UN commander who conceived the Inchon landing and overruled the unanimous opposition of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
"There is no substitute for victory": farewell address to Congress, 19 April 1951.
Douglas MacArthur was an American five-star general who led the Allied forces to victory in the Pacific War and governed occupied Japan as Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers. Appointed commander of UN forces after the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950, he conceived and drove through the Inchon landing against the unanimous opposition of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, reversing the course of the war. When China entered the war, MacArthur pressed for an expanded campaign including bombing Manchuria, clashing openly with the Truman administration and leading to his dramatic dismissal in April 1951. His removal remains the Cold War's sharpest constitutional confrontation over civilian control of the military.
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1930–1935Chief of Staff, U.S. Army
1935–1941Field Marshal and Military Advisor, Philippine Army
1941–1945Commander, U.S. Army Forces Far East / Supreme Commander, Southwest Pacific Area
1945–1951Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers, Japan
1950–1951Commander, United Nations Command, Korean War
Hungarian communist who backed Soviet intervention with Kádár in 1956 and became prime minister after the revolution was crushed
Born into a German Catholic family in Seregélyes, he studied law and was taken prisoner on the Eastern Front in 1915 and sent to Tomsk. There he joined the Bolsheviks and commanded an international POW unit; back in Hungary in 1918 he helped found the Hungarian Communist Party and was war commissar of the Slovak Soviet Republic. He lived in the Soviet Union from 1922 to 1936 and, under the name Otto Flatter, commanded the XI International Brigade in the Spanish Civil War. After the war he was Budapest’s chief of police and then a diplomat. In the 1956 revolution he was interior minister under Imre Nagy, but in November he went to Moscow with János Kádár and openly backed Soviet armed intervention. As minister of the armed forces and public security in Kádár’s government he helped organise the security regiments and the Workers’ Militia, and he was prime minister from 1958 to 1961.
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1915Captured by the Russians; held in Tomsk
1918Co-founder of the Hungarian Communist Party
1919War commissar of the Slovak Soviet Republic
1936–1939Commander of the XI International Brigade in Spain
1946–1949Budapest chief of police
1956Interior minister under Nagy; minister of the armed forces and public security under Kádár
Carmelite friar and Free French admiral whose Republic of Cochinchina as High Commissioner opened the road to war
On 1 June 1946, while Ho Chi Minh was negotiating in France, he unilaterally proclaimed Cochinchina’s provisional government, intensifying the conflict with the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.
A naval officer from Brest who became a Carmelite friar after the First World War, he returned to the navy in the Second and led de Gaulle’s Free French naval forces. Arriving as High Commissioner for Indochina on 31 October 1945 to restore colonial administration, he set up an autonomous Republic of Cochinchina in 1946 while the Viet Minh leaders were negotiating in France, breaking the Ho–Sainteny agreement of 6 March and effectively starting the war. He directed a hard line including the Haiphong shelling and was recalled in 1947.
Career timeline
1920Entered the Carmelite order as a friar.
1940Joined de Gaulle’s Free French forces.
1945De Gaulle named him High Commissioner for Indochina; he arrived there on 31 October.
1946Proclaimed Cochinchina’s provisional government on 1 June and supported the armed seizure of Lang Son and Haiphong in November.
1947On 4 March, the French government recalled him and relieved him of his post.
A U.S. general whose offensive command was bound to racial prejudice
“Don't let a bunch of Chinese laundrymen stop you.”
Edward Almond was a United States Army general who served in two world wars and Korea, leaving a record that combines an aggressive command style with racial prejudice. In World War II he commanded the largely African American 92nd Infantry Division, then blamed its combat performance on the soldiers' race and opposed using Black troops in combat. In Korea, as Douglas MacArthur's chief of staff, he was placed in command of X Corps after the Inchon landing force was formed, contributing to the capture of Inchon and Seoul. His wide dispersal of forces in the northeast and underestimation of Chinese strength helped deepen X Corps' crisis in late 1950.
