From baker to General Secretary: the leader who steered Spanish communism through the Popular Front and Civil War
“We are fighting for the Democratic Republic, for a democratic and Parliamentary Republic of a new type, with deep social content.” — Report to the PCE Central Committee, Valencia, 5 March 1937
As General Secretary of the Communist Party of Spain (PCE), José Díaz led the party through the Popular Front strategy, transforming it from a small sect into a mass party central to the Republican war effort. A Sevillian baker who cut his teeth in the anarcho-syndicalist CNT, he joined the PCE in 1927 and rose to General Secretary in 1932. At the 7th Comintern Congress (1935), he stood with Georgi Dimitrov in championing the anti-fascist united front, and during the Civil War he committed the party wholly to military victory under the banner of a “democratic republic of a new type.” Stricken by stomach cancer, he died in Tbilisi in 1942; his decade of leadership laid the foundations of the Spanish communist tradition for generations.
Career timeline
- 1913Joins La Aurora, the Seville bakers' union
- 1917Leads bakers' strike in Seville
- 1920Participates in the CNT general strike
- 1925Arrested in Madrid under Primo de Rivera dictatorship; imprisoned
- 1927Joins PCE; leads the Andalusian party organization
- 1932.034th PCE Congress — elected to Central Committee
- 1932.09Joins Politburo; soon appointed General Secretary
- 19357th Comintern Congress — backs Dimitrov's anti-fascist united front line
- 1936.02Elected to Cortes for Madrid
- 1936–1939Leads PCE through Civil War — prioritizes military victory and Republican unity
- 1938.12Transferred to USSR for stomach cancer treatment; operated in Leningrad
- 1939–1942Comintern Secretariat cadre — oversees Spain, South America, British India
An underground commander who grasped Tempest's political conditions
When the Home Army was established in 1942, he became commander of the unified underground force.
Stefan Rowecki was a Polish professional officer and the first commander of the Home Army, who helped turn scattered resistance groups under German occupation into a unified underground force. He developed plans for a rising under the contradictory conditions of German retreat and an advancing Soviet army, and advanced the general-uprising concept after the Home Army was formed in 1942. Arrested by the Gestapo in 1943, he rejected German offers of anti-Soviet cooperation and was murdered at Sachsenhausen shortly after the Warsaw Uprising began.
Career timeline
- 1914–1917Officer in the 1st and 5th Infantry Regiments of the Polish Legions in World War I
- 1919–1920Polish Army staff officer in the Polish–Soviet War
- 1923–1926Head of the scientific section at the Military Institute and founder-editor of Przegląd Wojskowy
- 1930–1935Commander of the 55th Poznań Infantry Regiment
- 1939–1940Commander of the Warsaw Armoured Motorized Brigade and senior leader of SZP-ZWZ
- 1940–1942Commander of the Union of Armed Struggle, preparing its transformation into the Home Army
- 1942–1943First commander of the Home Army, developing plans for a general rising and Operation Tempest
- 1943–1944Arrested by the Gestapo and imprisoned at Sachsenhausen
SS special-unit commander implicated in the Wola massacre
Waffen-SS commander of a unit recruited from convicted criminals; from 1940 he led it in anti-partisan operations in occupied Poland and Belarus, massacring civilians on a mass scale.
Nazi German SS officer and war criminal. From 1940 he commanded the special unit bearing his name, which committed war crimes in Poland and Belarus. During the suppression of the 1944 Warsaw Uprising, his formation participated in the massacre of civilians in Wola. His command responsibility belongs within the history of Nazi occupation policy and the SS and police command structure.
Career timeline
- 1913Enlisted in the Württemberg Army as a machine gunner; rose to lieutenant in World War I and received the Iron Cross in both classes.
- 1919–1921Joined the Freikorps and helped crush the German Revolution, workers' uprisings, strikes and communist revolts by force.
