Radical French prime minister at the end of the First World War who pressed harsh terms on Hungary at the Paris Peace Conference
A physician turned journalist from the Vendée, he became mayor of the 18th arrondissement of Paris in 1870 and the next year tried to broker a compromise between the Paris Commune and the government. A key figure of the Independent Radicals, he advocated the separation of church and state. As interior minister in 1906 he ordered repressive policies toward the workers’ movement and was nicknamed “the Tiger”, and he was prime minister in 1906–1909 and 1917–1920. Appointed in November 1917 at one of the darkest hours of the war, he demanded total victory over Germany and achieved the Treaty of Versailles at the Paris Peace Conference. Seeking to weaken Hungary as Germany was weakened, he brought about the stringent terms of the Treaty of Trianon. He died in 1929.
Aristocratic statesman who led Hungary’s delegation to the Paris peace talks in 1920 and pleaded for revising Trianon at the League
A count born in Vienna, he entered parliament in 1877 and was a leading orator for half a century. As education minister in 1906–1910 he drafted the Apponyi laws of 1907, which imposed Hungarian-language teaching on non-Hungarian schools. He led the Hungarian delegation at the Paris peace talks in January 1920 and spoke on 16 January, without changing the terms, and in March lost the regency vote to Horthy. Thereafter, as a legitimist opposition deputy and Hungary’s representative at the League of Nations, he denounced the injustice of the Trianon borders. He died in Geneva in 1933, where he had come for the Disarmament Conference.
German field marshal in World War I and president of the Weimar Republic
Paul von Hindenburg commanded German land forces during World War I and was elected president of the Weimar Republic in 1925, serving until 1934. In the early 1930s he authorized governments lacking parliamentary support to rule through presidential emergency decrees, and on January 30, 1933, appointed Adolf Hitler chancellor. Hitler’s government soon expanded its power through terror and political manipulation.
German field marshal who governed occupied Ukraine in 1918 and was assassinated in Kiev by a Left SR
Prussian field marshal Hermann von Eichhorn became military governor of occupied Ukraine in 1918 and was assassinated in Kiev by Left Socialist-Revolutionary Boris Donskoy, who bombed his carriage.
A Prussian officer who fought in the wars of 1866 and 1870–71 and rose to command the XVIII Army Corps. In the First World War he led the 10th Army from January 1915, taking Kovno and Grodno, and from 1916 also Army Group Eichhorn; he was made field marshal in December 1917. On 3 April 1918 he became commander of Army Group Kiev and military governor of occupied Ukraine. On 30 July 1918 the Left Socialist-Revolutionary Boris Donskoy killed him in Kiev with a bomb thrown at his carriage.
Career timeline
1866–1914Joined the Prussian Army; fought in 1866 and 1870–71; commanded 9th Division (1901–1904) and XVIII Army Corps (1904–1912)
1915–1918Commander, 10th Army; took Kovno and Grodno; Army Group Eichhorn from 1916; field marshal 1917
1918Commander, Army Group Kiev, and military governor of Ukraine; assassinated in Kiev on 30 July
The philosopher-president who organized the Czechoslovak Legion from exile and signed the Penza Agreement with the Bolsheviks
On 7 March 1918, his 68th birthday, Masaryk boarded a train from Moscow to Vladivostok to prove to his Legion in person that the crossing of Siberia was possible.
Masaryk, a philosophy professor and Reichsrat deputy from Moravia, went into exile at the outbreak of the First World War and became the political leader of the Czechoslovak independence movement. In 1917 he travelled to Russia, where he organized Czech and Slovak prisoners of war into the Czechoslovak Legion and negotiated the Penza Agreement with the Bolsheviks, securing the Legion's transfer to France via Vladivostok. Elected the first president of Czechoslovakia in 1918, he presided over Central Europe's most stable parliamentary democracy for 17 years, a success built on the contradiction of his Legion being drawn into the Russian Civil War against the very Bolsheviks with whom he had bargained.
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1882–1914Professor of Philosophy, Charles University in Prague
1891–1893Deputy of the Austrian Reichsrat (Young Czech Party)
1907–1914Deputy of the Austrian Reichsrat (Czech Progressive Party)
1915–1918Chairman of the Czechoslovak National Council (in exile)
1917–1918Organized the Czechoslovak Legion in Russia
French marshal who as Allied supreme commander in 1918 led the counter-offensive and dictated the armistice
Born into a Catholic family in Tarbes, he made his name commanding the Ninth Army at the Marne in 1914. Facing the German spring offensive in March 1918 he became Allied supreme commander, coordinating the French, British and American armies, and after the Second Battle of the Marne was made marshal and led the counter-offensive that ended the war. In November he received the German armistice at Compiègne. At the peace conference he called for separating the Rhineland, and when this was reduced to a fifteen-year occupation he criticised the Treaty of Versailles as too lenient. For his advice to Poland in the Polish-Soviet War of 1920 he was made a Marshal of Poland. He died in Paris in 1929.