Career timeline
1915Graduated from Virginia Military Institute
1918Commanded the 12th Machine Gun Battalion, 4th Division, in France
1942–1945Commanding general, 92nd Infantry Division, in the Italian campaign
1946–1949Personnel chief, then chief of staff, Far East Command in Tokyo
1950–1951Commanding general, X Corps, directing Inchon and northeast operations
1951–1953Commandant, U.S. Army War College; retired in 1953
First East German Minister for State Security, purged in 1953 after trying to replace Ulbricht
Born in Gelsenkirchen to a gendarmerie sergeant’s family, he trained as a teacher and was a military leader of the Red Ruhr Army during the Kapp Putsch of 1920. As a GRU agent and Comintern military adviser he co-organised the Guangzhou Uprising in China, and in the Spanish Civil War, as “Gomez”, he led the International Brigades. He returned to Germany in 1947, joined the SED, and in 1950 became the first Minister for State Security and a Politburo member, building up the Stasi. After the uprising of June 1953 he moved to replace Ulbricht with Herrnstadt, but once Ulbricht had Khrushchev’s backing he lost his ministry and all his posts in July and was expelled from the party. He worked as a translator, died in East Berlin in 1958 and was rehabilitated after 1990.
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1920Red Ruhr Army leader during the Kapp Putsch
1927–1930Comintern military adviser in China
1936–1938International Brigades commander in Spain (“Gomez”)
1950–1953GDR Minister for State Security; Politburo member
1953Stripped of all posts and expelled from the SED
A Marine commander whose caution helped save a surrounded division
“Retreat, hell! We're just attacking in another direction.”
Oliver P. Smith was a U.S. Marine general who served in World War II and the Korean War, known for expertise in amphibious operations and a cautious command style. As commander of the 1st Marine Division, he led the Inchon landing and the advance to Seoul in 1950, then directed the division’s breakout from Chinese encirclement at the Chosin Reservoir. Against speed-first orders from MacArthur and Almond, he prepared supply lines and an airfield, choices that helped preserve his force and sustain the operation.
Career timeline
1917Commissioned second lieutenant, U.S. Marine Corps
1934–1936Studied at the École Supérieure de Guerre in France
1944Commanded 5th Marines in the New Britain operation
1944–1945Assistant division commander, 1st Marine Division, Peleliu and Okinawa operations
1950–1951Commanding general, 1st Marine Division, Inchon, Seoul and Chosin operations
1953–1955Commanding general, Fleet Marine Force, Atlantic
A national hero of two world wars who became an unlikely last bastion of the Prague Spring
In Moscow in August 1968, when Brezhnev demanded he install a 'workers'-peasants' government,' Svoboda replied that he would put a bullet in his own head unless Dubček and the reformist leaders were released.
A World War I veteran who deserted the Austro-Hungarian army for the Czechoslovak Legion, Svoboda organized the 1st Czechoslovak Army Corps in the USSR during World War II and emerged a national hero, liberating his homeland from the east. As Minister of Defense, he declared in February 1948 that 'the army will not march against the people,' enabling the Communist takeover, only to be purged and spend the 1950s imprisoned and in obscurity. Elected president in March 1968 on Dubček's recommendation, he consented to the Prague Spring reforms; after the Warsaw Pact invasion that August, he flew to Moscow and threatened to shoot himself in Brezhnev's presence unless the kidnapped reform leaders were freed. During normalization he passively acquiesced to the muzzling of the press and Dubček's removal, remaining in office until a constitutional provision forced him out in 1975.
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1915–1920Czechoslovak Legion: battles of Zborov and Bakhmach, Siberian withdrawal
1921–1939Officer in the Czechoslovak Army; battalion commander at Munich
1939–1945Organizes Czechoslovak units in Poland and USSR; commands 1st Corps at Kiev and Dukla
1945–1950Minister of National Defense of Czechoslovakia
1950–1951Deputy Prime Minister and chairman of the State Committee for Sport
1951–1954Purged: arrested, imprisoned, then released to work on a cooperative farm
1954–1959Commandant of the Klement Gottwald Military Academy
The US Army lieutenant general who signed the Korean Armistice as UNC delegate after 158 truce meetings
In June 1952, seeing the meeting was going nowhere, Harrison stood up and walked out, leaving General Nam Il flabbergasted at the table.
