Activities and affiliations

Military command United States state institutions 1886–1969 ○ Natural causes

A cool-headed carrier commander at Midway

“Calm, collected, decisive, yet receptive to advice; ... boldly seizing every opening.”

Raymond Spruance was a United States Navy admiral who directed carrier operations in the Pacific during the Second World War. At Midway in 1942, he commanded Task Force 16, built around Enterprise and Hornet, and played a central role in the destruction of four Japanese fleet carriers. Known for measured decisions and calm command, he later led the Naval War College and served as ambassador to the Philippines.

Military command Germany state institutions 1886–1971 ○ Natural causes

The Wehrmacht's defensive specialist on the Eastern Front

On 16 April 1945, he pulled the main body out of the forward trenches before the Soviet bombardment, preserving the deeper defensive line.

Gotthard Heinrici was a senior German army commander in the Second World War who gained a reputation as the Wehrmacht's leading specialist in defensive operations. He fought in the invasion and occupation of the Soviet Union, bearing command responsibility as war crimes and ideological orders shaped the conduct of the campaign. As commander of Army Group Vistula in 1945, he anticipated the Soviet main thrust and built a defense in depth around the Seelow Heights, but tactical skill could not reverse Germany's defeat.

Military command 1886–1976 ○ Natural causes

Founder of the Chinese Red Army and the PLA, first among the Ten Marshals

Cornered by assassins, he told them "Don't shoot me — I'm only the cook," and survived; his men called him "Chief of the Cooks" ever after.

Commander-in-chief whose military leadership secured the Chinese Communist revolution. He joined Mao Zedong at Jinggangshan in 1928 to form the legendary Zhu-Mao Army, then elevated guerrilla warfare to a strategic art across the Long March, the war against Japan, and the Civil War. After the founding of the PRC he served as vice-chairman and chairman of the NPC Standing Committee, and was named first among the Ten Marshals in 1955. His journey from warlord general to communist, breaking an opium addiction and starting again, traces the arc of the Chinese Revolution more completely than almost any other life.

Military command Soviet Union state institutions 1887–1919 ✕ Killed in action

Legendary Civil War commander who became a Soviet folk hero through film and folklore

When I was a carpenter, I never valued my life. I was brave. But now, living better, I've tasted a new life. I'm not that man anymore — now my life feels precious.

A poor peasant who rose to become a legendary Red commander in the Civil War. Without formal military training, his bold tactics and raw charisma made him a folk hero. Killed on the Ural front in 1919, he was resurrected as an icon of Soviet mass culture through Furmanov's novel and the famed film.

Military command Soviet Union state institutions 1887–1934 ○ Natural causes

A Red Army commander shaped by the air war

A pilot who earned four St. George Crosses in the air fighting of the First World War went over to the revolution and in 1920 personally led the storming of the citadel of Old Bukhara.

Georgy Zinoviev was a military officer who moved from service as a pilot in the First World War to command in the revolutionary Red Army. In the 1919 counteroffensive on the Eastern Front, he led the Turkestan Army through the Buguruslan, Belebey and Ufa operations, helping turn back Kolchak's advance. After the Civil War, he helped institutionalize the early Soviet armed forces through senior posts in military education and engineering administration.

Military command Soviet Union state institutions 1887–1937 ✕ Executed

Imperial staff officer who rose to the top of the Red Army command

"Kork is my pride. Just as every front has one commander who plays first violin — that violin on the Western Front is Kork" — Commander-in-Chief Sergey Kamenev to Tukhachevsky, direct line, 1920

Born to an Estonian peasant family, Kork graduated with distinction from the Imperial General Staff Academy and became an elite staff officer. Volunteering for the Red Army in 1918, he commanded the 15th Army in the defence of Petrograd and the Polish-Soviet War, then led the 6th Army to destroy Wrangel's White forces in the Perekop-Chongar operation. After the Civil War he rose to command the Moscow Military District and head the Frunze Military Academy, reaching the rank of Komandarm 2nd rank (the highest Red Army rank below Marshal) and also served as Soviet military attaché in Germany. Arrested in the 1937 Tukhachevsky case, he was shot and posthumously rehabilitated in 1957.