Career timeline
1914Commander of the Ninth Army at the Marne
1918Allied commander-in-chief (26 March); Marshal of France (August)
US president whose Fourteen Points and League of Nations failed to win the Senate’s ratification
Born in Virginia, he was president of Princeton University and governor of New Jersey before winning the presidency in 1912, and in his first year imposed racial segregation across the federal bureaucracy. In April 1917 he asked Congress to declare war over unrestricted submarine warfare, and in January 1918 set out the Fourteen Points, with a League of Nations and self-determination. At the Paris Peace Conference he presided over the drafting of the League Covenant but conceded much to the other powers to get it. A stroke in October 1919 incapacitated him, and his refusal of a compromise sank the Senate’s ratification of the treaty. The Palmer Raids of the Red Scare came in the same years. He received the 1919 Nobel Peace Prize and died in 1924.
Career timeline
1902–1910President of Princeton University
1911–1913Governor of New Jersey
1913–1921President of the United States
1918Announced the Fourteen Points
1919Paris Peace Conference; chaired the League Covenant committee
A marshal whose Verdun prestige ended in Vichy collaboration
On 17 June 1940, Pétain broadcast that France must cease fighting.
Philippe Pétain was a French general who became a national hero through his command at Verdun and his effort to restore the army’s morale after the 1917 mutinies. In 1940 he opposed continuing the war against Germany and sought an armistice; after parliament granted him constituent powers, he became head of the French State at Vichy and replaced the republic with an authoritarian regime. His government collaborated with Nazi Germany and enacted antisemitic laws, binding French state institutions to the occupation order. After liberation, the High Court condemned him to death for treason and intelligence with the enemy, but Charles de Gaulle commuted the sentence to life imprisonment.
Career timeline
1876Entered Saint-Cyr military academy
1916Commanded French forces at Verdun
1917–1918Commander-in-chief of the French Army
1934Minister of War
1939–1940French ambassador to Spain
1940.06President of the Council of Ministers of France
1940–1944Head of the French State at Vichy
1945–1951Convicted of treason and imprisoned for life
Founding leader of the Wafd whose deportation to Malta in 1919 set off the Egyptian Revolution
Born in a village in the Nile Delta, he studied at al-Azhar and at a law school in Cairo and became a lawyer. Under the British occupation he served as a judge, minister of education (1906–1908) and minister of justice (1910–1912), and in 1913 became vice-president of the Legislative Assembly. In November 1918 he led the Wafd in demanding the end of the protectorate and a seat at the peace negotiations. When the British deported him to Malta in March 1919, the Egyptian Revolution of 1919 broke out. Exiled again to the Seychelles, he was allowed to return in 1923. After the Wafd’s landslide in the 1924 elections he formed the first Wafdist government, but resigned in November after the assassination of Sir Lee Stack, Governor-General of the Sudan, and the British demands that followed. He died in Cairo in 1927.
Career timeline
1906–1908Minister of education
1910–1912Minister of justice
1913Vice-president of the Legislative Assembly
1918Founding leader of the Wafd
1919.03Deported to Malta; Egyptian Revolution of 1919
Yomut Turkmen chief who held real power in the Khanate of Khiva in 1918–1920 and fought Soviet rule for more than a decade
Born in 1857 (some sources say 1862), the son of a Yomut Turkmen chief, he served as a village judge (kazi) and water distributor (mirab) and made his name in the Turkmen uprisings of 1912–1916. Appointed commander of the armed forces of Khiva by Asfandiyar Khan in January 1918, he had the khan assassinated, installed the khan’s uncle Sayyid Abdullah as a puppet and took real power. He besieged Petro-Alexandrovsk in November 1918 and in 1919 opened contact with Kolchak’s government, but in early 1920 the Red Army defeated him and he retreated into the Karakum desert. He then repeatedly invaded the Khorezm People’s Soviet Republic and the Turkmen SSR, besieging Khiva in January 1924. He went into exile in Persia and Afghanistan and died near Herat in 1938.
