The revolutionary wave and the world war 333

Military command Germany state institutions 1847–1934 Natural causes

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.

Military command Germany state institutions 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.

Political and party leadership Affiliation unconfirmed 1850–1937 ○ Natural causes

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.

Military command France state institutions 1856–1951 ○ Treason conviction · life imprisonment

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.

Political and party leadership Comintern 1859–1933 ○ Natural causes

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.

Government and administration Finland state institutions 1861–1944 ○ Died

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.

Political and party leadership Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) 1863–1919 ✕ Assassinated

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.

Government and administration Russian White movement 1863–1925 ○ Natural causes

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.

Security, intelligence and policing Germany state institutions 1863–1925

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.

Political and party leadership Labour Party (United Kingdom) 1863–1935

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.

Political and party leadership Soviet Union 1864–1941 ○ Natural causes

From Warsaw boy patriot to Comintern old revolutionary: the Pole who returned in the sealed train

“As a six-year-old boy I dreamed of becoming a rebel leader and freeing Poland from the 'Muscovites' and 'Swabians'.” — from his memoirs Za 50 Let

A Polish revolutionary who endured twenty years of tsarist prisons and Siberian exile, emerging as a gold-medal ethnographer of Siberia's indigenous peoples. He led the anti-Piłsudski split of the Polish Socialist Party into its internationalist left wing, then joined the Bolsheviks on Lenin's sealed train. He helped found the International Red Aid (MOPR), built the Soviet radio broadcasting system, and spent nearly sixty years on the front lines of revolutionary struggle, outliving the Great Purge to die of natural causes at 77.

Science and technology Soviet Union 1865–1937 ○ Natural causes

The American colonel who brought General Electric turbines and dam-building expertise to the Soviet Union's showcase construction site

At the 1932 Dneprostroi dedication: "The practical experience of American methods thus acquired will be a lever in raising the living standards of this country."

A self-taught dam engineer, Hugh Lincoln Cooper made his name by taming the Horseshoe Rapids at Niagara (1907) and spanning the Mississippi at Keokuk (1913), rising to become America's foremost hydroelectric builder. In 1926 the Soviet government invited him as chief consultant for Dneprostroi; he supplied General Electric turbines, supervised every phase of construction, and delivered Europe's largest power station eight months ahead of schedule in 1932. That September the USSR awarded Cooper and five other American engineers the Order of the Red Banner of Labour, the first time the decoration went to a foreigner. He remained an anti-communist all his life, but without his dam there would have been no flagship achievement for the First Five-Year Plan.

Government and administration Germany state institutions 1865–1939 → Died in exile

SPD politician who proclaimed the republic from a Reichstag window on 9 November 1918 and became Weimar’s first head of government

On 9 November 1918, he proclaimed Germany a republic from a Reichstag window. In June 1919, he resigned as head of government rather than sign the Treaty of Versailles.

A printer from Kassel who became an SPD journalist and Reichstag deputy, he joined Prince Max of Baden’s cabinet in October 1918. On 9 November, hearing that Liebknecht was about to proclaim a socialist republic, he proclaimed a republic first from a Reichstag window, to Ebert’s fury. A People’s Deputy, he became head of government in February 1919 but resigned in June rather than accept the Treaty of Versailles. He was mayor of Kassel in the 1920s, survived a far-right cyanide attack in 1922, went into exile in 1933 and died in Copenhagen.

Military command Germany state institutions 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.

Military command Poland 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.

Political and party leadership Communist Party of Germany (KPD) 1866–1922

German socialist and a leading figure in the workers’ council movement.

A social-democratic journalist, Däumig joined the Independent Social Democratic Party during the First World War and became influential among Berlin radicals and the revolutionary shop stewards. As a leading member of the Berlin workers’ council executive in November 1918, he sought to make the council system the basis of the constitution, but lost to supporters of a national assembly. In 1920 he led the USPD left into the Communist International and became co-chair of the United Communist Party of Germany. He resigned as co-chair with Paul Levi in February 1921, left the party after the March Action and Levi’s expulsion, and helped found the Communist Working Group; in 1922 he rejoined the USPD.

Political and party leadership Affiliation unconfirmed 1866–1925 ○ Illness

A Pole who passed through the German and Russian revolutions and tried to bring revolution home

As the Red Army prepared to march on Warsaw in 1920, he joined Radek in repeatedly urging Lenin to halt — warning him not to overestimate the revolutionary consciousness of the Polish worker.

Co-founder of Polish communism, he established the Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland (SDKPiL) in 1893 together with Rosa Luxemburg and Leo Jogiches. Active in the German SPD's left wing, he helped build the Spartacus League and the German Communist Party, and after the Russian Revolution joined the Bolsheviks, becoming one of Lenin's close advisers on agrarian policy. During the Polish-Soviet War of 1920 he served as chairman of the Polish Provisional Revolutionary Committee, and later became the first chairman of International Red Aid (MOPR) and first rector of the Communist University of the National Minorities of the West.

Political and party leadership Labour Party (United Kingdom) 1866–1937 ○ Natural causes

Politician who gave up the Labour chairmanship in 1914 over war credits and later became Britain’s first Labour prime minister

He resigned as Labour chairman in 1914 over Britain’s entry into the war and war spending; in 1931 he led a national government and lost Labour’s support.

