Head of Estonia's government in the independence war, later dictator of the 'era of silence'
"The greatest thing we have accomplished is the creation of the Estonian state," he said in his June 1940 Victory Day speech under Soviet pressure.
Led Estonia's declaration of independence in February 1918 and held the country together as head of the provisional government in the first winter of the independence war. In 1934 he built the authoritarian 'era of silence' with Laidoner; deported by the Soviets in 1940, he died in custody in 1956.
Career timeline
1905Became deputy mayor of Tallinn
1917Chairman of the provisional government of the Autonomous Governorate
1918Salvation Committee member; led the independence declaration as head of the provisional government
1921–1924Served twice as State Elder (de facto premier)
1934Self-coup with Laidoner establishing authoritarian rule
Master of famine relief and the 31st president, broken by the Great Depression
'Twenty million people are starving. Whatever their politics, they shall be fed!', Hoover's reply when asked whether feeding Russia would not help Bolshevism.
A mining engineer who made a vast fortune, Hoover built his public fame on famine relief across two world wars before becoming the 31st president of the United States in 1929. During the First World War he headed the Commission for Relief in Belgium and the U.S. Food Administration ('food czar') in feeding millions, and after the war he refashioned the American Relief Administration (ARA) into a private body directing relief across Eastern Europe and Russia. When famine struck the Volga in 1921 he answered Gorky's appeal at once and personally drove the Riga agreement, securing the ARA's autonomy in distribution and Soviet gold payments and feeding more than ten million people a day at the operation's peak. He struggled as president amid the Great Depression but remained active in retirement, chairing reform commissions for the Truman and Eisenhower administrations.
Career timeline
1874Born into a Quaker family in West Branch, Iowa
1895Graduated from Stanford; made a fortune as a mining engineer in China, Australia and beyond
1914–1919Chairman of the Commission for Relief in Belgium, feeding occupied Belgium
1917–1919Director of the U.S. Food Administration, celebrated as the 'food czar'
1919–1923Director of the American Relief Administration, leading relief in Eastern Europe and Russia
1921.08.20Conclusion of the Riga agreement, setting the terms of Volga famine relief
1921–1928Secretary of Commerce
1929–193331st president; lost reelection amid the Great Depression
Counter-revolutionary paramilitary commander who led the most brutal officer detachment of the Hungarian White Terror of 1919–1921
Born to an old noble family in Romhány, Nógrád County, the career officer took command of Horthy’s bodyguard in Szeged in 1919 and formed the first officer detachment. Torturing and killing Communists, Social Democrats, peasants and Jews, his unit is considered the most brutal of the Hungarian White Terror. Convicted of extortion in 1921, he lost his command and joined King Charles’s second return attempt; his battalion was dissolved in January 1922. He failed to build a fascist mass movement in the 1930s and in October 1944 again assembled a squad to hunt Jews. Captured by Soviet troops in 1945, he died in the Gulag.
Career timeline
1919Heads Horthy’s bodyguard; forms the first officer detachment
1919–1921Leads a detachment in the Hungarian White Terror
1921Convicted of extortion; joins King Charles’s return attempt
Britain's wartime prime minister who divided Europe with Stalin on a half-sheet of paper
Churchill's memoir account of the October 1944 Moscow meeting: 'I wrote on a half-sheet: Romania, Russia 90%… I pushed this across to Stalin. He took his blue pencil, made a large tick, and passed it back.' Soviet authorities denied in 1958 that Stalin accepted such a proposal.
A British statesman, army officer and writer, Churchill was born in 1874 at Blenheim Palace into the wealthy aristocratic Spencer family, of mixed English and American parentage. After army service in India, Sudan and the Boer War he entered Parliament in 1900. As a Liberal minister he was President of the Board of Trade, Home Secretary, and First Lord of the Admiralty, where he oversaw the failed Gallipoli campaign; in 1924–1929 he was Chancellor of the Exchequer. Prime minister from May 1940, he led Britain through the Second World War, warned in 1946 of an 'iron curtain', and held office again in 1951–1955. An imperialist, anti-communist and opponent of Indian self-government, he remains a contested figure; he died in 1965.
