After the Soviet invasion of Manchuria in August 1945, he ordered the Kwantung Army to surrender.
Otozō Yamada was a Japanese Imperial Army general who served from the Russo-Japanese War to the end of the Second World War, building his career in command, military administration, and training. As commander of the Kwantung Army from 1944, he recognized that troops and equipment had been stripped for the Pacific war, yet hastily organized formations collapsed rapidly when the Soviet Union invaded Manchuria. Taken into Soviet custody after Japan's surrender, he was sentenced to twenty-five years at the Khabarovsk war-crimes trial over responsibility for bacteriological warfare and returned to Japan in 1956.
Career timeline
1903Graduated from the Army Academy, cavalry officer
1912Graduated from the Army Staff College
1934–1937Director of the General Staff's General Affairs Bureau, commandant of the Army Academy
1937–1939Commander of the 12th Division, 3rd Army, and Central China Expeditionary Army
1939–1944Inspector-General of Military Training, member of the Supreme War Council
1944–1945Commander-in-chief of the Kwantung Army, ambassador to Manchukuo
1949–1950Defendant at the Khabarovsk war-crimes trial, sentenced to 25 years
The Social Democratic realist who faced Stalin as Finland's Winter War foreign minister, rising from the cooperative movement
At the final meeting on 9 November 1939, when Finland refused even the reduced demands, 'the eyes of our opposite numbers opened wide.' Stalin asked: 'You don't even offer Ino?'
The politician who rebuilt Finland's Social Democratic Party from the ashes of the 1918 civil war into a parliamentary-democratic force. He became prime minister of Finland's first leftist government in 1926, and during the Moscow negotiations on the eve of the Winter War he joined Paasikivi at the table, urging Helsinki to accept a territorial exchange. It was Tanner who later recorded that when Finland rejected even the reduced Soviet demands at the final meeting of 9 November 1939, Stalin's and Molotov's 'eyes opened wide.' After the war he served a five-and-a-half-year prison sentence under Soviet pressure, but returned to parliament and led the party into the early 1960s.
Career timeline
1907Member of Parliament, SDP
1917Senator for Finance
1926–1927Prime Minister
1927–1945President, International Co-operative Alliance
KPD chairman who called off a revolution; co-founder of the International Right Opposition
At the Chemnitz conference on 21 October 1923, Brandler saw the left-wing Social Democrats walk out and abruptly called off the planned insurrection. Word never reached Hamburg in time — workers there rose in isolation and were crushed within 24 hours.
Chairman of the German Communist Party (KPD) who led the party through the 1921 March Action and the 1923 'German October' uprising plan, which he ultimately called off, judging that revolutionary conditions were not ripe. Held responsible by the Comintern, he was summoned to Moscow and sidelined. After opposing Ernst Thälmann's leadership, he was expelled from the KPD in 1929 and co-founded the Communist Party Opposition (KPO) with August Thalheimer, becoming a central figure of the International Right Opposition. Following the Nazi seizure of power he lived in exile in France and Cuba, returning to West Germany in 1949 where he led the Gruppe Arbeiterpolitik, maintaining an independent communist line to the end of his life.
Career timeline
1897–1901Began trade union activity as a bricklayer; joined the SPD
1914–1916Anti-war agitation; founding member of the Spartacus League; arrested and deported
1918.12Founding member of the KPD; elected to the Central Committee
1921–1924KPD Chairman; led March Action and 1923 'German October,' summoned to Moscow after failure
1924–1928Comintern and Profintern work; exiled to Kazakhstan; worked at VSNKh in Moscow
1929Expelled from KPD; co-founded KPO with Thalheimer; built the International Right Opposition
1933–1948Exile in France and Cuba; advocated an anti-fascist united front
1949–1956Returned to West Germany; founded and led Gruppe Arbeiterpolitik
Interior commissar of Soviet Lithuania, a Lithuanian communist leader killed in the Great Terror
He urged that Lithuania remain an independent state, yet imagined that independence as socialist.
A Lithuanian communist leader, he was commissar for internal affairs of Soviet Lithuania and Litbel in 1918 and 1919. In exile he worked in the Comintern and wrote the history of the Lithuanian labour movement; arrested in 1938, he was shot in 1940.
