German Social Democratic and Independent Social Democratic politician who headed Berlin police in 1918
“I got my job from the Revolution, and I shall give it up only to the Revolution.”
A trained mechanic, Eichhorn worked for the Social Democratic Party before joining the Independent Social Democratic Party in 1917. After the November Revolution of 1918, he became Berlin police president and pursued a policing policy favorable to left-wing political groups. On 4 January 1919, the Prussian cabinet tried to dismiss him and replace him with Social Democrat Eugen Ernst. Mass demonstrations and a general strike opposed the move, followed by occupations and armed clashes that became the January uprising.
Career timeline
1893Became a full-time Social Democratic Party official and worked as an editor in Dresden
1903–1911Member of the Reichstag for Baden's 9th constituency
1908–1917Head of the Berlin Social Democratic press office
1917Joined the Independent Social Democratic Party
1918–1919Served as Berlin police president
1919–1920Member of the Weimar National Assembly for Berlin
1920–1925Joined the Communist Party of Germany and served in the Reichstag
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.
Career timeline
1907–1919German army officer and General Staff officer
1919Joined the police
1928Chief of the Chilean Carabineros
1936Inspector General of Police schools
1939–1940Commander, SS Polizei Division
1943–1944Commander, VI SS Army Corps (Latvian)
1944–1945Commander, IX SS Mountain Corps; defence of Budapest
1945–1955Soviet prisoner; sentenced to 25 years in 1949
First East German Minister for State Security, purged in 1953 after trying to replace Ulbricht
Born in Gelsenkirchen to a gendarmerie sergeant’s family, he trained as a teacher and was a military leader of the Red Ruhr Army during the Kapp Putsch of 1920. As a GRU agent and Comintern military adviser he co-organised the Guangzhou Uprising in China, and in the Spanish Civil War, as “Gomez”, he led the International Brigades. He returned to Germany in 1947, joined the SED, and in 1950 became the first Minister for State Security and a Politburo member, building up the Stasi. After the uprising of June 1953 he moved to replace Ulbricht with Herrnstadt, but once Ulbricht had Khrushchev’s backing he lost his ministry and all his posts in July and was expelled from the party. He worked as a translator, died in East Berlin in 1958 and was rehabilitated after 1990.
Career timeline
1920Red Ruhr Army leader during the Kapp Putsch
1927–1930Comintern military adviser in China
1936–1938International Brigades commander in Spain (“Gomez”)
1950–1953GDR Minister for State Security; Politburo member
1953Stripped of all posts and expelled from the SED
“The world war… exerted the deepest influence on my entire life. Whatever other factors may have affected me, it was solely because of this war that I became a communist.” — from his 1927 autobiography
A Soviet intelligence officer who worked under cover as a German correspondent in Tokyo. He warned of Operation Barbarossa and confirmed Japan's southward turn, enabling Siberian divisions to be thrown into the Moscow front. Executed in 1944; made a Hero of the Soviet Union in 1964.
Career timeline
1925–1929Comintern, then Red Army intelligence
1930–1933The Shanghai network
1933–1941Tokyo: the correspondent the German embassy trusted
1941.05–06Warns of Barbarossa; ignored
1941.09“Japan will not strike north”, the basis for moving the Siberian divisions
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
Communist who ran an anti-fascist sabotage network before the war and headed the Stasi from 1953 to 1957
Born in Münden in the Province of Hanover, he took part in the sailors’ revolt of 1918, joined the KPD in 1919 and led party military wings; he sat in the Reichstag in 1932–1933. In exile he organised the “Wollweber League” in 1936–1940, which carried out 21 known acts of sabotage against ships of fascist nations, and supplied arms to the Spanish Republicans. Back in Germany in 1946 he ran shipping administration. In July 1953, when Zaisser was removed and the Ministry for State Security was downgraded to a State Secretariat, he became its head, and in November 1955 Minister of State Security again. He clashed with Ulbricht and Honecker and sided with Schirdewan, resigned in 1957, and in 1958 was removed from the Central Committee for “factional activity”. He died in East Berlin in 1967.