Labour lawyer turned Communist who was interior commissar and a Red Army commander in the Hungarian Soviet Republic
Born to a Jewish family in Gelse, he became a lawyer and, as legal adviser to the railway workers’ federation, defended the leaders of the national railway strike in 1904. He joined the Social Democratic Party in 1908 and moved steadily left until he became a Communist. In March 1919 he agreed with Béla Kun in prison on introducing the dictatorship of the proletariat; in the Soviet Republic he was commissar for the interior and for trade, then commanded the Red Army’s III Corps in the northern campaign and became commander-in-chief in July. After the fall he emigrated to Austria and led the exiled Communist movement. He died in Cannes in 1928, and his ashes were placed in the Kremlin Wall.
Career timeline
1904Defended the leaders of the railway strike
1908Joined the Social Democratic Party
1919Commissar for the interior and for trade
1919Commander of III Corps; commander-in-chief from July
1919–1928Exile in Austria; leader of the exiled Communist movement
German social-democratic politician and co-chair of the Independent Social Democratic Party.
A painter and journalist, Crispien opposed the Social Democratic Party's support for the war and helped found the Independent Social Democratic Party (USPD) in 1917. He served as interior minister in Württemberg's provisional government in 1918–19 and became a USPD co-chair in 1919. He attended the Communist International's Second Congress in 1920 as a USPD delegate but opposed its admission conditions and merger with the Communist Party of Germany. After most of the USPD reunited with the Social Democratic Party in 1922, he joined its leadership; he went into exile after the Nazi seizure of power in 1933.
Career timeline
1918–1919Interior minister in Württemberg's provisional government
1919–1922Co-chair of the Independent Social Democratic Party
1920Attended the Second Congress of the Communist International as a USPD delegate
1922–1933Co-chair of the Social Democratic Party of Germany
Liberal aristocrat who came to power in the Aster Revolution and was president of the First Hungarian Republic
Born into an extremely wealthy Catholic aristocratic family, he led the small anti-war faction in parliament that demanded an immediate peace during the First World War. The Aster Revolution of October 1918 made him prime minister; when the People’s Republic was proclaimed on 16 November he also became provisional head of state, and in January 1919 he was recognised as president. As an example for land reform he gave his family estates to his tenants. After his government fell over the Vix note in March 1919 the Soviet Republic was proclaimed, and in July he went into exile. He returned in 1946 and was ambassador to France from 1947 to 1949, resigning in protest at the Rajk trial, and died in Vence, France, in 1955.
Career timeline
1910Member of parliament for the Party of Independence
1918Formed the Hungarian National Council; prime minister after the Aster Revolution
1918–1919Provisional head of state and president of the People’s Republic
Social scientist who led the Radical Party and served as minister of nationalities in the Károlyi government
Born to a Jewish doctor’s family in Nagykároly, he saw the family change its name to Jászi and convert to Calvinism in 1881. In 1900 he co-founded the social-science review Huszadik Század (Twentieth Century) and became its leading editor for two decades, arguing for universal secret suffrage and land reform. In June 1914 he founded the National Civic Radical Party. After the Aster Revolution of October 1918 he became minister of nationalities in the Károlyi government and tried to keep the minorities within Hungary by offering them maximum autonomy, but failed and resigned in December. Unable to tolerate the Soviet Republic’s denial of freedom of thought and conscience, he emigrated on 1 May 1919. In 1925 he joined the faculty of Oberlin College in the United States as a history professor, wrote The Dissolution of the Habsburg Monarchy (1929) and died in Oberlin in 1957.
Career timeline
1900Co-founded Huszadik Század
1914Founded the National Civic Radical Party
1918Minister of nationalities in the Károlyi government
1919Emigrated
1925–1957Professor at Oberlin College, United States
The five-star chief of staff who warned Roosevelt the Yalta Poland deal was 'so elastic' it could stretch from Yalta to Washington
Leahy told Roosevelt: 'This is so elastic that the Russians can stretch it all the way from Yalta to Washington without ever technically breaking it.' Roosevelt answered: 'I know, Bill, but it is the best I can do for Poland at this time.'