- 1922–1934Took a doctorate in political science at Frankfurt and joined the Nazi Party, but in 1934 was imprisoned for a sexual offence involving a minor and theft, expelled from the party and stripped of his doctorate and military honours.
- 1937–1939Served with the Condor Legion in the Spanish Civil War, was wounded three times, and on the strength of that service had his 1934 conviction annulled and his party membership restored in 1940.
- 1940Took command of the Oranienburg poacher unit recruited from convicted poachers; renamed Sonderkommando Dirlewanger, it was assigned guard and anti-partisan duties in occupied Poland.
- 1943Expansion of the unit to regimental size was authorized, and in Belarus it conducted anti-partisan operations that massacred civilians on a mass scale.
- 1944Took part in suppressing the Warsaw Uprising and the Wola massacre, and was then deployed against the Slovak National Uprising.
- 1945Was seriously wounded fighting Soviet forces near Guben in February and sent to the rear; in April he deserted and went into hiding.
Higher SS and Police Leader who directed the mass shootings at Kamianets-Podilskyi, Babi Yar and Rumbula
The son of a textile factory owner in Hornberg in the Black Forest, he fought as an officer in the First World War. He joined the Nazi Party in 1929 and the SS in 1930, and from 1933 was police president and head of the political police in Brunswick. Chosen by Himmler in June 1941 as Higher SS and Police Leader for southern Russia and Ukraine, he controlled all Einsatzgruppen killings in his area and used his method in the mass shootings at Kamianets-Podilskyi (23,600 killed) and Babi Yar (33,771 killed). Moved to Ostland in November with orders to complete the extermination of Riga’s Jews, he watched over two days as 25,000 people were killed at Rumbula. Taken prisoner fighting the Red Army in April 1945, he was sentenced to death at the Riga trial and hanged in Riga on 3 February 1946.
Career timeline
- 1914–1918German army officer and pilot
- 1929–1930Joined the Nazi Party and the SS
- 1932–1945Reichstag deputy
- 1933–1938Police president and head of political police, Brunswick
- 1941Higher SS and Police Leader, southern Russia and Ukraine
- 1941–1944Higher SS and Police Leader, Ostland
- 1946Sentenced at the Riga trial and executed
Interior Ministry state secretary who in 1944 ran the ghettoisation and deportation of Hungary’s Jews with László Baky
Born into a wealthy Abony family, he served as a hussar officer in the First World War and after the fall of the Soviet Republic joined counter-revolutionary groups such as MOVE, noted for his extreme cruelty. Chief magistrate of Gödöllő from 1923 and deputy lord-lieutenant of Pest county from 1938, he called the anti-Jewish laws too mild and imposed his own restrictions, such as banning Jews from beaches. After the German occupation in 1944 he became state secretary under Interior Minister Andor Jaross with far-reaching powers to ghettoise and deport the Jews, and with László Baky helped Eichmann deport over 400,000 Hungarian Jews between May and July. Removed in September, he returned under the Arrow Cross as commissioner for civil administration in the operational areas. Captured by US forces after fleeing in 1945, he was handed back, sentenced to death and hanged in 1946.
Career timeline
- 1915–1918Hussar officer
- 1919–1921Active in counter-revolutionary groups
- 1923–1938Chief magistrate of Gödöllő
- 1938–1944Deputy lord-lieutenant of Pest county
- 1944Administrative state secretary, Interior Ministry
- 1944–1945Commissioner for civil administration in the operational areas
- 1946Sentenced by the People’s Tribunal and executed
Mongolian revolution and consolidation
In an August 1945 telegram to Stalin he vowed that the friendship of the Mongolian and Soviet peoples would remain indestructible forever.
A military and political participant in Mongolia’s 1921 revolution. He consolidated power through close Soviet ties and directed major purges in the late 1930s. State-building and political and religious repression are inseparable parts of his leadership period.
