From 1931 to 1944, El Salvador was ruled by the military dictator Maximiliano Hernández Martínez, an admirer of Hitler and Mussolini. Despite his personal admiration, Hernández Martínez declared war on both Japan (8 December 1941) and Germany (12 December 1941) shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor due to El Salvador's strong economic ties with the United States. He removed Germans from the government and interned Japanese, German, and Italian nationals. The Second World War made Salvadorans weary of their dictatorship, and a general national strike in 1944 forced Hernández Martínez to resign and flee to Guatemala. Postwar, he was later killed in Honduras by a vengeful Salvadoran citizen.