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Hello, everyone, and thanks again for listening. Remember to subscribe to the podcast if you're listening on iTunes, or to follow me on SoundCloud if you're

getting the podcast there. This is another biographical episode, and I have to say, I really

enjoy writing these. The characters of the Second World War are just absolutely fascinating.

There's so many different backgrounds from the highborn Hirohito and Churchill to the lowly

Mussolini and Stalin. I find it extremely thought-provoking to consider

how all these people viewed the world and how their circumstances shaped them. What was it about

Eisenhower that made him ideally suited to lead a multinational military effort? Why was Mussolini

adept at gaining power but so incompetent at wielding it?, these characters are mythologized so much that we forget that there were

times in their lives when they were nobody's too.

Perhaps by looking at their childhoods and early lives, we can learn what made them tick.

We can maybe learn the same lessons they did, or perhaps avoid the same pitfalls.

Also, a quick note about dates.

Since Zaris Russia was still using an old,

unreformed calendar, dates don't match up with Western calendars, as many of you are probably

already aware. For example, the October Revolution actually took place in November.

As such, I'll be intentionally vague with dates for the most part with this episode,

just because I don't want to get bogged down

during the narrative, and I don't want to spend a ton of time hunting down accurate dates.

Rather than specify between old calendar and new calendar, I'll just give month and year.

...