People of the Revolution and the USSR

Activity(set)
Any Political and party leadership 49 Government and administration 21 Legislature and state representation 14 Monarchs and royalty 3 Military command 39 Security, intelligence and policing 16 Diplomacy and international organization 5 Economy, finance and planning 6 Industry and production 4 Agriculture and land policy 1 Ideology and propaganda 8 Social movements and organizing 15 Scholarship and theory 11 Education 2 Science and technology 4 Literature and arts 5 Law and justice 4
Affiliation

Most people

Any Hungary state institutions 1 Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) 1

All 2 affiliations

East Germany

Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) 1

Hungary

Hungary state institutions 1
Position
Any Marxism and communism 1
Citizenship
Any Germany 1 Hungary 1
Background(set)
Any Russia 8 Germany 2 Hungary 2 Albania 1 Belarus 1 Cuba 1 Moldova 1
Era
Any

People of the wider world

The revolutionary wave and the world war1917–1945 1 The Cold War and decolonization1945–현재 1
Education Background: Germany Clear all

Ferenc Szombathelyi

Szombathelyi Ferenc
Hungary state institutions Hungary Hungarian German (Swabian) 1887–1946 ✕ Executed

Chief of the General Staff who ordered the Bačka intervention behind the Novi Sad massacre and later sought contact with the West

Born Ferenc Knaus (or Knauz) at Moson, he served as an Austro-Hungarian staff officer in the First World War and in 1934 took his mother’s surname, Szombathelyi. In 1941 he led the Carpathian Group in the invasion of the Soviet Union. That September he succeeded Werth as Chief of the General Staff, and in January 1942 he ordered General Feketehalmy-Czeydner to intervene in Bačka, an operation that grew into punitive raids on Serb villages and the Novi Sad massacre. In 1943 he opened the investigation and court martial of those responsible for the massacre, and with Kállay he led the contacts with the Western Allies. Removed after the German occupation of 1944, he was sentenced to life imprisonment by a People’s Court after the war, handed over to Yugoslavia and shot at Petrovaradin in 1946.

Career timeline
  • 1914–1918Austro-Hungarian staff officer
  • 1926–1938Instructor and commander, Ludovica Military Academy
  • 1938–1939Deputy Chief of Staff
  • 1941Commander, Carpathian Group
  • 1941–1944Chief of the General Staff
  • 1946Life sentence by a People’s Court; executed after extradition to Yugoslavia

Wolfgang Leonhard

Wolfgang Leonhard
Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) Communism Germany Germany 1921–2014 ○ Natural death

Youngest member of the Ulbricht Group who fled to Yugoslavia in 1949 and became a leading Western scholar of Soviet communism

Born Vladimir Leonhard in Vienna, he went into Soviet exile with his Communist mother in 1935; she was arrested in 1936 and spent twelve years in the Vorkuta camps. After the Comintern school he became an announcer for Radio Free Germany, and on 30 April 1945 he returned to Berlin as a member of the Ulbricht Group. He worked in the agitation and propaganda department of the KPD and then SED Central Committee and from 1947 lectured at the party college. Convinced that Germany would replicate the Soviet system, he fled via Czechoslovakia to Yugoslavia in March 1949 and moved to West Germany in 1950. His 1955 memoir Die Revolution entlässt ihre Kinder became an international bestseller, and from 1966 to 1987 he taught Soviet history at Yale.

Career timeline
  • 1935Went into Soviet exile with his mother
  • 1943Announcer at Radio Free Germany
  • 1945Returned to Berlin with the Ulbricht Group
  • 1947Lecturer at the SED party college
  • 1949Fled to Yugoslavia
  • 1955Published his memoir
  • 1966–1987Professor at Yale