The revolutionary wave that spread from October across Europe and Asia, the communists and socialists of the Comintern era, interwar statesmen, fascism and the Spanish Civil War, and the leaders and commanders of the Second World War.
Co-founder of Western Marxism, the German philosopher who challenged Marxist orthodoxy with Marxism and Philosophy
“If we get a few more of these Professors spinning out their theories, we shall be lost.” — Zinoviev at the 5th Comintern Congress, 1924, attacking Korsch and Lukács
German Marxist philosopher and revolutionary who, alongside Lukács, laid the foundations of Western Marxism. In Marxism and Philosophy (1923) he applied the materialist conception of history to Marxism itself, arguing for the revolutionary recovery of the Hegelian dialectic, a move that drew fierce denunciation from the Comintern. Served as Justice Minister in the 1923 Thuringian workers' government and as a KPD Reichstag deputy before his expulsion as a left-oppositionist. Fled the Nazis for American exile, where his scholarship left a deep imprint on Brecht, Benjamin, and the Frankfurt School.
Career timeline
1906–1910Studies law and philosophy at Munich, Geneva, Berlin; doctorate in law, University of Jena
1912–1914Legal research in London; joins the Fabian Society
1914–1918German Army service — refuses to carry weapons; awarded the Iron Cross twice for bravery
1917Joins USPD; elected delegate to soldiers' soviet
1920Joins KPD with the USPD left wing; lecturer at University of Jena
1923.3Publishes Marxism and Philosophy; becomes target of fierce Comintern criticism
1923.10–11Justice Minister, Thuringian workers' government — collapses after 27 days under Reichswehr intervention
1924–1928KPD Reichstag deputy; delegate to 5th Comintern Congress
1926.4Expelled from KPD; forms the Resolute Lefts (Entschiedene Linke) opposition faction
1933Flees Germany the night of the Reichstag fire; passes through Denmark and England
1936–1961US exile — Tulane University, Institute for Social Research; teaches Marxism to Brecht
1938Publishes Karl Marx; deeply influences Benjamin's Arcades Project
1950Ten Theses on Marxism Today — declares break with orthodox Marxism
“Calm, collected, decisive, yet receptive to advice; ... boldly seizing every opening.”
Raymond Spruance was a United States Navy admiral who directed carrier operations in the Pacific during the Second World War. At Midway in 1942, he commanded Task Force 16, built around Enterprise and Hornet, and played a central role in the destruction of four Japanese fleet carriers. Known for measured decisions and calm command, he later led the Naval War College and served as ambassador to the Philippines.
Career timeline
1907Graduated from the United States Naval Academy
1913–1922Commanded destroyers and served with the Pacific Fleet
1935–1938Instructor at the Naval War College
1938–1939Commanding officer of USS Mississippi
1942Commanded Task Force 16 at the Battle of Midway
1943–1945Commander of the Central Pacific Force and Fifth Fleet
1946–1948President of the Naval War College
1952–1955United States ambassador to the Philippines
The Wehrmacht's defensive specialist on the Eastern Front
On 16 April 1945, he pulled the main body out of the forward trenches before the Soviet bombardment, preserving the deeper defensive line.
Gotthard Heinrici was a senior German army commander in the Second World War who gained a reputation as the Wehrmacht's leading specialist in defensive operations. He fought in the invasion and occupation of the Soviet Union, bearing command responsibility as war crimes and ideological orders shaped the conduct of the campaign. As commander of Army Group Vistula in 1945, he anticipated the Soviet main thrust and built a defense in depth around the Seelow Heights, but tactical skill could not reverse Germany's defeat.
Career timeline
1905Entered the Prussian Army
1914–1918Served on the Western and Eastern Fronts in the First World War; staff officer
1937–1940Commander of the 16th Infantry Division
1940–1941Commander of XII Army Corps; fought in the French campaign and invasion of the Soviet Union
1942–1944Commander of the 4th Army; directed defensive operations on the Eastern Front
1944–1945Commander of the 1st Panzer Army; led retreating operations through Poland and Slovakia
1945.03–04Commander of Army Group Vistula; directed the defense at the Seelow Heights and before Berlin
1945–1948British prisoner of war; released in 1948
From eyewitness of the Bolshevik Revolution to founder of the Communist Labor Party of America: an American buried at the Kremlin Wall
At the mass funeral for revolutionary martyrs in Red Square, Reed suddenly understood: the devout Russian people no longer needed priests to pray them into heaven. On earth they were building a kingdom more bright than any heaven had to offer.