Military command Japan state institutions 1887–1945 ✕ Suicide

Japanese general who directed Okinawa's war of attrition

Even after defeat was clear, he rejected a surrender appeal and ordered his remaining forces to fight to the end.

Mitsuru Ushijima was an Imperial Japanese Army officer who commanded formations in the war against China and the Pacific War. Sent to Okinawa in 1944, he led the 32nd Army in a defense-in-depth and war of attrition in the south rather than a beach battle, while its system also mobilized civilians for labor and combat. His May 1945 withdrawal from Shuri prolonged resistance but drew refugees into the battlefield and increased civilian losses; he rejected surrender and killed himself in June.

Military command Germany state institutions 1887–1952 ○ Natural causes

The general who represented Germany's surrender in Italy

On 29 April 1945 at Caserta, his representatives signed the surrender instrument for the German forces in Italy.

Born into a Prussian military family, Heinrich von Vietinghoff became a senior commander after serving in the Imperial Army and the Reichswehr. He took part in the invasions of Poland and the Soviet Union, and from 1943 commanded German defensive operations in occupied Italy. In April 1945 he negotiated with the Allies at Caserta and represented the German forces in the surrender arrangements, making him a central participant in ending the German war in Italy. After captivity, he joined West German rearmament discussions.

Military command United States state institutions 1887–1973 ○ Natural causes

The general who defended Guadalcanal and the Marine Corps

In his 1946 Senate testimony, he argued that Congress should decide the Marine Corps' future: “The bended knee is not a tradition of our Corps.”

Alexander Vandegrift was a United States Marine Corps general whose Pacific War command combined amphibious assault with determined defense. In August 1942 he led the 1st Marine Division ashore at Guadalcanal, organized the defense around Henderson Field, and held the beachhead through sustained Japanese air, land, and naval pressure, making the campaign the first major U.S. ground offensive of the war. As Commandant after the war, he defended the Marine Corps' independent role against proposals to absorb it into the Army, appealing to Congress in his 1946 Senate testimony.

Military command Nazi party and regime 1887–1973 ○ Convicted of war crimes 1949, released 1953

Nazi Germany's finest operational strategist and the apex of the 'clean Wehrmacht' myth

"Preussische Feldmarschälle meutern nicht": "Prussian field marshals do not mutiny." With these words he explained why he did not join the 20 July 1944 plot on Hitler's life.

Erich von Manstein was a field marshal of Nazi Germany and widely regarded as the most dangerous operational mind on the Eastern Front. He devised the Ardennes flanking manoeuvre (the Sichelschnitt, or sickle cut) that broke France in 1940, captured the Crimea and Sevastopol in 1941–42, and in February–March 1943 executed the backhand-blow counteroffensive at Kharkov that restored the German southern front and created the Kursk salient. Relieved in March 1944 for disagreements with Hitler, he was convicted of war crimes by a British tribunal in 1949 and sentenced to 18 years (released 1953), then advised West Germany on rearming. His memoir Lost Victories narrated only his operational record, ignoring the Holocaust and Wehrmacht crimes, and became a cornerstone of the 'clean Wehrmacht' myth.

Military command United Kingdom state institutions 1887–1976 ○ Natural causes

Commander of the Allied ground forces in Normandy

At a Normandy briefing on 12 June 1944, he told the troops: “We have got to go off and do a job together very soon now.”

Bernard Montgomery was a British field marshal shaped by First World War experience and an intense commitment to troop training. In the Second World War he rebuilt the Eighth Army before leading it at El Alamein, then commanded Allied operations in Sicily and Italy. Recalled to Britain for the Normandy invasion, he commanded the 21st Army Group and all Allied ground forces in the opening phase, pressing to enlarge the initial assault and secure a broad lodgement. His methodical, tightly controlled style reduced some risks but also drew criticism for slowing operations and accepting costly battles.

