People of the Revolution and the USSR

Army of Condé Counter-revolutionary forces 1736–1818

Bourbon prince who commanded the émigré Army of Condé

A Bourbon prince du sang who fled Revolutionary France and commanded the émigré Army of Condé against it.

A Bourbon prince of Condé, Louis Joseph left France soon after the Revolution began. He organized and commanded the émigré Army of Condé, which fought Revolutionary France alongside foreign monarchies. He returned to France after Napoleon’s fall.

United Kingdom state institutions Counter-revolutionary forces 1758–1805 ✕ Killed in action at Trafalgar

Royal Navy admiral who destroyed the French fleet at the Nile

Commanding the British fleet as Rear-Admiral of the Blue at Aboukir Bay in August 1798, he destroyed the French fleet that had escorted Napoleon's army to Egypt: the French flagship Orient exploded, and of the 17 French ships engaged only two ships of the line and two frigates escaped.

British Royal Navy officer. Born in 1758 at the rectory of Burnham Thorpe, Norfolk, he entered the navy through his uncle Maurice Suckling's influence, served in the West Indies and the Mediterranean, lost the sight of one eye at Calvi in 1794 and his right arm at Santa Cruz de Tenerife in 1797, destroyed the French fleet at Aboukir Bay on 1–3 August 1798, stranding Napoleon's army in Egypt, defeated Denmark at Copenhagen in 1801, and was killed at Trafalgar in 1805.

Catholic and Royal Army (Vendée) Counter-revolutionary forces 1759–1793 ✕ Died of wounds

First generalissimo of the Vendéan insurgency

A peddler and sacristan from Le Pin-en-Mauges, he took up arms in March 1793 over conscription and the clergy's civil constitution; the Vendéan chiefs elected him generalissimo at Saumur on 12 June 1793. Mortally wounded storming Nantes on 29 June, he died on 14 July.

A peddler from Anjou and devout Catholic, Cathelineau joined the anti-conscription rising of 1793. He helped unite peasant forces and was chosen as the first generalissimo of the Catholic and Royal Army. He died from a gunshot wound received during the attack on Nantes.

Catholic and Royal Army (Vendée) Counter-revolutionary forces 1763–1796 ✕ Executed

Royalist commander who led guerrilla war in the Lower Vendée

A royal navy officer of the Breton petty nobility, he became the emblematic commander of the Vendéan insurgency against the Republic. His choices and rivalries made him its most controversial general, even among royalists.

A former French naval officer, Charette became a commander of the Catholic and Royal Army in the War in the Vendée. He led guerrilla warfare in the Lower Vendée, signed the Treaty of La Jaunaye in 1795, and later resumed the revolt. Captured in 1796, he was executed by firing squad in Nantes.

French First Republic state institutions Counter-revolutionary forces 1767–1823 ○ Died in New Orleans in

French revolutionary general, commander of the 1798 Irish expedition

On 22 August 1798 he landed at Killala and on 27 August defeated British forces under Lord Lake at Castlebar. The Connacht republic was proclaimed on 31 August, and on 8 September he was defeated and taken prisoner at Ballinamuck.

Born in 1767 at Saint-Nabord in the Vosges, he volunteered in 1792, rose quickly, and became a général de brigade in 1794. In 1798 he commanded the expedition to Ireland, landing at Killala on 22 August and defeating British forces at Castlebar on 27 August; he took part in the proclamation of the Connacht republic on 31 August, but surrendered at Ballinamuck on 8 September and returned home in a prisoner exchange. He later served in the Saint-Domingue expedition, moved to the United States in 1813, aided US forces at New Orleans in 1815, and taught French in his last years; he died at New Orleans in 1823.

Catholic and Royal Army (Vendée) Counter-revolutionary forces 1772–1794 ✕ Killed in action

Young noble officer elected generalissimo of the Vendéan army

Emerging as a Vendéan commander in 1793, he was elected royalist commander-in-chief at 21 after Cholet. He led the campaign north of the Loire in late 1793 and died fighting a guerrilla war in January 1794.

