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.
Career timeline
1894Entered the Imperial German Navy
1912–1918Senior naval staff officer; served in the First World War
1928–1935Chief of the Naval Command, Reichsmarine
1935–1939Commander-in-chief of the Kriegsmarine; Generaladmiral
1939–1943Grand Admiral and commander-in-chief of the Kriegsmarine
1943Resigned as commander-in-chief and retired
1946–1955Convicted at Nuremberg and served a life sentence
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
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
German naval commander of the U-boat fleet who briefly became head of state after Hitler's death.
Dönitz commanded Germany's U-boat force during the Second World War and became commander-in-chief of the Navy in January 1943. He continued to send submarines into battle through 1945 despite mounting losses. After Hitler's suicide, Hitler's will named him head of state; on 7 May 1945, Dönitz ordered Alfred Jodl to sign Germany's surrender instrument. Convicted at Nuremberg of crimes against peace and war crimes, he was sentenced to ten years in prison.
Career timeline
1943Became commander-in-chief of the German Navy
1945Became head of state after Hitler's death and ordered Germany's surrender
A Luftwaffe chief who organized Nazi war and plunder
In August 1940, redirecting the air offensive toward London and civilian cities gave the RAF time to recover.
Hermann Göring rose from a First World War fighter ace to a central power-holder in Nazi Germany and commander-in-chief of the Luftwaffe. He helped build dictatorship and the machinery of aggressive war by directing the Prussian police, the creation of the Gestapo, rearmament, and wartime economic mobilization. During the Battle of Britain in 1940, he overestimated the Luftwaffe and was involved in shifting attacks from the RAF's struggling airfields and fighter defences toward British cities, giving Fighter Command time to recover. After the war, the Nuremberg Tribunal condemned him as a major war criminal, and he committed suicide on the eve of his execution.
The German general who surrendered Paris rather than destroy it
On 25 August 1944, he signed the capitulation of the German garrison in Paris.
Dietrich von Choltitz was a German professional officer who served in both world wars and carried out Nazi Germany’s war on the Eastern and Western Fronts. As military governor of Paris in August 1944, he did not execute Hitler’s order to destroy the city and surrendered the garrison to French forces, helping make the liberation of Paris possible. British recordings made after his capture also preserve his admission of responsibility for the liquidation of Jews in Crimea, so his refusal in Paris does not erase his wider responsibility for the war.
Career timeline
1914–1918Officer, Royal Saxon Army 107th Infantry Regiment, Western Front
1919–1939Reichswehr officer, commander of III Battalion, 16th Infantry Regiment
1939–1940Commander, 16th Air Landing Infantry Regiment, Poland and the Netherlands campaigns
1941–1942Commander, 16th Infantry Regiment, Crimea and Siege of Sevastopol
1943Commander, 11th Panzer Division and XLVIII Panzer Corps, Eastern Front
1944Commander, LXXVI Panzer Corps and LXXXIV Army Corps, Italy and Normandy
1944Commander of Greater Paris and military governor, surrendered on 25 August
1944–1947Interned at Trent Park and a US prisoner-of-war camp
SS special-unit commander implicated in the Wola massacre
Waffen-SS commander of a unit recruited from convicted criminals; from 1940 he led it in anti-partisan operations in occupied Poland and Belarus, massacring civilians on a mass scale.
Nazi German SS officer and war criminal. From 1940 he commanded the special unit bearing his name, which committed war crimes in Poland and Belarus. During the suppression of the 1944 Warsaw Uprising, his formation participated in the massacre of civilians in Wola. His command responsibility belongs within the history of Nazi occupation policy and the SS and police command structure.
Career timeline
1913Enlisted in the Württemberg Army as a machine gunner; rose to lieutenant in World War I and received the Iron Cross in both classes.
1919–1921Joined the Freikorps and helped crush the German Revolution, workers' uprisings, strikes and communist revolts by force.
1922–1934Took a doctorate in political science at Frankfurt and joined the Nazi Party, but in 1934 was imprisoned for a sexual offence involving a minor and theft, expelled from the party and stripped of his doctorate and military honours.
