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
The perfume magnate who bought both the far-right leagues and a mass newspaper
In 1928 he launched a daily at ten centimes a copy and drove its circulation toward a million. The paper lost money, which was not the point: it was cheap enough to be read everywhere, and the language grown on its pages became the language of the columns that filled the square in February 1934
A Corsican who built the largest fortune in the European perfume industry of his day. He bought Le Figaro in 1922 and founded the cheap mass daily L'Ami du peuple in 1928, using both as instruments of anticommunist, antisemitic and antiparliamentary agitation. He financed Georges Valois's Faisceau and the early Croix-de-Feu, and in 1933 created and funded Solidarité Française outright. His career is a large part of the answer to the question that hangs over the French leagues of the 1930s: who paid for them. The organisation he had founded was on the Place de la Concorde as a column on 6 February 1934, and he died that July, ruined by a divorce settlement and his debts.
Career timeline
- 1874–1904Born at Ajaccio in Corsica; starts in perfumery in Paris
- 1905–1920Builds one of the great fortunes of the perfume industry
- 1922Buys Le Figaro
- 1925–1928Finances Valois's Faisceau and the early Croix-de-Feu
- 1928Founds the mass daily L'Ami du peuple
- 1933Creates and funds Solidarité Française
- 1934.07Dies after a divorce settlement and financial ruin
Non-party chancellor who answered the Ruhr occupation with passive resistance and fell amid hyperinflation
Born to a civil servant’s family in Suhl, he studied law and, as a Treasury official, helped organise Germany’s food supply early in the First World War. In 1917 he joined the Hamburg America shipping line, which he went on to head. In November 1922 he was appointed chancellor by presidential decree without a Reichstag vote, the first Weimar chancellor who belonged to no party, and formed a “business ministry”. When French and Belgian troops occupied the Ruhr in January 1923 he called for passive resistance; paying for it, mostly by printing money, began the run-up to hyperinflation. Amid a wave of strikes his cabinet resigned in August in the face of a no-confidence vote initiated by the SPD. In 1932 he joined in advising Hitler on economics, and he died in January 1933.
Career timeline
- 1915–1916Head of the Imperial Grain Agency
- 1917Joined the Hamburg America Line
- 1922–1923Chancellor of Germany
- 1926Director general of the Hamburg America Line
A military organizer who bridged industry and war
Mannerheim remembered him as a colleague whose industrial experience and ability to organize an army were both needed by Finland.
Rudolf Walden was a Finnish industrialist who helped build the paper industry and became a military and state organizer. His work organizing the White rear and supply system in the 1918 civil war led to a long partnership with Mannerheim, and during the Winter War he represented headquarters in the cabinet. After the war he became defence minister and signed the Moscow Peace Treaty for Finland, helping manage a state that had lost territory while preserving its independence. Conservative toward organized labour, he shifted during the Winter War toward recognizing trade unions as legitimate negotiating partners in a national emergency.
Career timeline
- 1900Graduated from Hamina Cadet School; second lieutenant in the Finnish Guard
- 1918Chief in the White rear area and headquarters rear administration
- 1918–1919Finnish Minister of War
- 1920Finnish representative at the Treaty of Tartu
- 1939–1940Headquarters representative in the war cabinet during the Winter War
- 1940–1944Finnish Minister of Defence and signatory of the Moscow Peace Treaty
- 1942Promoted to general of infantry
- 1944Head of Finland's delegation for the Moscow Armistice
- 1946Died
