The orator who built the Red Army, felled by an ice axe
25 October 1917, the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets in Petrograd. As Menshevik and Right SR delegates walked out in protest against the Bolshevik insurrection, Trotsky declared of them from the chair: 'Go where you belong from now on, into the dustbin of history!'
Born on 7 November 1879 (O.S. 26 October) in Yanovka, Kherson Governorate, in the Russian Empire, into a Jewish farming family. After the February Revolution of 1917 he joined the Bolsheviks and, as chairman of the Petrograd Soviet, helped lead the October rising. As People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs he negotiated the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, and from 1918 to 1925 he headed Military and Naval Affairs, building the Red Army and leading it to victory in the Civil War. From 1923 he led the Left Opposition, but Stalin outmanoeuvred him: expelled from the party in 1927, exiled to Alma-Ata in 1928, deported in 1929, and stripped of Soviet citizenship in 1932. In exile he argued in The Revolution Betrayed (1936) that the USSR had become a degenerated workers' state, and founded the Fourth International in 1938. He was killed in Mexico City in August 1940 by the NKVD agent Ramón Mercader.
Career timeline
1905Chairs the Petersburg Soviet at 26
1906Published Results and Prospects, an early formulation of permanent revolution
1907–1914Exile journalism in Vienna and Paris; publishes Pravda
1914–1917Anti-war立场; exile in Paris and New York, Nashe Slovo and Novy Mir
1917.05Returns to Russia, joins the Mezhraiontsy — the inter-district unity faction
1917.08VI Congress: Mezhraiontsy merge into the Bolshevik Party
1917.09–10Chairs the Soviet and the MRC; designs the rising
1918–1925War Commissar: builds the Red Army, wins the civil war
1923–1927The Left Opposition: defeat and expulsion
1929–1940Deportation; the Fourth International (1938); killed in Mexico
1930Published the autobiography My Life
1930–1932Published the three-volume History of the Russian Revolution
A tank-war innovator who became the Secret Army's first commander
On 9 June 1943, the Secret Army commander Vidal was arrested at Paris's La Muette station.
Charles Delestraint was a French general shaped by captivity in the First World War and by command of armoured units, whose advocacy of tanks reflected a changing theory of modern war. After France's defeat and the armistice, he chose resistance and, selected by Charles de Gaulle, became the first commander of the Secret Army, bringing several movements' military structures together. Working with Jean Moulin, he helped extend the organisation across occupied France, but his arrest on 9 June 1943 created the succession crisis behind the Caluire meeting. Deported to Natzweiler-Struthof and Dachau, he was killed shortly before liberation and posthumously made a Companion of the Liberation.
Career timeline
1897–1900Cadet, Saint-Cyr military academy
1914–1918First World War service, German prisoner of war
1923–1936Armoured-unit commander, colonel
1936–1939Commander, 3rd Tank Brigade; brigadier general
1939–1940Commander of the 7th Army's tanks and 1st Armoured Group
1942–1943First commander of the Secret Army, code name Vidal
1943–1945Imprisoned at Natzweiler and Dachau; executed
The general who sought an Italian exit from the Axis under the monarchy
“The Axis is besieged, it is in a closed ring; it is necessary to get out.”
Vittorio Ambrosio was an Italian cavalry officer and general who served in both world wars and commanded forces during the invasion of Yugoslavia. As Chief of the Italian Armed Forces General Staff in 1943, he concluded after the defeats in North Africa and Sicily that Italy could not remain tied to Germany, and worked through the king and the military command to remove Mussolini and negotiate an armistice with the Allies. His course was not a democratic break with Fascism so much as a monarchic and military attempt to manage Italy's withdrawal from the war; the September armistice nonetheless failed to prevent German occupation and the disintegration of Italian command.
Career timeline
1898Commissioned as a cavalry officer
1911–1913Served in the Italo-Turkish War
1915–1918Served in World War I and covered the retreat after Caporetto
1941Commander of the Second Army during the invasion of Yugoslavia
1942Chief of Staff of the Army
1943.02–11Chief of the Armed Forces General Staff, pursuing Mussolini's removal and an armistice with the Allies
Tsarist officer turned Red commander who took Kyiv, battled in Bessarabia, and rebelled against Brest-Litovsk
After taking Kyiv he reported to Lenin: 'I ordered artillery to strike at high-rise and rich palaces, at churches and priests.'
