Menshevik politician who chaired the Transcaucasian Commissariat and became foreign minister of the Democratic Republic of Georgia
Born to a noble family in Martvili in 1881, he joined the Social Democratic movement as a student at Moscow University, became a Menshevik and sat in the Third State Duma from 1907 to 1912. From November 1917 to March 1918 he chaired the Transcaucasian Commissariat, then served as minister of war under the Transcaucasian Sejm. He signed the Georgian declaration of independence in May 1918 and was foreign minister, justice minister and deputy head of government of the Democratic Republic of Georgia. He left for France in March 1921 and from 1953 until his death in Paris in 1954 headed the government in exile.
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1907–1912Member of the Third State Duma
1917Russian Provisional Government commissar for western Georgia
1917–1918Chairman of the Transcaucasian Commissariat
1918–1921Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Democratic Republic of Georgia
Hungarian Social Democratic and trade-union leader who won legal status for his party in the Bethlen–Peyer Pact of 1921
A machinist from Városlőd in Veszprém County, he led the metalworkers’ and miners’ unions. He ran the mining sector under the Soviet Republic in 1919 and after its fall was interior minister in the Peidl government and minister of labour and welfare under Huszár. When the Social Democrats boycotted the election because of the terror, he resigned in January 1920 and fled to Austria. Back in 1921, he concluded the pact with Bethlen’s government; he was a deputy from 1922 to 1944 and from 1927 general secretary of the Trade Union Council. In 1944 he was held in Mauthausen. Opposing the post-war merger with the Communists, he was expelled in 1947, emigrated to the United States and died in New York in 1956.
Career timeline
1913Organises the miners’ union
1919Interior minister; minister of labour and welfare
1920–1921Exile in Austria
1921Bethlen–Peyer Pact
1922–1944Member of parliament
1944–1945Held in Mauthausen
1947Expelled from the party; emigrates to the United States
A parliamentarian who carried constitutional politics into the Liberation Movement
He presided over the Second Session of AVNOJ in 1943, where the decision to form New Yugoslavia was taken.
Ivan Ribar was a Croatian lawyer and Yugoslavist whose career connected parliamentary politics in the kingdom with the anti-fascist Liberation Movement. As president of the Constituent Assembly in 1920 and an advocate for communist defendants under dictatorship, he carried a constitutional and oppositional tradition into wartime politics. As chair of AVNOJ and later head of Yugoslavia’s collective state presidency, he gave the new order an institutional face while its political foundations were being remade. The loss of both sons in the war marked the personal cost of that passage between political traditions.
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1906Co-founded the Croatian Progressive Democratic Party; began legal practice
1918Member of the central committee of the National Council of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs
1919Vice-president of the Provisional People’s Presidency of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes
1920–1922President of the Constituent Assembly and National Assembly of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes
1942–1945Chair of the Anti-Fascist Council for the National Liberation of Yugoslavia (AVNOJ)
1945–1953President of the Presidium of Yugoslavia’s National Assembly, the collective head of state
The orator ground away between revolution and counter-revolution
In March 1917, taking the rostrum of the Petrograd Soviet to announce his acceptance of the Justice Ministry, he cried: "I cannot live without the people. In the moment you begin to doubt me, then kill me!" The workers and soldiers filling the hall erupted in wild applause.
The face of the Provisional Government and its last premier. In August 1917 he armed even the jailed Bolsheviks to stop Kornilov; in October, no army anywhere would come to save him. The story of his escaping in a dress is a Soviet fabrication. He spent half a century in exile lecturing on what had gone wrong, and died in New York.
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1912–1917Duma deputy (Trudovik); famed defence lawyer in political trials
1917.03Justice Minister: amnesty, abolition of the death penalty
1917.05War Minister: the failed June offensive
1917.07–10Premier: the Kornilov affair; overthrown in October
1918–1970Exile in Paris and New York: writing and lecturing
The only four-term president, who carried America through depression and war and spent his last strength at Yalta
Returning from Yalta, Roosevelt addressed Congress on March 1, 1945 seated — the first time he publicly conceded to the disability he had hidden all his public life.