1937–1939Served with the Condor Legion in the Spanish Civil War, was wounded three times, and on the strength of that service had his 1934 conviction annulled and his party membership restored in 1940.
1940Took command of the Oranienburg poacher unit recruited from convicted poachers; renamed Sonderkommando Dirlewanger, it was assigned guard and anti-partisan duties in occupied Poland.
1943Expansion of the unit to regimental size was authorized, and in Belarus it conducted anti-partisan operations that massacred civilians on a mass scale.
1944Took part in suppressing the Warsaw Uprising and the Wola massacre, and was then deployed against the Slovak National Uprising.
1945Was seriously wounded fighting Soviet forces near Guben in February and sent to the rear; in April he deserted and went into hiding.
A staff general who turned from Soviet command to an anti-Soviet armed organisation
In the autumn of 1941, while a prisoner of war, he proposed to the German authorities the creation of units to strike 'railways, warehouses and the like' in the Red Army rear, disrupting supply and command.
Trukhin was a former Imperial Russian officer who built his career in the Red Army as a general responsible for military education and staff work. During Germany's 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union, he served in the operational command structure of the Baltic Military District and the Northwestern Front, but became a prisoner of war during the retreat. In captivity he collaborated with German authorities and became chief of staff of the armed forces associated with Andrey Vlasov's Russian Liberation Army and the Committee for the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia. Transferred to Soviet custody after the war, he was convicted of treason and executed; his career shows how professional military expertise was redirected into German occupation policy and an anti-Soviet armed project.
Career timeline
1916–1917Officer in the Imperial Russian Army; served in the First World War
1918–1921Red Army company, battalion, and regimental commander in the Civil War
1922–1925Studied at the Red Army Military Academy
1932–1936Instructor and head of combat-training methodology at the Frunze Military Academy
1937–1940Senior course director and instructor at the General Staff Academy; promoted to major general
1940–1941Deputy chief in Red Army combat training, then chief of operations and deputy chief of staff of the Baltic Military District
1941.06Deputy chief of staff of the Northwestern Front; captured in Lithuania
1943–1945Head of the Dabendorf Russian Liberation Army school, then chief of staff of the committee's armed forces
At Posen in October 1943, he told SS officers that standing firm before 100, 500, or 1,000 corpses and staying 'decent' was 'a glorious chapter that has not and will not be spoken of.'
Heinrich Himmler was a central Nazi leader who expanded the SS and police into a bureaucratic apparatus for racial rule and mass murder. He directed the concentration-camp system, extermination policies, and killing formations in occupied Europe, making him one of the principal perpetrators of the Holocaust and the murder of millions of other victims. During the Warsaw Uprising in 1944, he approved and directed the German reprisal that treated the city and its population as targets for destruction, massacre, and deportation. After attempting unauthorized negotiations with the Western Allies as Germany’s defeat became unavoidable, he was dismissed by Hitler, captured by British forces, and died by suicide in custody.
Career timeline
1923Joined the Nazi Party and took part in the Beer Hall Putsch.
1925Joined the Schutzstaffel, or SS.
1929–1945Led the SS as Reichsführer-SS.
1936–1945Served as Chief of German Police, controlling the police and apparatus of political repression.
1943–1945Served concurrently as Reich Minister of the Interior.
1944Directed the destruction of Warsaw and the massacre and deportation of civilians during the uprising.
1945Was dismissed over unauthorized peace contacts, then captured and died by suicide in custody.
A senior Nazi SS coordinator who became a late-war negotiating envoy
On 8 March 1945, Wolff met Allen Dulles in Switzerland to discuss terms for the surrender of German forces in northern Italy.
Karl Wolff was a senior Nazi SS officer who served as Heinrich Himmler’s chief of staff and stood close to the regime’s central decisions and crimes. As the highest SS and police leader in occupied Italy, he oversaw a system marked by the deportation of Jews, forced labor, and repression of the resistance, responsibilities not erased by his later negotiations. In 1945 he conducted the secret Operation Sunrise talks with OSS chief Allen Dulles in Switzerland, helping secure the early surrender of German forces in northern Italy, though his influence and motives were limited. After the war he was convicted for facilitating mass murder.