A peasant-born officer of the Imperial Russian Army who distinguished himself in the Russo-Japanese War and World War I, he joined the Left SRs in 1917 and commanded the defense of Petrograd during the October Revolution. In early 1918 he seized Kyiv, establishing Soviet power in Ukraine, then led operations on the Romanian front to defend Bessarabia. Appointed commander of the Eastern Front in June 1918, he rebelled against the Brest-Litovsk Treaty in July, declared a 'war against Germany,' and was killed in Simbirsk.
Career timeline
1898–1917Served in Imperial Russian Army; fought in Russo-Japanese War and WWI, rose to Lieutenant Colonel
1917.10–11Commander of Petrograd Military District; led defense against Kerensky-Krasnov forces
1917.12–1918.02Chief of Staff, Southern Revolutionary Front; commanded operation to take Kyiv
1918.02–03Commander of Romanian Front; led Bessarabia defense and Odessa Soviet Republic
1918.06–07Commander of Eastern Front; rebelled against Brest-Litovsk Treaty, killed in Simbirsk
Trade union leader who commanded the Finnish Red Guards from January to March 1918
Born in Kuopio in 1880, he joined the labour movement while studying law at Helsinki University. He was one of the leading Red Guard organisers in Helsinki during the 1905 general strike and in 1907 became the first chairman of the Finnish Trade Union Federation, losing the post in 1911 over his drinking. One of the most radical voices of 1917, openly calling for armed revolution, he was elected to the five-man committee of the Red Guards and in January 1918, without any military training, succeeded Ali Aaltonen as their commander-in-chief. Removed on 20 March after a series of defeats, he organised the defence of Viipuri with Edvard Gylling and escaped to Petrograd in May. He helped found the exiled Communist Party of Finland and worked in the Karelian Workers’ Commune, but was arrested in the Great Purge and shot in Petrozavodsk in 1937.
Career timeline
1907–1911First chairman of the Finnish Trade Union Federation (SAJ)
1917Commander of the Kymi Paper Mill Red Guard; member of the five-man Red Guard committee
1918Commander-in-chief of the Red Guards; member of the People’s Delegation
1920–1923Several posts in the Karelian Workers’ Commune
1931–1935Head of the revolution research department, Karelian Research Institute
A general who embodied the military case for defeat and armistice
On 22 June 1940, he signed the armistice for France in the Compiègne forest.
Charles Huntziger was a French Army general who built his career in the colonial infantry, on the Balkan front in the First World War, and in overseas commands and negotiations between the wars. Commanding the Second Army at Sedan in 1940, he failed to stop the German breakthrough, and his decisions remained part of the dispute over responsibility for France’s defeat. He judged that the capacity to continue fighting was nearing its limit and chaired Pétain’s delegation that signed the 22 June armistice. As Vichy’s Minister of War, he then helped reorganize the military of the collaborationist state until his death in a plane crash in 1941.
Career timeline
1900Graduated from Saint-Cyr, second lieutenant in the colonial infantry
1918Operations chief, Allied Army of the Orient, planner of the Vardar offensive
1924–1928Commander of French occupation troops in the Tianjin concession
1934–1938Commander-in-chief of French forces in the Levant
1939–1940Commander of the Second Army at Sedan
1940Commander of Fourth Army Group; chairman of France’s 22 June armistice delegation
1940–1941Vichy Minister of War and commander-in-chief of the Armistice Army
The Soviet Union's greatest fortification scientist, who chose martyrdom at Mauthausen over collaboration with the Nazis
His reply to Nazi recruiters: "My convictions do not fall out with my teeth. I am a soldier and remain faithful to my duty."
A military engineer veteran of the Russo-Japanese War, World War I, and the Civil War, Karbyshev founded Soviet fortification science through over 100 publications and taught a generation of Red Army commanders at the Frunze and General Staff academies. He engineered the defensive infrastructure of Brest Fortress, the Stalin Line, and the Mannerheim Line breach. Captured in 1941, he refused every Nazi attempt to recruit him, including an offer to command the 'Russian Liberation Army' in place of Vlasov, led the camp resistance for three and a half years, and was tortured to death under ice water at Mauthausen in February 1945.