Roosevelt was the 32nd president of the United States, the only one elected to four terms, who led the country through the Great Depression and the Second World War. His New Deal redefined the role of the federal government, and after Pearl Harbor he drove the Allied war effort under a Europe-first strategy. At the Yalta Conference in February 1945, already gravely weakened by congestive heart failure and hypertension, he staked his personal diplomacy with Stalin on two overriding goals: Soviet entry into the Pacific war and the founding of the United Nations. He died of a cerebral hemorrhage two months later, and his Yalta agreements (praised for securing the UN and criticized for conceding Eastern Europe) remained a flashpoint of Cold War historiography.
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1882Born into the wealthy Roosevelt and Delano families in Hyde Park, New York
1913–1920Assistant Secretary of the Navy, drove naval expansion during the First World War
1921Diagnosed with polio, permanently paralyzed from the waist down
1929–1932Governor of New York, pioneered unemployment relief during the Depression
1933–194532nd president, led the New Deal and the US war effort
1943.11Met Stalin for the first time at the Tehran Conference
1945.02.04–11Yalta Conference: secured Soviet entry into the Pacific war and the UN Security Council framework
1945.04.12Died of a cerebral hemorrhage at Warm Springs, Georgia
The Conducător who took Romania into the Axis war against the Soviet Union and ordered the killings in Transnistria, executed at Jilava in 1946
On the afternoon of 23 August 1944, summoned to the palace, Antonescu refused the king's demand for an immediate armistice; Michael gave the prearranged signal and the guards arrested him. That night the king's radio address announced the armistice, and the Romanian army turned its guns on the Germans.
A cavalry officer born into a military family in Pitești, he helped plan the defence of Mărășești as a staff officer in the First World War, served as military attaché in Paris and London and was chief of the general staff in 1933–34. Defence minister in the Goga government of 1937–38, he fell out with Carol II and was confined to the Bistrița monastery in 1940. When the loss of Bessarabia and Northern Transylvania in the summer of 1940 shook the monarchy, he became prime minister with full powers on 4 September, forced Carol II to abdicate two days later and styled himself Conducător, founding the National Legionary State with the Iron Guard before crushing the Legionary rebellion by force in January 1941. He joined the Tripartite Pact in November 1940 and invaded the Soviet Union alongside Germany in June 1941, recovering Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina and occupying Transnistria beyond the Dniester. Through the Iași pogrom, the Odessa massacre and the deportations to Transnistria, between 280,000 and 380,000 Jews and more than 10,000 Roma died under Romanian jurisdiction, the Wiesel Commission concluded in 2004. After losing two armies at Stalingrad he sought a way out of the war, but on 23 August 1944 King Michael had him arrested and handed to the Soviets; sentenced to death by the Bucharest People's Tribunal in May 1946, he was shot at Jilava on 1 June.
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1916–1918Staff officer in the First World War
1933–1934Chief of the General Staff
1937–1938Minister of Defence
1940Prime minister with full powers; Carol II deposed; title of Conducător
Lithuanian writer who led the “People’s Government” of 1940 and resigned after Molotov told him the Baltic states would join the USSR
Born to a peasant family in the village of Subartonys in the Dzūkija region, he took his pen name from Krėvė, the name villagers gave his family. He received a doctorate in philology at Lviv in 1908, taught in Baku and in 1919 became Lithuania’s consul in Azerbaijan. From 1922 he taught Slavic literature at the University of Lithuania, and he is counted a classic of Lithuanian literature. After the Soviet occupation of June 1940 he joined the “People’s Government” as foreign minister and acting prime minister, but on the night of 1 July Molotov told him in Moscow that all the Baltic states had to join the Soviet Union; he returned and resigned. In 1941 he became the first president of the Lithuanian SSR Academy of Sciences. In July 1944 he left for Austria before the Soviets returned, and from 1947 he taught at the University of Pennsylvania until his death in 1954.
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1908Doctorate in philology, University of Lviv
1919Lithuanian consul in Azerbaijan
1922Professor of Slavic literatures, University of Lithuania
1940Foreign minister and acting prime minister of the People’s Government
The soldier-premier caught between a coup and defeat
In November 1918, reporting from Zagreb, Simović wrote that the overwhelming majority were 'taken with the idea of Yugoslav solidarity', and he blocked Italy's attempt to occupy Ljubljana by having the Serb Army enter the city first.
