Craig Kilborn (4 times)

The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson (2006, 2008, 2009,2010)

The Henry Rollins Show (2006)

The Paul O'Grady Show (2009)

The Secret Policeman's Ball (2006)

Kitchen (2007) - five

Comedy Cuts (interview) (2007)

The Hour (2007)

Friday Night with Jonathan Ross (2007 and 2009)

The Daily Show (2000, 2003 and 2007)

The Riches (2007–2008)

The Secret Policeman's Ball (2008)

(2008)

Late Night with Jimmy Fallon (2009)

Kevin Pollak's Chat Show (2009)

''BBC Sports Personality of the Year (2009 award winner)

''The Day of the Triffids (2009)

Marathon Man (2010)

The Simpsons episode To Surveil with Love (2010)

Chelsea Lately (2010)

Video game

- Sgt. Tibbs the Cat (voice)

Future projects

Eddie Izzard said in a personal appearance (for his biopic Believe) that he is currently putting together a script for a movie as a conclusion to The Riches. He said the plan is to "pick up exactly where we left off, and we think we're going to make a film of the next bit". As of May 24, 2010 there are no indications that this film will ever be made, leaving The Riches without a conclusion. He has announced for future tours that a dollar out of each ticket sale will be appropriated to supplying Africa with contraceptives and other means of sexual protection.

See also

Cross-dressing in film and television

References

External links

Official web site

BBC America - Eddie Izzard

Interview with Izzard - The Observer, 3 October 2004

It's stupid and I love it - the Goon Show and me - The Guardian, 14 February 2005.

Izzard interviewed by Bono - The Independent, 16 May 2006

Venus Zine Staff Picks: Eddie Izzard, Dress to Kill

Category:1962 births Category:People from Aden Category:Drama Desk Award winners Category:English atheists Category:English buskers Category:English comedians Category:English film actors Category:English voice actors Category:English television actors Category:English stand-up comedians Category:Cross-dressers Category:Living people Category:Old Eastbournians Category:Emmy Award winners

{{ infobox person | image = David Icke by Stef (cropped).jpg | image_size = 200px | caption = Icke in 2008 | birth_name = David Vaughan Icke | birth_date = April 29, 1952 | birth_place = Leicester, England | residence = Ryde, Isle of Wight | nationality = | known_for = Football, television sports, books on global politics | occupation = Writer and speaker | years_active = Since 1990 | party = Formerly the Green Party | spouse = Linda Atherton, Pamela Leigh Richards | children = Kerry (1975), Gareth (1981), Rebecca (1991), Jaymie (1992) | parents = Beric Vaughan Icke, Barbara J. Icke (née Cooke) | relations = Trevor and Paul (brothers) | website = davidicke.com }}

David Vaughan Icke (born April 29, 1952) is an English writer and public speaker best known for his views on what he calls "who and what is really controlling the world". Describing himself as the most controversial speaker and author in the world, he has written 16 books explaining his position, dubbed New Age-conspiracism, and has attracted a substantial following across the political spectrum. His 533-page The Biggest Secret (1999) has been called the conspiracy theorist's Rosetta Stone.

Icke was a well-known BBC television sports presenter and spokesman for the Green Party, when he had an encounter in 1990 with a psychic who told him he was a healer who had been placed on Earth for a purpose. In April 1991 he announced on the BBC's Terry Wogan show that he was the son of God, and predicted that the world would soon be devastated by tidal waves and earthquakes. The show changed his life, turning him practically overnight from a respected household name into an object of public ridicule.

He continued nevertheless to develop his ideas, and in four books published over seven years—The Robots' Rebellion (1994), And the Truth Shall Set You Free (1995), The Biggest Secret (1999), and Children of the Matrix (2001)—set out a moral and political worldview that combines New-Age spiritualism with a passionate denunciation of what he sees as totalitarian trends in the modern world. At the heart of his theories lies the idea that a secret group of reptilian humanoids called the Babylonian Brotherhood controls humanity, and that many prominent figures are reptilian, including George W. Bush, Queen Elizabeth II, Kris Kristofferson, and Boxcar Willie.

Some of Icke's theories have attracted the attention of the far right and the suspicion of Jewish groups; for example, he has argued that the reptilians were the original authors of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a 1903 Russian forgery purporting to be a plan by the Jewish people to achieve world domination. Icke strongly denies there is anything antisemitic about this claim. He was allowed to enter Canada in 1999 only after persuading immigration officials that when he said lizards, he meant lizards, but his books were still removed from the shelves of Indigo Books, a Canadian chain, after protests from the Canadian Jewish Congress. Icke's problems in Canada became the focus in 2001 of a documentary by British journalist Jon Ronson, David Icke, the Lizards and the Jews.

Personal life and career

Early life and education

Icke was born in Leicester General Hospital to Beric Vaughan Icke and Barbara J. Icke, née Cooke, who were married in Leicester in 1951. There was a brother, Trevor, seven years older than Icke, and another, Paul, seven years younger. Beric had wanted to be a doctor, but his family had no money, so he joined the Royal Air Force instead. He was awarded a British Empire Medal for gallantry in May 1943 after helping to save the crew of an aircraft that had crashed into the Chipping Warden air base in Oxfordshire. Along with a Squadron Leader, he ran into the burning aircraft, without protective clothing, and saved the life of a crew member who was trapped inside.