Born into poverty in Lossiemouth, Scotland, he became an organiser of the Independent Labour Party and Labour and was chairman of the party from 1911. When Labour backed the government’s war credits in August 1914 he resigned the chairmanship and was fiercely attacked for his opposition to the war. In 1924 he became Britain’s first Labour prime minister and recognised the Soviet Union, returning as prime minister in 1929. Forming a National Government with the Conservatives in the crisis of 1931, he was expelled from Labour. He died at sea in 1937.

Social movements and organizing Germany state institutions 1867–1919 ✕ Assassinated

Journalist who overthrew the Bavarian monarchy in Munich in November 1918, proclaimed the People’s State and was assassinated the next year

He organized the November 1918 Bavarian Revolution, overthrew the monarchy and proclaimed the People’s State; he was assassinated in February 1919 while on his way to resign.

Born to a Jewish merchant family in Berlin, he was a theatre critic and editor of the SPD’s Vorwärts before moving to Munich. He joined the USPD against the war and was jailed for leading the munitions strike of January 1918. On 7 November he led demonstrators from a rally on the Theresienwiese round the barracks, and the next day proclaimed the People’s State of Bavaria and became premier. His publication of documents on German war guilt earned him the right’s hatred. Heavily defeated in the January 1919 election, he was assassinated by Count Arco-Valley on 21 February on his way to resign.

Political and party leadership Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania (SDKPiL) 1867–1919 ✕ Murdered

The revolution's underground organizer, always behind the scenes, until he had to lead

On 10 March 1919, still investigating the killings of Luxemburg and Liebknecht, Jogiches was arrested and shot in the back of the head in Berlin's Moabit prison within hours. His last words to an interrogator: 'You will never find these murderers.'

Polish-Jewish Marxist revolutionary. Co-founded the SDKPiL with Rosa Luxemburg in 1893, the main forerunner of the Communist Party of Poland. During the First World War he was the key behind-the-scenes organizer of the underground Spartacus League in Germany. For decades Luxemburg's closest political comrade and personal companion, a brilliant organizer who struggled to write for himself. After Luxemburg and Liebknecht were murdered in January 1919, Jogiches took over KPD leadership and investigated their killings, only to be assassinated by the same Freikorps milieu two months later.

Government and administration Germany state institutions 1867–1929 ○ Natural causes

Last chancellor of the German Empire, who sought the armistice, announced the emperor’s abdication and handed power to Ebert

On 9 November 1918, as revolutionary demonstrations spread in Berlin, Max von Baden announced the emperor’s abdication and transferred the chancellorship to Friedrich Ebert.

Heir to the grand-ducal house of Baden and a former Prussian army officer, he won moderates’ respect in the war through Red Cross and prisoner-of-war relief work. Chancellor from 3 October 1918, he brought the SPD into government, asked the Allies for an armistice and carried the constitutional amendment that made the Empire a parliamentary monarchy. On 9 November, with Berlin full of demonstrators, he announced the emperor’s abdication without his consent, handed the chancellorship to Ebert and withdrew. In 1920 he founded the Salem boarding school with Kurt Hahn.

Government and administration Poland 1867–1935 ○ Illness

The soldier-politician who began as a socialist, became Head of State of reborn Poland, broke the Red Army's westward drive at Warsaw in 1920, and later ruled through a coup-built authoritarian regime

To be defeated and not to yield, that is victory; to be victorious and to rest on one's laurels, that is defeat.

Born 5 December 1867 at Zułowo manor (now Zalavas, Lithuania, then Vilna Governorate of the Russian Empire), second son of a noble szlachta family that sources characterize either as Polish or as Polonized Lithuanians. Arrested in March 1887 over the plot against Alexander III and sent to five years of Siberian exile, he joined the Polish Socialist Party in 1893, led it, and edited its underground organ Robotnik from 1894. In the First World War he raised the Polish Legions on Austria's side, was imprisoned at Magdeburg after the 1917 Oath crisis, became Chief of State of reborn Poland in November 1918, and broke the Red Army's drive at Warsaw in 1920. He ruled as the strongman of the Sanacja regime after the May 1926 coup, jailed opponents in the Brest trials and Bereza Kartuska, signed a non-aggression pact with the USSR in 1932, and died of liver cancer in Warsaw on 12 May 1935.

Science and technology Affiliation unconfirmed 1867–1937 ○ Natural causes

An entomologist who carried scientific expertise into international relief

“Can we stop with feeding children alone while their natural protectors are allowed to die?”

Vernon Kellogg was an entomologist and science administrator whose work at Stanford advanced zoology and the institutionalization of scientific research in the United States. His wartime service with Herbert Hoover's relief work in Belgium brought him into postwar international humanitarian operations. After inspecting the Volga famine zone in 1921, he reported to Washington that relief could not be limited to children while their parents and other adults died, helping support the American Relief Administration's expansion. His career shows a scientific specialist becoming an agent of administrative and ethical judgment in the face of mass starvation.

Military command Germany state institutions 1867–1939 ○ Natural causes

General who struck the 1918 secret pact with Ebert that preserved the officer corps and later served Weimar as defence and interior minister

On 10 November 1918, he made a secret telephone pact with Ebert, pledging army support for the new government while preserving the officer corps’ command.

A Württemberg staff officer and railway transport expert, he ran the War Office in the war, directing munitions production and labour mobilisation. In October 1918 he succeeded Ludendorff as First Quartermaster General and in November told the emperor that the army no longer stood behind him. On the night of 10 November he struck a secret telephone pact with Ebert, trading the army’s support for the preservation of the officer corps’ command. He later served as transport, defence and interior minister and fell in 1932 over his ban on the Nazi SA.