Career timeline
1918Took part in the sailors’ revolt
1932–1933KPD Reichstag deputy
1936–1940Organised the Wollweber League sabotage network
SS officer who led Einsatzgruppe A in 1941, instigating the Kaunas pogrom and directing the murder of Baltic Jews
Born into a pastor’s family in Sternenfels, he took a doctorate in law at Tübingen. He joined the Nazi Party and the SS in 1932, headed the Gestapo in Württemberg and then Breslau, and in 1938 became formal head of the Central Agency for Jewish Emigration in Vienna. Given command of Einsatzgruppe A in February 1941, he followed Army Group North into the Baltic states in June. He had Klimaitis start a pogrom in Kaunas and Arājs raise a unit in Riga, staging the killings as the “self-cleansing” of the local population. By the winter of 1941 he reported that Einsatzgruppe A had murdered some 249,420 Jews, and at the end of November he became commander of the Security Police and SD for Ostland. He was fatally wounded by Soviet partisans near Krasnogvardeysk, Russia, in March 1942.
Career timeline
1927Doctorate in law, Tübingen
1932Joined the Nazi Party and the SS
1938Head of the Central Agency for Jewish Emigration, Vienna
1941Commander of Einsatzgruppe A; Security Police commander for Ostland
At Posen in October 1943, he told SS officers that standing firm before 100, 500, or 1,000 corpses and staying 'decent' was 'a glorious chapter that has not and will not be spoken of.'
Heinrich Himmler was a central Nazi leader who expanded the SS and police into a bureaucratic apparatus for racial rule and mass murder. He directed the concentration-camp system, extermination policies, and killing formations in occupied Europe, making him one of the principal perpetrators of the Holocaust and the murder of millions of other victims. During the Warsaw Uprising in 1944, he approved and directed the German reprisal that treated the city and its population as targets for destruction, massacre, and deportation. After attempting unauthorized negotiations with the Western Allies as Germany’s defeat became unavoidable, he was dismissed by Hitler, captured by British forces, and died by suicide in custody.
Career timeline
1923Joined the Nazi Party and took part in the Beer Hall Putsch.
1925Joined the Schutzstaffel, or SS.
1929–1945Led the SS as Reichsführer-SS.
1936–1945Served as Chief of German Police, controlling the police and apparatus of political repression.
1943–1945Served concurrently as Reich Minister of the Interior.
1944Directed the destruction of Warsaw and the massacre and deportation of civilians during the uprising.
1945Was dismissed over unauthorized peace contacts, then captured and died by suicide in custody.
A senior Nazi SS coordinator who became a late-war negotiating envoy
On 8 March 1945, Wolff met Allen Dulles in Switzerland to discuss terms for the surrender of German forces in northern Italy.
Karl Wolff was a senior Nazi SS officer who served as Heinrich Himmler’s chief of staff and stood close to the regime’s central decisions and crimes. As the highest SS and police leader in occupied Italy, he oversaw a system marked by the deportation of Jews, forced labor, and repression of the resistance, responsibilities not erased by his later negotiations. In 1945 he conducted the secret Operation Sunrise talks with OSS chief Allen Dulles in Switzerland, helping secure the early surrender of German forces in northern Italy, though his influence and motives were limited. After the war he was convicted for facilitating mass murder.
