The revolutionary wave and the world war 333

Diplomacy and international organization Poland 1891–1993 ○ Natural causes

An aristocratic diplomat who preserved Poland’s diplomatic continuity in exile

On 17 April 1943, Raczyński’s Foreign Ministry requested that the International Red Cross investigate Katyn.

Edward Raczyński was a diplomat of the Second Polish Republic and a leading figure in the Polish government-in-exile in London. During the war he informed the Allies about the mass murder of Jews in German-occupied Poland and took part in the Polish diplomatic action requesting an international investigation into the Katyn massacre in 1943. After 1945 he defended the continuity of the government-in-exile while supporting democratic opposition in communist-ruled Poland, and served as President of Poland-in-exile from 1979 to 1986.

Political and party leadership Workers' Party of Marxist Unification (POUM) 1892–1937 ✕ Murdered

The Marxist who linked the Russian and Spanish revolutions, founder of the POUM

“The working class has solved the problem of the Church simply by not leaving even one of them standing.” — La Vanguardia, August 1936

Catalan Marxist revolutionary. After serving as CNT General Secretary, he joined Trotsky's Left Opposition in Moscow and later founded the anti-Stalinist POUM. He was also the first to translate Russian literature directly into Catalan.

Scholarship and theory 1892–1940 ✕ Morphine overdose

Frankfurt School's spectral companion, Marxist critic who dissected capitalist culture through the lens of mechanical reproduction

In the "Theses on the Philosophy of History," Benjamin wrote: "There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism."

Born to a prosperous assimilated Jewish family in Berlin, Walter Benjamin was a singular Marxist cultural critic who intersected deeply with the Frankfurt School yet remained irreducible to any single tradition. His thought, fusing Jewish mysticism with historical materialism, analyzed how capitalist production destroys art's "aura" in "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" (1935), while his posthumous "Theses on the Philosophy of History" (1940) challenged the Marxist faith in progress through the indelible allegory of the "angel of history," drawn from a Paul Klee painting. In exile he pursued the unfinished Arcades Project, an archaeological excavation of 19th-century Parisian commodity culture, and through his tense intellectual friendships with Brecht, Adorno, and Scholem, he expanded the horizons of Western Marxism.

Military command United Kingdom state institutions 1892–1944 ✕ Killed in crash

An air commander who made army cooperation central to Allied air power

Montgomery urged the War Office to retain him: “He is the only airman who is out to win the land battle and has no jealous reactions.”

Trafford Leigh-Mallory was a British air chief marshal whose command style grew from First World War experience in reconnaissance and cooperation with ground forces. During the Battle of Britain, he advocated large fighter formations against the quicker defensive methods of Hugh Dowding and Keith Park, and the dispute became entangled with changes in Fighter Command leadership. As commander-in-chief of the Allied Expeditionary Air Force for Overlord, he coordinated the air plan to delay German reinforcements and disrupt transport, while accepting the grave civilian costs of attacks in France. After Normandy he was appointed to command air forces in Southeast Asia, but died with his wife in a plane crash in the French Alps.

Government and administration Yugoslavia 1892–1955 ○ Natural causes

A conciliator between the monarchy and the national liberation movement

In the November 1944 Belgrade talks, he accepted a coalition government and regency while leaving the monarchy for a postwar decision.

Ivan Šubašić was a Croat Yugoslav politician and lawyer who became the first head of the autonomous Banovina of Croatia before the war. As the balance shifted between the royal government-in-exile and Tito’s national liberation movement, he became the principal non-Communist intermediary between them. In 1944 he negotiated with Tito, accepted the authority of AVNOJ, and helped design a coalition government and regency while leaving the monarchy’s fate to a postwar decision.

Law and justice Affiliation unconfirmed 1892–1956 ○ Natural causes

A socialist constitutional scholar who sought to ground sovereignty in the people

At the 1944 Lebanon Conference, he sought to carry the Resistance's representation from liberated Greece into a national government.