William Leahy was a Fleet Admiral of the US Navy who served as Chief of Staff to Presidents Roosevelt and Truman during World War II, functioning as the de facto first Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. After serving as CNO, Governor of Puerto Rico and Ambassador to Vichy France, he was recalled in 1942 and spent the war coordinating Allied grand strategy as the nation's most senior officer. At the Yalta Conference in February 1945, he read the Poland agreement and told Roosevelt: 'This is so elastic that the Russians can stretch it all the way from Yalta to Washington without ever technically breaking it.' Roosevelt replied, 'I know, Bill, but it is the best I can do for Poland at this time.' Though he later condemned the atomic bomb, he did not oppose its use at the time; after the war he rejected plans that relied on nuclear first use.
Career timeline
1875Born in Hampton, Iowa, the son of Irish immigrants
1897Graduated from the Naval Academy; served on USS Oregon in the Spanish-American War
1927–1931Chief of the Bureau of Ordnance; first of his Academy class to reach flag rank
1937–1939Chief of Naval Operations; oversaw fleet expansion and war preparations
1939–1940Governor of Puerto Rico; developed military bases and New Deal public works
1940–1942Ambassador to Vichy France; failed to restrain Pétain's collaboration with Germany
1942–1949Chief of Staff to the President and de facto JCS chair; attended Yalta and Potsdam
Father of the Chilean labour movement and pioneer of Latin American communism
"Reading is one of the best means of emancipation for the working classes. That is why we urge you to read much." — Recabarren's constant refrain at workers' gatherings throughout Chile.
A lifelong organizer and theorist who dedicated himself to building Chile's labour movement and socialist party. Witnessing the brutal conditions of nitrate miners, he joined the Democratic Party but broke with its reformism in 1912 to found the Socialist Workers' Party (POS). Despite repeated imprisonment and exile, he launched and edited workers' newspapers, toured the country raising class consciousness, and in 1922 affiliated the party to the Comintern, transforming it into the Communist Party of Chile. Beset by internal party conflicts and failing health, he took his own life in 1924, but the organizational, educational, and press foundations he laid became cornerstones of the Chilean and Latin American revolutionary tradition.
Career timeline
1894Joined the Chilean Democratic Party
1906Elected deputy for Tocopilla (denied seat)
1908–1909Exile in Argentina and Europe
1912Founded Socialist Workers' Party (POS) and El Despertar newspaper
1918Co-founded Communist Party of Argentina, first national directorate
1921Elected deputy for Antofagasta
1922Transformed POS into Communist Party (PCCh), attended 4th Comintern Congress
A Social Democratic politician of the Weimar Republic who served twice as chancellor.
Müller joined the Social Democratic Party in 1893 and rose to its leadership. As foreign minister from 1919 to 1920, he signed the Treaty of Versailles for Germany. His first chancellorship in 1920 combined the suppression of left-wing uprisings with reforms expanding disability employment, primary education, unemployment benefits and workers’ social protection. He returned as chancellor in 1928 to lead a grand coalition, which collapsed amid the Great Depression and disputes over financing unemployment insurance; he resigned in 1930.
Career timeline
1893Joined the Social Democratic Party of Germany.
1916Elected to the Reichstag of the German Empire.
1919–1920Served as foreign minister and signed the Treaty of Versailles.
1920Served as chancellor.
1928–1930Served as chancellor of the grand coalition.
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.
French officer who headed the Entente military mission in Budapest and delivered the Vix note in March 1919
An Alsatian-born French professional soldier, he graduated from Saint-Cyr in 1898 and served as a staff officer of the colonial troops. At the end of the First World War he was on the staff of the French Army of the Orient in Belgrade, and on 26 November 1918 he arrived in Budapest as a lieutenant colonel at the head of the Entente military mission, charged with overseeing the Padua armistice and the Belgrade military convention. He passed several notes demanding withdrawals to the Hungarian government; the note he handed President Károlyi on 20 March 1919 brought the government down the next day. Harassed after the Soviet Republic was proclaimed, the mission left by train for Szeged on 26 March. He later served with colonial troops in the Levant and elsewhere, became a général de division in 1933 and died in Neuilly-sur-Seine in 1941.