A cavalry officer decorated for valor in Normandy and the Bulge, he became the senior UNC delegate at Panmunjom in May 1952 and led the truce talks through more than a year of stalemate. On 27 July 1953, scarcely acknowledging his counterpart General Nam Il, he signed eighteen copies of the Korean Armistice Agreement and ended three years of open combat. A devout evangelical Christian who served as president of the Officers' Christian Fellowship, he lived by the discipline of a man under orders to the last.
Career timeline
1917Graduated West Point, commissioned cavalry 2nd lieutenant
1944ADC 30th Infantry Division, Normandy and Battle of the Bulge
1946–1949Chief of Reparations Section, GHQ, occupied Japan
1950–1951Commanding General, 9th Infantry Division, Fort Dix
The US military governor who answered the blockade of West Berlin with a 324-day airlift
On 25 June 1948, the day after the blockade began, Clay ordered the airlift on his own authority before Truman formally approved it, and the Berliners he saved came to call him their 'city father' and carved on his grave: 'Wir danken dem Bewahrer unserer Freiheit.'
An engineer who rose through the Army's Corps of Engineers to direct wartime supply, Clay became military governor of the American zone in occupied Germany in 1947. When the Soviets blockaded West Berlin in 1948, he chose an airlift over the armed convoys he privately favored, ordered it on his own authority, and held out for all 324 days, arguing that Berlin's defense was a question of American honor and Western Europe's fate. After retiring in 1949 he became a businessman and presidential adviser, and in 1961 returned to Berlin as Kennedy's envoy, sending American tanks to face Soviet armor at Checkpoint Charlie.
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1897Born in Marietta, Georgia, son of Senator Alexander Stephens Clay
1918Graduated West Point; commissioned in the Corps of Engineers
1942Became the youngest brigadier general; director of materiel under Eisenhower
1945–1946Deputy to Eisenhower, then deputy military governor of Germany
1947–1949Military governor of the US Zone and C-in-C, US Forces Europe
1948.06.25Ordered the Berlin Airlift
1949–1962Retired; chairman of Continental Can Company
1961–1962Kennedy's envoy to Berlin; US and Soviet tanks faced off at Checkpoint Charlie
Communist who ran an anti-fascist sabotage network before the war and headed the Stasi from 1953 to 1957
Born in Münden in the Province of Hanover, he took part in the sailors’ revolt of 1918, joined the KPD in 1919 and led party military wings; he sat in the Reichstag in 1932–1933. In exile he organised the “Wollweber League” in 1936–1940, which carried out 21 known acts of sabotage against ships of fascist nations, and supplied arms to the Spanish Republicans. Back in Germany in 1946 he ran shipping administration. In July 1953, when Zaisser was removed and the Ministry for State Security was downgraded to a State Secretariat, he became its head, and in November 1955 Minister of State Security again. He clashed with Ulbricht and Honecker and sided with Schirdewan, resigned in 1957, and in 1958 was removed from the Central Committee for “factional activity”. He died in East Berlin in 1967.
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1918Took part in the sailors’ revolt
1932–1933KPD Reichstag deputy
1936–1940Organised the Wollweber League sabotage network
Last commander of the French Far East Expeditionary Corps, who chose to fortify Điện Biên Phủ and met defeat there in 1954
Navarre ordered French troops into Điện Biên Phủ in November 1953 and directed its defense. He did not order a withdrawal during the siege, which began in March 1954; the fortress fell in May, erasing France’s expected negotiating advantage.