Career timeline
1906Joined the Lithuanian Social Democratic Party (Central Committee member from 1907)
1909Arrested and sentenced to four years' katorga, later exiled to the Yenisei province
1917Deputy commissar for Lithuanian affairs in Petrograd, editor of Tiesa
1918–1919Commissar for internal affairs of the first Soviet Lithuanian government
1920Secretary of the Lithuanian CP's Foreign Bureau (Comintern executive representative from 1921)
1926–1935Chairman of the Comintern International Control Commission
The only four-term president, who carried America through depression and war and spent his last strength at Yalta
Returning from Yalta, Roosevelt addressed Congress on March 1, 1945 seated — the first time he publicly conceded to the disability he had hidden all his public life.
Roosevelt was the 32nd president of the United States, the only one elected to four terms, who led the country through the Great Depression and the Second World War. His New Deal redefined the role of the federal government, and after Pearl Harbor he drove the Allied war effort under a Europe-first strategy. At the Yalta Conference in February 1945, already gravely weakened by congestive heart failure and hypertension, he staked his personal diplomacy with Stalin on two overriding goals: Soviet entry into the Pacific war and the founding of the United Nations. He died of a cerebral hemorrhage two months later, and his Yalta agreements (praised for securing the UN and criticized for conceding Eastern Europe) remained a flashpoint of Cold War historiography.
Career timeline
1882Born into the wealthy Roosevelt and Delano families in Hyde Park, New York
1913–1920Assistant Secretary of the Navy, drove naval expansion during the First World War
1921Diagnosed with polio, permanently paralyzed from the waist down
1929–1932Governor of New York, pioneered unemployment relief during the Depression
1933–194532nd president, led the New Deal and the US war effort
1943.11Met Stalin for the first time at the Tehran Conference
1945.02.04–11Yalta Conference: secured Soviet entry into the Pacific war and the UN Security Council framework
1945.04.12Died of a cerebral hemorrhage at Warm Springs, Georgia
Russian anarchist intellectual who theorized anarchist synthesis and chronicled the revolution the Bolsheviks suppressed
In Golos Truda, 1917: 'Once their power has been consolidated and legalized, the Bolsheviks… will start running the life of the country and of the people from the top. They will develop an authoritarian political and state apparatus that will crush all opposition with an iron fist.'
Russian anarchist intellectual and leading theorist of the Makhnovshchina. Editor of Golos Truda in Petrograd, co-founder of the Nabat Confederation in Ukraine, and chairman of the Makhnovist Military Revolutionary Council, he developed the theory of anarchist synthesis to unite communist, individualist, and syndicalist anarchists. After exile from Soviet Russia in 1922, he wrote The Unknown Revolution, the definitive anarchist history of 1917–1921, and opposed the Platformist centralization pushed by his comrade Makhno.
Career timeline
1904Drops out of St. Petersburg University law faculty; joins Socialist Revolutionary Party; organizes workers' study groups
1905Participates in Bloody Sunday march and helps form the St. Petersburg Soviet; imprisoned at Peter and Paul Fortress
1907Arrested by Okhrana, deported to Siberia; escapes and flees to France
1911Becomes anarchist under Apollon Karelin's influence; joins Brotherhood of Free Communists in Paris
1915–1916Flees anti-war persecution in France to USA; edits Golos Truda in New York
1917Returns to Petrograd after February Revolution; relaunches Golos Truda as leading anarcho-syndicalist organ
1918–1920Co-founds Nabat Confederation in Ukraine; chairs Makhnovist Military Revolutionary Council; arrested twice by Cheka
1922Exiled from Soviet Russia after hunger strike and Profintern delegate intervention
1924–1939Moves to Paris at Sébastien Faure's invitation; contributes to Anarchist Encyclopedia; writes for anarchist periodicals in five languages
1940Completes The Unknown Revolution in Marseille while living in poverty
1945Dies of tuberculosis in Paris; buried at Père Lachaise near Nestor Makhno
The behind-the-scenes organizer who wove international anarcho-syndicalism from Amsterdam 1907 to the IWMA
February 1921. Behind Kropotkin's coffin, 20,000 anarchists filled Moscow's streets — the last anarchist demonstration permitted in Soviet Russia. Schapiro and Berkman had organized the funeral commission.