Career timeline
- 1924–1928Commander-in-chief of the People's Revolutionary Army
- 1928–1930Chairman of the Presidium of the Little Khural
- 1930Foreign minister
- 1935–1939First deputy prime minister
- 1936Named Marshal of the Mongolian People's Republic
- 1939–1952Prime minister / head of government
- 1939Commanded MPR forces at Khalkhin Gol
The Socialist left's tribune who wrote 'Everything is possible', the Popular Front's left frontier
'Everything is possible', the title and the conclusion of his front-page article in Le Populaire as the strikes surged, 27 May 1936
A schoolmaster who became the leader of the Socialist SFIO's left. In 1935 he founded the Revolutionary Left tendency, supporting the Popular Front while arguing for a revolutionary way beyond it, and at the height of the strikes in May 1936 he planted himself at the centre of the argument with 'Everything is possible' in Le Populaire. He ran the premier's press service under Blum without ceasing to radicalize, and when the party expelled him in 1938 he founded the Workers' and Peasants' Socialist Party (PSOP). Exiled in Mexico during the war, he returned to the SFIO afterward and stood on its left and in the anticolonial camp until his death.
Career timeline
- 1895–1914Teacher's family in Seine-et-Marne; trained and worked as a schoolmaster
- 1914–1918The war turns him into an antimilitarist
- 1924–1935SFIO Paris federation; teachers' union activist
- 1935Founds the Revolutionary Left tendency inside the SFIO
- 1936.05Publishes 'Everything is possible'
- 1936–1937Runs the premier's press and information service
- 1938Expelled; founds the Workers' and Peasants' Socialist Party
- 1940–1946Exile in Mexico
- 1946–1958Returns to the SFIO; on its left and in the anticolonial camp
- 1958.06Dies in Paris
The Home Army commander who organized and launched the uprising
In late July 1944, he prepared the underground forces for mobilization and ordered the uprising to begin on 1 August.
Antoni Chruściel was a Polish Army officer who commanded the Home Army Warsaw District during the Second World War. After the decision to approve an uprising on 25 July 1944, he prepared the underground forces for mobilization and judged when to begin the local action, then commanded Warsaw's armed units after the rising opened on 1 August. His optimism about outside assistance and German collapse nevertheless exposed the uprising's prolonged course and military limits. After the war he passed through prisoner-of-war camps, lived in exile in the West, and died in Washington after the communist authorities stripped him of Polish citizenship.
Career timeline
- 1915–1918Officer in the Austro-Hungarian 90th Infantry Regiment
- 1919–1927Commander in the Polish Army's 14th and 42nd Infantry Regiments
- 1931–1937Tactics instructor at the Infantry Training Centre and War School
- 1938–1939Commander of the Polish Army's 82nd Siberian Infantry Regiment
- 1940–1941Head of Division III and chief of staff of the Warsaw District of the Union of Armed Struggle
- 1941–1944Commander of the Home Army Warsaw District
- 1944Commander of the Warsaw Uprising forces and the Warsaw Home Army Corps
- 1945–1948Staff officer and veterans' organization leader in the Polish forces in the West
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
Finnish foreign minister who dismissed Stalin's demands as a bluff and overruled Mannerheim's counsel to compromise
"Forget that the Soviet Union is a great power": Erkko's instruction to Paasikivi before the 1939 Moscow negotiations.
A press baron who built Helsingin Sanomat into the Nordics' largest daily, Erkko became foreign minister in December 1938 and seized full control of the Soviet negotiations. An unyielding hardliner, he instructed Paasikivi departing for Moscow to "forget that the Soviet Union is a great power," dismissed Stalin's territorial demands as a bluff, and overruled Marshal Mannerheim's advice to compromise. With the Erkko-owned Helsingin Sanomat steering public opinion against concessions, the talks collapsed; after the Winter War began, Paasikivi called it "Erkko's war."