American journalist and communist. He witnessed the 1917 October Revolution and wrote Ten Days That Shook the World. He co-founded the Communist Labor Party of America and served on the Comintern Executive Committee. One of the very few Americans buried at the Kremlin Wall.
Career timeline
1910Graduated Harvard, began journalism career in New York
1913Joined The Masses; first arrest covering Paterson silk strike
1913–1914War correspondent in Mexico — 4 months with Pancho Villa's army; published Insurgent Mexico
1917Witnessed the October Revolution in Petrograd; worked with the Bolshevik Foreign Commissariat
1919Published Ten Days That Shook the World; co-founded the Communist Labor Party of America
1919–1920Comintern Executive Committee member; U.S. delegate to 2nd Comintern Congress; attended Baku Congress of the Peoples of the East
Latvia's first foreign minister, who won international recognition for its independence
One of the most influential statesmen and diplomats of the early Latvian Republic. As its first foreign minister he drove the 1920 peace treaty with Soviet Russia, de jure recognition and League of Nations admission; he died in a car crash in 1925.
Latvia's first foreign minister, he won de facto British recognition in 1918, the Riga peace of 1920, and de jure Allied recognition and League membership in 1921. He also served as prime minister and died in a road accident in 1925 at thirty-eight.
Career timeline
1917Co-founder of the Latvian Farmers' Union; head of the Vidzeme Land Council's financial division
1918Appointed Latvia's first foreign minister
1920Concluded the Riga peace treaty with Soviet Russia
1921Secured de jure Allied recognition and League of Nations membership
German Communist who abstained on the Comintern’s founding at its first congress and was later shot in the Great Purge
At the 1919 Comintern founding congress, Eberlein conveyed Luxemburg and Jogiches’s mandate against immediate foundation. Lenin persuaded him personally, but he followed the mandate and abstained rather than vote against.
A draughtsman from Saalfeld, he joined the SPD and during the war co-founded the Spartacus League with Luxemburg. As the KPD’s delegate to the Comintern’s founding congress in March 1919 he abstained on the founding vote, as Luxemburg and Jogiches had advised, believing a premature International would be dominated by the Bolsheviks. Afterwards he did organisational and financial work for the Comintern and the German party and sat in the Prussian Landtag. He fled to the Soviet Union in 1933, was arrested in 1937 and was shot in Moscow in October 1941.
Career timeline
1916Helped organize the Spartacus League as an underground political organization.
1918Helped found the Communist Party of Germany (KPD).
1919Attended the Comintern’s founding congress as the KPD delegate and abstained on its founding vote.
Japanese general who directed Okinawa's war of attrition
Even after defeat was clear, he rejected a surrender appeal and ordered his remaining forces to fight to the end.
Mitsuru Ushijima was an Imperial Japanese Army officer who commanded formations in the war against China and the Pacific War. Sent to Okinawa in 1944, he led the 32nd Army in a defense-in-depth and war of attrition in the south rather than a beach battle, while its system also mobilized civilians for labor and combat. His May 1945 withdrawal from Shuri prolonged resistance but drew refugees into the battlefield and increased civilian losses; he rejected surrender and killed himself in June.
Career timeline
1908Graduated from Army Academy, 20th class; infantry second lieutenant
1916Graduated from Army Staff College, 28th class
1918–1919Staff of the Siberian Intervention force, transport and deployment
1937–1939Commander, 36th Infantry Brigade, China campaigns
1939–1941Commander, 11th Division, stationed at Hulin, Manchukuo
1942–1944Commandant, Imperial Japanese Army Academy
1944–1945Commanding general, 32nd Army, Okinawa defense
The general who represented Germany's surrender in Italy
On 29 April 1945 at Caserta, his representatives signed the surrender instrument for the German forces in Italy.