Career timeline
1898Graduated from Saint-Cyr
1918–1919Head of the Entente military mission in Budapest
Veteran of the Bessarabian national movement who, as foreign minister of the Moldavian Democratic Republic, championed union with Romania
Born in Răzeni, Bessarabia, in 1876, he graduated from the Chișinău seminary in 1898 and in law from the University of Dorpat in 1903. Arrested as a student for founding an association of Bessarabian students, he later worked as a deputy judge in Bălți and created the town’s first national group. He joined the National Moldavian Party in 1917 and initially won a majority for president of Sfatul Țării, but the post went to Inculeț. As foreign minister in the Erhan and Ciugureanu cabinets in 1917–1918 he sought military aid from Shcherbachev in Iași and campaigned for union. He then served as Minister of Justice under Vaida-Voevod, worked in Paris, London and Geneva for recognition of the union and sat in parliament for the National Party and the National Peasants’ Party. Arrested by the communist authorities in 1950, he died in Sighet Prison in 1954.
Career timeline
1903Law degree, University of Dorpat
1917–1918Director General for Foreign Affairs of the Moldavian Democratic Republic
1919–1920Romanian Minister of Justice (Vaida-Voevod cabinet)
Wehrmacht field marshal who directed the encirclement of Leningrad
In September 1941 he believed Leningrad was about to fall, but the city did not surrender.
Wilhelm Ritter von Leeb was a German field marshal and one of the Wehrmacht's senior operational commanders in the Second World War. In 1941 he led Army Group North through the Baltic states toward Leningrad, completing the land encirclement and directing the operational pressure that sustained it. Forces under his command committed crimes against civilians and cooperated with the SS in the murder of Jews. Convicted after the war in the High Command Trial for transmitting the Barbarossa Decree and its criminal application by subordinate units, he was sentenced to time served and released.
Career timeline
1895Entered the Bavarian Army
1914–1918Served on the Eastern Front and in the Serbian campaign during the First World War
1930–1933Commander of the 7th Division
1939–1941Commander of Army Group C
1941.06–1942.01Commander of Army Group North, directing the attack and encirclement of Leningrad
1948Convicted in the High Command Trial and released after a sentence of time served
A Nazi German naval commander who pursued a grand surface fleet
In the 1940 planning for Operation Sea Lion, control of the English Channel and the vulnerability of invasion transport exposed the German navy’s fundamental weakness.
Erich Raeder was an admiral who rose through the Imperial German Navy and went on to command the navies of the Weimar Republic and Nazi Germany. He pursued a battleship-centered ocean fleet combined with commerce raiding, although Germany’s navy was unready to confront the Royal Navy when the Second World War began. Raeder was skeptical of Operation Sea Lion in 1940, pointing to German weakness in controlling the English Channel and the vulnerability of an invasion transport, and those naval limits constrained the plan’s feasibility. At the postwar International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, he was convicted of conspiracy, crimes against peace, and war crimes, sentenced to life imprisonment, and released in 1955.
Career timeline
1894Entered the Imperial German Navy
1912–1918Senior naval staff officer; served in the First World War
1928–1935Chief of the Naval Command, Reichsmarine
1935–1939Commander-in-chief of the Kriegsmarine; Generaladmiral
1939–1943Grand Admiral and commander-in-chief of the Kriegsmarine
1943Resigned as commander-in-chief and retired
1946–1955Convicted at Nuremberg and served a life sentence
Legitimist general who led counter-revolutionary troops in western Hungary and joined both of King Charles’s return attempts in 1921
Born in Sopron and trained at the cadet school and war college in Vienna, he was the younger brother of the composer Ferenc Lehár. His First World War service won him the Knight’s Cross of the Military Order of Maria Theresa and a barony. During the Soviet Republic he raised a force of some 2,000 men in Graz, and in August 1919 he became military commander of Western Hungary, where his troops carried out reprisals against Communists and Social Democrats. A legitimist, he placed himself at King Charles’s disposal in March 1921 and was named defence minister in the second attempt that October; when it failed he fled through Czechoslovakia to Germany. He later lived in Berlin and Vienna, administered his brother’s estate, and died in Vienna in 1962.