Career timeline
1912–1916Leader in the Turkmen uprisings
1918Commander of the armed forces of the Khanate of Khiva
1918–1920De facto ruler of the Khanate of Khiva
1920–1931Basmachi leader operating from the Karakum, Persia and Afghanistan
Conservative viceroy of India and foreign secretary who gave his name to the Curzon Line and led the Allies at Lausanne
Born into an aristocratic Derbyshire family and educated at Eton and Oxford, he entered Parliament in 1885 and wrote travel books warning of a Russian threat to India. As Viceroy of India from 1899 to 1905 he pursued administrative reform, but his 1905 partition of Bengal was criticised as an attempt to divide Bengali nationalism, and a major famine coincided with his tenure. In the First World War he served in Lloyd George’s war cabinet; appointed Foreign Secretary in October 1919, he gave his name to the proposed Soviet-Polish boundary, the Curzon Line. He designed the Treaty of Sèvres and, as chief Allied negotiator at Lausanne in 1922, settled the borders of Turkey. Passed over for prime minister in 1923, he died in 1925.
Avar religious leader and mufti of the North Caucasus who led anti-Bolshevik uprisings in Dagestan and Chechnya in 1918–1925
Born in 1859 to an aristocratic Avar landowning family in the village of Gotsob in Dagestan, he was an Islamic scholar. In May 1917 the congress of the Union of Highlanders of the North Caucasus made him mufti of the North Caucasus, and in August he was proclaimed Imam of Dagestan and Chechnya but gave up the title three days later. He fought the Bolsheviks in 1918, and in 1919 he collaborated with Denikin’s Volunteer Army as a lesser evil than the communists. In September 1920 he raised and led the Dagestan uprising, which was put down in May 1921. Moving to Chechnya to prepare another rising, he was arrested in September 1925 and shot that October.
Career timeline
1895–1903Naib of Koisubu, Avar District
1917Mufti of the North Caucasus
1917Proclaimed Imam of Dagestan and Chechnya; gave up the title three days later
Japanese communist founder who shook Plekhanov's hand and shaped Comintern East Asia strategy
Amsterdam, 1904. When the chair announced that the vice-chairs were the delegates of the two warring powers — Plekhanov and Katayama — the two rose and clasped hands in silence. The hall answered with a standing ovation.
Father of Japanese communism. Born in Okayama, he studied in the United States and founded Japan's first trade union and Social Democratic Party. As a Comintern Executive Committee member he shaped anti-imperialist strategy for East Asia, and was buried in the Kremlin Wall.
Career timeline
1884–1896Studied in US; Grinnell College and Yale Divinity; became Christian and socialist
1896–1901Returned; founded Iron Workers' Union, Labour World, Social Democratic Party
1904Amsterdam Second International; anti-war handshake with Plekhanov
1911–1912Led Tokyo streetcar strike; 9 months imprisonment
1914–1921Exiled to US; joined CPUSA; communist groups among Japanese workers
1921–1922Via Mexico to Soviet Russia; led founding of Japanese Communist Party
1922–1933ECCI member and Presidium; anti-imperialist and anti-war congresses
Last German Emperor, who backed Austria-Hungary in the July Crisis and abdicated and fled in 1918
The son of the Prussian crown prince and Queen Victoria’s eldest daughter, he became emperor in 1888 and dismissed Bismarck in 1890. In 1900 he urged the troops sent against the Boxers to fight like Huns, and his naval build-up and Moroccan interventions isolated Germany. In the July Crisis of 1914 he assured Austria-Hungary of military support. In the war he left decisions largely to the Supreme Army Command, leading to the de facto military dictatorship of Hindenburg and Ludendorff. When his abdication was announced on 9 November 1918 he went into exile in the Netherlands, which refused to extradite him as the Treaty of Versailles provided. He died at Doorn in 1941.
Career timeline
1888German Emperor and King of Prussia
1890Dismissed Bismarck; the “New Course”
1914Guaranteed support to Austria-Hungary in the July Crisis
1918Abdication announced on 9 November; exile in the Netherlands
Italian prime minister who led the country to victory after Caporetto but failed to win its territorial claims at the peace conference
Born in Palermo, he became a renowned law professor and from 1897 sat in the Chamber of Deputies as a Liberal. When the government fell after the defeat at Caporetto in October 1917 he became prime minister, dismissed Cadorna and rebuilt the army, and the victory of Vittorio Veneto in 1918 earned him the name “Premier of Victory”. At the peace conference he demanded Dalmatia, promised by the Treaty of London, and Fiume, obtained neither, walked out in April 1919 and resigned in June. The “mutilated victory” helped Mussolini’s rise. He at first supported Mussolini but broke with him after the murder of Matteotti in 1924. He died in Rome in 1952.