The key linchpin of international anarcho-syndicalism. As secretary of the Amsterdam International, he built a cross-continental network; during the Revolution he worked within the Bolshevik state while maintaining his anarchist critique. Expelled in 1922, he co-founded the IWMA in Berlin.
Career timeline
1901–1907Active in London's Jewish anarchist movement; Arbeter Fraynd group member; runs Jubilee Street Club
1907Delegate to Amsterdam International Anarchist Congress; elected International Bureau secretary, edits its Bulletin
1915Signs International Anarchist Manifesto on the War; breaks with Kropotkin's pro-Allied position
1917–1920Returns to Russia; Golos Truda editor; works for Commissariats of Jewish Affairs and Foreign Affairs
1921Organizes Kropotkin's funeral; co-authors The Russian Revolution and the Communist Party; negotiates prisoner release at RILU congress
1922Arrested in Moscow; freed by international protest campaign and permanently expelled from Soviet Union
1922–1932Co-founds IWMA in Berlin, secretariat secretary; publishes Rabochii Put' for clandestine distribution in Russia
1932–1939Mediates CNT-FAI conflict in Barcelona; edits La Voix du Travail in France; emigrates to New York
1945–1946Edits New Trends journal in New York; dies of heart failure
The Conducător who took Romania into the Axis war against the Soviet Union and ordered the killings in Transnistria, executed at Jilava in 1946
On the afternoon of 23 August 1944, summoned to the palace, Antonescu refused the king's demand for an immediate armistice; Michael gave the prearranged signal and the guards arrested him. That night the king's radio address announced the armistice, and the Romanian army turned its guns on the Germans.
A cavalry officer born into a military family in Pitești, he helped plan the defence of Mărășești as a staff officer in the First World War, served as military attaché in Paris and London and was chief of the general staff in 1933–34. Defence minister in the Goga government of 1937–38, he fell out with Carol II and was confined to the Bistrița monastery in 1940. When the loss of Bessarabia and Northern Transylvania in the summer of 1940 shook the monarchy, he became prime minister with full powers on 4 September, forced Carol II to abdicate two days later and styled himself Conducător, founding the National Legionary State with the Iron Guard before crushing the Legionary rebellion by force in January 1941. He joined the Tripartite Pact in November 1940 and invaded the Soviet Union alongside Germany in June 1941, recovering Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina and occupying Transnistria beyond the Dniester. Through the Iași pogrom, the Odessa massacre and the deportations to Transnistria, between 280,000 and 380,000 Jews and more than 10,000 Roma died under Romanian jurisdiction, the Wiesel Commission concluded in 2004. After losing two armies at Stalingrad he sought a way out of the war, but on 23 August 1944 King Michael had him arrested and handed to the Soviets; sentenced to death by the Bucharest People's Tribunal in May 1946, he was shot at Jilava on 1 June.
Career timeline
1916–1918Staff officer in the First World War
1933–1934Chief of the General Staff
1937–1938Minister of Defence
1940Prime minister with full powers; Carol II deposed; title of Conducător
German general who headed the Wehrmacht High Command and was complicit in Nazi war crimes.
As head of the Wehrmacht High Command, he signed criminal orders and bore responsibility for Nazi mass murder and the conduct of the war.
Keitel became head of the Wehrmacht High Command (OKW) in 1938 and served under Hitler's supreme command as an executor of policy. He signed orders and decrees that violated international law, including one shielding German crimes in the East from prosecution, the Commissar Order requiring the summary execution of Soviet political officers, and the Night and Fog Decree. As OKW chief, he was also responsible for cooperation between the Einsatzgruppen and the military in mass murder of civilians in the Soviet Union, and for the brutal treatment of Soviet prisoners of war. The International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg convicted him on all four counts; he was hanged in 1946.
Career timeline
1901Joined the Prussian army as an artillery officer.
1938Appointed head of the Wehrmacht High Command (OKW).
1945Signed the German surrender document in May.
1946Convicted by the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg and hanged.