Military command Revolutionary Insurgent Army of Ukraine (Makhnovists) 1888–1934 ○ Bone tuberculosis

The anarchist peasant commander who fought Bolsheviks, Whites, Germans, and nationalists in succession

Kremlin, June 1918. Lenin told Makhno, "If anarchists were like you, we'd gladly work together." Two years later, Makhno would be betrayed by the Bolsheviks twice.

Ukrainian anarcho-communist revolutionary. Led a peasant army and built the Free Territory, an experiment in anarchist self-governance. Allied with the Red Army twice to defeat the Whites, and was betrayed each time. Exiled in 1921, he wrote his memoirs in Paris.

Military command Soviet Communist Party and Bolsheviks 1888–1936 ✕ Executed

The Red commander of the Urals

In 1926, after Zinoviev broke with Stalin, the Left Opposition weighed an alliance. Mrachkovsky: 'With no one — Zinoviev will run and Stalin will deceive.'

A Bolshevik organizer and Civil War hero from the Urals, he led the Special Northern Expeditionary Detachment to capture Tobolsk and was twice awarded the Order of the Red Banner. He later commanded military districts before becoming the first head of Baikal-Amur Mainline (BAM) construction. A key figure in the Left Opposition, he coined the famous warning 'Zinoviev will run away, and Stalin will deceive,' and was executed at the first Moscow Trial in 1936.

Military command Germany state institutions 1888–1954 ○ Natural causes

A leading architect of armoured warfare and a general of Nazi Germany

In May 1940, he argued that the armoured forces across the Meuse should keep moving toward the Channel rather than wait for the infantry.

Heinz Guderian was a professional soldier who helped develop the doctrine of concentrated armoured manoeuvre and shape Germany’s panzer force and early wartime victories. He presented himself after the war as the “father” of the panzer arm, but his ideas rested on work by Oswald Lutz and many other officers. During the 1940 invasion of France, he pressed for a rapid thrust through the Ardennes, across the Meuse and onward to the English Channel, helping isolate Allied forces around Dunkirk. He nevertheless collaborated with the Nazi regime and commanded in an eastern war of aggression marked by occupation crimes, while his postwar memoirs minimized his responsibility and political ties.

Military command Soviet Union state institutions 1889–1938 ✕ Executed

The quiet architect of the Red Army who confronted Stalin at Tsaritsyn as Trotsky's man

In January 1918, during the Brest-Litovsk peace negotiations, Mekhonoshin told a party meeting chaired by Lenin: 'We have no real fighting force. The front is bare. We cannot fight.'

Konstantin Mekhonoshin was a core military organizer in the founding era of the Red Army, who prepared the October armed uprising as a member of the Petrograd Military Revolutionary Committee and then, as Deputy People's Commissar for Military Affairs, built the skeleton of the new Red Army alongside Podvoisky and Sklyansky. As a member of the Republic's Revolutionary Military Council he served on multiple fronts, and in 1918 at Tsaritsyn he backed Trotsky's appointed Southern Front commander against Stalin and Voroshilov's independent line, playing a decisive role in their removal. After the Civil War he headed Vsevobuch, laying the foundations of the Soviet physical culture and sports system, before moving through Gosplan, Osoaviakhim, and the Institute of Oceanography; arrested in 1937 and shot the following year, he was rehabilitated in 1956.

Military command Soviet Union state institutions 1889–1938 ✕ Executed

The first People's Commissar for Naval Affairs, whose Baltic sailors tipped the scales in October 1917

November 1, 1917, Gatchina Palace. Dybenko, having surrounded Kerensky-Krasnov's forces with thousands of armed sailors, addressed the Cossack delegation: "Hand over your general. Soviet power guarantees you safe passage home." By morning, General Krasnov was under arrest and Kerensky had fled in disguise. In one week, the fate of the revolution had been sealed.

