SS diplomat who, as Reich plenipotentiary in Hungary in 1944, pressed the Hungarian government to deport its Jews to Auschwitz
Born in Bad Kissingen, the son of a schoolteacher, he studied political science in Munich and took his doctorate in 1928. He joined the Nazi Party in 1932 and took part in forcing the resignation of Austria’s Chancellor Schuschnigg, the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia in 1939 and the proclamation of the Independent State of Croatia in 1941. Promoted to SS-Brigadeführer, he became Reich plenipotentiary in Hungary when Germany occupied it in March 1944, with authority over all occupying forces except the Wehrmacht, chiefly the Gestapo, and pressed the Hungarian government to deport its Jews to Auschwitz. In June he cabled Ribbentrop that some 340,000 Jews had been delivered to the Reich, and in October he helped the Arrow Cross take power. Sentenced to 20 years at the Ministries Trial in 1949, he was released in 1951 and died in Darmstadt in 1977.
Career timeline
- 1928Doctorate in political science, Munich
- 1932Joined the Nazi Party
- 1939Worked on dismembering Czechoslovakia
- 1941Arranged the proclamation of the Independent State of Croatia in Zagreb
- 1944Reich plenipotentiary in Hungary
- 1949–1951Sentenced to 20 years at the Ministries Trial; released 1951
Exiled writer who recorded children’s experiences of the Spanish war
She drew on children she met at an International Brigades home, seeking to represent their memories and emotions rather than treating them only as an audience for propaganda.
German Jewish writer for children and young readers. After fleeing Nazi Germany for France, she worked at the Ernst Thälmann children’s home established by the International Brigades in Spain. Children’s experiences informed her novel Vier spanische Jungen. Deported to Auschwitz in 1942, she is believed to have been murdered there; the exact date of her death is unknown.
Career timeline
- 1925–1929Studied law in Berlin and Heidelberg but left without a degree.
- 1931Published her first stories in the children's book series Sonne und Regen im Kinderland.
- 1932Published Müllerstraße, Jungens von heute, about the lives of working-class children in Berlin.
- 1934Her youth novel Janko, der Junge aus Mexiko, written in Parisian exile, was published in Strasbourg.
- 1937Tsao und Jing-Ling, Kinderleben in China appeared in a Swiss trade-union newspaper through Lisa Tetzner's advocacy.
- 1937–1938Travelled in Spain to research a children's book on the civil war on the side of the International Brigades.
- 1938Completed Vier spanische Jungen at the end of the year; the novel was published only in 1987.
SS officer who ran the deportation of Europe’s Jews to the death camps and in 1944 oversaw that of Hungary’s Jews to Auschwitz
Born to a Calvinist family in Solingen, Germany, he grew up in Austria, where the family moved in 1914, and joined the Nazi Party and the SS in 1932. In 1938 he was posted to Vienna to organise Jewish emigration from Austria. Head of RSHA Sub-Department IV B4 from December 1939, he attended the Wannsee Conference in January 1942 and prepared its minutes, after which he and his staff were responsible for deporting Jews to the extermination camps. After Germany occupied Hungary in March 1944 he oversaw the deportation of Hungary’s Jews; by the time the transports stopped in July, 437,000 of its 725,000 Jews had been deported. Captured by US forces after the war, he escaped from a detention camp and reached Argentina in 1950, but in 1960 Israel’s Mossad abducted him; tried in Jerusalem, he was hanged in 1962.
Career timeline
- 1932Joined the Austrian Nazi Party and the SS
- 1933–1938Jewish affairs, SS Security Service
- 1938–1939Central Agency for Jewish Emigration, Vienna
- 1939–1945Head of RSHA Sub-Department IV B4
- 1944Oversaw the deportation of Hungary’s Jews
- 1950–1960In hiding in Argentina
- 1960–1962Abducted by Mossad, tried in Jerusalem, executed
The West German journalist whose question drew Ulbricht's 'No one intends to build a wall'
'I would like to ask a supplementary question: does the formation of a free city mean, in your opinion, that the state border will be erected at the Brandenburg Gate?'
A German journalist who studied law in Hamburg without finishing her degree and went into the press. After the war she worked for the Soviet-controlled Berliner Rundfunk, then moved to West Berlin in 1949 as the Frankfurter Rundschau correspondent, where on 15 June 1961 her question to Ulbricht about whether the state border would run at the Brandenburg Gate elicited his famous 'No one has the intention to erect a wall.'
Career timeline
- 1929Began studying law at the University of Hamburg
- 1934Volunteer at the Institute for Foreign Policy in Hamburg
- 1936Worked at the Hamburg World Economic Archive
- 1942Moved to Berlin as editor of Wirtschafts-Ring
- 1943Editor at the controlled Transocean-Europapress central desk
- 1945Joined the Soviet-controlled Berliner Rundfunk
- 1946Editor of the Berliner Rundfunk's 'Zeitecho'
- 1949West Berlin correspondent of the Frankfurter Rundschau
The long-serving East German leader of the walled republic
His removal in October 1989 showed that the GDR's collapse could no longer be contained even within its leadership.