Career timeline
1893Graduates from the cadet school in Vienna
1918Military Order of Maria Theresa; barony
1919Raises troops in Graz; military commander of Western Hungary
Czech journalist who chaired the Revolutionary Governing Council of the Slovak Soviet Republic in 1919
Born in Nymburk, he was originally an engine fitter; he joined the Social Democratic Party in 1895 and from 1906 was a workers’ journalist and an official of workers’ associations. Living in Budapest from 1918 as a correspondent of the Kladno paper Svoboda, he led the Czech and Slovak section of the Hungarian Communist Party’s central committee in 1919. After the Hungarian Red Army entered Slovakia he proclaimed the Slovak Soviet Republic in Prešov and became chairman of its Revolutionary Governing Council, but the state ceased to exist on 7 July when Czechoslovak troops pushed the Hungarians out. Imprisoned in Hungary after the fall of the Hungarian Soviet Republic, he was handed over to the Czechoslovak authorities in 1920. Granted Soviet citizenship, he moved to Soviet Russia in 1922 and worked for International Workers’ Aid. He died of natural causes in 1941.
Career timeline
1895Joined the Social Democratic Party
1906Workers’ journalist and official of workers’ associations
1919Head of the Czech and Slovak section of the Hungarian Communist central committee
1919Chairman of the Revolutionary Governing Council of the Slovak Soviet Republic
1922–1941Moved to the Soviet Union; International Workers’ Aid
Latvia's prime minister in the war of independence, later dictator after the 1934 coup
On the day of the occupation his radio address ordered no resistance: "I will remain in my place and you remain in yours."
Prime minister of Latvia's provisional government from November 1918, he survived the Soviet army, a German coup and Bermondt's army in turn and led the Riga peace and land reform of 1920. He set up a dictatorship by coup in 1934 and, deported by the Soviets in 1940, died in prison in 1942.
Career timeline
1918.11First prime minister of Latvia's provisional government
1920Led the Riga peace treaty and land reform
1918–1934Farmers' Union leader; prime minister and foreign minister several times
1934.05Bloodless coup with army and Aizsargi backing
1936.04Also state president, styled himself leader of the people
1939.10Signed treaty allowing Soviet bases
1940.07Forced from office and deported after Soviet occupation
Co-founder of Bulgarian communism, from the Comintern to head of state
On 22 September 1923, Kolarov and Dimitrov launched the anti-fascist armed uprising. Crushed, they led the survivors across the Yugoslav border — sentenced to death in absentia, beginning 22 years of exile.
Co-founder of the Bulgarian Communist Party and Comintern General Secretary (1922–24). He personally directed the failed September 1923 uprising, spent 22 years in Soviet exile as the Krestintern's agrarian theorist, then returned to lead Bulgaria's Stalinization as head of state and prime minister.
Career timeline
1897Joined Bulgarian Workers' Social Democratic Party
1904–1919Head of Tesniak organization, Plovdiv
1905–1923Member of the Central Committee
1913–1923Member of the National Assembly
1919–1923Secretary of the CC, Bulgarian Communist Party
1922–1924General Secretary, ECCI (Comintern)
1923Co-leader of the September anti-fascist uprising
From syndicalism through the Comintern to the Fourth International: a French internationalist across a century of revolution
Lenin described Rosmer as "a man who knows how to keep his mouth shut in five or six languages." — quoted in Philippe Robrieux's internal history of the French Communist Party
American-born French revolutionary syndicalist and a key figure in the Comintern leadership. With Pierre Monatte he published La Vie ouvrière and organised anti-war internationalism; he spent seventeen months in Moscow helping found the Red International of Labour Unions (Profintern). A Political Bureau member of the French Communist Party, he was expelled in 1924 for defending Trotsky, thereafter committing to the Left Opposition and Trotskyism. In 1938 he hosted the founding conference of the Fourth International at his home in Périgny. In his later years he signed the Manifesto of 121 against the Algerian War and wrote the classic memoir Lenin's Moscow.