Born into a Prussian military family, Heinrich von Vietinghoff became a senior commander after serving in the Imperial Army and the Reichswehr. He took part in the invasions of Poland and the Soviet Union, and from 1943 commanded German defensive operations in occupied Italy. In April 1945 he negotiated with the Allies at Caserta and represented the German forces in the surrender arrangements, making him a central participant in ending the German war in Italy. After captivity, he joined West German rearmament discussions.
Career timeline
1906–1918Officer in the Prussian Army; served in the First World War
1919–1935Officer of the Reichswehr; served in the Army Ministry and corps staff
1938–1939Commander of the 5th Panzer Division
1940–1942Commander of the XLVI Panzer Corps in the Balkans and on the Eastern Front
1942–1943Commander-in-chief of the Ninth and Fifteenth Armies
1943–1944Commander-in-chief of the Tenth Army in Italy, defending the Gustav and Gothic Lines
1944–1945Commander-in-chief of Army Group C and the Southwest theatre
1945Represented the German forces in the Caserta surrender arrangements
The Indian Marxist who debated Lenin on colonial revolution
"You are so young! I expected a grey-bearded wise man from the East." — Lenin's first words to the 27-year-old Indian revolutionary upon meeting him at the Kremlin, 1920.
Bengali Marxist. He debated Lenin on the colonial question at the 1920 Comintern Congress and founded the Mexican Communist Party (the first outside Russia) as well as the CPI. Expelled from the Comintern, he served six years in British prisons before turning to Radical Humanism.
Career timeline
1917Co-founded the Socialist Party of Mexico, soon transformed into the Mexican Communist Party
1919Founded the Mexican Communist Party, the first communist party outside Russia
1920Presented supplementary theses on the colonial question at the 2nd Comintern Congress, debated Lenin
1920Founded the Communist Party of India (Tashkent group) in exile
1922–1929Member of the Comintern Executive Committee and Presidium; secretary of the Chinese Commission
1929Expelled from the Comintern for siding with Bukharin's Right Opposition
1931–1936Arrested by British colonial authorities, imprisoned for 6 years on conspiracy charges
1940–1948Founded the Radical Democratic Party; supported the anti-fascist war effort
1947Published the New Humanism manifesto, articulating his Radical Humanist philosophy
A diplomat of empire who became the defeated state's signatory
On September 2, 1945, aboard USS Missouri, he signed the Instrument of Surrender for the Emperor and the Japanese government.
Mamoru Shigemitsu was a Japanese imperial diplomat and politician who carried out state diplomacy while warning against the military's expansion. After losing his right leg in the 1932 Shanghai bombing, he returned to public life and in 1945 signed the Instrument of Surrender for the Emperor and Japanese government as foreign minister. Convicted at the Tokyo Trial and sentenced to seven years for aggressive war and related failures concerning prisoners of war, he was paroled in 1950 and later returned as foreign minister and deputy prime minister, helping steer Japan back into international diplomacy.
Career timeline
1911Entered the Ministry of Foreign Affairs
1928–1930Consul-General in Shanghai
1930–1933Minister to the Republic of China
1936–1938Ambassador to the Soviet Union
1938–1941Ambassador to the United Kingdom
1943–1945Foreign Minister and Minister of Greater East Asia
1945Japanese signatory of the Instrument of Surrender
1954–1956Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister
The deputy who founded the Jeunesses Patriotes, holding a street force and a seat in the Chamber at once
He kept a parliamentary seat and a paramilitary organisation at the same time, on the principle that the street belonged to his side too. The Jeunesses Patriotes were among the columns that reached the Concorde on the night of 6 February 1934, and several of the fifteen dead were their members
A First World War veteran turned deputy who founded the Jeunesses Patriotes in 1924 against the incoming Cartel des Gauches and built it into a paramilitary body tens of thousands strong. Equipped with blue raincoats and berets, it broke up Communist meetings and fought for the streets, while its leader kept his seat inside parliament: a doubleness characteristic of the French leagues. On 6 February 1934 the Jeunesses Patriotes formed one of the main columns on the Place de la Concorde, and some of the dead came from its ranks. He voted full powers to Pétain in 1940, presided over the Paris municipal council under the occupation, and was detained and then released after the liberation.