A French army general of both world wars, he succeeded Salan as commander of French forces in Indochina in May 1953, and soon reported to his government that the war could not be won and that stalemate was the best hope. Under the “Navarre plan” of holding the cities and main roads to force the Viet Minh to negotiate, he dropped paratroopers into Điện Biên Phủ in November 1953 to block the Viet Minh route into Laos and fortified the valley. The fall of the fortress in May 1954 sealed France’s defeat.
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1916–1918Entered Saint-Cyr military academy and served at the front in World War I as a cavalry platoon commander.
1942–1945Went underground after being recalled for anti-German activity, joined the French Resistance, and commanded an armored regiment of the First Army in the liberation of France.
1945–1953Promoted to brigadier general, he served in Germany as commander of the 5th Armored Division and chief of staff to Marshal Alphonse Juin, with a division command in Algeria in 1948–49.
1953–1954As commander of French forces in Indochina, he directed the Battle of Điện Biên Phủ and was replaced after the fortress fell.
1956Retired from the Army and published Agonie de l’Indochine, a book on the Indochina War.
Communist who chaired the German Economic Commission, the forerunner of the GDR government, and led East German economic policy
Born in Feuerbach near Stuttgart, he worked as a metal presser at Bosch and passed through the Spartacists and the USPD into the KPD in 1919, becoming the party’s leading agricultural policy maker in the 1920s. Imprisoned after the Nazis came to power, he emigrated to the Soviet Union and in the Spanish Civil War commanded the XI International Brigade. Interned in France and handed to the Gestapo by Vichy in 1942, he was liberated at Mauthausen. In March 1948 he became chairman of the German Economic Commission (DWK), which carried out the eastern currency reform and the first plans. In the GDR he was a Politburo member, deputy prime minister and chairman of the State Planning Commission; at the Politburo session of 8 July 1953 he recommended replacing Ulbricht, yet kept his posts. Minister of Machine Construction and then of Foreign Trade, he died of a heart attack in 1961.
Career timeline
1919Joined the KPD
1923Head of the KPD agricultural division
1937–1938Commander of the XI International Brigade
1943–1945Mauthausen concentration camp
1948–1949Chairman of the German Economic Commission
1950–1961SED Politburo member; deputy prime minister
1955–1961Minister of Foreign and Inter-German Trade
French commander in the First Indochina War and leader of the OAS.
Salan commanded French forces in Indochina in 1952–53 and later served as the French government's delegate in Algeria. Opposed to Algerian independence, he joined the generals' April 1961 coup; after its failure, he went underground and founded and led the clandestine Organisation armée secrète (OAS), which sought to keep Algeria French and carried out attacks and violence in Algeria and France. Arrested in 1962, he was sentenced to life detention and pardoned and amnestied in 1968.
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1952–1953Commander-in-chief of French forces in Indochina
1958–1960French government's delegate in Algeria
1961–1962Participant in April coup; subsequently OAS leader
The Manchurian guerrilla who became the KPA's first commander and the DPRK's nominal head of state
In December 1955, Choe Yong-gon presided over the trial of Pak Hon-yong and sentenced him to death, rejecting pleas for clemency from Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai.
After military training at Yunnan and Whampoa academies, he led anti-Japanese guerrilla war in Manchuria as chief of staff of the 2nd Route Army and commander of the 7th Army of the Northeast Anti-Japanese United Army, forming the Manchurian trio with Kim Il Sung and Kim Chaek. Returning in 1945, he played the decisive role in converting Cho Man-sik's Korean Democratic Party to a communist line; upon the DPRK's founding in 1948 he became its first Minister of National Defence and Chief Commander of the Korean People's Army, the KPA's senior field commander during the Korean War. From 1957 to 1972 he chaired the Supreme People's Assembly Standing Committee, the DPRK's nominal head of state, and served as the regime's diplomatic face abroad. He received a state funeral at his death in 1976 and was interred in the Patriotic Martyrs' Cemetery.
