Liberal prime minister who led Britain in the later war and argued for moderation towards Germany at the peace conference
Born in Manchester to Welsh parents, he made his name as a radical Liberal orator. As chancellor of the exchequer he introduced the 1909 People’s Budget and the National Insurance Act, laying foundations of the welfare state. After serving as minister of munitions and secretary for war he became prime minister in December 1916. At the Paris Peace Conference he opposed reparations that would wreck the German economy and sought to check French dominance. In 1921 he concluded the Anglo-Soviet Trade Agreement and negotiated the creation of the Irish Free State, but resigned in 1922 when the Conservatives left the coalition. In 1936 he met Hitler and praised him. He died in 1945.
Career timeline
- 1890MP for Caernarvon Boroughs
- 1908–1915Chancellor of the Exchequer
- 1915–1916Minister of Munitions
- 1916Secretary of State for War
- 1916–1922Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
- 1919British representative at the Paris Peace Conference
Finnish labour leader who became the world’s first Social Democratic head of government and then joined the Red government
Born in Kannus in Central Ostrobothnia in 1873, he emigrated to America at 17, worked in the mines and joined the radical Western Federation of Miners. Back in Finland from 1900, he entered Parliament for the Social Democrats in 1907, chaired the Finnish Trade Union Federation in 1912–1917 and was Speaker in 1913. In 1917 he became vice-chairman of the Senate’s economic department, the world’s first social democratic prime minister. In the civil war he was commissar for supply in the People’s Delegation, signed the 1 March treaty with Soviet Russia and fled to Russia after the defeat. In 1919–1920 he advised the British-organised Murmansk Legion, for which the Communist Party of Finland sentenced him to death. From 1922 to 1949 he edited the social democratic paper Raivaaja in the United States, and the 1944 Lex Tokoi cleared him of the civil war charges.
Career timeline
- 1907–1918Social Democratic member of the Parliament of Finland
- 1912–1917Chairman of the Finnish Trade Union Federation
- 1913Speaker of the Parliament of Finland
- 1917Vice-chairman of the Senate’s economic department (head of government)
- 1918Commissar for supply, Finnish People’s Delegation
- 1919–1920Political adviser to the Murmansk Legion
- 1922–1949Editor of Raivaaja in the United States
Chairman of the Rada of the Belarusian People’s Republic from 1919 until his death, leading it in exile from Prague
Born in 1879 into the family of a village church deacon in the Grodno Governorate, he graduated from the seminary in Vilnius, worked as a teacher and from 1909 was employed at the Vilnius State Bank. In 1917, as chairman of the Borisov Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies, he was a delegate to the First All-Belarusian Congress and joined its executive committee. In 1918 he was state controller and then secretary for finance and for trade in the People’s Secretariat, and became one of the leaders of the Socialist Federalist party. He became chairman of the Rada on 13 December 1919, went into exile in 1920 and represented the Rada from Kaunas and Berlin and, from 1923, Prague. In 1921 he organised a conference in Prague that condemned the Peace of Riga, and in 1925 he refused to accept the decision to dissolve the government in exile. He died in Prague in 1928.
Career timeline
- 1902Graduated from the Vilnius seminary; teacher
- 1909Employee of the Vilnius State Bank
- 1917Chairman of the Borisov Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies
- 1918State controller, then secretary for finance and for trade in the People’s Secretariat
- 1918Secretary of the Rada of the Belarusian People’s Republic
- 1919–1928Chairman of the Rada of the Belarusian People’s Republic
- 1926Editor of the almanac Zamiežnaja Biełaruś
Finnish socialist who was Red Finland’s commissar of finance and later headed the government of Soviet Karelia
Born in Kuopio in 1881, the statistician and economist took his doctorate in 1909 with a thesis on crofting and became the Social Democrats’ agrarian expert. He sat in the Diet for the party from 1908 to 1917, was its vice chairman, and in November 1917 co-wrote “We demand” with Kuusinen. In the civil war he was Commissar of Finance of the People’s Delegation, led the talks for the 1 March treaty with Soviet Russia and signed it, and organised the defence of Viipuri at the end. Escaping to Sweden, he headed the Stockholm bureau of the Communist Party of Finland and in 1920 reported to Lenin on Karelian autonomy. As chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars of Soviet Karelia in 1923–1935 he pursued Finnicisation, was condemned for “nationalist chauvinism” and removed, and was shot in Moscow in 1938.
