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
“I order the immediate cessation of resistance. Every hour you keep on fighting prolongs the suffering of the civilians in Berlin and of our wounded.”
Helmuth Weidling was a German general who rose from imperial service to become an artillery officer and corps commander in the Wehrmacht. His command on the Eastern Front implicated him in Nazi Germany’s war of aggression and occupation, and his corps was later examined in connection with the Ozarichi camp crimes. Appointed commander of the Berlin Defence Area on 23 April 1945, he directed the city’s defence under Hitler’s ban on surrender, then negotiated with Vasily Chuikov and ordered the garrison to cease resistance on 2 May. Taken prisoner by the Soviet Union, he received a 25-year sentence for war crimes and died in custody in 1955; Russian prosecutors declared him ineligible for rehabilitation in 1996.
Career timeline
1911–1918Officer in Prussian artillery and Zeppelin units
1919–1938Reichswehr artillery officer and regimental commander
1939–1941Artillery commands in Poland, France and on the Eastern Front
1942–1943Commander of the 86th Infantry Division
1943–1945Commander of the XLI Panzer Corps
1945.04Commander of the LVI Panzer Corps at the Oder front and Berlin
1945.04.23–1945.05.02Commander of the Berlin Defence Area, ordering the garrison’s surrender
1952–1955Imprisoned in the Soviet Union after a war-crimes conviction
A military leader between wartime resistance and anti-communist politics
In November 1942, he committed his forces to the Gorgopotamos operation, where British saboteurs joined Aris Velouchiotis's ELAS fighters.
A former Hellenic Army officer, Napoleon Zervas founded the National Republican Greek League (EDES) in 1941 and led non-communist resistance to the Axis occupation. In 1942 he cooperated with the British Special Operations Executive and ELAS in the destruction of the Gorgopotamos bridge, but soon shifted from republicanism toward loyalty to the monarchy as British support and confrontation with the communist movement became decisive. After liberation, he carried his wartime military authority into right-wing politics and public-order administration during the Greek Civil War.
Career timeline
1910–1914Volunteered for the army, served in the Balkan Wars, and graduated from the NCO school.
1916–1920Joined the Movement of National Defence, served on the Macedonian Front, and rose to major.
1925–1926Served as Athens garrison commander and a battalion commander of the Republican Guard under Pangalos.
1941Founded the National Republican Greek League (EDES) with Venizelist officers.
1942–1944Organized the EOEA, directed armed resistance in Epirus, and took part in Operation Harling.
1946–1947Elected to parliament and served in the Maximos cabinet as minister without portfolio and Minister for Public Order.
1950–1951Served as Minister of Public Works in the cabinets of Sophoklis Venizelos.
The CPUSA leader who declared Communism was 20th-century Americanism, and then dissolved his own party
“Communism is twentieth-century Americanism.” — July 4, 1938, beneath the Star-Spangled Banner and the red flag together
A Kansas-born CPUSA leader for 15 years from 1930, Earl Browder proclaimed 'Communism is 20th-century Americanism' and in 1944 dissolved the party into a 'Communist Political Association', a strategy known as 'Browderism.' Expelled in 1946, he broke definitively with the party.
Career timeline
1907Joins Socialist Party of America at age 16
1912Leaves Socialist Party in 1912 split; joins Syndicalist League of North America
1917–1918Arrested for anti-WWI activism under the Espionage Act; serves 2-year sentence
1920Joins the United Communist Party of America
1921Sent to Moscow as U.S. delegate to RILU founding congress
1926–1929Secretary of RILU's Pan-Pacific Trade Union Secretariat, based in Shanghai
1930Becomes Secretary of the CPUSA Political Bureau — de facto party leader
1932–1945General Secretary of the CPUSA Central Committee
1935Elected to the Executive Committee of the Communist International (ECCI)
1936CPUSA candidate for U.S. President
1940Sentenced to 4 years for passport fraud; runs again for president
1942.05Released after 14 months by President Roosevelt's commutation
194412th CPUSA Convention dissolves the party; creates Communist Political Association
1945.0713th Convention repudiates Browderism and reconstitutes the CPUSA
1946.02Expelled from the CPUSA
1958Publishes Marx and America, arguing Marxism is inapplicable to U.S. conditions
German naval commander of the U-boat fleet who briefly became head of state after Hitler's death.