After the war, Beric got a job in the Gents clock factory. The family lived in a slum terraced house on Lead Street, near Wharf Street in the centre of Leicester. When Icke was three, they moved to a housing estate known as the Goodwood, one of the massive 1950s council estates the post-war Labour government built, their new home just across the road from the hospital. The family had nothing. "To say we were skint," he wrote in 1993, "is like saying it is a little chilly at the North Pole." He remembers having to hide under a window or chair when the council man came to collect the rent—after knocking, the rent man would walk round the house peering through the windows to see whether anyone was at home. His mother never explained that it was about the rent; she just told him to hide, and Icke writes that he still gets a fright when he hears a knock on the door.

He was always a loner, and felt different from other children, spending hours playing by himself with little steam trains that he had, and preferring to cross the street rather than speak to anyone. He attended Whitehall Infant School, then Whitehall Junior School, where he spent most of his time feeling nervous and shy, often to the point of feeling faint during the morning assembly and having to leave before he passed out. The family doctor suggested a referral to a child psychologist, but his father put his foot down. He made no effort at school and failed at practically everything, but when he was nine, he was chosen for the junior school's football team. It was the first time in his life he had succeeded at anything, and he came to see football as the only way out of his poverty. He played in goal, which he writes suited the loner in him, and gave him a sense of living on the edge between hero and villain.

Football and first marriage

He failed his 11-plus, a test that was used at the time to divide children between grammar schools, supposedly for the brightest, and secondary moderns or technical schools for the rest, so Icke was sent in 1963 to the city's Crown Hills Secondary Modern. He left at 15 after being talent-spotted while playing football, and was signed up as a goalkeeper for Coventry City. Arthritis in his left knee—which later spread to the right knee, ankles, elbows, wrists, and hands—stopped him from making a career out of football, but he managed to play for Coventry for four years and Hereford United for one, before retiring from the game in 1973 at the age of 21.

He met his first wife, Linda Atherton, in May 1971 at a dance at the Chesford Grange Hotel near Leamington Spa. She was working at the time as a van driver for a garage in Leamington. Shortly after they met, Icke had another one of the huge rows he had started having with his father—always a domineering man, his father was upset that Icke's arthritis was interfering with his football career—so he packed his bags and left home. He moved into a tiny bedsit and worked in a local travel agency during the day, travelling to Hereford in the evenings to practice or play football. He and Linda were married on September 30, four months after they'd met. Their daughter, Kerry, was born three and a half years later on March 7, 1975, followed by a son, Gareth, on December 12, 1981, and another son, Jaymie, on November 18, 1992.

Journalism

team. Clockwise from top left: Francis Wilson, Debbie Rix, David Icke, Nick Ross, Selina Scott, Frank Bough.]] He found a job in 1973 as a reporter with the weekly Leicester Advertiser, through a contact who was a sports editor at the Daily Mail, though he writes that he got the job because he was the only applicant. He advanced quickly through local radio to television, and became a regional sports presenter for the BBC's South Today in 1982, around the time his first son was born, and the year he moved to Ryde on the Isle of Wight, somewhere he had always wanted to live. He appeared on the first edition of British television's first national breakfast show, Breakfast Time, on January 17, 1983, presenting the sports news for them until 1985. He published his first book in 1983, It's a tough game, son! about football and how to break into it. He worked for BBC Sport until August 1990, often as a stand-in host on Grandstand and snooker programmes, and also at the 1988 Summer Olympics, but a career in television began to lose its appeal for him; he wrote in Tales from the Time Loop that he found television workers insincere, shallow, and vicious, with rare exceptions.

His contract with the BBC was terminated in 1990 when he refused to pay his poll tax, a controversial new tax introduced by Margaret Thatcher. He ended up paying it in November 1990, but his initial announcement that he was willing to go to jail rather than pay prompted the BBC, by charter an impartial public-service broadcaster, to distance itself from him.

Green Party

At some point during the 1980s, he began to flirt with fringe medicine and New Age philosophies in an effort to find relief from his arthritis.

Sessions with a psychic healer

Icke writes that it was when he was working for the Green Party, and particularly while he was writing the book in 1989, that he began to feel a presence around him, as though there was always someone else in the room, even when he was alone. He writes in Days of Decision (1993) that it was a time of considerable personal despair for him, though he gives no details. In March 1990, he had an experience in a newsagent's that felt as though a magnetic force was pulling his feet to the ground, and he heard a voice tell him to look at a particular section of books. One of the books was by Betty Shine, a psychic healer, or channeller, in Brighton. He decided to visit her to ask for help with his arthritis. She told him she had a message for him, that he was a healer who had been sent to heal the Earth, and who would become famous but would face enormous opposition, but that they would always be there to protect him. , Peru, that Icke said he had a pivotal mystic experience in February 1991.]]

In February 1991, Icke travelled to Peru, where he visited the pre-Inca Sillustani burial ground near Puno. He writes that he felt drawn to a large mound of earth, at the top of which lay a circle of waist-high stones. As he stood in the circle, he felt his feet pulled to the earth as if by a magnet, just as he had experienced in the newsagent's in Ryde, and an urge to outstretch his arms. His feet started to vibrate and burn, his head felt as though a drill was passing through it, and he felt two thoughts enter his mind: first, that people will be talking about this in 100 years, and then, "it will be over when you feel the rain." He said his body started shaking as though plugged into an electrical socket and new ideas began to pour into him. Time became meaningless, he writes, and he has no idea how long he stood there, arms outstretched. Then it started raining, and the experience ended as suddenly as it had begun. He described it later as the "kundalini"—a term from Indian yoga describing a libidinal force that lies coiled at the base of the spine—exploding up through his spine, activating his brain and his chakras, or energy centres, triggering a higher level of consciousness.

