People of the Revolution and the USSR

Russian White movement Fascists and Nazis 1877–1973 ○ Died

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.

Hungary Fascists and Nazis 1886–1936 ○ Cancer

Right-radical officer who organised the Szeged National Army and as prime minister in 1932–1936 steered Hungary towards Italy and Germany

Born in Murga, Tolna County, the son of the village schoolmaster, he served as an Austro-Hungarian officer in the First World War. In Szeged in 1919 he founded the paramilitary MOVE and played a leading role in organising Horthy’s National Army, and in 1921 he led the armed opposition to King Charles’s return. He became defence minister in Bethlen’s government in 1929 and prime minister in 1932. He aligned with Mussolini, signing the Rome Protocols in 1934, and as the first foreign head of government to visit Hitler concluded a trade agreement with Germany. He died of illness in Munich in 1936.

Nazi party and regime Fascists and Nazis 1888–1971 ✕ Traffic accident

Commander of the Waffen-SS IX Mountain Corps who led the German forces in the siege of Budapest and refused to surrender

He joined the army in 1907 and in the First World War served as a General Staff officer, including with the German military mission in Constantinople. Moving to the police in 1919, he headed Chile’s Carabineros and became inspector general of police schools, then joined the SS and served on Himmler’s staff. He commanded the SS Polizei Division from late 1939 and the VI SS Army Corps (Latvian) from 1943. Appointed commander of the IX SS Mountain Corps in Budapest in December 1944, he led the German forces in the siege from 24 December 1944 to 11 February 1945 and refused all invitations to surrender, setting off a long and bloody siege. Taken prisoner by the Soviets after the failed breakout, he was sentenced in 1949 to 25 years, released in 1955 and killed in a traffic accident at Bielefeld in 1971.

Hungary Fascists and Nazis 1890–1946 ✕ Executed

Hungarian general who directed the Novi Sad massacre, fled to Germany after his conviction and joined the SS

Born Franz Zeidner into a Transylvanian Saxon family, he served as an artillery and staff officer in the Austro-Hungarian army in the First World War, and between the wars changed his surname to the more Magyar-sounding Feketehalmy-Czeydner. In August 1941 he became commander of the Fifth Corps at Szeged. In January 1942 Chief of Staff Szombathelyi sent him against the partisans in Bačka; villagers there were massacred on his orders, and he organised the Novi Sad massacre. Sentenced to fifteen years by a court martial in January 1944, he fled to Vienna with other convicted officers and volunteered for the SS. As deputy defence minister under the Arrow Cross he signed the death warrant of his critic Endre Bajcsy-Zsilinszky. After the war he was handed via Hungary to Yugoslavia and executed in November 1946.

Czechoslovakia Fascists and Nazis 1892–1948 ○ Natural causes

A legion commander who carried battlefield success into White politics

After capturing Yekaterinburg, Gajda set up his headquarters in the very Ipatiev House where the Romanovs had been murdered by the Bolsheviks less than a week earlier.

Radola Gajda was a Czechoslovak Legion commander who rose to prominence in the First World War and the Russian Civil War, later becoming a general and politician in interwar Czechoslovakia. In 1918 he led the Legion's eastern group, seizing the railway from Novonikolaevsk to Irkutsk and pressing the argument for armed struggle over neutrality. He joined Kolchak's White forces, lost his command, and returned home to serve as acting chief of the general staff before leading the National Fascist Community. His military anti-Bolshevism became fascist politics in Czechoslovakia, while during the Nazi occupation he aided resistance networks.

Spain state institutions Fascists and Nazis 1892–1975 ○ Illness

The general who turned the rising into victory and ruled Spain for thirty-six years as Caudillo

The last war communiqué of 1 April 1939, signed in his own hand: “Today, with the Red Army captive and disarmed, the national troops have reached their final military objectives. The war is over.” Thirty-six years of dictatorship began.