Career timeline
1909–1914Co-editor of the CGT journal *La Vie ouvrière* with Pierre Monatte; leading figure in revolutionary syndicalism
1915–1918Organised French participation in the Zimmerwald Conference; sustained anti-war activity throughout WWI as an internationalist
1919–1920Active in the Committee for Adhesion to the Third International; sent to Moscow, elected to the ECCI during a seventeen-month stay
1921Helped found the Red International of Labour Unions (Profintern) at its inaugural congress; served on the provisional council with Lozovsky and Tom Mann
1922–1924Political Bureau member of the French Communist Party and general secretary of *L'Humanité*; core leader of the party's Left current
1924.10Expelled from the PCF alongside Boris Souvarine and Pierre Monatte for opposing the anti-Trotsky campaign
1929–1931Co-founded the Communist League, France's first Trotskyist organisation; resigned in 1931 over tactical differences
1938.09Hosted the founding conference of the Fourth International at his home in Périgny, held clandestinely under threat of GPU assassinations
1939Visited Trotsky in Mexico; served on the Dewey Commission and acted as guardian to Trotsky's grandson Sieva
1940–1947Stranded in the United States by WWII; returned to France in 1947
1953Published *Lenin's Moscow* (*Moscou sous Lénine*), with a preface by Albert Camus
1960Signed the Manifesto of 121, supporting those who refused to fight in the Algerian War
A militarist leader of Japan's Imperial Way faction
When young naval officers assassinated Prime Minister Inukai in the 1932 May 15 Incident, War Minister Araki praised the killers as 'irrepressible patriots.'
Sadao Araki was a general of the Imperial Japanese Army and a leading figure of the Imperial Way faction, advocating a militarism that joined emperor-centered national reconstruction to external expansion. As Army Minister after the 1931 Manchurian Incident, he helped consolidate the Kwantung Army's fait accompli into state policy and supported the Northern Expansion Doctrine aimed at the Soviet Far East. Yet the young officers he had cultivated escaped his control and erupted in the February 26 Incident, after which he left active service. Convicted of Class A war crimes at the postwar International Military Tribunal for the Far East, he received a life sentence and was released in 1955.
Career timeline
1897Graduated from Army Academy and commissioned
1907Graduated first in class from Army Staff College
1915–1918Military observer with Russian forces; took part in Siberian Intervention
1924–1925Provost Marshal General
1928–1930Commandant of the Army Staff College
1931–1934Army Minister; advanced consolidation of the Kwantung Army's occupation of Manchuria and recognition of Manchukuo
1938–1939Education Minister; promoted Imperial Way education and wartime mobilization
1946–1955Convicted at the IMTFE, imprisoned, and released
Commander of the West Russian Volunteer Army who led German Freikorps against Riga
Refusing Yudenich's order to join the Narva front, in October 1919 he proclaimed himself 'representative of Russian state power' and marched on Riga.
A Russian cavalry officer who styled himself 'Prince Avalov', he gathered tens of thousands of German Freikorps men who refused to leave Latvia into the West Russian Volunteer Army and attacked Riga in October 1919, only to be repelled. In exile he led a Russian fascist organization in Berlin and died in New York in 1973.
Career timeline
1901Enlisted as kapellmeister in the 1st Argun Regiment
1904–1905Fought in the Russo-Japanese War; awarded the Cross of St George
1918Head of recruitment and counterintelligence, Southern Army, Kiev
1919.04Formed a volunteer detachment at the Salzvedel POW camp
1919.07Formed the Count Keller detachment at Mitava
1919.09Proclaimed himself CinC of the West Russian Volunteer Army; marched on Riga in October
1925Published memoirs 'In the Struggle against Bolshevism'
1933Founded the Russian National-Socialist Movement (ROND)
Professional officer who as chief of staff of the Hungarian Red Army directed the northern campaign of 1919
Born in Újpest into a German-origin Evangelical family of intellectuals, he graduated from the Ludovika Academy in 1896, studied at the War Academy in Vienna and in 1913 became its first professor from the Hungarian army. In January 1919 he joined the Social Democratic Party and as state secretary was put in charge of army organisation. Under the Soviet Republic he became chief of staff of the Red Army on 21 April, won an important victory near Miskolc and led the northern campaign, but resigned on 3 July in protest at the acceptance of the Clemenceau note and the order to withdraw. Arrested after the fall, he was sentenced to three years for treason in 1920, and from 1925 he was a member of the illegal Communist Party. He died in 1927 and was posthumously promoted to colonel general in 1945.
Career timeline
1896Graduated from the Ludovika Academy
1913Professor at the War Academy in Vienna
1919Joined the Social Democrats; state secretary for army organisation