A former royal army officer, La Rochejaquelein joined the Vendéan rising in 1793 and led forces in its major battles. After the defeat at Cholet he was elected generalissimo of the Catholic and Royal Army at age twenty-one and took part in the campaign north of the Loire. He was killed in a skirmish in 1794.

France state institutions Counter-revolutionary forces 1808–1893 ○ Natural causes

Marshal captured at Sedan who led the Versailles army against the Paris Commune and became the president of “Moral Order”

As commander of the Versailles army, he led the suppression of the Paris Commune in May 1871. Elected president in 1873, he headed a “Moral Order” government; after Republicans won a parliamentary majority in 1877, he resigned in 1879.

A soldier from a family of Irish descent, he won his marshal’s baton and dukedom in the conquest of Algeria, the storming of the Malakoff in the Crimea and at Magenta in 1859. In 1870 he led the Army of Châlons to relieve Metz and was wounded and captured with the emperor at Sedan. Released by Germany, he commanded Thiers’s Versailles army, entered Paris in May 1871 and directed the repression and mass executions of Bloody Week. Succeeding Thiers as president in 1873, he led a “Moral Order” government awaiting a restoration, lost the 1877 confrontation with parliament and resigned in 1879.

Germany state institutions Counter-revolutionary forces 1848–1918 ✕ Assassinated

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.

Counter-revolutionary forces 1857–1938 → Died in exile

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.

Counter-revolutionary forces 1859–1925 ✕ Executed by shooting

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.

Germany state institutions Counter-revolutionary forces 1865–1937 ○ Natural death

General who directed Germany’s war with Hindenburg and later joined Hitler’s Beer Hall Putsch

Born to a commoner family in the Province of Posen, he served on the General Staff and won fame at Liège and Tannenberg in 1914. In August 1916 he and Hindenburg took over the Supreme Army Command; as First Quartermaster General he directed the war under a de facto military dictatorship and drove the Hindenburg Programme. His spring offensive, opened with Operation Michael in March 1918, failed; in September he demanded an immediate armistice and in October he was dismissed. After the war he spread the stab-in-the-back myth and took part in the Kapp Putsch of 1920 and Hitler’s Beer Hall Putsch of 1923. He sat in the Reichstag for the National Socialist Freedom Movement in 1924–1928 and died in Munich in 1937.

Germany state institutions Counter-revolutionary forces 1865–1946 ○ Died

Freikorps commander who tried to keep Germany's eastern influence in Finland and the Baltic

White Army quartermaster Hannes Ignatius described him as the "true regent of Finland."

He led the Baltic Sea Division to the aid of the Finnish Whites in 1918, then commanded the German troops and Freikorps in Latvia in 1919, retaking Riga but backing a coup against the Latvian government he saw as an obstacle. Recalled after Cēsis, he led far-right veterans' movements in the Weimar years.

Poland state institutions Counter-revolutionary forces 1865–1947 ○ Died

Polish general who seized Vilnius in a staged 'mutiny' and set up Central Lithuania

On 9 October 1920 Vilnius was occupied not by the Polish general Żeligowski, but by the Lithuanian Żeligowski.

A Polish general from the Russian imperial army, he seized Vilnius on 9 October 1920 in a 'mutiny' agreed with Piłsudski and set up Central Lithuania, an affair that blocked Polish-Lithuanian relations until 1938. He died in London in 1947.

Finland state institutions Counter-revolutionary forces 1867–1951 ○ Natural causes

Aristocratic soldier who rose from Russian Imperial lieutenant general to Marshal of Finland, facing the Soviet Union in two wars

"Forts, cannons and foreign aid will not help unless every man himself knows that he is the guard of his country."