Dönitz commanded Germany's U-boat force during the Second World War and became commander-in-chief of the Navy in January 1943. He continued to send submarines into battle through 1945 despite mounting losses. After Hitler's suicide, Hitler's will named him head of state; on 7 May 1945, Dönitz ordered Alfred Jodl to sign Germany's surrender instrument. Convicted at Nuremberg of crimes against peace and war crimes, he was sentenced to ten years in prison.
Career timeline
1943Became commander-in-chief of the German Navy
1945Became head of state after Hitler's death and ordered Germany's surrender
An aristocratic diplomat who preserved Poland’s diplomatic continuity in exile
On 17 April 1943, Raczyński’s Foreign Ministry requested that the International Red Cross investigate Katyn.
Edward Raczyński was a diplomat of the Second Polish Republic and a leading figure in the Polish government-in-exile in London. During the war he informed the Allies about the mass murder of Jews in German-occupied Poland and took part in the Polish diplomatic action requesting an international investigation into the Katyn massacre in 1943. After 1945 he defended the continuity of the government-in-exile while supporting democratic opposition in communist-ruled Poland, and served as President of Poland-in-exile from 1979 to 1986.
Career timeline
1919–1925Served in Polish diplomatic missions in Bern, Copenhagen and London
1925–1932Head of the International Treaties Department, Polish Foreign Ministry
1932–1934Polish ambassador to the League of Nations
1934–1945Polish ambassador to the United Kingdom and diplomatic representative of the government-in-exile
1941–1943Foreign Minister of the Polish government-in-exile in London
1954–1972Member of the Council of Three of the government-in-exile
1979–1986President of the Republic of Poland-in-exile
1986–1993Senior figure in the Polish émigré community in London
Communist paramilitary commander who led the Lenin Boys and was a leading participant in the Red Terror of 1919
Born into a working-class family in Budapest, he worked as a shoemaker and served in the Austro-Hungarian Navy in the First World War. In 1918 he escaped to Soviet Russia, joined the Hungarian Communist group and studied at an agitators’ school. Back in Hungary by December 1918, he joined the sailor detachment guarding the Communist Party headquarters. Under the Soviet Republic he commanded more than two hundred men and oversaw some revolutionary tribunal trials, while his men arrested, tortured and executed suspected counter-revolutionaries without trial. Ordered to disarm by Vilmos Böhm at the end of April, the group was re-armed at his request to Béla Kun after the June rising and resumed its activities. Arrested on 4 August after the fall, he was convicted of nine murders and hanged on 18 December 1919.
Career timeline
1914–1918Served in the Austro-Hungarian Navy
1918Joined the Hungarian Communist group in Soviet Russia
1918Sailor guard of the Communist Party headquarters
Austrian chancellor who shut down parliament, built the Fatherland Front dictatorship and was assassinated in a Nazi coup in 1934
Born to a poor peasant family in Lower Austria, he studied law at the University of Vienna and served for 37 months on the Italian front in the First World War. Working for the Lower Austrian Peasants’ Union he became known as an agrarian expert, and he was appointed minister of agriculture and forestry in 1931 and federal chancellor in May 1932. In March 1933 he shut out parliament and ruled by emergency decree, banned the Communists, the Nazis and then the Social Democrats, and built a one-party dictatorship under the Fatherland Front modelled largely on Italian Fascism. He crushed the socialist movement in the civil war of February 1934 and in March signed the Rome Protocols with Mussolini and Gömbös. On 25 July 1934 he was shot dead in the Chancellery during an attempted Nazi coup.
The Marxist who linked the Russian and Spanish revolutions, founder of the POUM
“The working class has solved the problem of the Church simply by not leaving even one of them standing.” — La Vanguardia, August 1936
Catalan Marxist revolutionary. After serving as CNT General Secretary, he joined Trotsky's Left Opposition in Moscow and later founded the anti-Stalinist POUM. He was also the first to translate Russian literature directly into Catalan.