Eastern Front commander of the Turkish War of Independence who invaded Armenia in 1920 and imposed the Treaty of Alexandropol
Born in Istanbul in 1882, he graduated at the top of his class from the Ottoman Military College and fought at Gallipoli, at Kut and on the Caucasus front in the First World War. Joining Mustafa Kemal’s national movement, he commanded the Eastern Front in the War of Independence. He invaded Armenia in September 1920 and took Kars and Alexandropol; during the campaign his army displaced and massacred tens of thousands of Armenian civilians. He signed the Treaty of Alexandropol in December and the Treaty of Kars in 1921. In 1924 he founded the Progressive Republican Party, the first opposition party, which was closed; elected speaker of the Grand National Assembly in 1946, he died in office in 1948.
Career timeline
1915Commander of the 14th Division at Gallipoli
1918Commander of the 15th Army Corps, Erzurum
1920Invasion of Armenia; signed the Treaty of Alexandropol
1921Signed the Treaty of Kars
1924–1925Founder and leader of the Progressive Republican Party
Comintern
Communism
1882–1949
○ Natural causes; some details unconfirmed
From Leipzig defendant to Comintern General Secretary
"I am defending myself, an accused Communist. I am defending my political honor, my honor as a revolutionary. I am defending my Communist ideology, my ideals." Spoken in the Leipzig courtroom in 1933, the words were meant to defend the content and significance of his whole life.
A printer and trade unionist who led the failed 1923 uprising, he became an international symbol by defying the Nazis at the Leipzig Reichstag fire trial. Elected Comintern General Secretary in 1935, after the 7th World Congress, he headed the CPSU Central Committee's International Information Department after the Comintern was dissolved in 1943. During the Great Purge he took part in the destruction of the Polish Communist Party's leadership and in reprisals against old Bulgarian comrades, while also intervening to save some. He returned to Bulgaria in 1945 and became Prime Minister the next year; his Bulgarian-Yugoslav federation plans were undone by the Stalin-Tito split. He died near Moscow in 1949.
The army chief caught between imperial command and surrender
On September 2, 1945, he signed the surrender instrument on behalf of Imperial General Headquarters.
Yoshijirō Umezu was a senior general of Imperial Japan who helped direct military rule and continental policy in China and Manchuria. As Army Chief of Staff from 1944, he argued for continuing the war, yet refused to support a military coup and enforced the emperor’s surrender order. On September 2, 1945, he signed the instrument of surrender for Imperial General Headquarters, then received a life sentence at the International Military Tribunal for the Far East for responsibility in waging aggressive war and died in prison.
Career timeline
1904Second lieutenant, 1st Infantry Regiment
1919–1921Military attaché in Switzerland
1934–1935Commander, China Garrison Army
1939–1944Commander and commander-in-chief, Kwantung Army
1944–1945Chief of the Imperial Japanese Army General Staff
1945Signed the surrender instrument for Imperial General Headquarters
1948–1949Life imprisonment at the IMTFE, died in custody
Before the flank northwest of Stalingrad collapsed, Dumitrescu requested German reinforcements.
Petre Dumitrescu was a career officer of the Kingdom of Romania who commanded the Romanian Third Army on the Eastern Front during the Second World War. Alongside German forces, he led Romanian operations in Bukovina, Ukraine, Crimea, and the Caucasus as Romania pursued the war against the Soviet Union. In November 1942, the Third Army's exposed flank northwest of Stalingrad came under the Soviet Uranus offensive; Dumitrescu requested support, but his formation suffered catastrophic losses and retreated. Charged with war crimes after the war, he was acquitted in 1946 for lack of sufficient evidence.
Career timeline
1901–1903Studied at the School of Artillery and Engineers; commissioned as a second lieutenant
1911–1913Studied at the Superior War School
1930–1932Military attaché to France
1935–1937Vice Chief of the General Staff
1940–1941Commander of the Romanian First Army
1941–1944Commander of the Romanian Third Army
1942Commanded the Third Army during the Battle of Stalingrad
1944Retired and investigated for alleged war crimes
A diplomat who sought peace after failing to prevent war
In July 1945, he argued that the Potsdam Declaration could serve as the basis for peace, but that Japan should first negotiate with the Soviet Union.
