Osobnosti počas 2 svetovej vojny

Anglicko--------
Winston Churchill 1874 - 1965
  First Lord of the Admiralty in Chamberlain's government then Prime Minister and Minister of  Defence from May 1940. Probably the greatest British hero of this century. His defiance of Nazi Germany, spirit and his superb leadership and oratory skills were a positive inspiration to British and Allied morale.
Neville Chamberlain 1869 - 1940
  Prime Minister from  May1937 until May 1940. During his time as Prime Minister he had followed a policy of appeasement of the Nazis in an attempt to avert war. By May 1940 he had lost the confidence of the British people and Parliament and surrendered the leadership to Churchill. He remained a member of the Cabinet, but died in November 1940.
Clement Atlee 1883 - 1967
  Deputy Prime Minister in Churchill's coalition government. He became Prime minister following the defeat of Churchill's Conservative Party in the general election of  July 1945.
Anthony Eden 1897- 1977
  Appointed Foreign Secretary in the Churchill government. Eden was a tough and stubborn negotiator for the British and was against giving territiorial concessions to the Soviets in Eastern Europe.
Field Marshal John Dill 1881 - 1944
  Chief of the Imperial General Staff from May 1940 until December 1941 when he was replaced due to poor health. Subsequently he became Head of the British Joint Staff Mission to Washington.
Field Marshal Alan Brooke 1883 - 1963
  Brooke replaced Dill as the Chief of the Imperial General Staff at the end of 1941. He had a reputation as a fine strategist and was good at turning plans into practical operations.
Air Chief Marshal Charles Portal 1893 - 1971
  Chief of the Air Staff from 1940 onwards. Portal was wise and diplomatic head of the RAF. He was an advocate of strategic area bombing for most of the war, however he later changed his views to that of bombers supporting offensive action
Admiral Dudley Pound 1877 - 1943
  Admiral of the Fleet and First Sea Lord from 1939 until he was taken ill and died in October 1943.
Admiral Andrew Cunningham 1883 - 1963
  Became Admiral of the Fleet and First Sea Lord in October 1943 following the death of Pound.

Prior to this appointment, Cunningham had been a highly successful naval commander in the Mediterranean.

Nemecko----------------

Adolf Hitler
1889-1945

Dictator of Nazi Germany,  Supreme Commander and Commander-in-Chief of German armed forces.  His refusal to heed the advice of  his Generals was a large factor in the demise of  German military fortunes. He committed suicide in his Berlin bunker in April 1945.

Hermann Goering
1893-1946

Chief of the Luftwaffe and one of the most powerful men in Germany. Vain, greedy and incompetent at his appointed task, he spent most of the war enriching his personal wealth. Sentenced to death after the Nuremburg Trials, he committed suicide before he could be hanged.

Joseph Goebbels
1897-1945

Minister for Propaganda, he had total control of the German press and radio. He was doggedly loyal to his Fuhrer, and was once named by Hitler as his possible successor.

Heinrich Himmler
1900-1945

Head of the SS, the Waffen SS and Gestapo and Minister of the Interior. By the end of the War, Himmler had become the second most powerful man in Germany. He Committed suicide in 1945 after being captured by the Allies.

Field Marshal Walter von Brauchitsch
1881-1948

Commander -in-Chief of the German Army from 1938 until he resigned at the end of  1941. His resignation was due to a combination of  ill-health, the failure of the German army at Moscow and Hitler's refusal to heed any of his advice. After Brauchitsch's resignation, the title of Commander-in-Chief  of the Army was assumed by Hitler himself.

Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel
1882-1946

Chief of the High Command of the Armed Forces (OKW) from 1938 until the end of the War. This meant that his position was as Hitler's chief of staff and his job was to offer advice to Hitler when it was asked for. He was known as a lackey and never questioned Hitler's orders or decisions. At the Nuremburg Trials,Keitel was found guilty of war crimes and hanged.

General Alfried Jodl
1890-1946 

Deputy to Keitel and head of the Operations Section of OKW. Jodl is considered to have been the brains behind virtually all of Hitler's campaigns except for the invasion of Russia. As with Keitel at Nuremburg, he was found guilty of War Crimes and hanged.

Admiral Erich Raeder
1876-1960

Commander in Chief of German Naval Forces until January 1943. Raeder was head of the Navy when Hitler came to power. He built up German Naval strength during the pre-war years. Raeder frequently disagreed with Hitler during the war and was replaced in 1943 by Admiral Doenitz. After the war Raeder was sentenced to ten years in prison for war crimes.

Admiral Karl Doenitz
1891-1980

Commander of the German Navy's U-boats until 1943 then subsequently Commander in Chief of the Navy.

Doenitz was respected and trusted by Hitler and became Head of State after Hitler's death in 1945. Following the Nuremburg trials he was sentenced to ten years in prison for war crimes.