Career timeline
1911Joined the Catalan federalist Republican Nationalist Federal Union
1914Moved to Barcelona; taught at a secular anarchist school
1917Joined the PSOE briefly, then the CNT; embraced revolutionary syndicalism
1920–1921General Secretary of the CNT
1921–1930Moscow: Profintern and Comintern work; joined the Left Opposition
1930Returned to Spain; founded the Communist Left of Spain (ICE)
1935Merged with Maurín's BOC to found the POUM
1936General Secretary of POUM; Minister of Justice of Catalonia
1937.06Arrested after the May Days; kidnapped and killed by the NKVD
Frankfurt School's spectral companion, Marxist critic who dissected capitalist culture through the lens of mechanical reproduction
In the "Theses on the Philosophy of History," Benjamin wrote: "There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism."
Born to a prosperous assimilated Jewish family in Berlin, Walter Benjamin was a singular Marxist cultural critic who intersected deeply with the Frankfurt School yet remained irreducible to any single tradition. His thought, fusing Jewish mysticism with historical materialism, analyzed how capitalist production destroys art's "aura" in "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" (1935), while his posthumous "Theses on the Philosophy of History" (1940) challenged the Marxist faith in progress through the indelible allegory of the "angel of history," drawn from a Paul Klee painting. In exile he pursued the unfinished Arcades Project, an archaeological excavation of 19th-century Parisian commodity culture, and through his tense intellectual friendships with Brecht, Adorno, and Scholem, he expanded the horizons of Western Marxism.
Career timeline
1919PhD summa cum laude, University of Bern, on 'The Concept of Art Criticism in German Romanticism'
1925Withdrew habilitation thesis 'The Origin of German Tragic Drama' from University of Frankfurt
1928Published 'One-Way Street' and 'The Origin of German Tragic Drama'
1933Fled Nazi Germany permanently, exiled to Paris
1935–1936Wrote 'The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,' published in French
1940Completed 'Theses on the Philosophy of History'; took his own life at Portbou on the Spanish border
A Bosnian politician who embodied a multi-ethnic resistance coalition
When Ustaša leader Ljubomir Kvaternik came to Cazin in the summer of 1941 seeking his support, Pozderac refused even to grant him a meeting.
Nurija Pozderac was a Bosnian Muslim teacher turned politician from the Cazin region who refused the Ustaša regime's demand to collaborate and stood against its persecution of Serbs and Jews. With his wife Devleta he rescued dozens of Jewish refugees, and as a vice president of AVNOJ elected in 1942 he embodied the partisan movement's multi-ethnic character.
Career timeline
1910s–1930sTeacher in the Cazin region
1935Deputy in the Parliament of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia
1941Rejected Ustaša collaboration and joined the National Liberation Movement
1942President of the Cazin National Liberation Committee
1942Vice president of the AVNOJ Executive Board
1943Participant in the Battles of Neretva and Sutjeska
1944Posthumously awarded the Order of the People’s Liberation
An air commander who made army cooperation central to Allied air power
Montgomery urged the War Office to retain him: “He is the only airman who is out to win the land battle and has no jealous reactions.”
Trafford Leigh-Mallory was a British air chief marshal whose command style grew from First World War experience in reconnaissance and cooperation with ground forces. During the Battle of Britain, he advocated large fighter formations against the quicker defensive methods of Hugh Dowding and Keith Park, and the dispute became entangled with changes in Fighter Command leadership. As commander-in-chief of the Allied Expeditionary Air Force for Overlord, he coordinated the air plan to delay German reinforcements and disrupt transport, while accepting the grave civilian costs of attacks in France. After Normandy he was appointed to command air forces in Southeast Asia, but died with his wife in a plane crash in the French Alps.
Career timeline
1916Pilot, No. 7 Squadron, Royal Flying Corps
1917–1918Commanding officer, No. 8 Squadron, Royal Flying Corps
1937–1940Air Officer Commanding, No. 12 (Fighter) Group
1940–1942Air Officer Commanding, No. 11 (Fighter) Group
1942–1943Commander-in-Chief, RAF Fighter Command
1943–1944Commander-in-Chief, Allied Expeditionary Air Force, Overlord
1944Designated Air Commander-in-Chief, South East Asia Command
Finnish Jäger lieutenant general who destroyed two Soviet divisions at Suomussalmi with motti tactics
The division was not yet fully formed: Siilasvuo destroyed the Soviet 163rd Division before year's end with an incomplete 9th Division, then encircled the 44th on the Raate Road and cut it into motti, cordwood stacks.