Career timeline
1917–1920Officer candidate in the Imperial German Army’s 115th Infantry Regiment, serving on the Western Front
1931Joined the Nazi Party and the SS
1935–1943Chief of the Reichsführer-SS Personal Staff
1943–1944Highest SS and Police Leader in Italy
1944–1945Plenipotentiary General of the German Wehrmacht in Italy
1945German negotiating representative in Operation Sunrise, involved in the surrender in northern Italy
1964–1969Convicted by a Munich court for facilitating the murder of 300,000 Jews and sentenced to 15 years, released in 1969
The SS general who commanded the repression of the Warsaw Uprising
In a report during the Warsaw Uprising, Reinefarth wrote: “We have more prisoners than ammunition to kill them.”
Heinz Reinefarth was a lawyer who joined the Nazi Party and the SS before becoming a commander in Germany's occupation war. During the Warsaw Uprising in 1944, he led a battle group combining combat, police, and security units, playing a central role in the command structure of the 5 August assault on Wola and the mass killing of civilians. Despite Polish demands for his extradition, he escaped prosecution and conviction after the war and served as a mayor and state legislator in West Germany. His career links command responsibility for war crimes with postwar impunity in a single life.
Career timeline
1927Completed his law training in Jena and began working in the legal profession.
1932Joined the Nazi Party and the SS.
1942Served as SS general inspector of civil administration in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.
1944Became Higher SS and Police Leader in Wartheland.
1944.08Commanded Kampfgruppe Reinefarth in the suppression of the Warsaw Uprising.
1945Commanded the fortress of Küstrin and was captured by U.S. forces.
1951–1964Served as mayor of Westerland.
1962–1967Served in the Schleswig-Holstein Landtag.
Standing before Mussolini at Gran Sasso, Skorzeny became the face of a victory whose command credit belonged elsewhere.
Born in Vienna, Skorzeny became a Waffen-SS officer who directed sabotage and commando operations for Nazi Germany. In the 1943 Gran Sasso raid, he helped locate Benito Mussolini and led an SS detachment at the landing site, but the operation as a whole was planned and commanded by the airborne officers Harald Mors and Kurt Student. Nazi propaganda presented him as Mussolini's liberator, while he also took part in the overthrow of Hungary's government and the Ardennes deception operation. Acquitted at a postwar war-crimes trial, he later lived in Spain amid far-right networks.
Career timeline
1932Joined the Austrian Nazi organisation
1938Served with the SS during the Anschluss
1943Led the RSHA sabotage and commando section
1943Led an SS detachment in the Gran Sasso raid
1944Took part in Operation Panzerfaust in Hungary
1944Commanded Operation Greif in the Ardennes
1947Acquitted at the Dachau military trial
1953Military adviser to Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser
The Nazi Gestapo chief who made Lyon a center of terror
At his 1987 Lyon trial, he denied the Izieu roundup and said: “I fought the Resistance. It was war.”
Klaus Barbie was an SS and Sicherheitsdienst officer who commanded the Gestapo in occupied Lyon, organizing systematic persecution of the French Resistance and Jews. He arrested and tortured Jean Moulin at Caluire and was responsible for deporting 44 Jewish children and their teachers from Izieu to Auschwitz. After the war, U.S. intelligence used him in anti-communist operations and helped him escape to Bolivia, where he avoided justice for decades before his 1987 Lyon trial and life sentence for crimes against humanity. His case exposes both the continuity of Nazi criminal networks and the impunity produced by Cold War anti-communism.
Career timeline
1935Joined the SS and began service in the Sicherheitsdienst
1940–1941SD service in Amsterdam, targeting Jews and communists
1942Assigned to Dijon for security work in occupied France
1942–1944Head of the Lyon Gestapo, repressing the Resistance and deporting Jews
1947–1951Agent of the U.S. Army Counterintelligence Corps
1951–1983Lived in Bolivia as Klaus Altmann
1987Lyon trial, convicted of crimes against humanity and sentenced to life
