People

Counter-revolutionary forces 1887–1965 ○ Illness

The deputy who founded the Jeunesses Patriotes, holding a street force and a seat in the Chamber at once

He kept a parliamentary seat and a paramilitary organisation at the same time, on the principle that the street belonged to his side too. The Jeunesses Patriotes were among the columns that reached the Concorde on the night of 6 February 1934, and several of the fifteen dead were their members

A First World War veteran turned deputy who founded the Jeunesses Patriotes in 1924 against the incoming Cartel des Gauches and built it into a paramilitary body tens of thousands strong. Equipped with blue raincoats and berets, it broke up Communist meetings and fought for the streets, while its leader kept his seat inside parliament: a doubleness characteristic of the French leagues. On 6 February 1934 the Jeunesses Patriotes formed one of the main columns on the Place de la Concorde, and some of the dead came from its ranks. He voted full powers to Pétain in 1940, presided over the Paris municipal council under the occupation, and was detained and then released after the liberation.

Nazi party and regime Counter-revolutionary forces 1887–1973 ○ Convicted of war crimes 1949, released 1953

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.

Germany state institutions Counter-revolutionary forces 1888–1954 ○ Natural causes

A leading architect of armoured warfare and a general of Nazi Germany

In May 1940, he argued that the armoured forces across the Meuse should keep moving toward the Channel rather than wait for the infantry.

Heinz Guderian was a professional soldier who helped develop the doctrine of concentrated armoured manoeuvre and shape Germany’s panzer force and early wartime victories. He presented himself after the war as the “father” of the panzer arm, but his ideas rested on work by Oswald Lutz and many other officers. During the 1940 invasion of France, he pressed for a rapid thrust through the Ardennes, across the Meuse and onward to the English Channel, helping isolate Allied forces around Dunkirk. He nevertheless collaborated with the Nazi regime and commanded in an eastern war of aggression marked by occupation crimes, while his postwar memoirs minimized his responsibility and political ties.

Counter-revolutionary forces 1889–1931 ✕ Executed by shooting

Lakai tribal chief who fought for the restoration of the Emir of Bukhara as the leading Basmachi commander in eastern Bukhara

Born around 1889 in the village of Koktash in the Emirate of Bukhara, the youngest son of an elder of the Uzbek Lakai tribe, he became bek of his tribe in 1920 and entered the service of Emir Said Alim Khan. After the emir fled he rallied the tribes of eastern Bukhara and led the Basmachi in the name of the emir’s restoration. Championing Islamic conservatism, he drove the Jadids from the movement’s ranks and was so suspicious of Enver Pasha that he once arrested him. After withdrawing to Afghanistan in 1926 he kept raiding across the border and also fought Afghan government troops. Captured while crossing the Kafirnigan River on Soviet territory in June 1931, he was taken to Tashkent and shot on 31 August. Uzbekistan’s Supreme Court rehabilitated him in 2021.

Japan state institutions Counter-revolutionary forces 1889–1949 ○ Natural causes

The theorist who designed Japan's Manchurian expansion

“Who starts a war just because he wants oil?”

Kanji Ishiwara was an Imperial Japanese Army officer and military thinker who viewed Manchuria as a strategic base for a future war against the United States. As a Kwantung Army planner in 1931, he worked with Seishirō Itagaki to use the railway sabotage as a pretext for the Mukden Incident and the occupation of Manchuria. He later opposed an all-out war in China, confronting the consequences of his own expansionist project before his conflict with Hideki Tōjō ended his active career.

France state institutions Counter-revolutionary forces 1889–1952 ○ Natural causes

The general who defied Vichy and led the Liberation Army

In January 1945, defying a retreat order, he commanded that the symbolic city of Strasbourg be defended, anticipating de Gaulle's own instruction by twenty-four hours 'with perfect convergence.'

Jean de Lattre de Tassigny was a French professional soldier shaped by the First World War and the Moroccan war, and a commander who preserved his division’s cohesion amid France’s defeat in 1940. He remained in Vichy’s army, but in November 1942 he refused orders not to resist the German occupation of southern France, and joined the Free French after imprisonment and escape. Commanding Army B and then the French First Army, he led the liberation of Toulon and Marseille after the Provence landings, advanced to the Rhine and Danube, and represented France at the German surrender in Berlin in 1945. He later commanded the French colonial war in Indochina, where illness ended his life in 1952; he was posthumously made Marshal of France.