People of the Revolution and the USSR
- Juho Kusti Paasikivi Juho Kusti Paasikivi Finnish realist who faced Stalin at the 1939 Moscow negotiations and later forged the Paasikivi doctrine of Cold War neutrality
- Konrad Adenauer Konrad Adenauer The chancellor who made provisional statehood durable
- Andreas Hermes Andreas Hermes Weimar finance minister who founded the CDU in the Soviet zone in 1945 and was deposed for opposing the land reform
- James F. Francis Byrnes James F. Byrnes Roosevelt's "assistant president" who, as Secretary of State, designed the Potsdam reparations compromise
- Otto Nuschke Otto Nuschke Kaiser’s successor at the head of the East German CDU, who brought it into line with the SED as deputy prime minister
- Jakob Kaiser Jakob Kaiser Christian Democrat who led the CDU in the Soviet zone until SMAD removed him, then became West Germany’s minister for all-German affairs
- Anthony Eden Anthony Eden A British diplomat of war and decolonisation
- Ludwig Erhard Ludwig Erhard The West German economic statesman who shaped currency reform and the social market economy
- Georges Bidault Georges Bidault From Resistance chief to architect of the Marshall Plan response, the foreign minister who told Molotov that Soviet actions divided Europe
- Gerald Ford Gerald Ford The unelected president who steered détente into its final phase
- George Pratt Shultz George Shultz The Secretary of State who pushed Reagan toward dialogue with Gorbachev and helped end the Cold War
- George H. W. Herbert Walker Bush George H. W. Bush The US president who declared the Cold War over with Gorbachev at Malta, yet whose caution nearly let history slip away
- Helmut Josef Michael Kohl Helmut Kohl The chancellor who seized the initiative on the German question with a ten-point unification plan days before Malta
- Alois Mock Alois Mock An Austrian Europeanist who helped open the Iron Curtain
- Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin Владимир Владимирович Путин A ruler who recast the loss of the Soviet Union as a narrative of state restoration
- Viktor Mihály Orbán Orbán Viktor From anti-communist youth leader in 1989 to architect of 'illiberal democracy'