Career timeline
1900–19051st East Siberian Sapper Bn, telegraph coy; Russo-Japanese War, 5 orders
1908–1911Nikolaev Military Engineering Academy, graduated with honours
In Moscow in August 1939 he negotiated a military accord with the USSR, but his own delegation's written powers were limited, the British head had none, and the talks stalled on Red Army transit through Poland.
French army general Aimé Doumenc organized motor transport in the First World War and later drafted a design for an autonomous armored division. In August 1939 he headed France's military delegation in Moscow, negotiating a military accord with the USSR on limited written powers; the talks stalled on Red Army transit through Poland and were suspended as the German-Soviet pact was concluded. In 1940 he served in the high command through the collapse in the Ardennes, and afterwards was Commissioner-General for National Reconstruction and wrote military history.
Career timeline
1898–1900Student at the École polytechnique
1907–1909Student at the École supérieure de guerre
1916–1918Deputy director and director of the Automobile Service, organizing Verdun supply and relief
1925Served in the Rif War
1928Proposed an autonomous armored-division design
1938Member of the Superior Council of War
1939Head of the French military delegation in Moscow
1940–1942Major general at army headquarters, Commissioner-General for National Reconstruction, then left active service
The operational commander of October, sidelined by the revolution he led
"You know how stubborn I am — listen, then later don't do it. But write everything down so I feel heard." Advising Eisenstein on the film October, 1927.
Nikolai Podvoisky, a village priest's son who left seminary for the Bolsheviks, was the de facto field commander of the October armed uprising: as head of the Military Revolutionary Committee's operational trio, he directed the storming of the Winter Palace. He became Soviet Russia's first People's Commissar for Military Affairs, only to be pushed aside by Trotsky four months later, and during the Civil War organized Vsevobuch, universal military training. He designed the Red Star and the Order of the Red Banner, then devoted himself to mass physical culture as chairman of the Red Sport International. Sidelined under Stalin, he survived the purges, wrote his memoirs, and at 61 volunteered to dig Moscow's defence trenches.
Career timeline
1901–1905Joined RSDLP, sided with Bolsheviks; led Ivanovo-Voznesensk textile strike and workers' Soviet
1906–1916Emigration and underground publishing; co-organized Zvezda and Pravda; finance chair of Russian Bureau of CC
1917.03–10Head of Petrograd Bolshevik Military Organization; edited soldiers' newspapers; organized Red Guard
1917.10VRK operational troika member and deputy chairman; field-directed armed uprising and storming of Winter Palace
1917.11–1918.03First People's Commissar for Military Affairs; chair of All-Russian Collegium for Red Army formation
1918–1919Member of RVSR; People's Commissar for Military Affairs of Ukrainian SSR
1920–1927Chairman of Sportintern and Supreme Council of Physical Culture — from revolutionary to sports administrator
1935–1948Personal pensioner; wrote memoirs and propaganda; volunteered for Moscow defence trench-digging, 1941
Social Democratic leader who was defence commissar and Red Army commander-in-chief of the Hungarian Soviet Republic
Born to a middle-class Jewish family, he trained as a mechanic and rose through the iron and metal workers’ union to the Social Democratic leadership. He became war minister in the Berinkey government in January 1919 and took part in the merger talks with the Communists. In the Soviet Republic he was defence commissar and commander-in-chief of the Red Army, and in July, as envoy in Vienna, he agreed with the Entente missions, on behalf of the Social Democratic leadership, on removing the council government. In exile he lived in Vienna, Czechoslovakia and Sweden; he headed the Hungarian legation in Sweden from 1946 to 1948 and resigned when the Social Democrats were merged into the Communist Party. He died in Stockholm in 1949.
Career timeline
1911Member of the Trade Union Council
1919War minister in the Berinkey government
1919Defence commissar and Red Army commander-in-chief
The only American to head the Army, the State Department, and the Pentagon, organizer of Allied victory and architect of the Marshall Plan
At Harvard's commencement on June 5, 1947, Marshall received an honorary degree and delivered a speech of under 1,200 words — barely twelve minutes — sketching a recovery plan directed 'against hunger, poverty, desperation and chaos.'