Born to a Ukrainian peasant family in Chernigov, he became a Baltic Fleet sailor and joined the Bolshevik underground. Elected chairman of Tsentrobalt in April 1917, he funnelled thousands of armed sailors from Helsingfors and Kronstadt into Petrograd during the October Revolution, tipping the balance, arresting General Krasnov, and dispersing the Constituent Assembly. He captured Crimea and liberated Tsaritsyn during the Civil War, then helped crush the Kronstadt and Tambov rebellions. His marriage to Alexandra Kollontai made them the revolution's most celebrated couple.

Military command Soviet Union state institutions 1889–1938 ✕ Shot in

The Latvian Bolshevik who built Soviet military intelligence and was consumed by the purges

When the secret residents' conference in Denmark was uncovered in February 1935 and four senior officers of the central apparatus were seized at once, Berzin submitted his resignation.

Born in 1889 into a Latvian farm-labourer family, born Pēteris Ķuzis, and executed in 1938. He joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1905, led guerrilla activity in Latvia, and after serving a katorga sentence for killing a policeman escaped from Siberian exile in 1914. Deputy People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of Soviet Latvia in 1919 and in Red Army intelligence from 1920, he headed the Fourth (Intelligence) Directorate from 1924 to 1935 and built the Soviet military-intelligence system. Chief military adviser to the Spanish Republic in 1936, he returned as intelligence chief in 1937, was arrested that November and executed on 29 July 1938; rehabilitated in 1956.

Military command Japan state institutions 1889–1949 ○ Natural causes

The theorist who designed Japan's Manchurian expansion

“Who starts a war just because he wants oil?”

Kanji Ishiwara was an Imperial Japanese Army officer and military thinker who viewed Manchuria as a strategic base for a future war against the United States. As a Kwantung Army planner in 1931, he worked with Seishirō Itagaki to use the railway sabotage as a pretext for the Mukden Incident and the occupation of Manchuria. He later opposed an all-out war in China, confronting the consequences of his own expansionist project before his conflict with Hideki Tōjō ended his active career.

Military command France state institutions 1889–1952 ○ Natural causes

The general who defied Vichy and led the Liberation Army

In January 1945, defying a retreat order, he commanded that the symbolic city of Strasbourg be defended, anticipating de Gaulle's own instruction by twenty-four hours 'with perfect convergence.'

Jean de Lattre de Tassigny was a French professional soldier shaped by the First World War and the Moroccan war, and a commander who preserved his division’s cohesion amid France’s defeat in 1940. He remained in Vichy’s army, but in November 1942 he refused orders not to resist the German occupation of southern France, and joined the Free French after imprisonment and escape. Commanding Army B and then the French First Army, he led the liberation of Toulon and Marseille after the Provence landings, advanced to the Rhine and Danube, and represented France at the German surrender in Berlin in 1945. He later commanded the French colonial war in Indochina, where illness ended his life in 1952; he was posthumously made Marshal of France.

Military command Soviet Union state institutions 1889–1953 ○ Natural causes

From Stalin's personal secretary to the Red Army's purge enforcer, nicknamed 'the Inquisitor of the Red Army'

According to former USSR Health Minister Ye. I. Smirnov, when he proposed to Stalin in 1949 that Mekhlis head a government commission, Stalin burst out laughing, wiping away tears, saying words to the effect that Mekhlis was suited to destroying and wrecking things, not to constructive work.

Born in Odessa into a Jewish family, he worked as a clerk and tutor before joining the Zionist workers' party Poale Zion (1907–1910). He entered the Communist Party in 1918 and did Red Army political work; in 1922–1926 he was in effect Stalin's personal secretary. As Pravda editor-in-chief from 1930 to November 1937 he incited the campaign against 'enemies of the people'. From December 1937 to September 1940, as Deputy People's Commissar of Defence and head of the Main Political Directorate, he helped organise the mass purge of the officer corps. His interference on the Crimean Front contributed to the Kerch catastrophe of 1942 and he was demoted two ranks, but his ranks were later restored and he became a colonel-general (1944). He served as USSR Minister of State Control (1946–1950) and died of heart disease in 1953.

