The revolutionary wave and the world war 333

Military command Germany state institutions Counter-revolutionary forces 1890–1946 ✕ Executed

An operational architect of Nazi Germany's war

On 30 June 1940 he wrote, “The final German victory over England is now only a question of time.”

Alfred Jodl was a career officer who served throughout the Second World War as chief of the Operations Staff of Germany's Armed Forces High Command, translating Nazi political decisions into military directives. In 1940 he judged final victory over Britain to be only a matter of time, while the OKW examined pressure and invasion options and coordinated the associated operational preparations and orders. He signed or circulated the Commissar and Commando Orders and bore responsibility for forced evacuation and the destruction of homes in occupied territory. Convicted on all four counts at the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg, he was hanged in 1946.

Military command Germany state institutions Counter-revolutionary forces 1890–1957 ○ Natural causes

A field commander undone by the collision of orders and reality

After being told that no German field marshal had ever been captured alive, Paulus refused suicide and surrendered.

Friedrich Paulus was a German staff officer and general whose work included planning the invasion of the Soviet Union. As commander of the Sixth Army, he led the advance on Stalingrad, then became trapped between Hitler's order to hold the city and the army's collapse after the Soviet encirclement. He surrendered on 31 January 1943 and, in captivity, became a critic of the Nazi regime who joined anti-Nazi German officers' organizations sponsored by the Soviet Union. In postwar East Germany he researched military history, leaving a legacy shaped both by responsibility for an aggressive war and by his late break with Nazism.

Military command Finland state institutions Counter-revolutionary forces 1890–1965 ○ Natural causes

A Finnish general at the boundary of war and diplomacy

In midsummer 1941 Mannerheim entrusted Finland's largest-ever field force, the 100,000-strong Army of Karelia, to Heinrichs for the advance toward the Svir River and Lake Onega.

Erik Heinrichs was a Finnish military commander who worked closely with Mannerheim across battlefield command and general-staff planning. After directing the defence of the Karelian Isthmus in the Winter War, he helped coordinate military cooperation with Germany in 1941 and then led the Army of Karelia in Finland’s offensive. The Weapons Cache Case ended his postwar command career, but he remained active as a military expert, taking part in the 1948 Moscow negotiations and writing a major two-volume biography of Mannerheim.

Military command Ukrainian People's Republic Counter-revolutionary forces 1891–1938 ✕ Assassinated

Ukrainian nationalist leader who commanded the Sich Riflemen and built the UVO and OUN

Rotterdam, 23 May 1938: a Ukrainian-style box of chocolates handed over by his trusted contact Pavel Sudoplatov concealed a time bomb made in Moscow.

A Ukrainian military and political leader from Zashkiv in Austrian Galicia. After captivity in Russia during the First World War, he organized the Sich Riflemen in Kyiv in 1917 and became a leading commander of the Army of the Ukrainian People’s Republic. Following defeat in the independence war, he led the Ukrainian Military Organization (UVO) in exile and united several nationalist groups into the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) in Vienna in 1929, becoming its first leader. He connected émigré organizations across Europe and North America and sought international support for Ukrainian independence, but was assassinated in Rotterdam in 1938 by a bomb delivered by NKVD operative Pavel Sudoplatov, who had infiltrated the OUN. In 1929 he obtained Lithuanian citizenship and a passport, giving his émigré activity a legal basis, while his national and political identity and the aim of his movement remained consistently Ukrainian independence.

Military command Japan state institutions Counter-revolutionary forces 1891–1945 ✕ Killed in action

The Iwo Jima commander who understood American power

He told his family that America was a great power and Japan should avoid fighting it if possible.

Tadamichi Kuribayashi was an Imperial Japanese Army officer and diplomat, unusually familiar among senior Japanese commanders with American society, industry, and military power. On Iwo Jima, he rejected a decisive stand at the beaches and organized a defense in depth from tunnels, caves, and concealed positions, turning an impossible strategic situation into a costly battle of attrition. The defense could not prevent Japan's defeat, but it imposed severe costs on the American landing and occupation while reflecting his effort to avoid wasteful banzai charges and indiscriminate self-destruction by his troops.

Military command Germany state institutions Counter-revolutionary forces 1891–1945 ✕ Suicide

Hitler's "fireman" who rushed from crisis to crisis on the Eastern Front, the Wehrmacht's most tenacious defensive commander

Driving through a blizzard to confront Hitler in East Prussia, Model glared through his monocle and demanded: "Mein Führer, who commands Ninth Army, you or I?"

Walter Model distinguished himself as a staff officer in the First World War and rose to become the Wehrmacht's finest defensive commander in the Second. As commander of the 9th Army in the Rzhev salient, he repelled repeated major Soviet offensives, earning the nickname "the Lion of Defence" and Hitler's trust as the "fireman" who could be rushed to any crisis. On 27 April 1943, Model was the first senior commander to warn Hitler against Operation Citadel, presenting aerial reconnaissance photographs of the Red Army's deeply prepared defences in the Kursk salient, yet the offensive went ahead and his 9th Army failed to advance even 12 kilometres on the northern face. In the war's final weeks, trapped in the Ruhr Pocket, he dissolved his army group rather than order a mass surrender and shot himself in a forest.

Military command Germany state institutions Counter-revolutionary forces 1891–1955 ○ Died in prison

The final Berlin commander of a collapsing Reich

“I order the immediate cessation of resistance. Every hour you keep on fighting prolongs the suffering of the civilians in Berlin and of our wounded.”

Helmuth Weidling was a German general who rose from imperial service to become an artillery officer and corps commander in the Wehrmacht. His command on the Eastern Front implicated him in Nazi Germany’s war of aggression and occupation, and his corps was later examined in connection with the Ozarichi camp crimes. Appointed commander of the Berlin Defence Area on 23 April 1945, he directed the city’s defence under Hitler’s ban on surrender, then negotiated with Vasily Chuikov and ordered the garrison to cease resistance on 2 May. Taken prisoner by the Soviet Union, he received a 25-year sentence for war crimes and died in custody in 1955; Russian prosecutors declared him ineligible for rehabilitation in 1996.

Military command Affiliation unconfirmed Counter-revolutionary forces 1891–1957

A military leader between wartime resistance and anti-communist politics

In November 1942, he committed his forces to the Gorgopotamos operation, where British saboteurs joined Aris Velouchiotis's ELAS fighters.

A former Hellenic Army officer, Napoleon Zervas founded the National Republican Greek League (EDES) in 1941 and led non-communist resistance to the Axis occupation. In 1942 he cooperated with the British Special Operations Executive and ELAS in the destruction of the Gorgopotamos bridge, but soon shifted from republicanism toward loyalty to the monarchy as British support and confrontation with the communist movement became decisive. After liberation, he carried his wartime military authority into right-wing politics and public-order administration during the Greek Civil War.