Marshall was the only American to serve as Army Chief of Staff (1939–45), Secretary of State (1947–49), and Secretary of Defense (1950–51): the 'organizer of victory' who presided over the fortyfold expansion of the U.S. Army. At Harvard on June 5, 1947, he proposed a massive aid program to reverse Europe's economic collapse and contain Soviet pressure; the Marshall Plan channeled $13 billion over four years, stabilizing Western Europe's industrial base and currencies while reshaping U.S. Cold War strategy. As Secretary of State he clashed openly with Truman over the recognition of Israel, and as Defense Secretary during the Korean War he approved MacArthur's dismissal, reasserting civilian control of the military. He received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1953, the only career soldier ever to do so.
Career timeline
1880Born in Uniontown, Pennsylvania, the youngest child of a coal and coke businessman
1902Graduated VMI, commissioned 2nd lieutenant, posted to the Philippines
1917–1918WWI: planned the Cantigny and Meuse-Argonne offensives as 1st Division G-3
1939–1945Army Chief of Staff: expanded the Army from 189,000 to 8 million, directed Allied strategy
1945.12–1947.01Special envoy to China; failed to broker a Nationalist-Communist coalition
1947–1949Secretary of State: launched the Marshall Plan and pushed for NATO's creation
1950–1951Secretary of Defense during the Korean War; approved MacArthur's relief and rebuilt the Pentagon
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.
Career timeline
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
A naval reformer sent to negotiate without authority
When the Soviet side asked about negotiating authority, Drax's mission could make no decision without government approval.
Reginald Drax was a Royal Navy admiral who argued for more active tactics and reform of naval command, while holding major staff and operational posts between the world wars. In August 1939 he led the British military mission to Moscow, sent with the French delegation to discuss cooperation with the Soviet Union but without written authority to negotiate. His mission's slow arrival in an outdated merchant ship and inability to commit the British government exposed the limits and mistrust surrounding the talks to prevent war with Germany, which ultimately failed.
Career timeline
1896Entered the Royal Navy; trained aboard HMS Britannia
1909Published Modern Naval Tactics; studied staff training
1914–1918Served in HMS Lion; took part in major First World War naval actions
1919–1922Director, Royal Naval Staff College
1923–1924President, Naval Allied Control Commission in Germany
1932–1934Commander-in-Chief, America and West Indies Station
1935–1938Commander-in-Chief, Plymouth
1939Led the British military mission to the Moscow talks
Institutional founder of Soviet military intelligence
Atatürk personally ordered Aralov's bronze figure placed on Istanbul's Taksim Square Republic Monument — the only Soviet diplomat on the monument — in gratitude for the aid Soviet Russia gave during the Turkish War of Independence.
Institutional founder of Soviet military intelligence: first head of the Red Army Registration Directorate (future GRU) in 1918, he built the foundations of Bolshevik strategic intelligence. A member of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic and a founding member of the Cheka, he helped construct the Red Army alongside Trotsky. After the Civil War he served as Soviet plenipotentiary to Lithuania, Turkey, Latvia, and China; his bronze figure stands on Istanbul's Taksim Square Republic Monument, placed at Atatürk's personal request for Soviet aid during Turkey's war of independence. Purged from intelligence in 1937, he volunteered for the front at 60 and served as trophy chief of the 33rd Army through WWII.
Career timeline
1902Joined RSDLP and Imperial Russian Army
1914–1917Served in WWI, rose to staff-captain; awarded 5 battle orders
1918.01Head of Operations, Moscow Military District; founding member of Cheka
1918.09–1919.07Member, Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic
1918.11–1919.06First head, Registration Directorate (future GRU) of the Red Army
1919–1920Member, RVS of 12th Army, 14th Army, South-Western Front
1921–1927Plenipotentiary to Lithuania, Turkey, Latvia, and China
1927–1937Presidium of VSNKh; head of State Insurance
1938–1941Deputy director, State Literature Museum
1941–1945Volunteered at 60; trophy department chief, 33rd Army
Freikorps officer who ordered the murders of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht in January 1919 and joined the Kapp Putsch
As a staff officer, he ordered the murders of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht in January 1919. He organised the 1920 Kapp-Lüttwitz Putsch and became a leading Heimwehr organiser in Austria.