Career timeline
- 1918White Guard officer, Finnish Civil War
- 1919–1927Foreign Ministry postings in Paris, Tallinn, London
- 1927–1938Editor-in-Chief, Helsingin Sanomat; CEO, Sanoma Oy
- 1932Minister without portfolio, Deputy Interior Minister (Sunila II)
- 1933–1936MP, National Progressive Party
- 1938–1939Minister of Foreign Affairs (Cajander III)
- 1939–1940Chargé d'affaires, Stockholm
- 1945–1965CEO and Chairman, Sanoma Oy
The Home Army commander whose decision led to both the uprising and its surrender
On 5 October 1944, he left Warsaw at the head of the surrendered Home Army units and entered captivity.
Tadeusz Bór-Komorowski was the Polish military commander who led the Home Army and later became a political leader of the government-in-exile in London. Seeking to secure Polish control of the capital before a Soviet-backed political settlement, he ordered the Warsaw Uprising on 1 August 1944, but the revolt became isolated as Western aid remained limited and Soviet forces did not intervene. He authorised negotiations that ended the uprising in October 1944, entered German captivity, and after the war served as prime minister of the émigré government, defending the continuity of a defeated Poland’s statehood.
Career timeline
- 1915–1918Cavalry officer in the Austro-Hungarian Army during the First World War
- 1918–1939Polish Army cavalry officer and commander of the Cavalry Training Centre at Grudziądz
- 1939–1941Organiser of the Kraków underground and commander in western Poland
- 1941–1943Deputy commander of the Home Army
- 1943–1944Commander-in-chief of the Home Army; ordered the Warsaw Uprising
- 1944–1947Commander-in-chief of the Polish Armed Forces, including German captivity
- 1947–1949Prime Minister of the Polish government-in-exile in London
- 1956–1966Member of the Council of Three in Polish émigré politics
Swiss vice-consul in Budapest who saved tens of thousands of Jews with protective letters and safe houses
Born in Walzenhausen, Switzerland, he emigrated to the United States in 1913 and from 1920 worked in the Swiss consular service in the US and in Jaffa. Appointed Swiss vice-consul in Budapest in 1942, he cooperated with the Jewish Agency. In 1944 he negotiated with the Hungarian government and the Nazis for permission to issue 8,000 protective letters for emigration to Palestine, applied it to families rather than individuals, and issued tens of thousands more letters, all numbered between one and 8,000. He declared some 76 houses around Budapest annexes of the Swiss legation; about 3,000 people found refuge at the “Glass House”. Credited with saving over 62,000 Jews, he was criticised after the war for exceeding his authority and rehabilitated only in 1958; in 1965 Yad Vashem named him one of the Righteous Among the Nations.
Career timeline
- 1913Emigrated to the United States
- 1920Joined the Swiss Legation in Washington
- 1935–1942Swiss vice-consul in Jaffa
- 1942–1945Swiss vice-consul in Budapest
- 1952–1961Swiss consul general in Bregenz
- 1965Righteous Among the Nations
Lithuanian officer and envoy in Berlin who founded the Lithuanian Activist Front behind the June Uprising of 1941
Mobilised into the Imperial Russian Army in the First World War, he was the first to enlist in the Lithuanian armed forces after independence in 1918, and on 1 January 1919 his men raised the Lithuanian flag over Gediminas’ Tower in Vilnius. He became Chief of the General Staff in 1925 but had to resign after opposing the 1926 coup. He was envoy to Germany in 1927–1930 and 1938–1941. After the Soviet occupation of 1940 he founded in Berlin the Lithuanian Activist Front, which sought to restore independence by working with the Nazis; named prime minister of the provisional government in 1941, he was held under house arrest by the Germans. In 1944 he was arrested for a memorandum demanding a Lithuanian government. After the war he settled in the United States, working at the Library of Congress. His antisemitic writings have made dedications in his honour controversial.
Career timeline
- 1919Raised the flag over Gediminas’ Tower
- 1925–1926Chief of the Lithuanian General Staff
- 1938–1941Envoy to Germany
- 1940–1941Founded the Activist Front; named provisional prime minister
- 1949Emigrated to the United States
The only non-Bolshevik on all three leading Comintern bodies. And author of the first critical Stalin biography.