A Jäger officer born in Helsinki, he went to Germany during the First World War for military training in the Prussian Jäger Battalion and fought in the Finnish Civil War as a White company commander. During the Winter War, as a colonel commanding the 9th Division, he encircled and destroyed the Soviet 163rd and 44th Rifle Divisions at Suomussalmi and Raate Road using motti tactics, halting the Soviet drive to cut Finland in half at Oulu. His success earned him promotion to major general and a best-selling book, Suomussalmen taistelut, though he was criticized for claiming all the credit. He commanded III Corps in the Continuation War and led the expulsion of German forces in the Lapland War, receiving the Mannerheim Cross in December 1944; he died at 54.
Career timeline
1915–1918Trained with 27th Prussian Jäger Battalion; fought on Eastern Front
1918White company commander, Finnish Civil War; fought at Tampere and Viipuri
1934–1939Commander, Pohjanmaa Military District; Oulu city councillor
1939–1940Commander, 9th Division; destroyed two Soviet divisions at Suomussalmi and Raate Road
1941–1942Commander, III Corps; northern Finnish-Soviet front
1944Commander, III Corps, Karelian Isthmus; Vuoksi defensive battles
1944–1945Overall commander, Lapland War; expelled German forces from Finland
A legion commander who carried battlefield success into White politics
After capturing Yekaterinburg, Gajda set up his headquarters in the very Ipatiev House where the Romanovs had been murdered by the Bolsheviks less than a week earlier.
Radola Gajda was a Czechoslovak Legion commander who rose to prominence in the First World War and the Russian Civil War, later becoming a general and politician in interwar Czechoslovakia. In 1918 he led the Legion's eastern group, seizing the railway from Novonikolaevsk to Irkutsk and pressing the argument for armed struggle over neutrality. He joined Kolchak's White forces, lost his command, and returned home to serve as acting chief of the general staff before leading the National Fascist Community. His military anti-Bolshevism became fascist politics in Czechoslovakia, while during the Nazi occupation he aided resistance networks.
Career timeline
1910–1911Served in the Austro-Hungarian Army
1915–1916Officer in the Montenegrin Army
1917Company and regimental commander, Czechoslovak Legion
1918Commander, Legion eastern group, directing the capture of Irkutsk and Yekaterinburg
1918–1919Commander of Kolchak's Siberian Army
1922–1926Divisional commander and acting chief of the Czechoslovak General Staff
1927–1939Leader of the National Fascist Community and parliamentarian
A conciliator between the monarchy and the national liberation movement
In the November 1944 Belgrade talks, he accepted a coalition government and regency while leaving the monarchy for a postwar decision.
Ivan Šubašić was a Croat Yugoslav politician and lawyer who became the first head of the autonomous Banovina of Croatia before the war. As the balance shifted between the royal government-in-exile and Tito’s national liberation movement, he became the principal non-Communist intermediary between them. In 1944 he negotiated with Tito, accepted the authority of AVNOJ, and helped design a coalition government and regency while leaving the monarchy’s fate to a postwar decision.
Career timeline
1918–1921Served with Yugoslav volunteers, then studied law
1920sOpened a law practice in Vrbovsko
1938Elected to the Yugoslav National Assembly for the Croatian Peasant Party
1939–1941First Ban of the Banovina of Croatia
1944.06–11Prime Minister of the royal Yugoslav government-in-exile
1944.06Negotiated the Vis Agreement with Tito
1944.11Initialled the Belgrade Agreement, outlining a coalition government and regency
A socialist constitutional scholar who sought to ground sovereignty in the people
At the 1944 Lebanon Conference, he sought to carry the Resistance's representation from liberated Greece into a national government.
Alexandros Svolos was a Greek constitutional scholar and socialist politician whose work connected labour rights to democratic constitutional order. During the Axis occupation, he chaired the Political Committee of National Liberation, helping lead administration in liberated areas and articulate institutions grounded in popular representation, while seeking cooperation between the Resistance and the government in exile at the Lebanon Conference. After liberation he became finance minister in the government of national unity, but resigned with the EAM ministers rather than endorse the dissolution of the resistance army. He pursued an independent socialist democracy between the established right and the communist movement, a position that gave his politics both influence and isolation in postwar Greece.