Career timeline
1923–1924Graduated from Yunnan Military Academy
1925–1927Instructor at Whampoa Military Academy
1936–1940Chief of Staff, 2nd Route Army & Commander, 7th Army, Northeast Anti-Japanese United Army
1942–1945Deputy Chief of Staff, 88th Special Brigade, Soviet Far East
1946–1955Chairman, Central Committee of the Korean Democratic Party
1948–1957Minister of National Defence & Chief Commander, Korean People's Army
1957–1972Chairman, Standing Committee of the Supreme People's Assembly
During the Cuban Missile Crisis, he presented the military options and then conveyed the president’s blockade decision to the armed forces.
Maxwell Taylor was a U.S. Army officer who moved from airborne command in World War II to a central military and diplomatic role in the Cold War. He criticized the Eisenhower administration’s nuclear-heavy “New Look” and argued for stronger conventional forces and flexible response. Trusted by John F. Kennedy, he served as presidential military representative and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; during the Cuban Missile Crisis he joined EXCOMM, presented military options, and conveyed the president’s blockade decision to the armed forces. He later supported expanding U.S. involvement in Vietnam, revealing both the reach and limits of Cold War military strategy.
Career timeline
1922Second lieutenant, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
1942–1945Commander, 82nd Airborne artillery; commanding general, 101st Airborne Division
1949–1951Commander of Allied troops in West Berlin
1953–1955Commander, Eighth United States Army; Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations and Administration
1955–1959Chief of Staff of the United States Army
1961–1962Military representative to the President
1962–1964Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; EXCOMM member
French general who commanded the Điện Biên Phủ fortress in 1954 and was captured when it fell
He commanded French forces at Điện Biên Phủ in 1954 and was captured after their defeat. After his release, he commanded a division and later ran a recycling firm.
A cavalry officer from an old French noble family, he served through the Second World War and into the Indochina War, taking command at Điện Biên Phủ in December 1953. After the Viet Minh attack began on 13 March 1954, artillery wrecked the airstrips and the monsoon cut supply until only three strongpoints remained. On 7 May General Cogny in Hanoi ordered him to cease fire and destroy his equipment without raising a white flag, and de Castries was taken prisoner as the fortress fell, to be released after the Geneva Accords.
Career timeline
1923Enlisted in the army and attended the Saumur Cavalry School.
1926Commissioned as a cavalry officer, then left the army to pursue equestrian sports.
1940–1945Rejoined the army during World War II, was captured and escaped, then fought with Allied forces in North Africa, Italy, southern France and Germany. Near the war’s end, he commanded the 3rd Moroccan Spahis.
1946Was sent to Indochina and commanded a battalion of Moroccan goumiers.
1953–1954After a wound and a year recovering in France, he returned to Vietnam. As a colonel he was charged with defending Điện Biên Phủ and was promoted to brigadier general near the end of the siege. French forces were defeated on 7 May 1954; he was held prisoner for four months while the Geneva armistice was arranged.
1954–1959After returning to France, commanded the 5th Armored Division stationed in West Germany. Retired from the army after a car accident in 1959.
“All flights in good weather or bad, day or night, will be by instrument flight rules.”
William H. Tunner was a U.S. Air Force commander who turned large-scale air transport into a disciplined system in the wartime Hump operation and the Berlin Airlift. During the Berlin Blockade, he led the Combined Airlift Task Force and converted a stopgap into a sustainable supply chain through one-way corridors, precise schedules, maintenance systems, and rapid turnarounds. After Black Friday, he required instrument flight in all conditions and ordered aircraft that missed an approach to return, raising both safety and throughput. He later commanded Korean War airlift operations and the Military Air Transport Service, helping define modern strategic airlift.
Career timeline
1928–1941U.S. Army Air Corps officer, pilot and staff officer
1942–1943Commander, Domestic and Ferrying Divisions, Air Transport Command
1942Organized the Women's Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron
The Air Force general who firebombed Japan and urged nuclear war on his adversaries
When Clay asked whether he could haul coal into Berlin, LeMay answered, 'We can haul anything.'