Ten days after the Bolsheviks seized power, the twenty-two-year-old Souvarine wrote on 17 November 1917: "It is to be feared that, for Lenin and his friends, the 'dictatorship of the proletariat' must be the dictatorship of the Bolsheviks and their leader. This could become a calamity for the Russian working class, and eventually, for the world proletariat. […] What we wish is agreement among socialists to organise a stable power that truly becomes the power of the people and not the power of a man." — 'La Commune maximaliste,' *Ce qu'il faut dire*, No. 78
The only non-Bolshevik to serve on all three leading Comintern bodies. Expelled in 1924 for defending Trotsky, he turned independent anti-Stalinist and published the first critical biography of Stalin (1935), remaining a pioneering Sovietologist throughout his life.
Career timeline
- 1914Mobilised into the French Army; experiences trench warfare on the Western Front
- 1916Joins the SFIO and writes for the anti-war minority paper *Le Populaire*; adopts pseudonym 'Souvarine'
- 1919Joins the Committee for the Third International; distributes Comintern propaganda across Europe
- 1920.05Arrested in government crackdown on 'anarchist plot'; writes *Bulletin Communiste* from La Santé prison
- 1920.12Tours Congress: Souvarine motion adopted, creating the French Communist Party (SFIC); named honorary president
- 1921–1924Member of the ECCI, Presidium, and Secretariat — the only non-Bolshevik on all three leading Comintern bodies
- 1924Defends Trotsky at the 13th Bolshevik Congress; expelled from the Comintern and the French Communist Party
- 1926First publishes Lenin's Testament in France, received from Krupskaya via Christian Rakovsky
- 1927–1935Breaks with Trotsky, analysing the USSR as state-capitalist; organises the Democratic Communist Circle (CCD)
- 1935Publishes *Staline, aperçu historique du bolchévisme* — the first critical biography of Stalin
- 1935Founds the Institute of Social History — French branch of the Amsterdam-based IISH
- 1939.05Predicts the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact 100 days in advance in *Le Figaro*
- 1940–1947Arrested by the Vichy regime, freed through an officer's intervention, exiles to the USA; returns to Paris in 1947
- 1947–1976Edits *Est & Ouest* and *Le Contrat Social* — leading voice of anti-Stalinist left Sovietology during the Cold War
A Fascist power broker who helped bring down Mussolini
At 2 a.m. on 25 July 1943, the Grandi motion passed 19–8 and shattered Mussolini’s grip on power.
Dino Grandi was a leading Italian Fascist and diplomat who exercised power at the centre of the regime. As foreign minister and ambassador in London, he pursued a cautious diplomatic line toward war, but he also bore responsibility for administering the Fascist state and its policies. After the Allied invasion of Sicily, he drafted and organized the vote on the July 1943 motion calling on the king to resume constitutional command of the armed forces, helping bring about Benito Mussolini’s removal. He went into exile and was later sentenced to death in absentia by the Italian Social Republic’s Fascist tribunal.
Career timeline
- 1915–1919Served in World War I, studied law and economics, and began legal practice
- 1920–1922Leader in the Bologna Fascist movement and the National Fascist Party leadership
- 1924–1929Undersecretary of the Interior and Foreign Affairs
- 1929–1932Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs
- 1932–1939Italian ambassador to the United Kingdom
- 1939–1943Minister of Justice and president of the Chamber of Fasces and Corporations
- 1943Drafted and organized the Grand Council motion that removed Mussolini
- 1944Sentenced to death in absentia by the Italian Social Republic tribunal
“¡No pasarán!”: the voice of anti-fascism that refused to let Franco's armies pass
“If we let the fascists continue the crimes they are committing in Spain, aggressive fascism will fall upon other peoples of Europe too. The Spanish people prefer to die on their feet than live on their knees.” — Paris solidarity rally, 3 September 1936
The iconic leader of the Spanish Communist Party (PCE), whose cry of "¡No pasarán!" during the Civil War became the universal rallying cry of anti-fascism. She resisted the Franco dictatorship from exile and publicly opposed the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia.