Career timeline
1897–1925Deputy for Partinico
1907–1909Minister of Justice
1916Minister of the Interior
1917–1919Prime minister of Italy
1919One of the Big Four at the Paris Peace Conference
Defender of the Dual Monarchy who was Hungary’s wartime prime minister and was killed by soldiers on the day of the Aster Revolution
The son of Kálmán Tisza, prime minister from 1875 to 1890, he grew up in a Calvinist family of untitled lower nobility and studied in Budapest, Heidelberg and Berlin. He entered parliament for the Liberal Party in 1886, was prime minister of Hungary twice, in 1903–1905 and 1913–1917, and Speaker of the House in 1912–1913. The most zealous adherent of the Dual Monarchy with Austria, he opposed universal suffrage and the break-up of the great estates. In July 1914 he alone at first opposed war with Serbia, but in the end supported it. Asked to resign by the reforming King Charles, he stepped down in May 1917. On 31 October 1918, during the Aster Revolution, he was killed by soldiers who broke into his home in Budapest.
German trade-union leader who signed the 1918 agreement with Stinnes and met the Kapp Putsch of 1920 with a general strike
Born in Marienburg, he grew up in an orphanage and became a wood turner. He joined the Social Democrats in 1885, chaired the General Commission of the German Trade Unions from 1890, and sat in the Reichstag in 1893–1898 and 1903–1920. In 1913 he became the first President of the International Federation of Trade Unions. He led the SPD’s right wing, and in the First World War supported the civil truce and the renunciation of strikes. On 15 November 1918 he signed an agreement with Hugo Stinnes under which employers for the first time accepted the unions as workers’ representatives, with the eight-hour day and works councils, while the unions rejected the radical socialists’ demands. In 1919 he became chairman of the new General German Trade Union Federation (ADGB), and in March 1920 he organised the general strike against the Kapp Putsch. He died in Berlin later that year.
Career timeline
1885Joined the SPD
1890Chairman of the General Commission of the German Trade Unions
1893Elected to the Reichstag
1913First President of the International Federation of Trade Unions
Head of the Finnish Senate who declared independence and sought German intervention in the civil war
On hearing of the February Revolution in his Siberian exile at Tomsk, he walked to the police station and announced, 'The person who sent me here has been arrested. Now I'm going home.'
Head of the Senate that declared Finland's independence in December 1917, he led the White government in the civil war of 1918 and sought German intervention. He was president from 1931 to 1937.
Career timeline
1894Began Diet work as representative of the Estate of Nobles
1907–1912Speaker of the Finnish Parliament
1914–1917Exiled to Tomsk for resisting Russification
1917–1918Chairman of the Senate (first head of government)
Lawyer who founded the USPD against the war and co-chaired the Council of People’s Deputies with Ebert in 1918
After Ebert’s government bloodily suppressed the revolutionary Volksmarinedivision in December 1918, Haase and fellow USPD delegates resigned from the Council of the People’s Deputies in protest.
Born to a Jewish family in East Prussia, he made his name as a lawyer defending socialists and in 1911 became SPD co-chairman alongside Bebel. In August 1914 he opposed war credits but had to read the party’s statement in their favour in the Reichstag. In 1917 he founded the Independent Social Democratic Party (USPD) with the war’s opponents. In November 1918 he co-chaired the Council of People’s Deputies with Ebert, leaving the government after the Christmas crisis. Shot outside the Reichstag in October 1919, he died in November.
Career timeline
1888Established himself as a lawyer, defending workers, peasants, and socialist activists.
1911Became co-chairman of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) with August Bebel.
1914Opposed war credits but, following party discipline, voted for them in the Reichstag and defended the party’s support.
1917Helped found the Independent Social Democratic Party (USPD) and became its chairman.
1918From November, co-chaired the Council of the People’s Deputies with Ebert; resigned in December to protest the government’s suppression of the sailors’ division.
1919Was shot while entering the Reichstag on 8 October and died of blood poisoning from the wound on 7 November.
A lawyer-statesman who held White Siberia together through compromise
He told Kolchak that the government’s authority, and Kolchak’s own, was falling with every passing hour.