Career timeline
1887–1918Born in Paris; serves in the First World War
1919–1940Deputy in the Chamber
1924Founds the Jeunesses Patriotes
1925–1936Commands a paramilitary league tens of thousands strong
1934.02.06The Jeunesses Patriotes form one of the main columns on the Concorde
1940.07Votes full powers to Pétain
1943–1944Presides over the Paris municipal council under the occupation
1944–1945Detained after the liberation, then released
The general who defended Guadalcanal and the Marine Corps
In his 1946 Senate testimony, he argued that Congress should decide the Marine Corps' future: “The bended knee is not a tradition of our Corps.”
Alexander Vandegrift was a United States Marine Corps general whose Pacific War command combined amphibious assault with determined defense. In August 1942 he led the 1st Marine Division ashore at Guadalcanal, organized the defense around Henderson Field, and held the beachhead through sustained Japanese air, land, and naval pressure, making the campaign the first major U.S. ground offensive of the war. As Commandant after the war, he defended the Marine Corps' independent role against proposals to absorb it into the Army, appealing to Congress in his 1946 Senate testimony.
Career timeline
1909Commissioned second lieutenant, U.S. Marine Corps
1912–1914Served in expeditions in Cuba, Nicaragua, and Mexico
1915–1923Served in the occupation of Haiti and its constabulary
1942Commanded 1st Marine Division in the Guadalcanal landing and defense
1943Commanded I Marine Amphibious Corps at Bougainville
1944–194718th Commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps
1945First active-duty Marine promoted to four-star general
Nazi Germany's finest operational strategist and the apex of the 'clean Wehrmacht' myth
"Preussische Feldmarschälle meutern nicht": "Prussian field marshals do not mutiny." With these words he explained why he did not join the 20 July 1944 plot on Hitler's life.
Erich von Manstein was a field marshal of Nazi Germany and widely regarded as the most dangerous operational mind on the Eastern Front. He devised the Ardennes flanking manoeuvre (the Sichelschnitt, or sickle cut) that broke France in 1940, captured the Crimea and Sevastopol in 1941–42, and in February–March 1943 executed the backhand-blow counteroffensive at Kharkov that restored the German southern front and created the Kursk salient. Relieved in March 1944 for disagreements with Hitler, he was convicted of war crimes by a British tribunal in 1949 and sentenced to 18 years (released 1953), then advised West Germany on rearming. His memoir Lost Victories narrated only his operational record, ignoring the Holocaust and Wehrmacht crimes, and became a cornerstone of the 'clean Wehrmacht' myth.
Career timeline
1906Commissioned in the 3rd Prussian Foot Guards
1914–1918Served on both fronts as staff officer; ended war as captain
1920s–1935Reichswehr staff and command; War Ministry; major to colonel
1936Deputy Chief of Staff, Army General Staff (Generalmajor)
1939–1940Poland and France: Army Group South CoS, devised Sichelschnitt, XXXVIII Corps
1941–194211th Army: Crimea and Sevastopol; Generalfeldmarschall
1942–1944Army Group Don→South; Kharkov backhand blow, Kursk southern pincer; relieved March 1944
1949–195518 years for war crimes (released 1953); Lost Victories, West German advisor
At a Normandy briefing on 12 June 1944, he told the troops: “We have got to go off and do a job together very soon now.”
Bernard Montgomery was a British field marshal shaped by First World War experience and an intense commitment to troop training. In the Second World War he rebuilt the Eighth Army before leading it at El Alamein, then commanded Allied operations in Sicily and Italy. Recalled to Britain for the Normandy invasion, he commanded the 21st Army Group and all Allied ground forces in the opening phase, pressing to enlarge the initial assault and secure a broad lodgement. His methodical, tightly controlled style reduced some risks but also drew criticism for slowing operations and accepting costly battles.
Career timeline
1908Commissioned into the Royal Warwickshire Regiment
1914–1918Served on the Western Front; chief of staff, 47th London Division
1942–1943Commander, Eighth Army; led at El Alamein
1943Commander, Eighth Army; led the Sicily and Italy invasions
1944Commander, 21st Army Group; led Allied ground forces in the opening of Normandy
1944–1945Commander, 21st Army Group, north-western Europe campaign
Bolshevik who led the underground communist party in independent Estonia and was executed
A Cheka investigator on the Lockhart conspiracy and Kaplan affair, he was arrested after the May Day demonstration of 1922 and shot that same night in a forest by Lake Ülemiste.