As staff officer of the Guards Cavalry Rifle Division, the largest Freikorps unit, he had Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht interrogated after their capture in January 1919 and ordered them killed, later boasting “I had them executed”. A leading figure in the Kapp Putsch of 1920, he went to Austria to help organise the right-wing Heimwehr and was deported. In Nazi Germany he faded from public life, only loosely tied to the party. In a 1962 interview and his memoirs he claimed Noske and Ebert had approved the killings, which was never confirmed. Never punished, he died in Düsseldorf in 1970.
Career timeline
1911–1913Served as a first lieutenant in the Prussian General Staff.
1914–1918Served on the Western Front in the First World War as a captain and staff officer.
1918–1919As first general staff officer of the Guards Cavalry Rifle Division, took part in suppressing the revolution in Berlin. After Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht were captured and briefly interrogated on 15 January 1919, he ordered their murder.
1919–1920As managing director of the nationalist National Association, organised the Kapp-Lüttwitz Putsch; he fled to Austria after its failure.
1921–1930Became chief of staff of the Tyrolean Heimwehr, then federal chief of staff in 1928. Arrested and expelled from Austria in 1930.
1930–1943Headed the arms department at Rheinmetall-Borsig in Berlin and acquired his own business in 1938. In 1943 he remained in Switzerland and received political asylum.
1955–1970Returned to Germany in 1955. He took no further part in politics after the war and died in Düsseldorf in 1970.
War minister among the Three Pashas who took the Ottomans into the war and was a main perpetrator of the Armenian genocide
Born in Constantinople, he joined the Committee of Union and Progress and became a hero of the Young Turk Revolution of 1908. After the 1913 coup he became war minister and ruled the empire with Talat and Djemal as the Three Pashas. He took the Ottomans into the First World War in alliance with Germany, and after losing most of his army at Sarıkamış in December 1914 blamed the defeat on the Armenians. He was a main perpetrator of the Armenian, Greek and Assyrian genocides. After the defeat he fled and was sentenced to death in absentia. He worked with the Bolsheviks, then in 1921 in Central Asia went over to the Basmachi rebels, and was killed fighting the Red Army in 1922.
The Bessarabian 'Red Robin Hood' who rose from Tsarist outlaw to legendary Soviet Civil War commander
In May 1917, during Carmen at the Odesa Opera House, the recently pardoned Kotovsky appeared to a standing ovation, delivered a revolutionary speech from the stage, and watched his prison shackles auctioned for 10,000 rubles.
A Bessarabian revolutionary commander. Notorious under the Tsar as a bandit who sided with the poor, he led Red cavalry in the Civil War and helped establish the Moldavian ASSR. Mythologized in his lifetime as a legend of Soviet folklore; murdered in 1925.
Career timeline
1905–1916Led armed raiding bands in Bessarabia and Odesa; repeatedly arrested and escaped; sentenced to death 1916, commuted to hard labor
1917Amnestied after February Revolution; served on Romanian Front, awarded George Cross for bravery; joined Left SRs
1918–1919Commanded cavalry in Tiraspol Detachment defending Odesa Soviet Republic; military commissar of Ovidiopol, commander 2nd Brigade, 45th Rifle Division
1920Awarded Order of the Red Banner; joined RCP(b); commanded cavalry brigade on Soviet-Polish front
1921Commander, 17th Cavalry Division of Red Cossacks; wounded suppressing Makhnovist and Antonov uprisings; awarded Honorary Revolutionary Weapon and second Red Banner
1922–1924Commander, 2nd Cavalry Corps; contributed to founding Moldavian ASSR; awarded third Order of the Red Banner
1924–1925Member of USSR Central Executive Committee and Ukrainian/Moldavian CECs; member of Revolutionary Military Council
Commander-in-Chief who led the Red Army to victory in the Civil War
In modern war, the defeat of the enemy requires a sum of continuous and systematic victories across the entire front — each blow connected to the next in time. The side that summed up its blows won.
A former Tsarist colonel who joined the Red Army in 1918, Sergey Kamenev became its Commander-in-Chief (1919–1924) and led the campaigns that defeated Kolchak, Denikin, and Wrangel. As Eastern Front commander he broke Kolchak's armies; as supreme commander he secured Soviet power through coordinated multi-front offensives, guided by his doctrine of the 'summation of continuous blows.' After the Civil War, political commanders who had once served under him eclipsed his career. He was demoted to head of air defence in 1934, and the marshal's rank went to five former subordinates. He died of a heart attack in 1936, escaping the Purge; Stalin posthumously erased him, restoring his name to the Kremlin Wall only in the 1960s.