The architect of America's strategic bombing of Japan, whose March 1945 fire raid on Tokyo began the incineration of 66 cities. As commander of US Air Forces in Europe in 1948, he answered Lucius Clay's call during the Berlin Blockade with 'We can haul anything,' setting in motion the first phase of the Airlift. He then rebuilt Strategic Air Command into an all-jet nuclear force and, as Air Force Chief of Staff, pressed for bombing Cuba's missile sites in 1962. In retirement he ran as George Wallace's running mate in 1968.
Career timeline
1942Commander, 305th Bomb Group, European theater
1944–1945Led XXI Bomber Command, firebombing Japanese cities
1947–1948Commander, USAF Europe; launched the Berlin Airlift
Officer who founded the Union of Lithuanian Freedom Fighters in 1949 and led the partisan resistance as its chairman
Born in Palanga, he graduated from the War School of Kaunas in 1929 as an artillery officer and studied at the School of Applied Artillery in Fontainebleau, France, in 1936–1938. In the deportations of June 1941 his sister’s whole family was sent to Siberia; under the German occupation he retired rather than serve the Nazis. In 1944 he joined the Lithuanian Territorial Defense Force, and when the Red Army returned he joined the Lithuanian Liberty Army and the partisans, rising to the leadership. In February 1949 he founded the Union of Lithuanian Freedom Fighters and became its chairman, working to unify the partisan units and give their struggle a legal framework. Paralysed by a cerebral haemorrhage in December 1951, he was arrested on 30 May 1953, interrogated in Moscow by Beria and executed in Butyrka prison in 1954. In 2009 he was officially named the fourth President of Lithuania.
Career timeline
1929Graduated from the War School of Kaunas; artillery officer
1936–1938School of Applied Artillery, Fontainebleau
1944Lithuanian Territorial Defense Force, then the partisans
1949Chairman of the Union of Lithuanian Freedom Fighters
The history teacher who defeated two empires without ever attending a military academy
As a young history teacher at a Hanoi lycée, he would sketch detailed Napoleonic campaign plans on the blackboard. His students called him 'the General.' Fifteen years later he accepted the French surrender at Dien Bien Phu.
A history teacher with no formal military training who built the Viet Minh army and defeated France at Dien Bien Phu (1954), then the United States in the war that followed. As the first commander of a colonial liberation force to break a modern imperial army in pitched battle, he spent three decades building the People's Army into a mechanised combined-arms force and perfecting a people's war aimed at breaking the enemy's political will.
Career timeline
1941–1945Military commander, Viet Minh
1946–1947Minister of the Interior, DRV
1946–1980Minister of Defence, DRV / SRV
1951–1982Politburo member, Communist Party of Vietnam
1955–1991Deputy Prime Minister
1972Relieved as field commander (replaced by Văn Tiến Dũng); retained Defence portfolio
“I was skin and bones coming out of five years of imprisonment.”
Béla Király was a Hungarian officer whose career crossed the Second World War, the construction of postwar socialism, and the 1956 Revolution. Sentenced to death by the postwar regime and later commuted and released, he became the highest-ranking military commander of the Hungarian armed forces that resisted the Soviet intervention. In exile he became a historian and teacher in the United States, while his memoirs and writings on the Tito–Stalin split argued that Stalin had prepared to invade Yugoslavia. Archive-based scholarship later disputed or qualified that claim, making Király both an important witness to 1956 and a contested author of Cold War memory.
Career timeline
1935Graduated from Ludovika Military Academy, commissioned second lieutenant
1942–1945Hungarian Army staff officer, Eastern Front service
1949–1951Commander of infantry in the Hungarian People's Army, major general
1951–1956Imprisoned in a political trial, sentence commuted from death to life
1956Commander-in-chief of the National Guard, military commander of Budapest
1957–1966Exile in the United States, earned a history PhD at Columbia University
1964–1982Professor of military history at Brooklyn College
The Soviet-Korean general who signed the Korean Armistice at Panmunjom
At Panmunjom on 27 July 1953, General Nam Il and Lieutenant General Harrison barely acknowledged each other as they signed eighteen copies of the armistice. In those ten minutes that stopped three years of war, he was the face of North Korea.