The Bolshevik who led the October Revolution in Estonia in 1917, he directed the underground communist party in the independent republic until his arrest and execution in Tallinn in 1922.
Career timeline
1905Began revolutionary activity in a Marxist students' circle in Arensburg (Kuressaare)
1906Moved to St Petersburg and joined the RSDLP (Bolsheviks)
1906–1913Party work in St Petersburg and Revel (Tallinn); helped publish the Estonian-language paper Kiir
1917Deputy chairman of the Estland Military Revolutionary Committee; head of the administrative department of the Soviet ExecutComm
1918Investigator for the Supreme Revolutionary Tribunal and Cheka; member of the All-Russian Central ExecutComm
1918–1922Led the underground Estonian Communist Party; Central Committee and Politburo member
The anarchist peasant commander who fought Bolsheviks, Whites, Germans, and nationalists in succession
Kremlin, June 1918. Lenin told Makhno, "If anarchists were like you, we'd gladly work together." Two years later, Makhno would be betrayed by the Bolsheviks twice.
Ukrainian anarcho-communist revolutionary. Led a peasant army and built the Free Territory, an experiment in anarchist self-governance. Allied with the Red Army twice to defeat the Whites, and was betrayed each time. Exiled in 1921, he wrote his memoirs in Paris.
Career timeline
1906Joins Huliaipole anarcho-communist 'Union of Free Grain-Growers'; begins expropriations
1910Sentenced to death, commuted to life hard labour; educated in anarchist theory by Arshinov in Butyrka prison
1917–1918Amnestied, returns to Huliaipole as soviet chair; organizes Black Guard; confiscates landlords' land
1919.2–6Allies with Red Army, commands 3rd Brigade, 1st Zadneprovsk Division; breaks when Trotsky declares him an outlaw
1919.7–10Commander-in-chief of the RPAU; 600-km raid through Denikin's rear disrupts White advance on Moscow; proclaims Free Territory
1920.10–11Re-allies with Red Army against Wrangel, fights in Crimea; Red Army surrounds and destroys his units after victory
1921–1925Retreats across Romania, Poland, and Danzig to exile in Paris
1925–1934Active in anarchist circles in Paris exile; writes memoirs; dies of bone tuberculosis
Buryat revolutionary, drafter of Mongolia's 1924 constitution, victim of the Great Terror
At the third party congress in August 1924, as leader of the leftist faction he joined the rightists led by Dambadorj in accusing Danzan of representing bourgeois interests and dealing with American and Chinese firms; Danzan and Bavaasan were sentenced and shot within twenty-four hours.
A Buryat from Transbaikalia, he was elected first chairman of the Buryat-Mongol Central National Committee (Burnatskom) in April 1917 and helped lay the foundations of Buryat autonomy. In 1920 he became secretary of the Mongol-Tibet section of the Comintern's Far Eastern Secretariat. After the 1921 revolution he served until 1925 as chairman of Mongolia's Revolutionary Military Council, a government adviser, a member of the MPRP Central Committee presidium and a deputy in the Great and Small Khural. He helped draft the 1924 constitution and argued for the non-capitalist path at the third party congress, where he also joined in denouncing Danzan. Arrested in Moscow on 19 June 1937 (custody records date it 19 July), he was sentenced in 1938; sources disagree on the sentencing date and on when and where he was executed. A review of his case began in 1955 and he was rehabilitated in 1957.
Career timeline
1917Elected first chairman of the Buryat-Mongol Central National Committee (Burnatskom)
1918Elected in absentia as education minister of the Provisional Siberian Government
1920Secretary of the Mongol-Tibet section, Comintern Far Eastern Secretariat
1921–1925Chairman of Mongolia's Revolutionary Military Council, government adviser, member of the MPRP Central Committee presidium, deputy in the Great and Small Khural
1924Helped draft the constitution; joined in denouncing Danzan at the third party congress
1926–1930Studied at the Red Professors' Institute
1927–1934Research and teaching at the Communist University of the Toilers of the East (KUTV), professor of political economy from November 1934
A leading architect of armoured warfare and a general of Nazi Germany
In May 1940, he argued that the armoured forces across the Meuse should keep moving toward the Channel rather than wait for the infantry.
