- Erwin Rommel
Erwin Rommel (Erwin Johannes Eugen Rommel, 1891-1944) | The famous "Desert Fox" commander of the North African campaign was born in Heidenheim, near Ulm on Nov. 15, 1891. While earning the respect of both sides in WWII, Rommel became disillusioned with Hitler. Although the Nazis accused him of being involved in the abortive July 20, 1944 bombing/assassination attempt against Hitler, his active role in the plot is doubtful.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower, born David Dwight Eisenhower was an American General and politician, who served as the thirty-fourth President of the United States (1953–1961). During the Second World War, he served as Supreme Commander of the Allied forces in Europe, with responsibility for planning and supervising the successful invasion of France and Germany in 1944-45. In 1951, he became the first supreme commander of NATO.
- George Marshall
General of the Army George Catlett Marshall, Jr. GCB (December 31 1880 - October 16 1959) was an American military leader, Secretary of State, and the third Secretary of Defense. Once noted as the "organizer of victory" by Winston Churchill for his leadership of the Allied victory in World War II, Marshall supervised the U.S. Army during the war and was the chief military advisor to President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
- Albert Speer
Berthold Konrad Hermann Albert Speer, commonly known as Albert Speer (March 19, 1905 - September 1, 1981), was an architect, author and high-ranking Nazi German government official, sometimes called "the first architect of the Third Reich". His two bestselling autobiographical works, "Inside the Third Reich" and "Spandau: the Secret Diaries" detailed his often close personal relationship with German dictator Adolf Hitler, …
- Otto Skorzeny
Otto Skorzeny (June 12 1908 – July 6 1975) was an Standartenführer in the German Waffen-SS during World War II. After fighting on the Eastern Front, he is known as the commando leader who rescued Benito Mussolini from imprisonment after his overthrow. He also was the initiator of Operation Greif, for which he was judged after the war: this special operation involved false flag tactics, that is wearing the uniform of the enemy to confuse him and advance into his lines.
- Rudolf Vrba
Rudolf 'Rudi' Vrba, born Walter Rosenberg, was a professor of pharmacology at the University of British Columbia. In April 1944, Vrba and his friend Alfréd Wetzler became the second and third of only five Jews to escape from the Auschwitz concentration camp and pass information to the Allies about the mass murder that was taking place there.
- Ivanoe Bonomi
Ivanoe Bonomi (October 18 1873 - April 20 1951) was an Italian politician and statesman before and after World War II. Bonomi was born in Mantua. He was elected to the Italian Chamber of Deputies in 1909, representing Mantua as a member of the Italian Socialist Party. He was among those expelled from the party in 1912, for his advocacy of reformism and moderation.
- George Kenney
George Churchill Kenney (August 6, 1889 - August 9, 1977) was a United States Army Air Forces general during World War II. He was commander of the Allied air forces in the Southwest Pacific Area (SWPA) from August 1942 until 1945.
- Yoshijiro Umezu
"'"' (January 4, 1882 - January 8, 1949) was the chief commander of the Japanese army in World War II. Umezu was promoted to general (taisho) in August 1939. In the 1920s Umezu was a member of the Tosei-Ha (Control Group) led by General Kazushige Ugaki along with Gen Sugiyama, Koiso Kuniaki, Tetsuzan Nagata and Hideki Tojo. They represented a moderate line between the armed forces, in opposition to the radical movement of the Koda-Ha (Action Group) guided by Sadao Araki.
- Szmul Zygielbojm
Szmul Zygielbojm, sometimes spelled Zygelbojm or Zigelboim, (February 21, 1895 - May 12, 1943) was a Jewish-Polish socialist politician, leader of the Bund, and a member of the National Council of the Polish government in exile. He committed suicide to protest the indifference of the Allied governments in the face of the Holocaust.