A Swedish-speaking Finnish aristocrat who served 30 years in the Imperial Russian Army, rising to lieutenant general through the Russo-Japanese War and the First World War. In the 1918 Finnish Civil War he commanded the White Army to victory, then as regent consolidated Finland's independence, telling the London Times that 'the historic mission of Finland is to drive Bolshevism out.' As commander-in-chief in the Winter War and Continuation War, he led outnumbered Finnish forces against the Soviet Union, fighting alongside Nazi Germany but refusing to assault Leningrad. Elected president in 1944, he concluded peace with the USSR and expelled German forces in the Lapland War, leaving Finland the only Eastern European nation to escape occupation.

France state institutions Counter-revolutionary forces 1867–1965 ○ Natural causes

From Foch's brilliant staff officer to a general of defeat and accommodation

On 12 June 1940, Weygand advised the French government to capitulate.

Maxime Weygand was a French general who served as Ferdinand Foch's key staff officer in the First World War, coordinating Allied operations and reading the armistice terms to the German delegation in 1918. Between the wars he carried French military influence in Poland and the Levant, then became commander-in-chief of the French armies in May 1940 and, after the German breakthrough, judged that continued fighting in metropolitan France was no longer feasible and advised an armistice. He joined the Vichy government and later directed French North Africa, choosing limited accommodation with Germany while enforcing antisemitic measures harshly. Detained after the war on treason charges and cleared in 1948, he later defended Marshal Pétain's memory.

Germany state institutions Counter-revolutionary forces 1869–1927 ○ Stroke

German Eastern Front chief of staff who placed his soldier's boot on the Brest-Litovsk negotiating table

"The General on several occasions put his soldier's boot on the table around which the discussion was taking place": Trotsky, who wrote that 'Hoffmann's boot was the only reality to take seriously'

An outstanding strategic staff officer who, as Chief of Operations of the German Eighth Army, devised the plans that destroyed the Russian armies at Tannenberg and the Masurian Lakes. As Chief of Staff of the Eastern Front from late 1917, he was the driving force behind the German position at the Brest-Litovsk peace talks: on 18 January 1918 he spread a map before the Soviet delegation and demanded the severance of Poland, the Baltic states, and Ukraine from Russia. After Trotsky's 'neither war nor peace' declaration, Hoffmann commanded Operation Faustschlag, an unopposed advance that compelled the Bolsheviks to accept far harsher final terms. He embodied the asymmetry between revolutionary diplomacy and imperial military force, most memorably by placing his soldier's boot on the negotiating table.

Italy state institutions Counter-revolutionary forces 1871–1956 ○ Natural causes

A marshal who served Fascism before steering Italy's turn

When the armistice was announced on 8 September 1943, Badoglio's government left Rome and headed south for Allied protection.

Pietro Badoglio was an Italian royal army officer and colonial commander who enforced imperial violence in Libya and Ethiopia. A central military official under Mussolini, he resigned after the failure of the 1940 Greek campaign and later helped the monarchy remove the dictator. As prime minister after Mussolini's fall in 1943, he arranged Italy's armistice with the Allies, but the confused announcement and flight of the royal government left Italian forces unprepared for German disarmament and the collapse of state authority.

Austria state institutions Counter-revolutionary forces 1872–1962 ○ Died

Habsburg archduke and last field marshal of the Austro-Hungarian army who briefly declared himself regent of Hungary in August 1919

Born at Alcsút in Hungary into the Hungarian or Palatinal branch of the House of Habsburg-Lorraine, he entered the army in 1890, commanded a corps, an army and army groups in the First World War and on 24 October 1918 became the last field marshal of the Austro-Hungarian army. On 27 October Emperor Charles made him homo regius of Hungary, but the Aster Revolution put an end to his plans. After the fall of the Soviet Republic he became head of state in August 1919 as regent for Charles and appointed István Friedrich prime minister, but when it became clear that the Allies would not recognise a Habsburg as head of state he was forced to resign on 23 August. In the Horthy era he was president of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences from 1936 to 1944. He left Hungary in 1944 and died in Rain, West Germany, in 1962.