Alexandros Svolos was a Greek constitutional scholar and socialist politician whose work connected labour rights to democratic constitutional order. During the Axis occupation, he chaired the Political Committee of National Liberation, helping lead administration in liberated areas and articulate institutions grounded in popular representation, while seeking cooperation between the Resistance and the government in exile at the Lebanon Conference. After liberation he became finance minister in the government of national unity, but resigned with the EAM ministers rather than endorse the dissolution of the resistance army. He pursued an independent socialist democracy between the established right and the communist movement, a position that gave his politics both influence and isolation in postwar Greece.

Military command United Kingdom state institutions 1892–1975 ○ Natural causes

The air-defence commander at the heart of the Battle of Britain

Using the picture supplied by radar and the reporting system, he scrambled No. 11 Group's fighters quickly enough to keep the south-east's defence in action.

A New Zealand-born Royal Air Force officer, Park carried experience from First World War artillery and fighter flying into the organisation of air defence. As commander of No. 11 Group in 1940, he directed the fighter defence of London and south-east England, combining radar and reporting networks with rapid, dispersed interceptions against German raids. His decisions balanced the need to preserve fighters and pilots against the accumulating damage to airfields while keeping the southern defence system in action. He later commanded air operations in Malta and the Far East.

Military command United Kingdom state institutions 1892–1984 ○ Natural causes

The air commander who made strategic bombing central to total war

Days after the thousand-bomber raid on Cologne, he told a newsreel audience: 'They sowed the wind, and now they are going to reap the whirlwind.'

Arthur Harris was the Royal Air Force commander who led Bomber Command during the Second World War and made area bombing of German cities a central instrument of British strategy. He improved the operational scale and effectiveness of the campaign while remaining responsible for a method that killed civilians and destroyed urban life. Before the Normandy landings, Harris resisted diverting bombers from the pressure on German industry to the Transportation Plan, yet in March 1944 he ordered the initial attacks on French railway centres that put the plan into action. That tension exposed the conflict between an air force command defending its independent strategic campaign and the Allied demand for direct support to the invasion.

Social movements and organizing Affiliation unconfirmed 1893–1932 ✕ Executed

Father of Central American communism, Sandino's colonel, martyr of La Matanza

As US planes bombed Sandino's camp, Martí pushed aside his typewriter and declared: "When history cannot be written by the pen, it must be written by the rifle." He then picked up a gun and fired at the planes.

Salvadoran Marxist-Leninist revolutionary and pioneer of Central American communism. In 1930 he co-founded the Communist Party of El Salvador (PCS) and in 1932 led a peasant-indigenous uprising amid the Depression; the Martínez military regime crushed it in the La Matanza massacre and had him executed by firing squad. His name was later adopted by the FMLN guerrilla coalition, making him an enduring symbol of Central American revolution.

Social movements and organizing Affiliation unconfirmed 1893–1943 ✕ Suicide in prison

A feminist who carried anti-fascism into clandestine resistance

“Life is not worth much, and dying is not important. What matters is living according to one’s honour and ideal.”

Berty Albrecht was a French activist who joined feminism to anti-fascism, publishing a journal that defended contraception and abortion rights. Her early warning about Nazism and aid to German refugees led to cooperation with Henri Frenay and the formation of the clandestine Resistance movement Combat. She helped produce Les Petites Ailes and Vérités and organized Combat’s social services, continuing after arrest, imprisonment and escape. Captured and tortured in 1943, she died in Fresnes prison and was posthumously named a Companion of the Liberation.

Military command Spanish Republic 1893–1968 ○ Natural causes

The Republican general who overthrew Negrín to negotiate peace with Franco, and got only unconditional surrender

On the night of 5 March 1939, Casado went before a radio microphone, declared the Negrín government was preparing a Communist dictatorship and that only his National Defence Council could deliver an honourable peace. In Madrid, street fighting began at once.

A cavalry officer of the Spanish Republican Army who stayed loyal after the rising of July 1936, rose through operations and training posts to command of the Army of the Centre, and became convinced the war was already lost. On 5 March 1939 he staged a coup in Madrid, overthrew the Negrín government and set up a National Defence Council under General Miaja, claiming to forestall a Communist takeover while seeking a negotiated peace with Franco. Franco demanded unconditional surrender, the talks collapsed, and Casado escaped aboard a British warship, living in exile in Britain and Venezuela before returning to Spain in 1961.