Career timeline
1915Earned a doctorate in constitutional law at the University of Athens and began teaching
1917–1920Director of Labour and Social Policy at the Ministry of National Economy
1929–1946Professor of Constitutional Law at the University of Athens
1941–1943President of the Committee of Macedonians and Thracians
1944.04–09President of the Political Committee of National Liberation, also secretary for foreign affairs, education, religion and popular enlightenment
1944.09–12Minister of Finance in the government of national unity
1945–1953President of the Socialist Party–Union of Popular Democracy
The physiologist trained in Leipzig who sent the Republic's gold to Moscow and chose to fight to the end as its last prime minister
The Thirteen Points he put to Franco in May 1938: full Spanish independence, a government chosen by universal suffrage, regional autonomy, freedom of conscience, land reform, and no reprisals for acts of war. Franco''s answer was unconditional surrender.
A physiologist turned PSOE politician. He studied medicine at Kiel and Leipzig, became professor of physiology in Madrid at twenty-nine and built the laboratory that trained the future Nobel laureate Severo Ochoa, joined the PSOE in 1929 and entered parliament in 1931. As finance minister from September 1936 he moved the national gold reserve to Cartagena and signed the decision to place it in Soviet hands, and after the Barcelona May Days he became prime minister in May 1937, centralizing the Popular Army under the slogan that to resist is to win. He leaned on the communists and the Soviet advisers because under Western non-intervention there was nowhere else to buy arms, and was called a puppet of Moscow for it for the rest of his life. His Thirteen Points of May 1938 were an attempt to negotiate; Franco would accept only unconditional surrender, and in March 1939 Colonel Casado''s coup drove him out of Spain. Expelled from the PSOE in 1946, he was rehabilitated by the party only in 2008.
Career timeline
1892Born in Las Palmas in the Canary Islands to a well-off Catholic family
1906–1915Studied medicine and physiology at Kiel and Leipzig; doctorate in medicine 1912
1922Professor of physiology in Madrid at twenty-nine, founding the laboratory that trained Severo Ochoa
1929–1931Joined the PSOE and was elected deputy for Las Palmas with the founding of the Second Republic
1936.09Finance minister in the Largo Caballero cabinet; moved the gold reserve to Cartagena
1936.10Signed the decision to place 510 tonnes of gold in Soviet hands, the so-called Moscow Gold
1937.05.17Became prime minister after the Barcelona May Days: one war, one army, one command
1938.04–1939.03Also defence minister; ran the Ebro offensive under the slogan to resist is to win
1938.05Issued the Thirteen Points as a basis for negotiation; Franco refused
1938.09–10Announced the unilateral withdrawal of the International Brigades at the League of Nations and presided over the Barcelona farewell parade
1939.03Driven out of Spain by Colonel Casado's coup, into exile in France
1939–1945Prime minister of the Republican government in exile; organized the SERE refugee relief service
1946Expelled from the PSOE; rehabilitated by the party in 2008
1956.11.12Died of a heart attack in Paris; buried at Père Lachaise
US Under Secretary of State whose Welles Declaration of July 1940 refused to recognise the Soviet annexation of the Baltic states
Born in New York City to a wealthy political family, he graduated from Harvard in 1914 and joined the diplomatic service on the advice of the family friend Franklin Roosevelt. A Latin America specialist, he saw his career ended by President Coolidge, but under Roosevelt he became Assistant Secretary for Latin American Affairs and then Under Secretary of State from 1937 to 1943. As acting Secretary of State he issued the Welles Declaration on 23 July 1940, condemning the Soviet occupation of the Baltic states and refusing to recognise their annexation; the day before, he had authorised diplomatic visas for the family of Konstantin Päts. He went on to oppose any concession on the Baltic question. He helped write the Atlantic Charter, but was forced out by Cordell Hull in 1943 after word spread that he had propositioned two railroad porters. He died in New Jersey in 1961.
Career timeline
1914Graduated from Harvard; entered the diplomatic service
The general who turned the rising into victory and ruled Spain for thirty-six years as Caudillo
The last war communiqué of 1 April 1939, signed in his own hand: “Today, with the Red Army captive and disarmed, the national troops have reached their final military objectives. The war is over.” Thirty-six years of dictatorship began.