Pyotr Vologodsky was a lawyer and statesman shaped by Siberian regionalism and the Socialist Revolutionary movement, advocating local self-government and legal reform before 1917. In 1918 he led Siberia’s anti-Bolshevik government and managed compromises among right-wing, socialist, and regionalist forces. He remained head of government after Kolchak’s seizure of power, criticized the crisis produced by military arbitrariness and administrative weakness, and resigned in 1919 before emigrating to China.
Career timeline
1887–1897Clerk, judge, and assistant prosecutor in Siberian judicial institutions
1897–1917Tomsk attorney and member of the city duma
1902–1907Leader in Tomsk Socialist Revolutionary organization and Siberian regionalism
1917Tomsk provincial commissar and senior chairman of the Omsk court chamber
1918.01–06Minister of Foreign Affairs in the Provisional Government of Autonomous Siberia
1918.06–11Chairman of the Provisional Siberian Government
1918.11–1919.11Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Russian Government
1920–1925Exile in China, working in legal and émigré affairs
German Social Democratic and Independent Social Democratic politician who headed Berlin police in 1918
“I got my job from the Revolution, and I shall give it up only to the Revolution.”
A trained mechanic, Eichhorn worked for the Social Democratic Party before joining the Independent Social Democratic Party in 1917. After the November Revolution of 1918, he became Berlin police president and pursued a policing policy favorable to left-wing political groups. On 4 January 1919, the Prussian cabinet tried to dismiss him and replace him with Social Democrat Eugen Ernst. Mass demonstrations and a general strike opposed the move, followed by occupations and armed clashes that became the January uprising.
Career timeline
1893Became a full-time Social Democratic Party official and worked as an editor in Dresden
1903–1911Member of the Reichstag for Baden's 9th constituency
1908–1917Head of the Berlin Social Democratic press office
1917Joined the Independent Social Democratic Party
1918–1919Served as Berlin police president
1919–1920Member of the Weimar National Assembly for Berlin
1920–1925Joined the Communist Party of Germany and served in the Reichstag
British Labour organizer and politician who led the international disarmament effort.
Henderson worked as an iron foundryman and became active in the trade-union movement. He helped establish the Labour Representation Committee in 1900, chaired the conference that formed the Labour Party in 1906, and served as party secretary from 1911 to 1934, building its organization and broadening its base. He was president of the Board of Education in 1915–16, home secretary in 1924, and foreign secretary from 1929 to 1931. Elected president of the League of Nations Disarmament Conference in 1932, he pursued international negotiations even as the conference ultimately failed; his work for peace and disarmament earned him the 1934 Nobel Peace Prize.
Career timeline
1900Helped establish the Labour Representation Committee
1906Chaired the conference that formed the Labour Party
1911–1934Served as Labour Party secretary
1915–1916Served as president of the Board of Education
1924Served as home secretary
1929–1931Served as foreign secretary
1932Was elected president of the League of Nations Disarmament Conference
Liberal prime minister who led Britain in the later war and argued for moderation towards Germany at the peace conference
Born in Manchester to Welsh parents, he made his name as a radical Liberal orator. As chancellor of the exchequer he introduced the 1909 People’s Budget and the National Insurance Act, laying foundations of the welfare state. After serving as minister of munitions and secretary for war he became prime minister in December 1916. At the Paris Peace Conference he opposed reparations that would wreck the German economy and sought to check French dominance. In 1921 he concluded the Anglo-Soviet Trade Agreement and negotiated the creation of the Irish Free State, but resigned in 1922 when the Conservatives left the coalition. In 1936 he met Hitler and praised him. He died in 1945.
Career timeline
1890MP for Caernarvon Boroughs
1908–1915Chancellor of the Exchequer
1915–1916Minister of Munitions
1916Secretary of State for War
1916–1922Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
1919British representative at the Paris Peace Conference
British Indian Army officer who ordered troops to fire on an unarmed crowd at Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar in 1919
Born in Murree in British Punjab, the son of a brewery manager, he graduated from Sandhurst and transferred to the Bengal Army, serving on frontier expeditions. In the First World War he commanded the Seistan Force. As a temporary brigadier-general on 13 April 1919 he ordered his troops, without warning, to fire on a crowd gathered at Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar in defiance of his ban on meetings. The soldiers fired 1,650 rounds for about ten minutes, directed towards the exits, and even the official count was at least 379 dead. In the street where a British woman had been assaulted he made people crawl on their bellies. Criticised by the Hunter Committee, he was told to resign, while in Britain a fund was raised for “the man who saved India”. He died of a cerebral haemorrhage in 1927.
Career timeline
1885Graduated from Sandhurst; commissioned in the British Army