A Koryo-saram born in the Russian Far East, he was deported with his family to Central Asia in 1937 and served as a Soviet Army officer at Stalingrad and the Battle of Berlin. Dispatched to northern Korea in 1946, he became a close aide to Kim Il Sung, and when the Korean War broke out he was appointed Chief of Staff of the Korean People's Army. From 1951 he led the communist delegation at the Panmunjom armistice talks for two years and on 27 July 1953 signed the Korean Armistice Agreement as the KPA's senior delegate, becoming the face of North Korea to the world. After the war he served as Foreign Minister and Deputy Premier, surviving the purges that eliminated most of his Soviet-Korean colleagues, but died in a suspicious car crash in 1976.
Career timeline
1939–1946Teacher and education official in USSR; served as Soviet Army captain in the German-Soviet War
1946–1950Dispatched to northern Korea, rose to Deputy Minister of Education
1950–1953KPA Chief of Staff; chief communist delegate at armistice talks
1953Signed the Korean Armistice Agreement for the KPA, 27 July
1953–1959Minister of Foreign Affairs
1957–1976Deputy Premier of the DPRK Cabinet
1966–1972Minister of Railways; Chairman of the State Construction Committee
1972–1976State Administrative Council Vice Premier; Chairman of the State Light Industry Committee
Cambodian military officer and politician who led the Khmer Republic as prime minister and president
Lon Nol held senior military and government posts in Cambodia and was a principal architect of the March 1970 coup that removed Norodom Sihanouk. As premier of the new government, he abandoned Sihanouk’s neutrality and aligned closely with the United States and South Vietnam, permitting their forces to operate in Cambodia. He assumed total power in 1972 and became president; as Khmer Rouge forces neared the capital, he left Cambodia for the United States in April 1975.
Career timeline
1937Entered the French colonial service and served as a magistrate
1951Served as provincial governor and head of the national police
1952Joined the army and fought Vietnamese communist guerrillas in Cambodia as an area commander
1955Became chief of staff of the Cambodian army
1960Became commander in chief
1963Served as deputy premier
1966–1967Served as premier
1968–1969Served as minister of defense
1969–1972Served as premier under Sihanouk and became a leading figure in the government after the March 1970 coup
1972Assumed total power and became president
1975Left Cambodia on April 1 as Khmer Rouge forces neared the capital and settled in the United States
US Army general who commanded American forces in South Vietnam from 1964 to 1968 and pursued a strategy of attrition measured by body count
Westmoreland adopted attrition and “search and destroy” in Vietnam, treating enemy body counts as a key measure of success. U.S. forces grew to more than half a million, but the enemy replenished its losses; his optimistic claims of progress lost credibility after the 1968 Tet Offensive.
From South Carolina, he graduated first in his West Point class in 1936 and served in the European theatre of the Second World War and in Korea. Sent to South Vietnam in January 1964, he took command of Military Assistance Command, Vietnam in June. After the Marines landed he argued for abandoning a defensive posture in favour of an attrition war in which US forces sought out and destroyed the enemy, using artillery and air power on a huge scale. In November 1967 he said “the end comes into view”; after the Tet Offensive his request for 200,000 more troops leaked and he was replaced in March 1968. He was Army Chief of Staff from 1968 to 1972.
Career timeline
1936Graduated from West Point and was commissioned in the Army.
1942–1945Commanded the 34th Field Artillery Battalion in World War II, then served as chief of staff of the 9th Infantry Division.
1958–1963Commanded the 101st Airborne Division, then served as superintendent of West Point.
1964–1968Commanded U.S. forces in Vietnam and directed a war of attrition. After the Tet Offensive, he returned to the United States and became Army chief of staff.