Shigenori Tōgō was a Japanese career diplomat who served as foreign minister at both the opening and the end of the Pacific War. He joined efforts to avoid war with the United States but failed to prevent the attack, and was later tried for the diplomatic responsibility of the wartime government. In 1945 he sought a conditional peace through Soviet mediation while advocating acceptance of the Potsdam Declaration, a course that combined an urgent drive to end the war with a grave misreading of Soviet intentions. The International Military Tribunal for the Far East sentenced him to twenty years in prison.
Career timeline
1912Entered the Ministry of Foreign Affairs after passing the diplomatic and consular examination
1933–1935Director of the Bureau of North American and European Affairs
1937–1938Ambassador to Germany
1938–1940Ambassador to the Soviet Union, handling border and neutrality negotiations
1941–1942Foreign Minister and Minister of Colonial Affairs in the Tōjō cabinet
1945Foreign Minister and Minister for Greater East Asia in the Suzuki cabinet, pressing acceptance of the Potsdam Declaration
1948Sentenced to twenty years by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East
Lithuanian writer who led the “People’s Government” of 1940 and resigned after Molotov told him the Baltic states would join the USSR
Born to a peasant family in the village of Subartonys in the Dzūkija region, he took his pen name from Krėvė, the name villagers gave his family. He received a doctorate in philology at Lviv in 1908, taught in Baku and in 1919 became Lithuania’s consul in Azerbaijan. From 1922 he taught Slavic literature at the University of Lithuania, and he is counted a classic of Lithuanian literature. After the Soviet occupation of June 1940 he joined the “People’s Government” as foreign minister and acting prime minister, but on the night of 1 July Molotov told him in Moscow that all the Baltic states had to join the Soviet Union; he returned and resigned. In 1941 he became the first president of the Lithuanian SSR Academy of Sciences. In July 1944 he left for Austria before the Soviets returned, and from 1947 he taught at the University of Pennsylvania until his death in 1954.
Career timeline
1908Doctorate in philology, University of Lviv
1919Lithuanian consul in Azerbaijan
1922Professor of Slavic literatures, University of Lithuania
1940Foreign minister and acting prime minister of the People’s Government
Left communist who broke from her mother's WSPU to stand with East End working women, buried among Ethiopian patriots
"The Bolsheviks have begun to desert communism." In her 1922 Open Letter to Lenin, Pankhurst broke with Moscow. Expelled from the CPGB for refusing to surrender the Workers' Dreadnought, she chose free debate over party discipline.
British suffragette, left communist and anti-colonial activist. Breaking from her mother Emmeline's WSPU to organise working-class women in the East End, she debated Lenin and turned council communist before devoting her final decades to Ethiopia's anti-fascist struggle.
Career timeline
1882Born in Manchester to Emmeline and Richard Pankhurst
1903–1914Full-time WSPU organiser — designed logo and banners, witnessed Black Friday 1910, organised nationwide suffrage campaign
1914–1918Founded ELFS, launched Woman's Dreadnought — anti-war and anti-conscription agitation, rent strikes and cost-price canteens
1918–1920Founded WSF, published Workers' Dreadnought — attended 2nd Comintern Congress, debated Lenin directly
1921–1924Expelled from CPGB; published Open Letter to Lenin — turned council communist, formed Communist Workers' Party
1935–1956Founded and edited New Times and Ethiopia News — opposed fascist invasion, shaped pan-African and anti-colonial opinion
1956–1960Moved to Ethiopia — adviser to Haile Selassie, fundraised for first teaching hospital, wrote Ethiopia: A Cultural History
1960Died aged 78 in Addis Ababa — Ethiopian state funeral, buried among patriots at Holy Trinity Cathedral
The soldier-premier caught between a coup and defeat
In November 1918, reporting from Zagreb, Simović wrote that the overwhelming majority were 'taken with the idea of Yugoslav solidarity', and he blocked Italy's attempt to occupy Ljubljana by having the Serb Army enter the city first.
Dušan Simović was a Royal Yugoslav air force general who led the 27 March 1941 coup and became prime minister amid crowds cheering the overthrow of the pact with Germany. Yet in power he refused to formally repudiate the Tripartite Pact, hoping to avert a German invasion, and after the German attack he headed the London government-in-exile until 1942.