A German communist trained at Moscow's International Lenin School, he rose through East Germany's youth organization and party leadership. He led the Socialist Unity Party from 1971 to 1989 as the GDR's long-serving ruler.
Career timeline
- 1930–1931Studies at Moscow's International Lenin School
- 1971–1989First, then general secretary of the SED
- 1976–1989Chairman of the GDR State Council
- 1989Removed amid mass protests
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
- 1991Died in Lyon prison
A social democrat who made reconciliation a politics of divided cities
After the Wall was built, he said: “The Wall must go, but until it goes, the city must live.”
Willy Brandt was a German social-democratic politician shaped by exile and resistance to the Nazi dictatorship. As Governing Mayor of West Berlin, he defended the city’s morale after the Wall was built and pressed the West to honor its responsibilities, helping popularize the name “Wall of Shame.” As chancellor, he pursued Ostpolitik and “change through rapprochement,” easing Cold War confrontation and earning the 1971 Nobel Peace Prize.
Career timeline
- 1933–1945Exile and resistance activist against the Nazi dictatorship
- 1948–1953SPD representative in Berlin
- 1957–1966Governing Mayor of West Berlin
- 1964–1987Chairman of the SPD
- 1966–1969Foreign Minister and Vice Chancellor
- 1969–1974Federal Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany
- 1976–1992President of the Socialist International
From Peenemünde to Gorodomlya, the German rocket engineer who designed the conceptual ancestor of the R-7
'If we abandon the old conservative form of the V-2, it may be quite possible to reach nearly two thousand miles. The conical shape is, fundamentally, the only possible solution.' to his wife Irmgard, 1949
A German applied physicist and rocket guidance specialist. At Peenemünde under Wernher von Braun, he developed the V-2's guidance and control systems; in 1944 the Gestapo arrested him for expressing defeatist views about the war. Forcibly relocated to the USSR in 1946, he led over 170 German specialists on Gorodomlya Island, where his team designed the G-4 (conical single-stage) and G-5 (packet of clustered G-4s). These concepts directly shaped Korolev's R-7 ICBM; in 1949 a Soviet commission rated G-4 superior to the rival R-3. After returning to West Germany in 1953, he left rocketry, invented the smart card, and coined the German term 'Informatik.'
Career timeline
- 1939–1945V-2 guidance and control department, Peenemünde Army Research Center
- 1945–1946Head of Büro Gröttrup, Bleicherode (Soviet occupation zone)
- 1946German head of Institut Nordhausen, then General Manager of Zentralwerke
- 1946–1950Head of Branch 1, NII-88, Gorodomlya Island
- 1954–1958Engineer, Standard Elektrik Lorenz, Pforzheim
- 1970–1980Managing director, GAO, Giesecke+Devrient
Youngest member of the Ulbricht Group who fled to Yugoslavia in 1949 and became a leading Western scholar of Soviet communism
Born Vladimir Leonhard in Vienna, he went into Soviet exile with his Communist mother in 1935; she was arrested in 1936 and spent twelve years in the Vorkuta camps. After the Comintern school he became an announcer for Radio Free Germany, and on 30 April 1945 he returned to Berlin as a member of the Ulbricht Group. He worked in the agitation and propaganda department of the KPD and then SED Central Committee and from 1947 lectured at the party college. Convinced that Germany would replicate the Soviet system, he fled via Czechoslovakia to Yugoslavia in March 1949 and moved to West Germany in 1950. His 1955 memoir Die Revolution entlässt ihre Kinder became an international bestseller, and from 1966 to 1987 he taught Soviet history at Yale.
Career timeline
- 1935Went into Soviet exile with his mother
- 1943Announcer at Radio Free Germany
- 1945Returned to Berlin with the Ulbricht Group
- 1947Lecturer at the SED party college
- 1949Fled to Yugoslavia
- 1955Published his memoir
- 1966–1987Professor at Yale
The chancellor who seized the initiative on the German question with a ten-point unification plan days before Malta
On 28 November 1989, Kohl rose in the Bundestag without having told his allies, or even his own foreign minister. President Bush received Kohl's letter summarizing the Ten-Point Plan just as the chancellor was already speaking in Bonn.
A Christian Democratic Union (CDU) politician who served sixteen years as chancellor of West Germany and reunified Germany, leading both European integration and German reunification. On 28 November 1989, without consulting his allies, he presented a 'Ten-Point Plan' for German unity to the Bundestag; days later, at the Malta summit, the German question dominated the proceedings on his terms. The following year, on 3 October 1990, Germany was reunified; together with French president François Mitterrand, Kohl drove the Maastricht Treaty and the introduction of the euro. He achieved reunification by extending the West German system into the former East, and after his long tenure ended with electoral defeat in 1998, he resigned as CDU honorary chairman amid a party donations scandal.
Career timeline
- 1959Elected to the Landtag of Rhineland-Palatinate (youngest member)
- 1969–1976Minister-President of Rhineland-Palatinate
- 1973–1998Chairman of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU)
- 1976–1982Leader of the CDU/CSU opposition in the Bundestag
- 1982–1998Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany
- 1989.11.28Presented the Ten-Point Plan for German unity to the Bundestag
- 1990.10.03Presided over German reunification
- 1998Defeated in federal elections; resigned as CDU chairman