Career timeline
- 1917Joins the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE)
- 1918First article in El Minero Vizcaíno; adopts pen name 'Pasionaria'
- 1922Co-founds the unified Communist Party of Spain (PCE)
- 1930Elected to the PCE Central Committee
- 1933Founding president of the Union of Anti-Fascist Women
- 19357th Comintern Congress — elected candidate member of the ECCI
- 1936.02Elected to the Cortes for Asturias
- 1936.07Radio address “¡No pasarán!” — calls for the defence of Madrid against the fascist armies
- 1937Elected Vice-President of the Cortes
- 1939–1942Soviet exile — continues Comintern work
- 1941–1963Directs short-wave Radio España Independiente (Radio Pirenaica)
- 1942–1960General Secretary of the PCE
- 1945Co-founds the Women's International Democratic Federation; Vice-President
- 1960–1989Chair of the PCE
- 1968Publicly opposes the Soviet intervention in Czechoslovakia
- 1977Returns to Spain after Franco's death; re-elected to the Cortes after 41 years
The anarchist metalworker who broke the rising in Barcelona and led the column that carried his name
Reported from an interview with the Canadian journalist Pierre van Paassen in Barcelona in 1936: “We are not in the least afraid of ruins. We are going to inherit the earth. The bourgeoisie may blast and ruin its own world before it leaves the stage of history. We carry a new world, here, in our hearts.” The words are famous, though the exact wording of the interview is disputed.
A metalworker born into a railwayman''s family in León. Sacked after the general strike of 1917, he fled to France and became an anarchist, and through Los Solidarios and Los Errantes he passed from bank expropriations and an attempt on the king''s life to prisons across Europe and Latin America. In July 1936 he led the workers who stormed the Atarazanas barracks and broke the military rising in Catalonia, losing his old comrade Francisco Ascaso in the fight. He then raised the six-thousand-strong Durruti Column, took it to the Aragon front and pressed the collectivization of land and factories in the liberated zone. In November he joined the defence of Madrid, was shot at the Casa de Campo front on the 19th and died the next day; whether the bullet came from the enemy, from his own side or from his own malfunctioning weapon is still argued. Hundreds of thousands followed his coffin through Barcelona.
Career timeline
- 1896Born in León, second of eight children of a railway worker
- 1913–1917Joined the metalworkers' union; sacked by the Northern Railway for the 1917 general strike and fled to France
- 1918–1919Became an anarchist in exile and joined the CNT on his return
- 1920–1922Formed Los Justicieros; the plot against Alfonso XIII was uncovered and he fled to Zaragoza
- 1922–1923Organized Los Solidarios with Ascaso and García Oliver; expropriated the Bank of Spain in Gijón
- 1924–1926Expropriation raids through Cuba, Mexico, Chile and Argentina; arrested in Paris and held in La Santé
- 1927–1931Released, lived in Belgium and worked with the FAI; returned to Barcelona when the Second Republic was proclaimed
- 1931–1936Founded the affinity group Nosotros; repeated arrests and deportations made him the face of the CNT left
- 1936.07.19–20Led the workers who took the Atarazanas barracks in Barcelona; his comrade Francisco Ascaso was killed
- 1936.07–11Raised the Durruti Column for the Aragon front and pressed collectivization in the liberated zone
- 1936.11.14Brought part of his column to the defence of Madrid
- 1936.11.19–20Shot at the Casa de Campo front and died the next day; the source of the bullet is still disputed
- 1936.11.22Buried in Barcelona, hundreds of thousands following the coffin
Hungarian minority leader in Czechoslovakia who, as interior minister in Sztójay’s cabinet in 1944, organised the deportation of Jews
Born in Komáromcsehi, Komárom County (now Čechy, Slovakia), he entered the politics of the Hungarian minority in Upper Hungary, cut off by Trianon, in the early 1920s. He became chairman of the Hungarian National Party in 1933 and a deputy in Prague in 1935, and was general secretary of the United Hungarian Party. From 1938 to 1940 he was Hungary’s minister without portfolio for Upper Hungary, and in 1940 he co-founded the far-right Party of Hungarian Renewal with Béla Imrédy. As interior minister in Sztójay’s cabinet after the German occupation of 1944, he organised the deportation of the Jews with his state secretaries László Baky and László Endre. He resigned under Horthy’s pressure on 17 August. After the war he fled west, was captured by the Americans, handed over to Hungary, sentenced to death by the People’s Tribunal and shot in 1946.