Heinz Guderian was a professional soldier who helped develop the doctrine of concentrated armoured manoeuvre and shape Germany’s panzer force and early wartime victories. He presented himself after the war as the “father” of the panzer arm, but his ideas rested on work by Oswald Lutz and many other officers. During the 1940 invasion of France, he pressed for a rapid thrust through the Ardennes, across the Meuse and onward to the English Channel, helping isolate Allied forces around Dunkirk. He nevertheless collaborated with the Nazi regime and commanded in an eastern war of aggression marked by occupation crimes, while his postwar memoirs minimized his responsibility and political ties.
Career timeline
1908Officer, Hanoverian Light Infantry Battalion
1914–1918World War I, signals and staff officer
1927–1931Staff officer and instructor in army transport and motorized units
1935–1938Commander of 2nd Panzer Division, Inspector of Motorized Troops
1938–1940Commander of XIX Army Corps, armoured command in the Western Campaign
1941Commander of 2nd Panzer Group, Operation Barbarossa
1943–1945Inspector General of Armoured Troops, Acting Chief of the Army General Staff
A liberal statesman at the threshold of liberation and civil war
At Caserta, he agreed that military command after liberation would pass to the British commander, General Scobie.
A Greek liberal politician, Papandreou opposed the monarchy while also confronting the communist movement, combining social reform with firm anti-communism. During the Second World War he led the government-in-exile and, through the Lebanon Conference and the Caserta Agreement, helped establish a framework for resistance participation in government and the integration of armed forces. Returning in 1944 as prime minister of the Government of National Unity, he sought to restore state authority amid British intervention and conflict between EAM and non-EAM forces, a project that gave way to the Dekemvriana and civil war. He later founded the Centre Union and defended parliamentary democracy until his death under house arrest after the 1967 military coup.
Career timeline
1916Joined Venizelos's insurgent government and organised anti-monarchist support.
1923Minister of the Interior
1930–1932Minister of Education, expanding schools for refugee children.
1935Founded the Democratic Socialist Party of Greece
1944–1945Prime minister of the government-in-exile and Government of National Unity; represented Greece at Lebanon and Caserta.
1950–1952Deputy prime minister
1961–1965Leader of the Centre Union, winning the 1963 and 1964 elections.
1967–1968Held under house arrest by the military regime
The 'Red Millionaire' who exposed Nazi terror through publishing, the Comintern's greatest propagandist, who broke with Stalin
"Stalin, you are a traitor!" — Münzenberg's response to the 1939 Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact
The Comintern's most brilliant mass-propagandist. He founded Workers International Relief, co-founded the League Against Imperialism, and his Brown Book (1933) exposed the Reichstag fire as a Nazi frame-up. He broke with Stalin and died under mysterious circumstances.
Career timeline
1915–1919Secretary, Intl. Union of Socialist Youth Organizations
1919–1921First Secretary, Young Communist International
1921–1937Founder & leader, Workers International Relief (IAH/Mezhrabpom)
1924–1933Reichstag deputy for Hesse-Nassau (KPD)
1927–1935Co-founder & leader, League Against Imperialism
In summer 1942, Hitler split Army Group South into Groups A and B to strike at Caucasus oil and the Volga at the same time, a decision that led to the encirclement and destruction of the Sixth Army.
Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) was born in Braunau am Inn, Austria-Hungary, and held Austrian citizenship by descent; he moved to Munich in 1913 and falsely registered as stateless. He joined the German Workers' Party in 1919, led it from 1921, and dictated Mein Kampf in prison after the failed 1923 Munich putsch. Released from Austrian citizenship in 1925, he remained stateless until he acquired German citizenship in 1932. Appointed chancellor on 30 January 1933, he used the Enabling Act of 23 March 1933 to build a dictatorship and became head of state on 2 August 1934 after Hindenburg's death. His regime was responsible for the genocide of about six million Jews and the deliberate killing of an estimated 19.3 million civilians and POWs. He died by suicide in Berlin on 30 April 1945.