He returned to England and began to write a book about the experience, Truth Vibrations, published in May that year. At a Green Party conference in Wolverhampton on March 20, 1991, before the book appeared, he resigned from the party, telling them he was about to be at the centre of "tremendous and increasing controversy," and winning a standing ovation from them after the announcement.

Turquoise period

What followed became what Icke calls his "turquoise period." He began to wear only turquoise because, he explained, it is a conduit of positive energy. He had met Deborah Shaw, an English psychic living in Calgary, Alberta, in August 1990, and after he returned from Peru, he struck up a relationship with her, which became close and led to the birth of a daughter, Rebecca, in December 1991. At one point, Shaw moved in with him and his wife. Shaw had changed her name to Mari Shawsun, while Icke's wife became known as Michaela, an aspect of the Archangel Michael, and they became known in the press as the "turquoise triangle," though Icke insisted that he and Shaw were just friends. He answered reporters' questions about the relationship with, "if you resonate on this higher level then you see not two ladies, but two bodies with energy patterns."

In March 1991, a week after resigning from the Green Party, he, his wife, and Deborah/Mari held a press conference to announce that he had become a "channel for the Christ spirit," a title conferred on him by "the Godhead." He said the world would end in 1997, preceded by a number of disasters. There would be a severe hurricane around the Gulf of Mexico and New Orleans, eruptions in Cuba, disruption in China, a hurricane in Derry, and an earthquake on the Isle of Arran. Los Angeles would become an island, New Zealand would disappear, and the cliffs of Kent would be under water by Christmas 1991. He said the information was being given to the three of them by voices and automatic writing. In In the Light of Experience (1993), Icke wrote that, at the time he gave the press conference, he didn't feel in control. He heard his voice predicting the end of the world, and was appalled by what he was saying. "I was speaking the words," he wrote, "but all the time I could hear the voice of the brakes in the background saying, 'David, what the hell are you saying? This is absolute nonsense'." His predictions were splashed all over the next day's front pages, to his great dismay.

Terry Wogan interview

for an interview on April 29, 1991, during which Icke declared that he was the son of God. He said his children were devastated afterwards, because their dad had become a figure of ridicule. He later said he had been misinterpreted, and that he had used the term "the son of God" to mean an "aspect" of the infinite consciousness. The interview proved devastating for him. As the audience laughed, Wogan memorably pointed out that they were laughing at him, not with him, and his humiliation seemed complete. He disappeared from public life, and for several years was unable to walk down the street without people pointing at and mocking him. His children were followed to school by journalists and ridiculed by schoolmates, and his wife would open the back door to get the washing in, only to find a camera crew filming her. Icke told Jon Ronson:

One of my very greatest fears as a child was being ridiculed in public. And there it was coming true. As a television presenter, I'd been respected. People come up to you in the street and shake your hand and talk to you in a respectful way. And suddenly, overnight, this was transformed into "Icke's a nutter." I couldn't walk down any street in Britain without being laughed at. It was a nightmare. My children were devastated because their dad was a figure of ridicule.

The BBC was criticised for allowing the interview to go ahead, Des Christy in The Guardian calling it a "media crucifixion." Wogan interviewed Icke again in 2006, acknowledging that his comments had been a bit sharp,

Key ideas

Icke's core ideas are put forward in four books—The Robots' Rebellion (1994), And the Truth Shall Set You Free (1995), The Biggest Secret: The Book that Will Change the World (1999), and Children of the Matrix (2001)— self-published by his Bridge of Love Publications or David Icke Books. Discussion about the nature of consciousness is intermingled with unsourced allegations against named individuals, including that certain senior politicians are Satanic paedophiles, and that the Swine flu vaccinations are a deliberate attempt to cull the world's population. He argues that human beings are the result of a breeding program conducted by a race of reptilians called Anunnaki from the Draco constellation, and that what we call reality is nothing but a "five-sense illusion," or holographic experience. The only reality is the realm of the Absolute. He believes in a collective consciousness that has intentionality; in reincarnation; in other possible worlds that exist alongside ours on other frequencies; and in acquired characteristics, arguing that our experiences change our DNA by downloading new information and overwriting the software. We are also able to attract experiences to ourselves, by means of good and bad thoughts.

Global Elite

Icke argues that humanity was created, and is controlled, by a network of secret societies run by an ancient race of interbreeding bloodlines from the Middle and Near East, originally extraterrestrial. Icke calls them the "Babylonian Brotherhood." The Illuminati, Round Table, Council on Foreign Relations, Chatham House, the Trilateral Commission, the Bilderberg Group, the IMF, United Nations, the media, military, science, religion, and the Internet are all Brotherhood created and controlled. The Brotherhood is mostly male. Their children are raised from an early age to understand the mission; those who don't are pushed aside. Key Brotherhood bloodlines are the British House of Windsor, the Rothschilds, the Rockefellers, European royalty and aristocracy, and the Eastern establishment families of the United States. At the apex of the Brotherhood stands the "Global Elite," identified throughout history as the Illuminati, and at the top of the Global Elite stand the "Prison Wardens." The goal of the Brotherhood—their "Great Work of Ages," or the "Brotherhood Agenda"—is world domination and a micro-chipped population.