Military command Soviet Union state institutions 1890–1918 ✕ Suicide

MRC commissar who twice entered the Winter Palace to parley and talked its defenders into walking away

Inside the Winter Palace, Palchinsky ordered his arrest. The cadets protested: 'His detention damages our honour. We guaranteed his safety.' The commissar walked free, and soon the cadets walked out too.

A Jewish youth from Ekaterinoslav who joined the revolutionary movement at fifteen, Chudnovsky followed Trotsky through emigration in Paris and New York, returning via the Mezhraiontsy to the Bolsheviks in May 1917. As an MRC commissar during the October insurrection, he twice entered the Winter Palace to parley (arrested the first time by Palchinsky, then freed at the cadets' insistence), and his promise of safe passage to those who would lay down their arms persuaded waves of defenders to quit the building before the final entry. Appointed extraordinary commissar of the South-Western Front, he fought German occupation forces and the Ukrainian Central Rada; captured and sentenced to death by the Rada in December 1917, he was freed by Soviet troops entering Kiev, only to die months later, surrounded near Liubotyn in April 1918, when he shot himself.

Military command Soviet Union state institutions 1890–1937 ✕ Executed

One of the eight Tukhachevsky-trial defendants; his confession under torture started the chain reaction that consumed the Red Army

"Although I was arrested on the 15th and the very next day declared I belonged to an anti-Soviet organization, until today I have tried to minimize my role and conceal the most essential facts." (interrogation, May 19, 1937)

Born in Pinsk to a Jewish carpenter, he rose from a WWI private and Civil War division commander to the Red Army elite. As head of the Command Personnel Directorate from 1934, he controlled officer appointments across the armed forces, working closely with Tukhachevsky, whom he accompanied to Reichswehr maneuvers in Germany in 1932. Arrested on May 15, 1937, a week before Tukhachevsky, he named over forty fellow commanders under torture as participants in the "military-Trotskyist conspiracy"; his confession ignited the chain reaction of the Great Purge. On June 12 he was sentenced to death by a closed military tribunal and shot that same day alongside Tukhachevsky and six others.

Military command Soviet Union state institutions 1890–1938 ✕ Died in prison

“Order of the Red Banner No. 1”: Civil War hero and one of the first five marshals, extinguished in Lefortovo

Uniting scattered Red detachments, he fought his way across 1,500 km of the Urals in 54 days. For this immortal campaign Comrade Blyukher is awarded the Order of the Red Banner No. 1. — VTsIK decree, 28 September 1918

A peasant's son from Yaroslavl, he earned the Red Army's first Order of the Red Banner for his epic 1,500-kilometre Ural raid in 1918. Under Frunze he broke through the Perekop defences to expel Wrangel from Crimea, then as C-in-C of the Far Eastern Republic crushed the last White offensive at Volochayevka. As Sun Yat-sen's chief military advisor 'General Galin' he designed the Northern Expedition; he later commanded the Special Far Eastern Army, routing Manchu forces in the 1929 CER conflict. One of the first five Marshals in 1935, he defended the Soviet Far East against Japanese expansion, but was arrested after the costly Lake Khasan battle and died in Lubyanka. Rehabilitated 1956.

Military command Germany state institutions 1890–1946 ✕ Executed

An operational architect of Nazi Germany's war

On 30 June 1940 he wrote, “The final German victory over England is now only a question of time.”

Alfred Jodl was a career officer who served throughout the Second World War as chief of the Operations Staff of Germany's Armed Forces High Command, translating Nazi political decisions into military directives. In 1940 he judged final victory over Britain to be only a matter of time, while the OKW examined pressure and invasion options and coordinated the associated operational preparations and orders. He signed or circulated the Commissar and Commando Orders and bore responsibility for forced evacuation and the destruction of homes in occupied territory. Convicted on all four counts at the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg, he was hanged in 1946.