Dušan Simović was a Royal Yugoslav air force general who led the 27 March 1941 coup and became prime minister amid crowds cheering the overthrow of the pact with Germany. Yet in power he refused to formally repudiate the Tripartite Pact, hoping to avert a German invasion, and after the German attack he headed the London government-in-exile until 1942.
Career timeline
1900Graduated from the Belgrade Military Academy, commissioned second lieutenant of artillery
1912–1918Served in the Balkan Wars and First World War; commanded the 7th Infantry Regiment on the Salonika Front
1918Serbian government and Supreme Command delegate to the National Council of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs in Zagreb
1936–1938Commander of the Royal Yugoslav Air Force
1938–1940Chief of the General Staff of the Royal Yugoslav Army; resigned after advocating resistance to a German attack
1941.03–1942.01Prime Minister and Chief of the General Staff after the 27 March coup
1941–1942Head of the Yugoslav government-in-exile in London
1945–1946Returned to Belgrade and testified at Mihailović's trial
Roosevelt's "assistant president" who, as Secretary of State, designed the Potsdam reparations compromise
After Byrnes took the oath as Secretary of State, Truman said, "Jimmy, kiss the Bible." Byrnes did so, then handed it back to the President and told him to kiss it too. Truman did, as the room laughed.
James F. Byrnes was a Democratic politician from South Carolina who, as senator, steered New Deal legislation through Congress; as director of war mobilization, earned the nickname "assistant president"; and as Truman's Secretary of State, designed the reparations framework at Potsdam. At Potsdam, Byrnes negotiated the compromise with Molotov whereby each occupying power would extract reparations from its own zone, while the USSR would receive 15% of western-zone industrial equipment in exchange for food and raw materials and an additional 10% without payment. Passed over as Roosevelt's running mate in 1944 and later sidelined by Truman as their relationship soured, Byrnes returned to elective politics as governor of South Carolina, where he championed "separate but equal" schooling against desegregation.
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1911–1925U.S. Representative, South Carolina
1931–1941U.S. Senator, South Carolina
1941–1942Associate Justice, U.S. Supreme Court
1942–1943Director, Office of Economic Stabilization
Left SR People's Commissar in the first Soviet coalition: 'the core of the party'
'Proshyan succeeded in doing more to strengthen the Soviet power before July 1918 than he did after July 1918 to undermine it.' — Lenin, 'In Memory of Comrade Proshyan,' December 1918
Core leader of the Left Socialist Revolutionary Party and People's Commissar for Posts and Telegraphs in the first Soviet coalition government, serving alongside Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin on the Provisional Executive Committee of the Council of People's Commissars (February 1918). As commissar (December 1917–March 1918) he broke the postal-telegraph sabotage and normalized communications, while also serving as political commissar to the Supreme Military Council and member of the VTsIK Presidium. He resigned in protest against the Brest-Litovsk Treaty and became one of the leaders of the July 1918 Left SR uprising; he died of typhus while underground. Maria Spiridonova called him 'the internal builder, the main spring, the core of the Left SR party.'
Career timeline
1903Joined SR Party at Odessa University; student organizer
1905Arrested for attempting to free political prisoners from Odessa prison; 6 years katorga
1910–1913Escaped settlement, recaptured, 3 more years hard labor; exiled to Siberia, fled abroad
1917Returned after February Revolution; Left SR leader in Helsingfors, editor of Socialist-Revolutionary; elected to VTsIK at Second Congress of Soviets
1917.12Appointed People's Commissar for Posts and Telegraphs
1918.02–03Member of Provisional Executive Committee of Sovnarkom; Political Commissar to Supreme Military Council
1918.03Resigned from Sovnarkom in protest against Brest-Litovsk Treaty
1918.07Participated in Left SR uprising leadership; went underground after suppression, sentenced to 3 years in absentia
Founder and head of the Donetsk-Krivoy Rog Soviet Republic, close friend of Stalin and Kirov
March 1902, Moscow. Nineteen-year-old Fyodor raised a homemade red banner — 'Inviolability of the Person! Freedom of Speech! Freedom of Assembly!' — the signal launching the student demonstration. Arrest, prison, expulsion: thus 'Artyom' was born.
