John Joseph Curtin (8 January 1885 – 5 July 1945) was an Australian politician who was the 14th Prime Minister of Australia from 1941 to 1945 and the Leader of the Labor Party from 1935 to 1945. Having first formed a minority government in 1941, Curtin went on to lead Labor to a still-existing record landslide at the 1943 election on both the two-party vote and swing, winning two-thirds of seats in the House of Representatives. Curtin successfully led Australia through the period when the nation was directly threatened by the Japanese advance in World War II, and is today widely regarded as one of the country's greatest ever prime ministers. With the end of the war in sight, Curtin died in office on 5 July 1945 and was succeeded briefly by Frank Forde and then by Ben Chifley.