- Jinichi Kusaka
Jinichi Kusaka, December 7 1888 - August 24 1972, was a commander in the Imperial Japanese Navy during World War II. At the beginning of the war Kusaka commanded the Imperial Japanese Naval Academy. On September 28, 1942 he took command of the 11th Air Fleet located at the major Japanese base of Rabaul on New Britain in the South Pacific. Throughout the Guadalcanal campaign Kusaka's air units battled the Allied Cactus Air Force for control of the air around Guadalcanal, …
- Kiyotake Kawaguchi
Kiyotake Kawaguchi, December 3, 1892 - May 16, 1961, was a general in the Imperial Japanese Army. Born in Kochi prefecture, Kawaguchi graduated from the Japanese Military Academy in 1914, and from Army Staff College in 1922, spending much of the 1920s and 30s in a series of staff positions in both Japan and China before his promotion to major general in 1940. Appointed commander of the 35th Infantry Brigade, Kawaguchi arrived at Borneo in December 1941 and, …
- Guy Burgess
Guy Francis De Moncy Burgess (16 April, 1911 - 30 August, 1963) was a British-born intelligence officer and double agent who worked for the Soviet Union. He was part of the Cambridge Five spy ring that betrayed allied secrets to the Soviets before and during the Cold War. Burgess and Anthony Blunt contributed to the Soviet cause with the transmission of secret Foreign Office and MI5 documents that described Allied military strategy.
- Kiyohide Shima
Kiyohide Shima (February 25, 1878 - November 7, 1973) was a commander in the Imperial Japanese Navy during World War II. From November 15, 1939 until October 15, 1940 he was the Chief of Staff of the Maizuru Naval District. Later, he led the Tulagi invasion force that occupied Tulagi in the Solomon Islands on May 3, 1942 as part of Operation "Mo".
- Takuma Nishimura
Takuma Nishimura was a soldier of the Empire of Japan. He rose to the rank of Lieutenant General and commanded Japanese forces in the invasion of French Indochina, in 1940. He also commanded the Imperial Guard Division during the Malayan and Singapore campaigns. He was later tried by the Allies for war crimes, and was executed. However, doubt has been cast on Nishimura's guilt. Nishimura was a career soldier. In 1936, he was appointed commanding officer of the 9th Regiment.
- Hong Sa-Ik
Hong Sa-ik was a Lieutenant General in the Imperial Japanese Army, and the highest-ranking ethnic Korean in Japan to be charged with war crimes relating to the conduct of the Empire of Japan in World War II. A graduate of the Imperial Japanese Army Academy, Hong was placed in command of the Japanese camps holding Allied (primarily U.S. and Filipino) prisoners of war in the Philippines during the latter part of World War II.
- Clemens August Graf von Galen
Blessed Clemens August Graf von Galen was a German count, Bishop of Münster, and Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church. An outspoken critic of the Nazi regime, he issued forceful, public denunciations of the Third Reich's euthanasia programs and persecution of the Catholic Church, making him one of the most visible and unrelenting internal voices of dissent against the Nazis.
- Ringer Edwards
Herbert James "Ringer" Edwards, was an Australian soldier during World War II. As a prisoner of war (POW), he survived being crucified for 63 hours by Japanese soldiers on the Burma Railway. Edwards was the basis for the character of Joe Harman in the Neville Shute novel "A Town Like Alice" (US title: "The Legacy"), and subsequent film and television adaptations of the book (including a 1956 film known as "The Rape of Malaya" in US cinemas).
- Ève Curie
Ève Denise Curie Labouisse is a French author and writer. She is the second daughter of Marie and Pierre Curie and wrote an acclaimed biography of her mother, "Madame Curie" (1937). After the defeat of France in 1940, Ève Curie moved to England and worked for the Allied and Free French causes during the rest of the war. In 1945 Curie published "Journey Among Warriors," a chronicle of her travel to the fronts of World War II.
- James Bacque
James Bacque is a Canadian novelist, publisher and book editor. Bacque was a mainstream fiction writer and essayist before turning his attention, in 1989, to the controversial fate of German soldiers held as POWs by the Allies after World War II. His recent works have also dealt with the French resistance. Bacque was educated at Upper Canada College in Toronto, where he was a member of Seaton's House, one of the school's boarding houses.