In The Robot's Rebellion (1994), Icke introduced the idea that the Global Elite's plan for world domination was first laid out in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a hoax published in Russia in 1903, which supposedly presented a plan by the Jewish people to take over the world. The Protocols is the most influential piece of antisemitic material of modern times, portraying the Jewish people as cackling villains from a Saturday matinee, as Jon Ronson puts it, widely drawn on by the far right and neo-Nazi groups. Mark Honigsbaum writes that Icke refers to it 25 times in the book, calling it the "Illuminati protocols," and it is the first of a number of examples of Icke moving dangerously close to antisemitism, according to Michael Barkun of Syracuse University.

Reptilians and shape-shifting

from Uranographia by Johannes Hevelius, 1690]] In The Biggest Secret (1999), Icke introduced the "Reptoid Hypothesis." He identifies the Brotherhood as originating from reptilians from the constellation Draco who walk on two legs and appear human, and who live in tunnels and caverns inside the earth. They are the same race of gods known as the Anunnaki in the Babylonian creation myth, Enûma Eliš. Tyson Lewis of Montclair State University and Richard Kahn of Antioch University Los Angeles write that Icke has taken his "ancient astronaut" narrative from the Israeli-American writer, Zecharia Sitchin. Icke's idea of "inner-earth reptilians" is also not new, though Barkun writes that Icke has done more than most to expand it.

Sitchin writes that the reptilians came to Earth for its precious metals. Icke argues that the Anunnaki came specifically for "monoatomic gold," a mineral he says can increase the carrying capacity of the nervous system ten thousandfold. After ingesting it, the Anunnaki are able to process vast amounts of information, speed up trans-dimensional travel, and shapeshift from reptilian to human form. They use human fear, guilt, and aggression as energy in a similar way, part of the reason they organise human conflict. The more negative emotion we emit, the more the reptilians absorb. "Thus we have the encouragement of wars," he writes, "human genocide, the mass slaughter of animals, sexual perversions which create highly charged negative energy, and black magic ritual and sacrifice which takes place on a scale that will stagger those who have not studied the subject."

The Anunnaki have crossbred with human beings, the breeding lines carefully chosen for political reasons. He believes they are the Watchers, the fallen angels, or "Grigori," who mated with human women in the Biblical apocrypha. Their first reptilian-human hybrid, possibly Adam, was created 200,000–300,000 years ago. There was a second breeding program around 30,000 years ago, and a third 7,000 years ago. It is the half-bloods of the third breeding program who today control the world, more Anunnaki than human. They have an extremely powerful, hypnotic stare, the origin of the phrase to "give someone the evil eye," and their hybrid DNA allows them to shapeshift when they consume human blood. In Children of the Matrix, he expanded his description of those in charge, adding that the Anunnaki also bred with another extraterrestrial race called the "Nordics," on account of their blond hair and blue eyes, to produce a race of human slave masters, the Aryans. The Aryans retain many reptilian traits, including cold-blooded attitudes, a desire for top-down control, and an obsession with ritual, lending them a tendency toward fascistic militarism, rationalism, and racism.

Lewis and Kahn write that, with the Nordic hypothesis, Icke is mirroring standard claims by the far right that the Aryan bloodline has ruled the Earth throughout history. For Icke, Sumerian Kings and Egyptian pharaohs have all been Aryan reptilian humanoids, as have 43 American presidents and the Queen Mother, who he writes was "seriously reptilian." All have taken part in Satanic rituals, paedophilia, kidnapping of children, drug parties and murder, needed to satisfy their reptilian blood lust, which allows them to retain their temporary human form. The reptilians not only come from another planet, but are also from another dimension, the lower level of the fourth dimension, the one nearest the physical world. Icke writes that the universe consists of an infinite number of frequencies or dimensions of life that share the same space, just as television and radio frequencies do. Some people can tune their consciousness to other wavelengths, which is what psychic power consists of, and it is from one of these other dimensions that the Anunnaki are controlling this world—though just as fourth-dimensional reptilians control us, they are controlled, in turn, by a fifth dimension. The lower level of the fourth dimension is what others call the "lower astral dimension." Icke argues that it is where demons live, the entities Satanists summon during their rituals. They are, in fact, summoning the reptilians. Barkun argues that the introduction of different dimensions allows Icke to skip awkward questions about which part of the universe the reptilians come from and how they got here. The incidents allow the Elite to respond in whatever way they intended to act in the first place, a concept Icke calls "order out of chaos," or "problem-reaction-solution". There are few, if any, public events that are not engineered, or at least used, by the Brotherhood in their bid to sow division and centralise power. He suggested that the 1996 Dunblane massacre, for example, was organised by the Elite to strengthen gun laws:

Red Dresses

In Infinite Love is the Only Truth (2005), Icke introduces the idea of "reptilian software." He says that there are three kinds of people. The highest level of the Brotherhood are the "Red Dresses." These are "software people," elsewhere called "reptilian software," or "constructs of mind," without consciousness, without free will. Their human bodies are holographic veils. A second group, the so-called "sheeple"—the vast majority of humanity—have what Icke calls "back seat consciousness." They are conscious, but they do whatever they are told and are the main source of energy for the Brotherhood. They include the "repeaters," the people in positions of influence who simply repeat what other people have told them. Doctors repeat what they are told in medical school and by drug companies, teachers repeat what they learned at teacher training college, and journalists are the greatest repeaters of all. The third group, by far the smallest, are those who see through the illusion; they are people like Neo from the film, The Matrix. They are usually dubbed dangerous or mad. The "Red Dress" genetic lines keep obsessively interbreeding to make sure their bloodlines are not weakened by the second or third levels of consciousness, because consciousness can rewrite the software.