Career timeline
- 1925–1933Vice-chairman, Hungarian National Party
- 1933Chairman, Hungarian National Party
- 1935–1938Member of the Czechoslovak Chamber of Deputies
- 1938–1940Minister without portfolio for Upper Hungary
- 1940Co-founded the Party of Hungarian Renewal
- 1944Interior minister
- 1946Sentenced by the People’s Tribunal and executed
Nazi Gauleiter of Schleswig-Holstein who, as Reichskommissar for Ostland in 1941–1944, ordered the ghettoisation and expropriation of Jews
Born into a peasant family in Schleswig-Holstein, he was severely wounded in the First World War. He joined the Nazi Party in 1923, became Gauleiter of Schleswig-Holstein in 1925 and in 1933 also Oberpräsident of the province. Appointed Reichskommissar for Ostland on 25 July 1941, he shuttled between Riga and Kiel; his decree of 27 July ordered lists of Jews, the yellow badge, the confiscation of their property and their concentration in ghettos. Asked to explain his order forbidding the execution of Jews in Libau (Liepāja), he wrote on 15 November asking whether all Jews were to be liquidated regardless of economic interests, yet he stayed at his post for three more years. He fled Ostland without authorisation on 13 August 1944 and was removed. Sentenced in 1948 to ten years, he was released for ill health in 1951 and died in his home village in 1964.
Career timeline
- 1923Joined the Nazi Party
- 1925Gauleiter of Schleswig-Holstein
- 1933Oberpräsident of Schleswig-Holstein
- 1941–1944Reichskommissar for Ostland
- 1948–1951Sentenced to ten years; released 1951
A revolutionary who pursued workers' unity across communist divisions
After his arrest in 1936, Maurín remained in prison throughout the war, leaving the POUM under Andreu Nin's leadership in his absence.
Joaquín Maurín was a Spanish communist politician and labor activist who sought a mass revolutionary politics rooted in Catalonia. He led the Workers' and Peasants' Bloc while breaking with the Communist Party's Stalinist line, then co-founded the POUM with Andreu Nin in 1935 and became its first general secretary. Trapped in the insurgent zone when the military uprising began in 1936, he was arrested and spent the Civil War in prison, leaving Nin to lead the party in his absence. After his release and exile, he worked in New York as a writer and news-agency organizer, documenting the experience of the Spanish revolution.
Career timeline
- 1914–1920Taught in Lleida and joined the CNT
- 1920–1922Lleida CNT secretary and editor of Lucha Social
- 1921–1922Provisional secretary of the CNT national executive
- 1924–1930Organizer of the Catalan-Balearic Communist Federation
- 1931–1935General secretary of the Workers' and Peasants' Bloc
- 1935–1936Co-founder and first general secretary of the POUM
- 1936Popular Front deputy for Barcelona
- 1949–1973Founder of the American Literary Agency and writer in New York
CPGB founding member, chief theoretician for half a century, and pioneer of Marxist historiography on India
After Khrushchev's 1956 Secret Speech, Dutt told the CPGB Political Bureau: 'On Stalin's sun there were, unsurprisingly, some spots.' The Soviet system, he added, had 'demonstrated the ability of a socialist society to recognise and correct its mistakes.'