An Old Bolshevik from 1901, he rose from Donbas miner and railway worker to organizer of Russian immigrant workers in Australia, and in 1918 founded and led the Donetsk-Krivoy Rog Soviet Republic. A close friend of Stalin and Kirov, he chaired the All-Ukrainian Military Revolutionary Committee and CEC during the Civil War and served as Moscow Party executive secretary. He defended Soviet power against German occupiers and Denikin's White Army, dying at 38 in the 1921 aerowagon derailment. His infant son was adopted and raised by Stalin.
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1901–1902Joined RSDLP; led student demonstration at Moscow Technical School, expelled and jailed
1903–1905Underground revolutionary work in Donbas and Kharkov; led December 1905 Kharkov armed uprising
1906–1910Delegate to IV Congress; party work in Perm and Moscow; sentenced to lifetime Siberian exile, escaped
1911–1917Organized Russian workers in Brisbane, Australia; led general strike; published Echo of Australia
1917–1918Elected CC member at VI Congress; founded DKSR, chairman of its Council of People's Commissars
1918–1919Chairman of All-Ukrainian CVRK; chairman of All-Ukrainian CEC
1920Plenipotentiary in Bashkiria; suppressed 'Black Eagle' uprising; executive secretary of Moscow Party Committee
1920–1921Chairman of All-Russian Miners' Union CC; organized International Miners' Union
Historian who headed the government of the Belarusian People’s Republic in exile, moved to Soviet Byelorussia and was executed
Born into a landless noble family in the Disna district of the Vilna Governorate in 1883, he had almost no formal schooling. He was active in the Hramada in 1906–1908, was editorial secretary of Nasha Niva and from 1915 openly advocated independence from both Russia and Poland. In 1918 he joined the Rada as a delegate of the Belarusian Council of Vilnius, and in 1919 he led the Belarusian Socialist Revolutionaries. Appointed prime minister in December 1919, he was soon arrested by the Polish authorities; released the following year, he went to Riga and toured European capitals seeking recognition until he stepped down in 1923. In 1927 he moved to Soviet Byelorussia, where he became director of the State Museum and a member of the Academy of Sciences, but he was arrested in 1930, exiled to Saratov and shot in 1938.
Career timeline
1909Editorial secretary of Nasha Niva
1918Member of the Rada for the Belarusian Council of Vilnius
1918Head of the Belarusian representation in Lithuania
1919–1923Prime minister of the Belarusian People’s Republic
1927–1930Director of the Belarusian State Museum
1928Academician of the Belarusian Academy of Sciences
Lithuania's first prime minister, later leader of the far-right Iron Wolf
Dissolving the Seimas in 1928, he quipped that he had promised to hold elections but had made no promise about the year.
Prime minister and foreign minister of Lithuania's first cabinet in November 1918, he later fought the Vilnius question in Paris and at the League of Nations. Prime minister again after the 1926 coup, he led the far-right Iron Wolf, broke with Smetona and died in a Soviet prison in 1942.
Career timeline
1910Master's degree in history and philology, St. Petersburg University
1916Professor at Perm University; joined the Party of National Progress
1918First prime minister and foreign minister (Nov); head delegate to the Paris Peace Conference
1918–1920Foreign minister in successive cabinets
1926Member of the Third Seimas; prime minister and foreign minister after the December coup
1928Border treaty with Germany; de facto leader of the far-right Iron Wolf
1929Ousted by President Smetona and exiled
1934–1938Imprisoned after the failed coup; exiled to France in 1938
A republican politician who became an architect of Vichy collaboration
In 1942, while calling for labor mobilization, he publicly declared that he desired a German victory.
Pierre Laval began as a lawyer and Socialist politician, then moved rightward and became a leading minister and prime minister of the Third Republic. After France's defeat in 1940, he helped secure Pétain's full powers and the dismantling of the constitutional order, making himself central to the Vichy regime. He believed collaboration with Germany could preserve France's position, and after returning to power in 1942 he expanded labor provision and police cooperation. Convicted of treason after liberation, he was executed in 1945.