Career timeline
1917–1920Officer candidate in the Imperial German Army’s 115th Infantry Regiment, serving on the Western Front
1931Joined the Nazi Party and the SS
1935–1943Chief of the Reichsführer-SS Personal Staff
1943–1944Highest SS and Police Leader in Italy
1944–1945Plenipotentiary General of the German Wehrmacht in Italy
1945German negotiating representative in Operation Sunrise, involved in the surrender in northern Italy
1964–1969Convicted by a Munich court for facilitating the murder of 300,000 Jews and sentenced to 15 years, released in 1969
Editor of Neues Deutschland who helped draft the 1953 New Course, moved against Ulbricht and was purged as a “faction”
Born into a wealthy Jewish family in Gleiwitz, he became a correspondent for the Berliner Tageblatt and an agent of Soviet military intelligence (GRU). Exiled in the Soviet Union from 1939, he edited the newspaper of the National Committee for a Free Germany. Back in Berlin in 1945 he ran the Berliner Zeitung and helped found Neues Deutschland, whose editor always followed Moscow’s line. In June 1953 he and Zaisser set themselves against Ulbricht, and he helped formulate the New Course approved by the Central Committee. After the uprising he proposed a collective leadership, but in July he was removed from the Central Committee for “anti-party factionalism” and in January 1954 expelled from the SED. He worked at the Central Archives in Merseburg, died in 1966 and was rehabilitated only in 1989.
Career timeline
1930Recruited as a GRU agent
1943Editor-in-chief of Freies Deutschland
1945Editor-in-chief of the Berliner Zeitung
1950–1953SED Central Committee member and Politburo candidate
1953Removed from the Central Committee for “anti-party factionalism”
Nazi official who led SS intelligence and police agencies in implementing the Holocaust.
At the 1942 Wannsee Conference, Heydrich coordinated German state agencies for the murder of Europe’s Jews.
Heydrich joined the SS in 1931 and built and led its Security Service (SD); in 1936 he took command of the Security Police, including the Gestapo and criminal police. When the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA) was established in 1939, he became its chief, unifying the Security Police and SD under an agency central to Nazi persecution and mass murder of Jews and political opponents. Appointed acting Reich Protector of Bohemia and Moravia in 1941, he oversaw executions of resistance figures and the ghettoization and deportation of Jews. He chaired the January 1942 Wannsee Conference to coordinate ministries in the murder of European Jews; wounded in an attack by Czech resistance agents in May, he died on June 4.
Career timeline
1931–1942Chief of the SS Security Service (SD)
1936–1942Chief of the Security Police, titled Chief of the Security Police Main Office, 1936–1939
1939–1942Chief of the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA)
1941–1942Acting Reich Protector of Bohemia and Moravia
German communist who drafted the KPD’s 1945 appeal and argued for a “special German road to socialism”
The son of a hosier from Thalheim in Saxony, he joined the KPD in 1926 and attended the International Lenin School in Moscow. After underground work and exile under the Nazis he directed a political school of the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War, and in Moscow ran the “Free Germany” radio station. In 1945 he led the KPD group sent to Saxony and drafted the party’s appeal of 11 June 1945. In 1946 he argued that socialism could be built in Germany without a preceding dictatorship of the proletariat, a “special German road to socialism” he had to recant after Tito’s break with Stalin in 1948. He served as deputy foreign minister and first head of the GDR’s foreign intelligence service, and in 1953 was stripped of all posts for supporting Zaisser. Gravely ill with cancer, he took his own life in 1973.
Career timeline
1926Joined the KPD
1935KPD Central Committee member and Politburo candidate
1945Head of the KPD group in Saxony; drafted the 11 June appeal
SS officer who ran the deportation of Europe’s Jews to the death camps and in 1944 oversaw that of Hungary’s Jews to Auschwitz
Born to a Calvinist family in Solingen, Germany, he grew up in Austria, where the family moved in 1914, and joined the Nazi Party and the SS in 1932. In 1938 he was posted to Vienna to organise Jewish emigration from Austria. Head of RSHA Sub-Department IV B4 from December 1939, he attended the Wannsee Conference in January 1942 and prepared its minutes, after which he and his staff were responsible for deporting Jews to the extermination camps. After Germany occupied Hungary in March 1944 he oversaw the deportation of Hungary’s Jews; by the time the transports stopped in July, 437,000 of its 725,000 Jews had been deported. Captured by US forces after the war, he escaped from a detention camp and reached Argentina in 1950, but in 1960 Israel’s Mossad abducted him; tried in Jerusalem, he was hanged in 1962.