Career timeline
1900Graduated from the Belgrade Military Academy, commissioned second lieutenant of artillery
1912–1918Served in the Balkan Wars and First World War; commanded the 7th Infantry Regiment on the Salonika Front
1918Serbian government and Supreme Command delegate to the National Council of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs in Zagreb
1936–1938Commander of the Royal Yugoslav Air Force
1938–1940Chief of the General Staff of the Royal Yugoslav Army; resigned after advocating resistance to a German attack
1941.03–1942.01Prime Minister and Chief of the General Staff after the 27 March coup
1941–1942Head of the Yugoslav government-in-exile in London
1945–1946Returned to Belgrade and testified at Mihailović's trial
“If Chicago gangsters can have bulletproof glass in their cars, I can't see any reason why my pilots cannot have the same.”
Hugh Dowding was a British air officer who recognized early that fighter defence required more than aircraft alone. At RAF Fighter Command he integrated radar, observers, raid plotting, and radio control into a system that enabled a smaller force to respond to German attacks. His careful husbanding of pilots and reserves sustained Britain’s defence during the Battle of Britain, but conflicts over tactics and night defence contributed to his replacement soon afterward.
Career timeline
1900Officer, Royal Garrison Artillery
1914Pilot and flight commander, Royal Flying Corps
1915Commanding officer, No. 16 Squadron, Royal Flying Corps
1929Air Officer Commanding, Fighting Area, Air Defence of Great Britain
1930Air Member for Supply and Research, Air Council
1936Air Officer Commanding, RAF Fighter Command
1940Commanded Fighter Command during the Battle of Britain
The last Japanese ambassador to the USSR, who received Molotov's declaration of war
We must quickly end this reality of continuing resistance through inertia, and stop it one step short of national destruction.
A Japanese diplomat and statesman. After serving as ambassador to Belgium, France, and Italy, he became foreign minister in 1937 but resigned three months later when his policy of conciliation collided with the army's hard line on China. Posted to Moscow as ambassador in 1942, he spent the war's final years warning Tokyo by cable that Soviet mediation was a fantasy and that only prompt surrender could save Japan. On 8 August 1945, in the Kremlin, Vyacheslav Molotov handed him the Soviet declaration of war. After the war he was elected to the House of Councillors, serving as its president from 1949 to 1953.
Career timeline
1905Entered the Foreign Ministry
1917–1919Consul-General in Harbin
1927–1930Japanese representative to the League of Nations
A British diplomat whose judgments narrowed as the Moscow negotiations closed in
Seeds judged Molotov to possess “rather foolish cunning of the type of the peasant.”
William Seeds was a British diplomat who served in missions across Europe and the Americas before becoming ambassador in Moscow in 1939. He represented Britain in the negotiations for a British-French-Soviet mutual-assistance treaty, as Western hesitation collided with Soviet demands for binding security guarantees. His dismissive reports on Vyacheslav Molotov after Maxim Litvinov's removal reveal both a contemporary observer's insight and the limits of British diplomacy as the talks failed.
Career timeline
1904–1907British diplomatic mission, Washington
1908–1910British Legation, Peking
1913–1919Chargé d'affaires and consul general, Lisbon
1928–1930British High Commissioner for the Rhineland
1930–1935British ambassador to Brazil
1939–1940British ambassador to the Soviet Union, leading the Moscow triple-alliance negotiations
Communist who led the Bavarian Soviet Republic in 1919 and was shot after its fall
On 13 April 1919, Leviné became chair of Munich’s Executive Board, calling for a Red Army and the overcoming of capitalism. After the Soviet Republic was suppressed, he was executed in June.
Born to a Jewish merchant family in St Petersburg, he moved to Germany with his mother after his father’s death and studied at Heidelberg. He returned to Russia to take part in the revolution of 1905 and was imprisoned. In Germany he worked in the USPD and the Spartacus League, and in 1919 the KPD sent him to Munich. When the KPD replaced Toller’s council government on 13 April he became its leader, raising a Red Army and putting factories under workers’ control. Captured after Munich fell in May, he was sentenced to death by a court martial and shot in Stadelheim prison on 5 June.