A career officer who made his name in the colonial war in Morocco and became the youngest general in Europe at thirty-three. His use of the Army of Africa to crush the Asturian miners in 1934 fixed him in the eyes of the right as the restorer of order, and in July 1936 he joined the rising, flew from the Canaries to Morocco and, with German and Italian transports, ferried the Army of Africa to the mainland. In October he was made commander-in-chief and head of state of the rebel zone, and the Unification Decree of 1937 fused the Falange and the Carlists into a single National Movement under his personal rule. Victory in 1939 was followed by mass execution and imprisonment under the Law of Political Responsibilities, costing tens of thousands of lives. He declared non-belligerence in the Second World War while sending the Blue Division to the Eastern Front, and broke out of postwar isolation with the Pact of Madrid and the Concordat of 1953. The growth that followed the Stabilization Plan of 1959 became another pillar of the regime; he named Juan Carlos his successor in 1969, and with his death in 1975 the regime itself began to come apart.

Nazi party and regime Fascists and Nazis 1893–1946 ✕ Suicide

A Luftwaffe chief who organized Nazi war and plunder

In August 1940, redirecting the air offensive toward London and civilian cities gave the RAF time to recover.

Hermann Göring rose from a First World War fighter ace to a central power-holder in Nazi Germany and commander-in-chief of the Luftwaffe. He helped build dictatorship and the machinery of aggressive war by directing the Prussian police, the creation of the Gestapo, rearmament, and wartime economic mobilization. During the Battle of Britain in 1940, he overestimated the Luftwaffe and was involved in shifting attacks from the RAF's struggling airfields and fighter defences toward British cities, giving Fighter Command time to recover. After the war, the Nuremberg Tribunal condemned him as a major war criminal, and he committed suicide on the eve of his execution.

Nazi party and regime Fascists and Nazis 1895–1945 ✕ Beaten to death

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.

Hungary Fascists and Nazis 1897–1946 ✕ Executed

Arrow Cross leader installed by Germany as 'Leader of the Nation' in 1944

Born a soldier's son in Kassa (now Košice), he served as an officer in the First World War and joined the General Staff in 1925. In the early 1930s he turned to politics as a prophet of 'Hungarism' and the restoration of pre-Trianon borders, left the army in 1935 and founded the Hungarian National Socialist Party in 1937. While imprisoned in 1938 he was proclaimed leader of the Arrow Cross Party, which won 30 seats in the 1939 election. When Germany removed Horthy in October 1944 he became head of state, restarted the deportation of Jews that Horthy had halted, and his militias massacred Jews in Budapest. Captured by American troops in Austria in May 1945, he was sentenced to death by the People's Tribunal and hanged in March 1946.

Nazi party and regime Fascists and Nazis 1903–1979 ○ Natural causes

The SS general who commanded the repression of the Warsaw Uprising

In a report during the Warsaw Uprising, Reinefarth wrote: “We have more prisoners than ammunition to kill them.”

Heinz Reinefarth was a lawyer who joined the Nazi Party and the SS before becoming a commander in Germany's occupation war. During the Warsaw Uprising in 1944, he led a battle group combining combat, police, and security units, playing a central role in the command structure of the 5 August assault on Wola and the mass killing of civilians. Despite Polish demands for his extradition, he escaped prosecution and conviction after the war and served as a mayor and state legislator in West Germany. His career links command responsibility for war crimes with postwar impunity in a single life.

Nazi party and regime Fascists and Nazis 1908–1975 ○ Natural causes

A Nazi commando leader magnified by propaganda

Standing before Mussolini at Gran Sasso, Skorzeny became the face of a victory whose command credit belonged elsewhere.

Born in Vienna, Skorzeny became a Waffen-SS officer who directed sabotage and commando operations for Nazi Germany. In the 1943 Gran Sasso raid, he helped locate Benito Mussolini and led an SS detachment at the landing site, but the operation as a whole was planned and commanded by the airborne officers Harald Mors and Kurt Student. Nazi propaganda presented him as Mussolini's liberator, while he also took part in the overthrow of Hungary's government and the Ardennes deception operation. Acquitted at a postwar war-crimes trial, he later lived in Spain amid far-right networks.