- Masatane Kanda
Masatane Kanda, 1890 - 1983, was a Lieutenant General in the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II. He served as second-in-command of the 17th Army under Harukichi Hyakutake during the initial period of the Bougainville campaign in the Solomon Islands from 1943 until 1945. Kanda took over command of the 17th Army after Hyakutake suffered a stroke in 1945. Kanda surrendered Japanese forces on Bougainville to Allied commanders on September 8, 1945.
- Leonard W. Murray
Rear Admiral Leonard Warren Murray CB, CBE, (22 June 1896 - 25 November 1971) was a Canadian naval officer who played a significant role in the Battle of the Atlantic. He commanded the Newfoundland Escort Force from 1941 to 1943, and from 1943 to the end of the war was Commander-in-Chief, Canadian Northwest Atlantic. He was the only Canadian to lead an Allied theatre of operations during World War II.
- Kiyotaki Kawaguchi
Kiyotaki Kawaguchi, December 3, 1892 - May 16, 1961, was a general in the Imperial Japanese Army. As commander of Army forces on Cebu after the invasion of the Philippines in 1942, Kawaguchi objected to the "revenge killings" of senior Philippine government officials by Japanese authorities. He argued that, "shooting defeated opponents in cold blood was a violation of the true Bushido." Later, he commanded the 35th Infantry Brigade, that, along with other attached units, …
- Hein Ter Poorten
Hein ter Poorten, 1887-1968, was the commander of the Koninklijk Nederlands Indisch Leger (Royal Netherlands Indies Army; KNIL) in the Pacific campaign of World War II. Ter Poorten was also Allied land forces commander in the American-British-Dutch-Australian Command, during early 1942. He was born on Java, which was then part of the Netherlands East Indies. After having been sworn in as an artillery officer in 1911, Ter Poorten helped to found the army air force, …
- Chaim Michael Dov Weissmandl
Rabbi Chaim Michael Dov Weissmandl (1903-1957) (known as Rabbi Michoel Ber Weissmandl) was a rabbi and shtadlan who became known for his efforts to save the Jews of Slovakia from extermination at the hands of the Nazis during the Holocaust. Largely by bribing diplomats, Weissmandl was able to smuggle letters to people he hoped would help save the Jews of Europe, alerting them to the progressive Nazi destruction of European Jewry.
- Jacob C. Vouza
Sergeant Major Sir Jacob Charles Vouza GM MBE (1900-15 March 1984) was a highly decorated Solomonese Coastwatcher and scout for the U.S. Marine Corps on Guadalcanal. Later in life he served in the government of the British Solomon Islands Protectorate.
- Yumio Nasu
Yumio Nasu, 1892 - October 26, 1942, was a major general and commander in the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II. During the Guadalcanal campaign Nasu landed on Guadalcanal with the 2nd Infantry Division during the first week of October, 1942 in response to the Allied landings on the island. Nasu commanded one of the 2nd Division's large infantry groups, …
- Henri Dentz
Henri Fernand Dentz was a Vichy French general during World War II. He was in charge of the defence of the French Mandates of Syria and the Lebanon, and commanded the "Armée du Levant" of approximately 45,000 men. After Vichy authorities allowed German "Luftwaffe" aircraft to refuel in the mandates, the Allies planned an invasion. On June 8, 1941, a force of approximately 20,000 Australian, Indian, Free French and British troops, …
- Herbert Backe
Herbert Backe was a German politician and war criminal. He was born in Batumi, Georgia. He performed duties in the Third Reich government and was named Minister of Food in May 1942 and Minister of Agriculture in April 1944. He continued to hold that position in the ephemeral Cabinet led by Admiral Karl Dönitz in the last days of World War II, from late April to May 1945, as according to the political will of Adolf Hitler.
- Aritomo Gotō
Aritomo Gotō (五藤 存知, "Gotō Aritomo"; January 23, 1888 - October 12, 1942) was an admiral in the Imperial Japanese Navy during World War II. On September 10, 1941 he was placed in command of Cruiser Division 6 (CruDiv6), consisting of the four heavy cruisers "Aoba" (Goto's flagship), "Furutaka", "Kinugasa", and "Kako".