Career timeline
- 1905Editor-in-chief of the Marxist journal Sosialistinen aikakausilehti
- 1908–1917Social Democratic member of the Diet; party vice chairman
- 1918Commissar of Finance, Finnish People’s Delegation
- 1918–1920Head of the Stockholm bureau of the Communist Party of Finland
- 1920–1923Leading the Karelian Workers’ Commune
- 1923–1935Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars of the Karelian ASSR
British economist who left the Treasury in protest at the peace treaty and warned of the damage reparations would do
Born in Cambridge, he studied mathematics at King’s College. Entering the Treasury in 1915, he designed the terms of credit between Britain and its continental allies. At the Paris Peace Conference he tried to keep Germany’s reparations within its capacity to pay but was largely excluded from the high-level talks, and the treaty’s outcome led to his resignation from the Treasury. The Economic Consequences of the Peace (1919), predicting the treaty’s damaging effects, made him internationally famous. In the Depression he argued that aggregate demand determined the level of economic activity and called for fiscal and monetary policy against slumps, publishing The General Theory in 1936. He led the British delegation at Bretton Woods in 1944, where the American plan largely prevailed. He died of heart attacks in 1946.
Career timeline
- 1915–1919Treasury official
- 1919Treasury representative at the Paris Peace Conference; resigned
- 1919The Economic Consequences of the Peace
- 1936The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money
- 1944Head of the British delegation at Bretton Woods
Prime minister who swung Hungary towards Germany and drafted the Second Jewish Law, then fell over his own Jewish ancestry
Born to a Catholic family in Budapest, he was an economist in the finance ministry who became Gömbös’s finance minister in 1932 and president of the National Bank in 1935. Prime minister from May 1938, he turned foreign policy towards Germany and Italy from that autumn, and under him the First Vienna Award returned southern Slovakia to Hungary. He pressed for a dictatorial reorganisation and the Second Jewish Law, but resigned in February 1939 when opponents exposed his Jewish ancestry. In 1940 he founded the pro-fascist Party of Hungarian Renewal, and after the German occupation of 1944 he served in Sztójay’s cabinet. Sentenced to death by a People’s Tribunal, he was shot in 1946.
Career timeline
- 1928–1932Director, Hungarian National Bank
- 1932–1935Finance minister under Gömbös
- 1935–1938President, Hungarian National Bank
- 1938–1939Prime minister; introduced the Second Jewish Law
- 1940–1944Founder and leader, Party of Hungarian Renewal
- 1944Minister of economic coordination under Sztójay
Prime minister who declared Finland at war in 1941 and was later convicted in the war-responsibility trials
On the evening of 25 June 1941, Rangell told parliament: 'Finland has become the object of an attack by the Soviet Union, which has started acts of war against Finland.'
A Bank of Finland executive and close associate of Risto Ryti, Rangell was elevated to prime minister when Ryti became president in 1940. During his tenure Finland fought the Continuation War alongside Germany and occupied East Karelia, though foreign policy and military power rested with Mannerheim, Ryti, and Foreign Minister Witting rather than with Rangell. When Himmler visited in August 1942, Rangell famously silenced talk of Finland's Jewish minority with the words 'Wir haben keine Judenfrage.' Convicted to six years in the 1946 war-responsibility trials and pardoned in 1949, he left politics and served as an IOC member until 1967.
Career timeline
- 1912–1913Two-time Finnish triple jump champion and national record holder
- 1925–1933Legal department head and managing director, OKO cooperative bank
- 1937–1945Board member, Bank of Finland
- 1939–1940Acting governor, Bank of Finland
- 1943–1944Governor, Bank of Finland
- 1941–1943Prime Minister of Finland (Continuation War)
- 1938–1967IOC member; president, Finnish Olympic Committee (1961–1963)
Swedish diplomat who sheltered Budapest Jews with protective passports and safe houses, then vanished in Soviet custody
Born near Stockholm, he studied architecture in the United States and from 1941 travelled often to Budapest for a trading company. Chosen in June 1944 to lead the rescue mission of the US War Refugee Board, he reached the Swedish legation in Budapest on 9 July issued “protective passports” identifying the bearers as Swedish subjects, and sheltered almost 10,000 people in 32 buildings he declared extraterritorial. Historians regard the claim that he saved 100,000 Jews as an exaggeration; Yad Vashem puts the number granted protective paperwork at about 4,500. Detained by SMERSH on suspicion of espionage during the siege on 17 January 1945, he disappeared; in 1957 the Soviet authorities said he had died of a heart attack in the Lubyanka in 1947, but the cause and date of his death have been disputed ever since. In 2016 the Swedish Tax Agency declared him dead.
Career timeline
- 1935Architecture degree, University of Michigan
- 1936–1944Central European Trading Company; joint owner
- 1944Joined the Swedish legation in Budapest; issued protective passports
- 1945Detained by SMERSH and disappeared
- 2016Declared dead by the Swedish Tax Agency