Career timeline
1918–1919Commander of the Eastern Front
1919–1924Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the Republic
1924–1925Inspector of the Red Army
1925Chief of Staff of the Red Army
1925–1926Chief Inspector of the Red Army
1926–1927Chief of the Main Directorate of the Red Army
1927–1934Deputy People's Commissar for Military and Naval Affairs & Deputy Chairman of the RVS
1934–1936Head of the Air Defence Directorate of the Red Army
Gallipoli commander who led the national movement and founded the Republic of Turkey as its first president
Born in Salonica, he joined the Young Turk movement and made his name defending Gallipoli in the First World War. After the defeat he landed at Samsun in May 1919 to organise the national movement against occupation, and in 1920 convened the Grand National Assembly in Ankara. With gold and arms from the Bolshevik government he defeated the Greek army, and the Treaty of Lausanne recognised the victory. In these years the ethnic cleansing of Anatolia’s Armenians and Greeks was completed through massacres, deportations and population exchange. He abolished the sultanate in 1922 and in 1923 became the first president of the republic, pursuing secularising reforms and Turkification under one-party rule. He died in 1938.
Career timeline
1915Commander of the 19th Division at Gallipoli
1919Landed at Samsun and organised the national movement
1920Speaker of the Grand National Assembly in Ankara
1921–1922Victories at the Sakarya and Dumlupınar
1923–1938First president of the Republic of Turkey
A general who defended Polish sovereignty between exile and return
After Sikorski's government requested an investigation into Katyn in 1943, the Soviet Union broke diplomatic relations with the government-in-exile.
Władysław Sikorski was a Polish soldier and politician who sought an independent course amid the conflict between interwar democracy and military authoritarianism. During the Second World War, as prime minister of the government-in-exile in London and commander-in-chief of the Polish Armed Forces, he pressed the Allied powers to recognize Poland's national claims. Through the 1941 Sikorski–Mayski agreement, he restored diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union and opened the way for the release of Polish prisoners and the formation of a Polish army, but relations broke down again after his government requested an investigation into the Katyn massacre. His death in a 1943 aircraft crash at Gibraltar dealt a severe blow to the diplomatic influence of the government-in-exile.
Career timeline
1908Co-founded the secret Union for Active Struggle
1914–1916Head of the Military Department of the Supreme National Committee and commander of a Polish Legions officers' school
1920Commander of the 5th Army during the Battle of Warsaw in the Polish–Soviet War
1922–1923Prime Minister and Minister of the Interior of the Republic of Poland
1924–1925Minister of Military Affairs; advanced modernization of the Polish Army
1939–1943Prime Minister of the government-in-exile in London and Commander-in-Chief of the Polish Armed Forces
1941Signed the Sikorski–Mayski agreement, restoring relations with the Soviet Union
1943Died in the Gibraltar air crash after seeking an international investigation into Katyn
Chief of the Hungarian General Staff who was the strongest advocate of alliance with Germany and of war on the Soviet Union
Born into a Swabian family at Rezsőháza in the Banat (now Knićanin, Serbia), he became a cadet in Vienna in 1897 and served as an Austro-Hungarian officer in the First World War. In 1919 he commanded the I Corps of the Hungarian Soviet Republic’s Red Army before going over to Horthy’s National Army in June. Retired in 1936, he was recalled in 1938 as Chief of the General Staff and, with Defence Minister Károly Bartha, became the leading advocate of alliance with Germany. He oversaw the invasion and annexation of Carpatho-Ukraine in March 1939 and, after the Kassa bombing of June 1941, at once blamed the Soviet Union and urged an immediate declaration of war. He left the post of chief of staff in September 1941; arrested by Soviet forces in February 1945, he was taken to the USSR and died there in 1952.