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1903–1922Socialist activist and lawyer
1914–1919Deputy in the Chamber of Deputies
1923–1944Mayor of Aubervilliers
1931–1932President of the Council
1934–1936Foreign minister and President of the Council
1940.06–12Vice-President of the Vichy Council of Ministers
Soldier-diplomat who pushed for the German alliance in Berlin and, as prime minister under occupation, sped up the Jewish deportations
Born Dimitrije Stojaković into a Serb family in Versec (Vršac), he served in the First World War as an intelligence officer of the Austro-Hungarian general staff. After the war he specialised in counter-espionage in Horthy’s counter-revolutionary army, was military attaché in Berlin from 1927 to 1933 and, from 1935 to 1944, Hungary’s minister in Berlin, where he pressed for alliance with Germany. Prime minister and foreign minister after the German occupation of March 1944, he legalised the Arrow Cross, dissolved the trade unions, jailed opponents and sharply accelerated the deportation of Jews. Forced out by Horthy’s pressure in August, he was captured by American troops after the war, handed over to Hungary, sentenced to death by a People’s Tribunal and shot in 1946.
Career timeline
1917–1918Intelligence officer, Austro-Hungarian general staff
1919–1925Intelligence and counter-espionage officer, National Army
Kaiser’s successor at the head of the East German CDU, who brought it into line with the SED as deputy prime minister
Born in Frohburg in Saxony, he worked as a journalist, moved through the left-liberal parties, helped found the German Democratic Party in 1918, and sat in the Weimar National Assembly and the Prussian Landtag. He joined the opposition after 1933 and went into hiding after the 1944 attempt on Hitler’s life. In 1945 he co-founded the CDU in the Soviet zone; when the Soviet authorities deposed Jakob Kaiser and Ernst Lemmer in 1947 he became acting chairman, and chairman in 1948. As a co-chairman of the German People’s Council he took part in drafting the GDR constitution, and in 1949 became deputy prime minister and head of the Church Office. A loyal supporter of the SED regime, he pushed out CDU members unwilling to follow the Communists. He died in 1957.
Career timeline
1918Co-founder of the German Democratic Party
1921–1933Member of the Prussian Landtag
1945Co-founder of the CDU in the Soviet zone
1948–1957Chairman of the East German CDU
1949–1957GDR deputy prime minister and head of the Church Office
The laconic reformer who replaced Churchill mid-Potsdam and built Britain's postwar welfare state
After winning the 1945 election, Attlee stood in silence with George VI at Buckingham Palace before volunteering, "I've won the election." The King replied, "I know. I heard it on the Six O'Clock News."
Clement Attlee was the man who replaced Winston Churchill as British prime minister in the middle of the Potsdam Conference, after Labour's landslide victory in July 1945. He had served loyally as Churchill's deputy in the wartime coalition, but voters chose the unassuming reformer over the war hero and his promise of a welfare state. His government created the National Health Service, nationalised major industries, and began dismantling the British Empire by granting independence to India and Pakistan. Abroad, he championed the Marshall Plan and NATO, aligning Britain firmly with the United States as the Cold War took shape.
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1935–1955Leader of the Labour Party
1940–1942Lord Privy Seal (wartime coalition)
1942–1945Deputy Prime Minister (wartime coalition)
Journalist and politician who, as vice-president and later president of Sfatul Țării, led the movement for Bessarabia’s union with Romania
Born to poor peasants in Cubolta, Bessarabia, in 1883, he graduated from the Chișinău seminary and entered the University of Yuryev, but as a Socialist Revolutionary had to quit after the 1905 revolution. Sought by the Tsarist authorities after printing the hymn “Deșteaptă-te, române!”, he took refuge in Iași and studied there in 1908–1912. From 1913 he published the newspaper Cuvânt moldovenesc in Chișinău, writing unceasingly for union, and in 1917 he founded the Moldovan National Party. He was elected first vice-president, then president of Sfatul Țării. After 1918 he served as minister for Bessarabia and in other posts and joined the National Peasants’ Party; in 1924 he accused the Romanian government of turning Bessarabia into an “inferno”. Arrested in 1950, he was sentenced in the Soviet Union to 25 years’ hard labour, was held until 1957 and died in 1979.
