Austrian Social Democratic leader who signed the Treaty of Saint-Germain and founded the Second Republic in 1945
Born to an ethnic German farming family in Moravia, he studied law in Vienna, joined the Social Democrats and entered the Imperial Council in 1907. An Austromarxist theorist of “personal autonomy” on the national question, he was criticised by Lenin and Stalin. In 1918 he became the first chancellor of German-Austria, leading a grand coalition that introduced the eight-hour day among other reforms, and had to accept the ban on union with Germany and the territorial losses of Saint-Germain. He supported the Anschluss in 1938. In April 1945, at Soviet direction, he formed a provisional government, and that year became president. He died in Vienna in 1950.
Career timeline
- 1896Joined the Social Democratic Workers’ Party of Austria
- 1907–1918Member of the Reichsrat
- 1918–1920Chancellor and foreign minister of German-Austria (Austria)
- 1919Head of the delegation at Saint-Germain
- 1931–1933President of the National Council
- 1945Head of the provisional government; declared independence
- 1945–1950President of Austria
Dictator who built a racist war state
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
- 1945Committed suicide in Berlin
First woman to lead a major European communist party, and its sharpest anti-Stalinist apostate
“We are condemned to death, since terror reigns in Leningrad.” — her letter to Maslow, intercepted by Soviet censorship and read aloud at a Comintern special session, sealed her break with Stalin (February 1926).
Co-chair of the KPD (1924–1925), the first woman to lead a major European communist party. Born to a Vienna philosophy professor, she co-founded the Austrian Communist Party in 1918 and then, with Arkadi Maslow, led the KPD's ultra-left in Berlin, providing the theoretical groundwork for the 1923 uprising. A fierce factional warrior who publicly denounced Trotsky at the Fifth Comintern Congress, she was expelled in 1926 after refusing to submit to Stalin and spent the rest of her life as an anti-Stalinist left intellectual. Her dramatic trajectory took her from Comintern leadership to US intelligence cooperation in exile, and finally back toward communism in her final years.
Career timeline
- 1918Co-founds the Austrian Communist Party (KPÖ); member no. 1
- 1919–1921Moves to Berlin, joins the KPD
- 1921–1923Berlin district leader; with Maslow develops the left-wing 'theory of the offensive'
- 1924–1925KPD co-chair; Reichstag and Prussian Landtag deputy; candidate member of the Comintern Executive
- 1924Leads the German delegation to the Fifth Comintern Congress; publicly denounces Trotsky
- 1925–1926Detained in Moscow; refuses Stalin's demand to submit to the party line
- 1926Expelled from the KPD for supporting the United Opposition
- 1928Briefly joins the Leninbund, soon departs
- 1933–1941Exile in Paris; cooperates with Trotsky, founds the Gruppe Internationale
- 1941–1955Exile in the US; publishes Stalin and German Communism (1948)
- 1947Testifies before HUAC against her brothers Gerhart and Hanns Eisler
- 1955–1961Returns to Paris; publishes From Lenin to Mao (1956), renouncing anti-communism
A Nazi commando leader magnified by propaganda
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