Career timeline
1905Returned to Russia to take part in the revolution and was exiled to Siberia.
1918–1919Helped found the Spartacus League in Berlin and worked in the Communist Party of Germany (KPD).
1919Sent by the KPD to Munich to organize its local branch and help establish the council republic, he became chair of its Executive Board on 13 April and led the republic.
1919Captured after the republic’s suppression, he was sentenced to death and shot at Stadelheim Prison on 5 June.
From Rosa Luxemburg's lawyer to KPD leader, his 'anti-putschism' took on Comintern adventurism
Right after the March Action of 1921 he wrote: 'When I conceived this pamphlet, the Communist Party had 500,000 members in Germany. Eight days later when I wrote it, the party was shaken to its foundations and its very existence called into question. The fallen, sacrificed to this Bakuninist madness, cry out: Never again!'
A socialist who rose from Rosa Luxemburg's lawyer to chairman of the German Communist Party (KPD). Expelled for his pamphlet Unser Weg, which condemned the 1921 March Action as 'Bakuninist putschism,' he returned via the USPD to lead the SPD left. Trotsky called him 'the only man in Germany who had a head to lose.'
Career timeline
1906Joined the SPD; began law practice in Frankfurt
1913Defended Rosa Luxemburg in court on charges of inciting soldiers to disobedience
1915–1918Co-founded the Spartacus League; Zimmerwald Left bureau; edited Spartakusbriefe
1918.12Introduced the 'National Assembly' debate at the KPD founding congress
1919.03–1921.02KPD chairman — rebuilt the party after the murders of Luxemburg, Liebknecht, and Jogiches
1920Led unification with the USPD left, turning the KPD into a mass party; championed the 'Open Letter' tactic
1921Expelled from the KPD for Unser Weg: Wider den Putschismus, his critique of the March Action
1922Returned to the SPD via the USPD; published Luxemburg's suppressed manuscript The Russian Revolution
1924–1930SPD Reichstag deputy; fought to expose the Liebknecht–Luxemburg murders and opposed the rising Nazi movement
Historian who headed the government of the Belarusian People’s Republic in exile, moved to Soviet Byelorussia and was executed
Born into a landless noble family in the Disna district of the Vilna Governorate in 1883, he had almost no formal schooling. He was active in the Hramada in 1906–1908, was editorial secretary of Nasha Niva and from 1915 openly advocated independence from both Russia and Poland. In 1918 he joined the Rada as a delegate of the Belarusian Council of Vilnius, and in 1919 he led the Belarusian Socialist Revolutionaries. Appointed prime minister in December 1919, he was soon arrested by the Polish authorities; released the following year, he went to Riga and toured European capitals seeking recognition until he stepped down in 1923. In 1927 he moved to Soviet Byelorussia, where he became director of the State Museum and a member of the Academy of Sciences, but he was arrested in 1930, exiled to Saratov and shot in 1938.
Career timeline
1909Editorial secretary of Nasha Niva
1918Member of the Rada for the Belarusian Council of Vilnius
1918Head of the Belarusian representation in Lithuania
1919–1923Prime minister of the Belarusian People’s Republic
1927–1930Director of the Belarusian State Museum
1928Academician of the Belarusian Academy of Sciences
Anti-Soviet partisan commander who moved from Estonia to Belarus, changing camps as he went
Pilsudski judged him 'a bandit, but not only a bandit: today a Russian, tomorrow a Pole, the day after a Belarusian.'
He went from the Red Army to the Whites, took Pskov in 1919, broke with Yudenich to side with Estonia and in 1920 moved to Poland for a Belarusian expedition. His troops' anti-Jewish violence is on record; he was killed in occupied Warsaw in 1940.
Career timeline
1914Mobilized into the tsarist army; awarded the George Cross and St George medal
1918Joined the Red Army; formed the Luga cavalry regiment with Trotsky's sanction
1918.11Defected to the Whites with about 400 men
1919Colonel then major-general; took Pskov in the Yudenich offensive
1920.01Arrested Yudenich and sided with Estonia
1920In Polish service took Pinsk and formed the Russian People's Volunteer Army
1920.11Invaded Soviet Belarus and proclaimed himself head of a Belarusian state; after defeat fled to Poland