Career timeline
1897–1901Infantry cadet school, Vienna
1914–1918Austro-Hungarian staff officer
1919Commander, Red Army I Corps; joined the National Army in June
1938–1941Chief of the General Staff
1945–1952Arrested by Soviet forces; died in Soviet captivity
German field marshal who commanded the Stalingrad offensive
In May 1941, days after Yugoslavia's surrender, he ordered reprisals killing one hundred Serbs for every German soldier wounded.
Maximilian von Weichs was a German professional officer shaped by the Bavarian and Reichswehr staff traditions who commanded corps and armies in Nazi Germany's wars of aggression. In 1942 he became commander of the newly formed Army Group B, placing the Sixth Army and Axis allies within the command structure of the southern offensive toward Stalingrad, where he advocated withdrawal after the encirclement but could not overcome Hitler's orders. He later commanded Army Group F and the German forces in the Balkans, where responsibility for reprisals against civilians and other war crimes was raised, and proceedings against him in the Hostages Trial were halted because of his failing health.
Career timeline
1900Joined the Bavarian Army's 2nd Heavy Cavalry Regiment
1935Commanded the 1st Panzer Division
1937–1939Commander of XIII Army Corps and Military District XIII
1939–1942Commander of the 2nd Army
1942–1943Commander of Army Group B during the offensive toward Stalingrad
1943–1945Commander of Army Group F and OB Southeast
1947Released from the Hostages Trial proceedings on medical grounds
After the Soviet invasion of Manchuria in August 1945, he ordered the Kwantung Army to surrender.
Otozō Yamada was a Japanese Imperial Army general who served from the Russo-Japanese War to the end of the Second World War, building his career in command, military administration, and training. As commander of the Kwantung Army from 1944, he recognized that troops and equipment had been stripped for the Pacific war, yet hastily organized formations collapsed rapidly when the Soviet Union invaded Manchuria. Taken into Soviet custody after Japan's surrender, he was sentenced to twenty-five years at the Khabarovsk war-crimes trial over responsibility for bacteriological warfare and returned to Japan in 1956.
Career timeline
1903Graduated from the Army Academy, cavalry officer
1912Graduated from the Army Staff College
1934–1937Director of the General Staff's General Affairs Bureau, commandant of the Army Academy
1937–1939Commander of the 12th Division, 3rd Army, and Central China Expeditionary Army
1939–1944Inspector-General of Military Training, member of the Supreme War Council
1944–1945Commander-in-chief of the Kwantung Army, ambassador to Manchukuo
1949–1950Defendant at the Khabarovsk war-crimes trial, sentenced to 25 years
Stalin’s marshal, sustained by loyalty more than command
28 May 1937, on an NKVD list of 26 Red Army commanders sent to the Defence Commissariat, he wrote in his own hand: "To Comrade Yezhov. Take all the scoundrels. 28.V.1937. K. Voroshilov." On a similar list of 142 commanders his resolution was shorter: "Arrest. K. V."
A metalworker from a railway family in Yekaterinoslav Governorate who joined the Bolsheviks in 1903. His Tsaritsyn command alongside Stalin in 1918 made him a military symbol of Stalin's circle, and from 1925 to 1940 he led the Red Army as People's Commissar for Military and Naval Affairs and then for Defence, longer than anyone else in the Soviet period. He directed rearmament and the shift from a territorial-militia to a cadre army, and he shared responsibility for the Great Terror: his signature appears on 185 execution lists, more than 18,000 people were convicted and shot under them, and he signed the 5 March 1940 order to execute some 25,700 Polish officers and intelligentsia. Removed after the Winter War, he served on the State Defence Committee from 1941 to 1944 and as partisan commander-in-chief, and chaired the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet until 1960.
Career timeline
1918–1920Civil-war command at Tsaritsyn, rising as a military symbol of Stalin’s circle
1925–1940War/defense commissar, representing political loyalty in the Red Army
1937–1938As top military leader, approves purges of the officer corps
1939–1940After failures in the Winter War, loses the defense commissariat to Timoshenko
1941–1945Wartime elder commander whose operational limits become clear
1953–1960Moves to the titular head-of-state role as Presidium chairman
1940–1953Deputy Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars, then of the Council of Ministers
1945–1947Chairman of the Allied Control Commission in Hungary
1941–1944Member of the State Defence Committee; commanders of the North-Western Direction and the Leningrad Front; Commander-in-Chief of the Partisan Movement