- Guido Buffarini Guidi
Guido Buffarini Guidi (August 17 1895 - July 10 1945) was an Italian politician notable for his involvement in the Fascist regime during the Second World War. Buffarini Guidi was born in Pisa. When Italy entered World War I, he volunteered in an artillery regiment. He was promoted to rank of Captain in 1917, and remained on active duty in the Italian Army until 1923 - in the meantime, he earned his bachelor's degree in law from the University of Pisa in March 1920.
- Ivan Ivanov Bagrianov
Ivan Ivanov Bagrianov (1891-1945) was a leading Bulgarian politician who briefly served as Prime Minister during the Second World War. After a career as a diplomat he was chosen by the Council of Regents that at the time had power in Bulgaria to form a government capable of negotiating peace.
- Masao Maruyama
Masao Maruyama, 1889 - November 11, 1957, was a lieutenant general and commander in the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II. As commander of the 6th Infantry Brigade, he was involved in the China Incident in July, 1937. As commander of the 2nd Infantry Division, he and his division were deployed to Guadalcanal in September and October, 1942 in response to the Allied landings on the island.
- Rudolf Kastner
Rudolf (Rezső) Kastner (Kasztner), also known as Israel (Yisrael) Kastner was the "de facto" head of a small Jewish organization in Budapest known as the "Va'adat Ezrah Vehatzalah" ("Vaada"), or Aid and Rescue Committee, during the Nazi occupation of Hungary during World War II. As the head of the "Vaada", he was one of the conduits between the Nazis and the Jewish community in Hungary.
- Koso Abe
Koso Abe (March 24, 1892 - June 19, 1947), was a vice admiral in the Imperial Japanese Navy during World War II. In 1942, he commanded the 6th Air Base Group which included Japanese military forces in garrisons throughout the Gilbert and Marshall Islands in the central Pacific Ocean. Two weeks after United States (U.S.) Marine forces raided Makin Island (Butaritari) in the Gilbert Islands on August 17 and 18, 1942, …
- Friedrich Hildebrandt
Friedrich Hildebrandt was an SS Obergruppenführer, a Gauleiter and judged for war crimes in the time of the Third Reich. The farmworker had several positions bestowed upon him as an early NSDAP activist: Gauleiter and Reichsstatthalter (Reich Governor) of Mecklenburg and until 1937 also of Lübeck. In 1948, after sentencing in the Allied Dachau Trials, and specifically in the Airmen's Trial, for contraventions of the Hague Conventions, …
- Roberto María Ortiz
Jaime Gerardo Roberto Marcelino María Ortiz Lizardi was President of Argentina from February 20 1938 to June 27 1942. Ortiz was born in Buenos Aires. As a student at the University of Buenos Aires, he participated in an unsuccessful revolution in 1905. In 1909 he graduated from the university and became a lawyer. He became active in the Radical Civic Union and was elected to the Argentine National Congress in 1920. He served as minister of public works from 1925 to 1928.
- Gerard Bucknall
Lieutenant-General Gerard Corfield Bucknall, CB, MC (1894 - 1980) was a British Army officer and corps commander during World War II. In 1914, during the First World War, Bucknall was commissioned in The Middlesex Regiment with whom he served in France with some distinction. Between the wars he served with the Egyptian Army (Egypt was then de-facto part of the British Empire) and attended the Staff College, Camberley.
- Konstantin Muraviev
Konstantin Vladov Muraviev (5 March 1893-31 January 1965) was a leading member of the Agrarian People's Union who briefly served as Prime Minister of Bulgaria near the end of Bulgarian involvement in the Second World War. Muraviev was educated at Robert College of Istanbul, just like Ivan Evstratiev Geshov, Todor Ivanchov, Konstantin Stoilov and many other Bulgarian revolutionaries were.
- Harald Quandt
Harald Quandt, the child of Magda Goebbels and entrepreneur Günther Quandt, was the stepson of Joseph Goebbels. Quandt was the result of a marriage between Günther Quandt and the then Magda Behrend Rietschel in 1921. The couple divorced in 1929, but remained on extremely friendly terms. Magda later married Goebbels at a property owned by Günther. After his mothers re-marriage, Harald remained with his biological father, Günther, …