Career timeline
1889–1918Born in Austria; served in the German Army during the First World War
1919Joined the German Workers' Party and entered politics
1921Leader of the National Socialist German Workers' Party
1923–1924Failed Munich putsch; dictated Mein Kampf in prison
1933Chancellor of Germany; established Nazi dictatorship
1934–1945Führer and head of state; directed the Second World War
1942Split Army Group South into Groups A and B, directing the Stalingrad and Caucasus offensives
SFIO general secretary who led the Tours vote to join the Comintern, became the first PCF general secretary and left in 1923
At the 1920 Tours Congress, Frossard led the move to join the Comintern and became the French Communist Party’s first general secretary, but left in 1923. Later a minister, he joined Pétain’s cabinet in 1940, voted for his full powers, and was acquitted of collaboration after the war.
A teacher from the Belfort region, he joined the SFIO and became its general secretary in 1918. After visiting Moscow with Cachin in 1920 he backed joining the Comintern at the Tours congress and became the first general secretary of the new French Communist Party. Clashing with the Comintern’s demands for discipline, he left in January 1923 and returned to the SFIO. He served as a minister in several governments in the 1930s and joined Pétain’s first cabinet in June–July 1940, but declined to serve Vichy; after the war he was tried for collaboration and acquitted.
Career timeline
1918–1920General secretary of the SFIO
1921–1923General secretary of the French Communist Party
1923Left the Communist Party and founded the Unitary Communist Party (PCU)
1928–1936Socialist deputy for Martinique and Haute-Saône
1935–1940Minister in several governments
1940Minister of Public Works in Pétain’s cabinet; voted in July to grant Pétain full powers
The theorist who designed Japan's Manchurian expansion
“Who starts a war just because he wants oil?”
Kanji Ishiwara was an Imperial Japanese Army officer and military thinker who viewed Manchuria as a strategic base for a future war against the United States. As a Kwantung Army planner in 1931, he worked with Seishirō Itagaki to use the railway sabotage as a pretext for the Mukden Incident and the occupation of Manchuria. He later opposed an all-out war in China, confronting the consequences of his own expansionist project before his conflict with Hideki Tōjō ended his active career.
Career timeline
1909Graduated from Army Academy, commissioned infantry second lieutenant
1915–1918Studied at Army War College, graduated second
1921–1925Army War College instructor, studied in Germany
1928–1931Kwantung Army chief operations planner and operations chief
1935–1937Army General Staff operations chief and director
1937–1938Deputy chief of staff, Kwantung Army
1939–1941Lieutenant general, commander of 16th Division, retired to reserve
1941–1945Director of Ritsumeikan national defense institute, led East Asia League movement
The general who defied Vichy and led the Liberation Army
In January 1945, defying a retreat order, he commanded that the symbolic city of Strasbourg be defended, anticipating de Gaulle's own instruction by twenty-four hours 'with perfect convergence.'
Jean de Lattre de Tassigny was a French professional soldier shaped by the First World War and the Moroccan war, and a commander who preserved his division’s cohesion amid France’s defeat in 1940. He remained in Vichy’s army, but in November 1942 he refused orders not to resist the German occupation of southern France, and joined the Free French after imprisonment and escape. Commanding Army B and then the French First Army, he led the liberation of Toulon and Marseille after the Provence landings, advanced to the Rhine and Danube, and represented France at the German surrender in Berlin in 1945. He later commanded the French colonial war in Indochina, where illness ended his life in 1952; he was posthumously made Marshal of France.
Career timeline
1911Graduated from the cavalry school and commissioned as an officer
1914–191812th Dragoons and 93rd Infantry Regiment, First World War
1921–1926Served in Morocco during the Rif War
1940Commanded the 14th Infantry Division in the Battle of France
1942–1943Commander of the 16th Military Division; imprisoned after defying Vichy and later escaped
1943–1945Commanded Army B and the French First Army in the Liberation campaign
1950–1951High Commissioner in Indochina and Commander-in-Chief of the Far East Expeditionary Corps