Career timeline
1908–1912Studies at the Faculty of Letters and Philosophy, University of Iași
1913Launches the newspaper Cuvânt moldovenesc
1917Founds the Moldovan National Party
1917–1918Vice-president, then president of Sfatul Țării
1919–1920Romanian Minister and Secretary of State for Bessarabia
1927Romanian Minister of Public Works
1950–1957Arrest and imprisonment (Sighet, Soviet hard labour, Aiud)
Bessarabian politician who presided over Sfatul Țării and the Moldavian Democratic Republic and saw through its union with Romania
Born to a peasant family in Răzeni, Bessarabia, in 1884, he graduated from the Chișinău seminary and Saint Petersburg University and worked as a physicist at the Meteorological Observatory. After the February Revolution he joined the Socialist Revolutionary Party and sat in the Petrograd Soviet, and Kerensky sent him to Bessarabia as the Provisional Government’s representative. At first he said Bessarabia should remain part of Russia, but as president of Sfatul Țării and of the Moldavian Democratic Republic he steered the vote for union with Romania in April 1918. After the union he became Minister of State for Bessarabia; in 1923 he took his wing of the Bessarabian Peasants’ Party into the National Liberal Party, and he later served as minister of health, of the interior and of communications and as vice-president of the Council of Ministers. He died of a heart attack in 1940.
Career timeline
1915Physicist at the Meteorological Observatory, Saint Petersburg
1917Member of the Petrograd Soviet (Socialist Revolutionary Party)
1917Assistant Government Commissioner of Bessarabia
1917–1918President of Sfatul Țării and of the Moldavian Democratic Republic
1918–1920Romanian Minister of State for Bessarabia
1927–1928Romanian Minister of Health and Social Protection
1933Romanian Minister of the Interior (Duca cabinet)
1936Vice-President of the Romanian Council of Ministers
Founder of the Hramada who, as prime minister of the Belarusian People’s Republic, sought its recognition at the Paris Peace Conference
Born into an impoverished noble family in Šiauliai in 1884, he founded the Belarusian Revolutionary Hramada (later the Belarusian Socialist Hramada) with his brother Ivan and others in 1903. In Vilnius he brought out the first Belarusian newspapers, Nasha Niva among them, and under German occupation in 1915 he led the clandestine Belarusian People’s Committee. As president of the Belarusian Council of Vilnius he took part in the declaration of independence in 1918, and in October he became prime minister and then foreign minister. In 1919 he led the delegation to the Paris Peace Conference and negotiated a union with Poland, but with no result he resigned in February 1920. He devoted himself to publishing and education in Western Belarus until the Soviet authorities arrested him in 1939, and he died in 1942 while being transferred to a prison camp.
Career timeline
1903Co-founder of the Belarusian Revolutionary Hramada
1915Head of the clandestine Belarusian People’s Committee in Vilnius
1918President of the Belarusian Council of Vilnius
1918–1920Prime minister and foreign minister of the Belarusian People’s Republic
1921President of the Belarusian National Committee in Vilnius
1921–1939Director of the Belarusian Museum in Vilnius
The last democratic president, who tried to topple a government with resignations and instead handed it to Gottwald
On 25 February 1948, with Communist militias controlling Prague and civil war imminent, Beneš accepted the resignations of twelve non-Communist ministers.
Beneš was a central figure in the Czechoslovak independence movement, co-founding the Czechoslovak National Council with Masaryk and Štefánik during the First World War. As foreign minister for 17 years from 1918, he shone at the League of Nations, built the Little Entente with Romania and Yugoslavia, and forged alliance treaties with France and the Soviet Union. Elected president in 1935, he resigned after Munich and led the government-in-exile in London, securing Britain's repudiation of the Munich Agreement. In February 1948, he accepted the resignations of non-Communist ministers and sanctioned Gottwald's Communist-dominated government, a decision that sealed Czechoslovakia's entry into the Soviet bloc.
Career timeline
1915–1918Secretary of the Czechoslovak National Council
1918–1935Foreign Minister of Czechoslovakia
1921–1922Prime Minister of Czechoslovakia
1935–1938President of Czechoslovakia
1940–1945President of the Czechoslovak government-in-exile
A soldier-statesman who steered imperial Japan from northern ambitions toward southern expansion and war
In October 1941, he called the demand for withdrawal the “heart” of the issue and framed concession as surrender.