Reception

Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the Holocaust

cites this cartoon, "Rothschild" (1898), by Charles Léandre, arguing that Jews have long been depicted as lizard-like creatures out to control the world.]]

Icke's criticism of Judaism, his reliance on the Protocols, questioning of the Holocaust, and claims about Jewish involvement in the "Global Elite," have attracted the attention of Jewish groups, who fear that his talk of lizards wanting to rule the world is a smokescreen for claims about Jews. Journalist Louis Theroux cautions against accusing him of antisemitism, arguing that it might not only be unfair, but may also lend a patina of seriousness to his ideas. Icke strongly denies that his reptiles represent Jews, calling the claim "friggin' nonsense." "There is a tribe of people interbreeding," he told Jon Ronson in 2001, "which do not, do not, relate to any earth race ... This is not a Jewish plot. This is not a plot on the world by Jewish people".

Icke introduced the idea in The Robot's Rebellion that the Global Elite's plan for world domination was first laid out in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a hoax published in Russia in 1903, supposedly a plan by the Jewish people to take over the world. Parts of it were serialised in a Russian newspaper in 1903, and it was published in English throughout the U.S. in 1920 by The Dearborn Independent, Henry Ford's weekly newspaper, becoming mixed up with conspiracy theories about anti-Christian Illuminati, international financiers, and the Rothschilds, a powerful Jewish dynasty involved in banking. After it was exposed as a hoax, Michael Barkun writes that it disappeared from mainstream discourse until interest in it was renewed by the American far right in the 1950s.

Icke's use of the Protocols in The Robots' Rebellion was greeted with dismay by the Green Party's executive, who argued that his book promoted fascist and antisemitic views. They had allowed Icke to address the party's annual conference in 1992, despite the controversy over his "son of God" interview, but in September 1994 they decided to deny him a platform. Icke wrote to The Guardian protesting the party's decision, denying the book was antisemitic, and arguing that racism, sexism and prejudice of any kind were horrific and ridiculous, but in the same letter, he insisted that whoever wrote the Protocols "knew the game plan" for the 20th century. Barkun argues that Icke is trying to have it both ways—offended by the allegation of antisemitism, while "hinting at the dark activities of Jewish elites," Icke explicitly blames a ruling Jewish clique for the first and second world wars and the rise of Hitler—and indeed writes that Hitler's father was a Rothschild—and in And the Truth Shall Set You Free, he appears to flirt openly with Holocaust denial. Alick Bartholomew of Gateway, Icke's former publisher, told journalist Mark Honigsbaum in 1995 that an early draft of the book contained material questioning the Holocaust, and that Icke was dropped because of it. The September 2004 edition still contains material in chapter seven that is arguably revisionist. Sam Taylor writes in The Observer that, having read the chapter in question, he does not believe Icke is antisemitic, but argues that he is "tapping into a seriously paranoid, aggressive strain in U.S. society."

Honigsbaum writes that Combat 18, the British neo-Nazi group, publicised a 1995 talk Icke gave at Glastonbury in its magazine, Putsch. The talk was understood as antisemitic both by Combat 18 and by the Isle of Avalon Foundation, the New Age group that had promoted Icke's tour, which not only disowned him, but started handing out leaflets in protest at his presence. Perhaps unfairly projecting its own views onto Icke, Putsch wrote that Icke had talked about "the big conspiracy by a group of bankers, media moguls etc.—always being clever enough not to mention what all these had in common." Icke dismisses Combat 18's attentions, writing that it is a front for the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the Mossad.

Protests in Canada

Icke was detained by immigration officials when he tried to enter Canada in 1999, after Ontario's Hate Crime Unit added his name to an all-ports watch list because of complaints from the Canadian Jewish Congress. The officers combed his luggage and reading material for evidence of antisemitic material. Jon Ronson writes: "Finally, after four hours of questioning, they concluded that when David Icke said lizards, lizards was what he meant."

While his lecture in a downtown Vancouver theatre attracted an audience of 1,200—attended, according to Icke, by the head of the Hate Crimes Unit—his books were removed from Indigo Books, and several venues on his speaking tour were cancelled. Human rights lawyer Richard Warman, working at the time for the Canadian Green Party, took credit for much of this in an interview with Jon Ronson for the latter's documentary, David Icke, the Lizards and the Jews (2001), in which Ronson catalogues the cancelled radio interviews and book signings that Warman appears to have engineered. In response, Icke's Children of the Matrix (2001) reportedly accused Warman of being an Illuminati "gatekeeper," and of working to stop the exposure of child abuse, which triggered a statement of claim from Warman.