A career officer who made his name in the colonial war in Morocco and became the youngest general in Europe at thirty-three. His use of the Army of Africa to crush the Asturian miners in 1934 fixed him in the eyes of the right as the restorer of order, and in July 1936 he joined the rising, flew from the Canaries to Morocco and, with German and Italian transports, ferried the Army of Africa to the mainland. In October he was made commander-in-chief and head of state of the rebel zone, and the Unification Decree of 1937 fused the Falange and the Carlists into a single National Movement under his personal rule. Victory in 1939 was followed by mass execution and imprisonment under the Law of Political Responsibilities, costing tens of thousands of lives. He declared non-belligerence in the Second World War while sending the Blue Division to the Eastern Front, and broke out of postwar isolation with the Pact of Madrid and the Concordat of 1953. The growth that followed the Stabilization Plan of 1959 became another pillar of the regime; he named Juan Carlos his successor in 1969, and with his death in 1975 the regime itself began to come apart.
Career timeline
1892Born into a naval family in Ferrol, Galicia
1907–1910Trained at the Toledo Infantry Academy
1912–1926Fought in the colonial war in Morocco, second-in-command of the Spanish Legion, brigadier general at thirty-three
1928–1931Director of the Zaragoza military academy until the Republic removed him
1934.10Used the Army of Africa to crush the Asturian miners' rising
1935–1936Rose to chief of the general staff, then was posted to the Canary Islands by the Popular Front government
1936.07.18–19Joined the rising, flew to Morocco in the chartered Dragon Rapide and organized the airlift of the Army of Africa
1936.10.01Proclaimed Generalísimo and head of state of the rebel zone at Burgos
1937.04.19Fused the Falange and the Carlists into a single National Movement by decree
1939.04.01Declared the war over and began mass execution and imprisonment under the Law of Political Responsibilities
1940–1943Met Hitler at Hendaye, declared non-belligerence and sent the Blue Division to the Eastern Front
1953–1955Signed the Pact of Madrid with the United States and a Concordat with the Vatican; UN membership in 1955 ended his isolation
1959Abandoned autarky with the Stabilization Plan and entered the years of high growth
1969–1973Named Juan Carlos his successor; in 1973 his prime minister Carrero Blanco was assassinated by ETA
1975.11.20Died in Madrid; buried at the Valley of the Fallen until his exhumation in 2019
Archbishop of Esztergom and cardinal sentenced to life in a 1949 show trial, who sheltered in the US embassy in Budapest from 1956
Born at Csehimindszent in Vas County into a family with a German surname, he was ordained in 1915 and in 1919 was arrested by the Károlyi and then the Kun government. He later took the name Mindszenty from his home village. Consecrated Bishop of Veszprém in March 1944, he was arrested by the Arrow Cross government in November and released in April 1945. Appointed Archbishop of Esztergom and Primate in 1945 and made a cardinal in 1946, he resisted the Communists, notably over church schools. Arrested in December 1948 and beaten until he confessed, he was sentenced to life imprisonment at a show trial in February 1949. Freed during the 1956 revolution, he took refuge in the US embassy when the Soviets invaded and stayed there fifteen years. Allowed to leave in 1971, he settled in Vienna; in February 1974 Paul VI declared the see of Esztergom vacant, and he died in Vienna in 1975.
Career timeline
1915Ordained priest
1919Arrested by the Károlyi and Béla Kun governments
1944Bishop of Veszprém; arrested by the Arrow Cross government in November
1945–1974Archbishop of Esztergom, Primate of Hungary
1946Made a cardinal
1948–1949Arrested; sentenced to life at a show trial
1956–1971Freed in the revolution; refuge in the US embassy in Budapest
The air-defence commander at the heart of the Battle of Britain
Using the picture supplied by radar and the reporting system, he scrambled No. 11 Group's fighters quickly enough to keep the south-east's defence in action.
A New Zealand-born Royal Air Force officer, Park carried experience from First World War artillery and fighter flying into the organisation of air defence. As commander of No. 11 Group in 1940, he directed the fighter defence of London and south-east England, combining radar and reporting networks with rapid, dispersed interceptions against German raids. His decisions balanced the need to preserve fighters and pilots against the accumulating damage to airfields while keeping the southern defence system in action. He later commanded air operations in Malta and the Far East.