Founding member of the Communist Party of Great Britain and its chief theoretician for half a century, a Marxist historian and journalist. His Fascism and Social Revolution (1934) analysed fascism as an extreme form of monopoly-capitalist crisis, his India Today (1940) pioneered Marxist historiography on India, and he served as CPGB General Secretary in 1939–1941, replacing Harry Pollitt over the party's anti-war line at the outbreak of World War II.
Career timeline
- 1920Founding member, CPGB
- 1921–1974Founded and edited Labour Monthly (53 years)
- 1923–1965Member, CPGB Executive Committee
- 1924Alternate member, ECCI Presidium
- 1925–1935Comintern representative (Belgium & Sweden); supervised Communist Party of India
- 1936–1938Editor, Daily Worker
- 1939–1941General Secretary, CPGB
- 1943–1965Vice-chairman then Vice-president, CPGB
An Allied commander caught between military gains and civilian cost
On 27 July 1953, Mark W. Clark signed the Korean Armistice Agreement at Panmunjom for the United Nations Command.
Mark W. Clark was a United States Army general who commanded in both world wars and the Korean War, combining staff work with field command in coalition warfare. In Italy he led the capture of Rome and accepted the German surrender, but his decisions around the Rapido-Garigliano crossing and the bombing of Monte Cassino remained subjects of criticism. As Commander in Chief of the United Nations Command during the final phase of the Korean War, he combined military pressure with armistice negotiations and signed the agreement on 27 July 1953 for the UNC side. His career shows how the pursuit of American military advantage could expose both the workings of coalition command and the destructive costs of war.
Career timeline
- 1917Second lieutenant, U.S. Army Infantry
- 1942Deputy commander, Allied forces for Operation Torch
- 1943–1944Commanding General, U.S. Fifth Army, Italian campaign
- 1944–1945Commander, 15th Army Group, Italy
- 1945–1947Commander in Chief, U.S. occupation forces in Austria
- 1947–1949Commanding General, U.S. Sixth Army
- 1949–1952Chief, U.S. Army Field Forces
- 1952–1953Commander in Chief, United Nations Command and Far East Command
Hungarian Communist leader hanged in 1932 under the summary jurisdiction proclaimed after the Biatorbágy bombing
Born in Erdőfüle, he bore the surname Hollender until 1916. A bank clerk, he organised an anti-militarist movement with Ottó Korvin during the First World War and was arrested in 1918. In the 1919 Soviet Republic he was Korvin’s deputy in the political department of the people’s commissariat of the interior. After its fall he fled via Vienna to Moscow and worked for International Red Aid, and was sent home on Béla Kun’s proposal to run the illegal party press. Arrested in July 1932, he was sentenced to death although he had no part in the Biatorbágy bombing, and was hanged with Sándor Fürst on 29 July.
Career timeline
- 1918Arrested for anti-militarist agitation
- 1919Deputy head of the interior commissariat’s political department
- 1919–1931Exile in Vienna and Moscow; International Red Aid
- 1931–1932Returns to run the illegal party press
- 1932Arrested and hanged after a summary trial
Nazi Party propaganda chief and minister who promoted antisemitism and dictatorship.
Joseph Goebbels was a Nazi Party propaganda leader who headed the party organization in Berlin from 1926 and became its propaganda chief in 1930. Appointed minister of propaganda by Hitler in 1933, he brought the press, film, radio, and cultural life under Nazi ideological control and promoted antisemitism and persecution of Jews. He was a chief instigator of the November 1938 pogrom and later campaigned for total war.
Career timeline
- 1926–1945Nazi Party Gauleiter for Berlin
- 1930–1945Nazi Party propaganda chief
- 1933–1945Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda
- 1944–1945Reich Plenipotentiary for Total War