Hideki Tojo was a military politician who represented the Imperial Japanese Army’s Control Faction and pressed imperial expansion in Manchuria and China. As chief of staff of the Kwantung Army, he escalated operations in northern China while tensions with the Soviet Union remained a strategic concern; later, army priorities shifted from an immediate northern advance toward a southern drive for oil and other resources. As prime minister, he organized Japan for total war against the United States and Britain and suppressed dissent, falling from power as the war situation deteriorated in 1944. Convicted at the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, he was executed after the war.
Career timeline
1905Graduated from the Army Academy and commissioned as an infantry second lieutenant
1919–1922Military attaché in Switzerland and Germany, with European service
1935–1937Commander of the Kwantung Army Kempeitai, then chief of staff of the Kwantung Army
1938Vice-Minister of the Army, then Inspector-General of Army Aviation
1940–1941Army Minister in the second and third Konoe cabinets
1941–194440th Prime Minister of Japan, concurrently Home and Army Minister
1944Concurrently Army Chief of Staff, then resigned with his cabinet in July
1948Sentenced to death by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East and executed
The "red bourgeois", a landowning lawyer who never joined the party yet served as the communist regime's first prime minister and head of state
In early March 1945 Vyshinsky flew to Bucharest and demanded that King Michael appoint Groza prime minister within two hours, warning that otherwise he could not guarantee Romania's survival as an independent state. The Rădescu government fell and the Groza government took office on 6 March.
Born into an Orthodox priest's family in Hunedoara, Transylvania, he studied law in Budapest, Berlin and Leipzig and became a lawyer and landowner. Starting in the Romanian National Party during the Hungarian parliament years, he twice served as a minister in Averescu's governments in the 1920s, founded the Ploughmen's Front at Deva in 1933 and allied it with the Communist Party through the Țebea agreement of 1935. Deputy prime minister after 23 August 1944, he became prime minister on 6 March 1945 as Soviet deputy foreign commissar Vyshinsky demanded at the palace, and at once decreed a land reform that broke up the great estates. When King Michael demanded his resignation in the summer of 1945 and began the "royal strike" of refusing to sign decrees, Groza held on, trusting Soviet backing. After the rigged election of 1946 and the dissolution of the National Peasant Party in 1947, he forced the king's abdication together with Gheorghiu-Dej on 30 December that year. Prime minister until June 1952, he then became chairman of the Presidium of the Grand National Assembly, the nominal head of state, and kept the post until his death. A wealthy landowner who never joined the Communist Party, he was friendly to the Hungarian minority of Transylvania and famous for the wit with which he called himself a "red bourgeois".
Career timeline
1920–1921Minister in the Averescu government
1926–1927Minister in the second Averescu government
1933Founded the Ploughmen's Front
1935Țebea agreement with the Communist Party
1944–1945Deputy prime minister
1945–1952Prime minister
1947Forced King Michael's abdication on 30 December
1952–1958Chairman of the Presidium of the Grand National Assembly (head of state)
Defence minister who pressed for joining the invasion of Yugoslavia and the war on the Soviet Union, and harshened labour service
Born in Budapest, he graduated from the military technical academy at Mödling in 1904. After the fall of the Soviet Republic he joined Horthy’s National Army. Appointed defence minister by Imrédy in 1938, he kept the post until 1942; with Chief of Staff Werth he pressed for full participation in the invasion of Yugoslavia and for fighting on the Eastern Front, and after the Kassa bombing demanded an immediate declaration of war on the Soviets. In 1942 he removed the age limit for conscription into labour service battalions and in June announced in parliament that Jewishness would be defined in racial terms. Horthy forced him to resign in September 1942 over his excessive pro-German stance. After the war a military court stripped him of his rank; he emigrated to Venezuela and died in 1964 while visiting Linz, Austria.
Career timeline
1904Graduated from the military technical academy at Mödling
1914–1918Senior commands in Budapest and Trieste
1919Fought the Czechoslovak and Romanian armies; joined the National Army
1938–1942Defence minister
1945Stripped of rank by a military court
1950s–1964Emigrated to Venezuela; railway engineer