Place within the conspiracism genre

Improvisational millennialism

of Syracuse University writes that Icke is the most fluent of the conspiracy writers. Barkun calls Icke's work "improvisational millennialism," with an end-of-history scenario involving a final battle between good and evil. Because everything is connected in the conspiracist world view, every source can be mined for links, and the greater the stigma attached to an idea, the more attractive it becomes, because the vehemence with which the mainstream rejects it becomes a measure of its validity. For Icke, therefore, the widespread ridiculing of the lizard theory is a guarantee that there's something to it, Barkun argues.

According to Barkun, Icke has actively tried to cultivate the far right. In 1996, he spoke to a conference in Reno, Nevada, alongside opponents of the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act—which mandates background checks on people who buy guns in the United States—including Kirk Lyons, a white nationalist lawyer who has represented the Ku Klux Klan. Barkun argues that the relationship between Icke, the militias, and the Christian Patriots is complex because of the New Age baggage Icke brings with him, and he stresses that Icke is not actually a member of any of these groups, but it is nevertheless true that Icke has absorbed the world view of the radical right virtually intact. "There is no fuller explication of its beliefs about ruling elites than Icke's," he writes. Icke regards Christian patriots as the only Americans who understand the truth about the New World Order, but he also told a Christian patriot group: "I don't know which I dislike more, the world controlled by the Brotherhood, or the one you want to replace it with."]] Tyson Lewis and Richard Kahn see Icke as a spiritual philosopher, arguing that it's not clear he believes in the reptilians himself. They write that he has produced an extraordinary, all-inclusive narrative, a consolidation of all conspiracy theories into one massive project with unlimited explanatory power. There is an almost obsessive-compulsive element to his writing, they argue, whereby he ferrets out any minutiae he can find to support a narrative structure that allows him to pole vault from ancient Sumer to modern America in a way that "defies the laws of academic gravity."

His work cuts across political, religious, cultural, and socio-economic divisions, uniting the political left and right—they write that his lectures might see neo-Nazis and Christian Patriots sitting next to 60-something UFO buffs and New Age earth goddesses—and as such he represents a truly global counter-culture and should not, they argue, be dismissed as fringe. He has lectured in 25 countries, his books have been translated into eight languages, his website gets 600,000 hits a week, and his lecture tours attract thousands. The Biggest Secret has gone through six reprintings since 1999, and Alice in Wonderland and the World Trade Center Disaster is a top-five seller in South Africa.

They argue that the lizards may be allegorical, a Swiftian satire intended to demonstrate the emergence of a global fascist state. In Children of the Matrix, Icke writes that, that if the reptilians did not exist, we would have to invent them. "In fact," he says, "we probably have. They are other levels of ourselves putting ourselves in our face." He argues, "We are the reptilians and the 'demons' and, at the same time, we are those they manipulate because we are all the same 'I'." Lewis and Kahn make use of Douglas Kellner's distinction in Media Spectacle (1995) between a reactionary clinical paranoia, a mindset dissociated from reality, and a positive, progressive, critical paranoia, which uses the culture of suspicion to question and confront power. They argue that Icke displays elements of both, writing that what they call his "postmodern metanarrative" may be politically empowering, a way of giving ordinary people a narrative structure with which to question what they see around them.

Works

;Books

It's a Tough Game, Son!. Piccolo Books, 1983. ISBN 0330280473

It Doesn't Have To Be Like This: Green Politics Explained. Green Print, 1989. ISBN 1854250337

Truth Vibrations. Gateway, 1991, 1994. ISBN 1858600065

Love Changes Everything. Harper Collins Publishers, 1992. ISBN 1855382474

In the Light of Experience: The Autobiography of David Icke. Time Warner Books, 1993. ISBN 0751506036

Days of Decision. Jon Carpenter Publishing, 1993. ISBN 1897766017

The Robot's Rebellion. Gateway, 1994. ISBN 1858600227

Heal the World: A Do-It-Yourself Guide to Personal and Planetary Transformation. Gateway, 1994. ISBN 1858600057

...And the Truth Shall Set You Free. Bridge of Love Publications, 1995. ISBN 0953881059

I Am Me, I Am Free: The Robot's Guide to Freedom. Truth Seeker, 1996, 1998. ISBN 0952614758

Lifting the Veil: David Icke interviewed by Jon Rappoport. Truth Seeker, 1998. ISBN 0939040050

The Biggest Secret: The Book That Will Change the World. Bridge of Love Publications, 1999. ISBN 0952614766

Children of the Matrix. Bridge of Love Publications, 2001. ISBN 0953881016

Alice in Wonderland and the World Trade Center Disaster. Bridge of Love Publications, 2002. ISBN 0953881024

Tales from the Time Loop. Bridge of Love Publications, 2003. ISBN 0953881040

Infinite Love Is the Only Truth: Everything Else Is Illusion. Bridge of Love Publications, 2005. ISBN 0953881067

The David Icke Guide to the Global Conspiracy (and how to end it). David Icke Books Ltd, 2007. ISBN 978-0-9538810-8-6

Human Race Get Off Your Knees—The Lion Sleeps No More. David Icke Books Ltd, 2010. ISBN 978-0-9559973-1-0

;DVDs and videos

Speaking Out: Who Really Controls the World and What We Can Do About It

David Icke: Turning of the Tide (1996)