Hungary state institutions Counter-revolutionary forces 1874–1947/1948 ○ Died in a labour camp

Counter-revolutionary paramilitary commander who led the most brutal officer detachment of the Hungarian White Terror of 1919–1921

Born to an old noble family in Romhány, Nógrád County, the career officer took command of Horthy’s bodyguard in Szeged in 1919 and formed the first officer detachment. Torturing and killing Communists, Social Democrats, peasants and Jews, his unit is considered the most brutal of the Hungarian White Terror. Convicted of extortion in 1921, he lost his command and joined King Charles’s second return attempt; his battalion was dissolved in January 1922. He failed to build a fascist mass movement in the 1930s and in October 1944 again assembled a squad to hunt Jews. Captured by Soviet troops in 1945, he died in the Gulag.

Germany state institutions Counter-revolutionary forces 1876–1956 ○ Natural causes

Wehrmacht field marshal who directed the encirclement of Leningrad

In September 1941 he believed Leningrad was about to fall, but the city did not surrender.

Wilhelm Ritter von Leeb was a German field marshal and one of the Wehrmacht's senior operational commanders in the Second World War. In 1941 he led Army Group North through the Baltic states toward Leningrad, completing the land encirclement and directing the operational pressure that sustained it. Forces under his command committed crimes against civilians and cooperated with the SS in the murder of Jews. Convicted after the war in the High Command Trial for transmitting the Barbarossa Decree and its criminal application by subordinate units, he was sentenced to time served and released.

Germany state institutions Counter-revolutionary forces 1876–1960 ○ Convicted war criminal, released 1955

A Nazi German naval commander who pursued a grand surface fleet

In the 1940 planning for Operation Sea Lion, control of the English Channel and the vulnerability of invasion transport exposed the German navy’s fundamental weakness.

Erich Raeder was an admiral who rose through the Imperial German Navy and went on to command the navies of the Weimar Republic and Nazi Germany. He pursued a battleship-centered ocean fleet combined with commerce raiding, although Germany’s navy was unready to confront the Royal Navy when the Second World War began. Raeder was skeptical of Operation Sea Lion in 1940, pointing to German weakness in controlling the English Channel and the vulnerability of an invasion transport, and those naval limits constrained the plan’s feasibility. At the postwar International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, he was convicted of conspiracy, crimes against peace, and war crimes, sentenced to life imprisonment, and released in 1955.

Hungary state institutions Counter-revolutionary forces 1876–1962 ○ Died in Vienna

Legitimist general who led counter-revolutionary troops in western Hungary and joined both of King Charles’s return attempts in 1921

Born in Sopron and trained at the cadet school and war college in Vienna, he was the younger brother of the composer Ferenc Lehár. His First World War service won him the Knight’s Cross of the Military Order of Maria Theresa and a barony. During the Soviet Republic he raised a force of some 2,000 men in Graz, and in August 1919 he became military commander of Western Hungary, where his troops carried out reprisals against Communists and Social Democrats. A legitimist, he placed himself at King Charles’s disposal in March 1921 and was named defence minister in the second attempt that October; when it failed he fled through Czechoslovakia to Germany. He later lived in Berlin and Vienna, administered his brother’s estate, and died in Vienna in 1962.

Japan state institutions Counter-revolutionary forces 1877–1966 ○ War-crimes conviction, released 1955

A militarist leader of Japan's Imperial Way faction

When young naval officers assassinated Prime Minister Inukai in the 1932 May 15 Incident, War Minister Araki praised the killers as 'irrepressible patriots.'

Sadao Araki was a general of the Imperial Japanese Army and a leading figure of the Imperial Way faction, advocating a militarism that joined emperor-centered national reconstruction to external expansion. As Army Minister after the 1931 Manchurian Incident, he helped consolidate the Kwantung Army's fait accompli into state policy and supported the Northern Expansion Doctrine aimed at the Soviet Far East. Yet the young officers he had cultivated escaped his control and erupted in the February 26 Incident, after which he left active service. Convicted of Class A war crimes at the postwar International Military Tribunal for the Far East, he received a life sentence and was released in 1955.