Career timeline
1914–1916Served with New Zealand Expeditionary Force artillery at Gallipoli and on the Western Front
1916–1918Served as a fighter pilot with the Royal Flying Corps and RAF, commanding No. 48 Squadron
1938–1940Senior air staff officer at Fighter Command
1940.04–11Air Officer Commanding No. 11 Group, directing south-east air defence in the Battle of Britain
1940–1941Served in Training Command, overseeing fighter training
1941–1942Air Officer Commanding, Egypt
1942–1945Commanded Malta's air defence and later air operations in the Mediterranean, Middle East and India
The air commander who made strategic bombing central to total war
Days after the thousand-bomber raid on Cologne, he told a newsreel audience: 'They sowed the wind, and now they are going to reap the whirlwind.'
Arthur Harris was the Royal Air Force commander who led Bomber Command during the Second World War and made area bombing of German cities a central instrument of British strategy. He improved the operational scale and effectiveness of the campaign while remaining responsible for a method that killed civilians and destroyed urban life. Before the Normandy landings, Harris resisted diverting bombers from the pressure on German industry to the Transportation Plan, yet in March 1944 he ordered the initial attacks on French railway centres that put the plan into action. That tension exposed the conflict between an air force command defending its independent strategic campaign and the Allied demand for direct support to the invasion.
Career timeline
1915–1918Royal Flying Corps pilot and flight commander
1918–1920Served in the RAF after its formation
1925–1927Commanding Officer, No. 58 Squadron
1937–1939Command of No. 4 Group and RAF forces in the Middle East
1939–1941Commander, No. 5 Group, then Deputy Chief of the Air Staff
1942–1945Commander-in-Chief, RAF Bomber Command
1953Created a baronet, retaining his Southern Rhodesian identity
International communist who founded the JCP, ran the Comintern's Pacific networks, and led the party for 24 years
On his arrival at JCP headquarters in January 1946, one newspaper reported that 'young girls in both kimonos and Western dress gathered like fans awaiting a star at the stage door.'
An international communist who helped found both the CPGB in London (1920) and the JCP in Tokyo (1922), he served on the Comintern Executive Committee and ran intelligence networks against Imperial Japan from the United States and China. From 1940 to 1945 in Yan'an, he led the Japanese People's Emancipation League, converting captured Japanese soldiers into communist forces, and after the war he crafted the JCP's 'lovable party' strategy of peaceful revolution, winning up to 35 Diet seats. As JCP Chairman from 1958 to 1982, he steered the party through the Anpo protests and the Sino-Soviet split, but in 1992 the discovery of his 1939 letter denouncing a comrade to the NKVD led to his expulsion from the party he had founded.
Career timeline
1915Joined Yuaikai (Friendly Society), editor of Labour and Industry
1920Founding member, Communist Party of Great Britain; London delegate
1922Co-founded the Japanese Communist Party; editor of Musansha Shimbun
1931–1940Comintern Executive Committee member; intelligence work in USSR, USA, China
1940–1945Led the Japanese People's Emancipation League in Yan'an; re-educated Japanese POWs
1946–1950Elected to House of Representatives; JCP Central Committee
Military leader of Mongolia's 1921 revolution, posthumously canonized as its 'father'
Appointed commander-in-chief of the people's partisans in February 1921, he took Kyakhta in March and entered Khüree on July 6; on July 11 he became minister of the army in the new government. Mongolian-language records date that appointment to July 1922.
A Mongolian revolutionary and founding member of the Mongolian People's Party, he led the people's partisans that entered Khüree (now Ulaanbaatar) in 1921. Of a poor arat family, he worked as a typesetter and a relay-station rider, and joined Urga's underground anti-Chinese group in 1919. He went to Soviet Russia in 1920, was confirmed commander-in-chief at Kyakhta in 1921, became minister of the army that July and met Lenin in Moscow in November. The cause of his death is unconfirmed, and his posthumous canonization is itself a central dispute.
Career timeline
1919–1920Joined Urga's underground anti-Chinese group
1920–1921Traveled to Soviet Russia on party missions
1921Commander-in-chief of the people's partisans; took Kyakhta and entered Khüree
1921–1923Minister of the army and commander-in-chief