The Reptilian Agenda (1999) (DVD)

David Icke: Revelations of a Mother Goddess

David Icke: The Freedom Road (2003)

David Icke: Secrets of the Matrix, Parts 1–3 (2003) (DVD)

David Icke, Live in Vancouver: From Prison to Paradise (2005) (DVD)

Freedom or Fascism: The Time to Choose (2006) (DVD)

David Icke: Big Brother, the Big Picture, (2008) free Internet Video

Beyond The Cutting Edge (2008) (DVD)

''David Icke Live at the Oxford Union Debating Society

''Secret Space

''Secret Space 2

See also

Erich von Däniken

Vusamazulu Credo Mutwa

List of people who have claimed to be Jesus

Notes

References

David Icke's website

Barkun, Michael (2003). A Culture of Conspiracy: Apocalyptic Visions in Contemporary America, University of California. ISBN 0-520-23805-2

Cowley, Jason (2000). "The Icke Files,' The Independent on Sunday, October 1, 2000.

Channel 5 Television (2006). David Icke: Was He Right?, December 12, 2006, YouTube, accessed December 12, 2010.

Evans, Paul (2008). Interview: David Icke, New Statesman, March 3, 2008.

Gillis, Charlie (2008). "Righteous Crusader or Civil Rights Menace?", Macleans, April 9, 2008.

Greenslade, Nick (2004). "The ten worst sportsmen in politics", The Observer, September 5, 2004.

Grossman, Wendy (1991). "Green Party Cofounder Icke Goes New Age", Skeptical Inquirer, January 1, 1991.

Honigsbaum, Mark (1995). "The Dark Side of David Icke", London Evening Standard, May 26, 1995, accessed December 12, 2010.

Icke, David (1983). It's a tough game, son!. Piccolo Books.

Icke, David (1989). "Does the Animal Kingdom need a Bill of Rights?", Royal Institute of Great Britain, YouTube, accessed December 12, 2010.

Icke, David (1993). In the Light of Experience, Warner Books.

Icke, David (1993). Days of Decision. Jon Carpenter Publishing.

Icke, David (1995). And the Truth Shall Set You Free. David Icke Books; the edition used in this article, September 2004.

Icke, David (1999). The Biggest Secret: The Book that Will Change the World. David Icke Books.

Icke, David (2002). Alice in Wonderland and the World Trade Center Disaster, Bridge of Love Publications.

Icke, David (2003). ''Tales from the Time Loop. David Icke Books.

Icke, David (2005). Infinite Love is the Only Truth. Bridge of Love Publications.

Icke, David (2007). The David Icke Guide to the Global Conspiracy. David Icke Books.

Icke, David (undated). "Problem-reaction-solution", News for the Soul, accessed December 12, 2010.

Icke, David (undated). David Icke part 1, part 2, Davidicke.com, accessed December 12, 2010.

Icke, David (undated). Was Hitler a Rothschild?, DavidIcke.com, accessed December 12, 2010.

Jabbari, Dorsa (1999). "U of T provides accused anti-Semite with mike", Varsity News, October 12, 1999, accessed December 12, 2010.

Kraft, Frances (1999). "New Age speaker set to talk in Toronto", The Canadian Jewish News, October 7, 1999, accessed December 12, 2010.

Laming, Donald (2003). Understanding Human Motivation: What makes people tick. Blackwell. ISBN 0631219838

Lewis, Tyson and Kahn, Richard (2005). "The Reptoid Hypothesis: Utopian and Dystopian Representational Motifs in David Icke's Alien Conspiracy Theory", Utopian Studies, Vol. 16, accessed December 12, 2010.

Mitchell, Ben (2006). "This much I know", interview with David Icke, The Observer, January 22, 2006.

Offley, Will (2000a). "Selected Quotes Of David Icke", PublicEye.org, Political Research Associates, February 23, 2000, accessed December 12, 2010.

Offley, Will (2000b). "David Icke And The Politics Of Madness: Where The New Age Meets The Third Reich", PublicEye.org, Political Research Associates, February 29, 2000, accessed December 12, 2010.

Ronson, Jon (March 17, 2001). "Beset by lizards, part 1", part 2, extracts from Ronson's book, Them: Adventures with Extremists, The Guardian.

Ronson, Jon (2001). "David Icke, the Lizards, and the Jews" 1/5, 2/5, 3/5, 4/5, 5/5, Channel 4 Television, UK, YouTube, accessed December 12, 2010.

Spargo, John (1921). The Jew and American Ideals. Harper & Brothers.

Steyn, Mark (2008). I am Warman, hear me roar!, Steynonline.com, January 27, 2008.

Taylor, Sam (1997). "So I was in this bar with the son of God...," The Observer, April 20, 1997.

Theroux, Louis (2001). "Stranger than fiction: Are 12ft lizards running the world?", The Guardian, April 7, 2001.

Warman, Richard (2002). Statement of claim against David Icke, Court File No. 02-CV-237691 SR, Ontario Superior Court of Justice, October 17, 2002, accessed December 12, 2010.

Whitney, Nicole (undated). "Interview with David Icke", News for the Soul, 2004, accessed December 12, 2010.

Wogan, Terry (1991). David Icke interviewed by Terry Wogan, 1991 and again in 2006, BBC, courtesy of YouTube, accessed December 12, 2010.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Protocols of the Elders of Zion, accessed December 12, 2010.