Career timeline
1932Joined the Austrian Nazi Party and the SS
1933–1938Jewish affairs, SS Security Service
1938–1939Central Agency for Jewish Emigration, Vienna
1939–1945Head of RSHA Sub-Department IV B4
1944Oversaw the deportation of Hungary’s Jews
1950–1960In hiding in Argentina
1960–1962Abducted by Mossad, tried in Jerusalem, executed
East Germany's 'Master of Fear': the Stasi chief who ruled state security for 32 years
“All this blithering over to execute or not to execute, for the death penalty or against — all rot, Comrades. Execute! And, when necessary, without a court judgment.” — to senior Stasi officers, 1982
A communist militant from Berlin's Wedding district, Mielke fled to the USSR after the 1931 killing of two Berlin policemen and was trained by the NKVD. After the Spanish Civil War he returned in 1945 to help build the GDR's state security apparatus, leading the Stasi from 1957 to 1989 and expanding it into a 90,000-strong surveillance network. The Stasi controlled all of East German society while training armed groups across the Third World and Western Europe, extending socialist-bloc security architecture. He fell with the regime in 1989 and was convicted after reunification for the 1931 murders.
Career timeline
1925Joined the KPD
1931Fled to USSR after Bülowplatz police murders
1936–1939Served in International Brigades, Spain (Captain)
1945Returned to Berlin, Police Inspector Lichtenberg
1950Deputy Minister of State Security, State Secretary
1957–1989Minister for State Security (Stasi chief)
The Nazi Gestapo chief who made Lyon a center of terror
At his 1987 Lyon trial, he denied the Izieu roundup and said: “I fought the Resistance. It was war.”
Klaus Barbie was an SS and Sicherheitsdienst officer who commanded the Gestapo in occupied Lyon, organizing systematic persecution of the French Resistance and Jews. He arrested and tortured Jean Moulin at Caluire and was responsible for deporting 44 Jewish children and their teachers from Izieu to Auschwitz. After the war, U.S. intelligence used him in anti-communist operations and helped him escape to Bolivia, where he avoided justice for decades before his 1987 Lyon trial and life sentence for crimes against humanity. His case exposes both the continuity of Nazi criminal networks and the impunity produced by Cold War anti-communism.
Career timeline
1935Joined the SS and began service in the Sicherheitsdienst
1940–1941SD service in Amsterdam, targeting Jews and communists
1942Assigned to Dijon for security work in occupied France
1942–1944Head of the Lyon Gestapo, repressing the Resistance and deporting Jews
1947–1951Agent of the U.S. Army Counterintelligence Corps
1951–1983Lived in Bolivia as Klaus Altmann
1987Lyon trial, convicted of crimes against humanity and sentenced to life
At the August 1984 RYaN meeting, he stressed the need to establish the “actual situation” rather than mistake indicators for a Western nuclear attack.
Markus Wolf was a communist official and intelligence chief who, after fleeing Nazi persecution to the Soviet Union, led the foreign intelligence service of East Germany. From 1952 to 1986 he directed the Stasi’s Main Directorate for Reconnaissance, organizing espionage and active measures aimed at West German political, military, and economic institutions. When Soviet leaders expanded Operation RYaN amid fears of a pre-emptive nuclear attack in the early 1980s, Wolf maintained cooperation while exposing a tension between alarmist indicators and the need to establish the actual situation. After German reunification he passed through exile and trial, and used memoirs and public interventions to address responsibility for state security work and the possibility of reforming socialism.
Career timeline
1923–1933Grew up in Stuttgart
1933–1943Exile in the Soviet Union; studied in Moscow and at the Comintern school
1943–1945Editor and announcer for the German-language Moscow radio
1949–1951First counsellor at the East German embassy in Moscow
1952–1986Head of the foreign intelligence services IWF and HVA
1953–1986First deputy minister for state security
1986–1990After retirement, wrote memoirs and joined debates on reform