Further reading

DavidIcke.com, accessed December 12, 2010.

Banyan, Will. Alice in Wonderland and the World Trade Center Disaster">"The Big Picture" A review of Alice in Wonderland and the World Trade Center Disaster (pdf) Paranoia Magazine, October 2003, accessed December 12, 2010.

Lewis, Tyson and Kahn, Richard. Education Out of Bounds: Reimagining Cultural Studies for a Posthuman Age. Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.

Shermer, Michael. Illuminati, The New World Order & Paranoid Conspiracy Theorists (PCTs)">Illuminati, The New World Order & Paranoid Conspiracy Theorists (PCTs), The Skeptic's Dictionary, accessed December 12, 2010.

;Audio/video

Britton, Fern (1991). Interview with David Icke, 1/3, 2/3, 3/3, BBC's Coast to Coast People, courtesy of YouTube, accessed December 12, 2010.

Icke, David. Presenting snooker, BBC, 1980s, courtesy of YouTube, accessed December 12, 2010.

Icke, David (1989). Does the Animal Kingdom need a Bill of Rights?, Royal Institute of Great Britain, Arena, BBC2, courtesy of YouTube, accessed November 15, 2009.

Icke, David (2009). Live at the Oxford Union, June 10, 2009, courtesy of YouTube, accessed December 12, 2010.

Maher, Bill (2008). Interview with David Icke, Religulous, courtesy of YouTube, accessed December 12, 2010.

Category:1952 births Category:Living people Category:British television presenters Category:British sports broadcasters Category:Conspiracy theorists Category:UFO conspiracy theorists Category:British writers Category:Coventry City F.C. players Category:English footballers Category:Association football goalkeepers Category:Hereford United F.C. players Category:The Football League players Category:English occult writers Category:People from Ryde Category:People from Leicester Category:Independent politicians in England Category:English writers Category:English political writers Category:Environmental skepticism Category:Psychedelic drug advocates Category:Religious skeptics Category:Anti-globalist activists Category:Self-declared messiahs

Name	Boyce Avenue
Background	group_or_band
Origin	Sarasota, Florida
Genre	Alternative rock
Years active	2004–present
Label	3 Peace Records / Universal (2010 - present)
Url
Current members	Alejandro Manzano Daniel Manzano Fabian Manzano

Boyce Avenue is an American acoustic rock band. It was formed in Sarasota, Florida by three brothers Alejandro, Daniel and Fabian Manzano. The band is named after a combination of two streets the brothers lived on as children. The band first came together in 2004 when Daniel moved back to Florida, after graduating Harvard law school, and joined his brothers Alejandro and Fabian, who were both attending classes at the University of Florida.

Biography

In 2007, Boyce Avenue began posting videos on YouTube, both of original material and covers. Some of these covers have reached up to 10,000,000 views. These covers have been released in 3 EPs digitally via their independent record label, 3 Peace Records. While producing the videos for Youtube, Boyce Avenue was continuing to create original material for a debut album entitled “All You’re Meant To Be”, for release on March 3, 2008.

In January 2009 the band performed a stand-alone show in New York City.

With their sights set on connecting with their online fan base, the band turned their attention to touring, playing four headlining shows in the Philippines. Shortly following this, the band returned to the States to begin its first tour of the U.S.

Following these tours, the band launched a tour of Europe, including dates in Germany, Ireland and the UK. In early 2010, the band returned to the Philippines to play festivals with Kris Allen and the Jabbawockeez. This was followed by a spring revisit tour of Europe in 2010.

Most recently the band signed with Universal Republic and has a second album, entitled “All We Have Left”, released on June 15, 2010. The album was produced and financed entirely by Boyce Avenue prior to being signed to Universal Republic. The album contains reworked songs from “All You're Meant To Be” and brand new songs written for the album. The albums first single “Every Breath” was released digitally on March 16, 2010. The music video for Every Breath was released on March 20, 2010. On July 29, the band announced they'd be slowing down production on their own material, as lead singer Alejandro Manzano had decided to return to his studies at Santa Monica College.

From September 2010, Boyce Avenue has posted new covers on YouTube. They have covered new popular songs which their fans have chosen for them.

Members

Alejandro Manzano – lead vocals, rhythm guitar, piano

Fabian Manzano - lead guitar, backing vocals

Daniel Manzano - percussion, bass, backing vocals

Discography

EPs

Acoustic Sessions, Volume 1 (Deluxe Version), 2008

Acoustic Sessions, Volume 2 (Deluxe Version)

Acoustic Sessions, Volume 3 (Deluxe Version)

Acoustic Sessions, Volume 4 (Deluxe Version)

Volume 5 Singles, Part 1

Volume 5 Singles, Part 2

Influential Sessions

New Accoustic Sessions, 2010

Albums

All You're Meant To Be, 2008

All We Have Left, 2010

References

External links

[ Allmusic]

Sun Herald

Herald Tribune

Manila Bulletin

Philipine Star

Alternativeaddiction.com US Tour Boyce Avenue

Alternativeaddiction.com New Album Boyce Avenue

Theroundtableonline.com Interwiew Daniel Manzano of Boyce Avenue

Boyce Avenue singing Universal Republic

Category:American rock music groups Category:Musical groups from Florida