USA-------------

Franklin Delano Roosevelt 1882 - 1945
  President and Commander in Chief of US armed forces. Roosevelt had been President since 1933. Before the United States entered the war he was in favour of supporting Britain against the Axis. He introduced the Lend-Lease Act in order to supply Britain and her Allies with war material. Roosevelt died on April 12th 1945, shortly before the end of the war.
Harry S. Truman 1892 - 1972
  Vice President after replacing Henry Wallace in 1944. Became President in April 1945 following Roosevelt's death. During his term as Vice-President, Truman was rarely consulted by Roosevelt, however, after succeeding to the Presidency he adapted quickly to the role and the heavy responsibility of deciding upon the use of the atomic bomb.
Henry L. Stimson 1867 - 1950
  Secretary of War from July 1940. Stimson was a supporter of Lend-Lease aid to Britain and was also in favour of repealing the Neutrality Act. He was present at all the major Allied conferences during the war. Stimson introduced compulsory military service and supported using the atomic bomb against Japan. He resigned in September 1945.
Harry Hopkins 1890 - 1946
  Secretary of Commerce until August 1940 and special advisor and envoy to Roosevelt. Hopkins was a skilled mediator and often represented Roosevelt at Allied meetings. He conferred with Churchill and Stalin on wartime aid requirements and helped to get Lend-Lease underway.
Cordell Hull 1871 -1955
  Secretary of State until November 1944. Principally involved with US-Japanese negotiations before Pearl Harbor. Hull had to take on a more back seat role in international negotiations following the US entry into the war.
Edward R. Stettinius Jr. 1900 -1949
  Succeeded Hull as Secretary of State in November 1944. Stettinius had previously been special advisor to Roosevelt on matters of war production and war economics. He was succeeded by James Byrnes in July 1945.
Frank Knox 1874 -1944
  Secretary of the Navy from 1940. Knox was responsible for supplying and expanding the US Navy. He died in office in April 1944.
Admiral Ernest J. King 1878 -1956
  Chief of Naval Operations, King was known as one of the top strategic planners of the war.
General George C.

Marshall 1880 -1959
  Army Chief of Staff from 1939. Marshall was an expert planner and led the expansion of the US armed forces from 130,000 men to a strength of some 8.3 million men. He played a leading role in strategic planning for all theatres of the war and was considered the top candidate for the command of Allied forces in Europe. His value to Roosevelt in Washington however, prevented him from being appointed and Eisenhower was given the role instead. Marshall retired in November 1945.
Admiral William D. Leahy 1875-1959
  Chief of Naval Operations from 1937-1939; Governor of Puerto Rico 1939-1940; Ambassador to Vichy France 1940-1942; Chief of Staff to the President from 1942 to 1949. Leahy was an invaluable advisor to Truman following the death of Roosevelt.

Japonsko----------------------

General Hideki Tojo
1884 - 1948

Prime Minister, Chief of Staff of the Army, and Minister of War from October 1941 until July 1944. Tojo could almost be described as the dictator of Japan. He was the principal director of all Japanese war operations. When military fortunes began to turn against Japan he attempted to stabilize his position by handing over his post of Minister of War to Umezu. However after the fall of Saipan in July 1944 he resigned his remaining posts and was succeeded by Koiso. After his resignation he attempted to commit suicide, he lived, but only to be found guilty of war crimes by the Allies and was hanged.

Lt General Kuniaki Koiso
1880 - 1950


Appointed Prime Minister after the fall of Tojo in 1944, Koiso was almost a token Prime Minister as he was not party to any military decisions. He was not popular with either government ministers who favoured making peace, nor with those who wished to prosecute the war until the bitter end. He resigned in April 1945 after his demands to be included in military decisions were rejected.

Kantaro Suzuki
1867 - 1948

Suzuki became Prime Minister in April 1945 after the collapse of Koiso's premiership. He was one of the Japanese leaders who were in favour of peace, and it was he who finally asked Emperor Hirohito to decide on the surrender of Japan. Suzuki resigned after the surrender was announced.

General Yoshijiro Umezu
1880 - 1949

Chief of Staff of the Army from July 1944. Previously he had been Minister of War when Tojo relinquised this post. Umezu was one of the government leaders who were in favour of continuing the war as long as possible.

He was a reluctant participant in the signing of the Japanese instrument of surrender on the USS Missouri.

Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto
1884 -1943

Minister of the Navy and Commander in Chief of the 1st Fleet. Yamamoto was the architect of the Japanese carrier forces and planned the surprise attack on the US Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbour. Yamamoto was killed when his aircraft was shot down following the discovery of his flight plans by the Americans in April 1943.

Taliansko-------------------------------

Benito Mussolini
1883 - 1945

Fascist Dictator of Italy since 1924. Entered Italy into the war in 1940 even though his military power was not sufficient at the time. His armies met with humiliating defeats in North Africa and Greece. The African conflict against the British Army resulted in the loss of a large part of his total army. Mussolini then became the subservient partner in the Rome-Berlin Axis. Following the Allied invasion of Sicily, Mussolini was deposed by the Fascist Grand Council in July 1943 and imprisoned. Two months later he was freed from prison by a German commando raid and installed as the head of a puppet government in Northern Italy. As this part of Italy began to fall to the Allies in April 1945, he was captured by partisans and executed. Despite being a partner to Hitler in the Axis, Mussolini never stooped to the evil ways of the Nazis, for example, whilst he was dictator of Italy he never allowed the deportation of Jews to Hitler's extermination camps.

Field Marshal Pietro Badoglio
1871 - 1956

Chief of Staff of the Italian Army from the beginning of the war until December 1940, when he resigned after the failure to conquer Greece. Subsequently he plotted against Mussolini and after the dictator's downfall in July 1943, became the first Prime Minister of  the new non-Fascist government.

Count Galeazzo Ciano
1903 - 1944

Italian Foreign Minister and son-in-law of Mussolini. Ciano had been Foreign Minister since 1936 but during the war he lost respect for Mussolini and resigned from his post in February 1943. Ciano, however, remained a member of the Fascist Grand Council and voted to remove Mussolini in July 1943. In August of the same year he was tricked into being captured by the Germans and executed with the approval of his father-in-law.

Marshal Ugo Cavallero
1880 - 1943

Cavallero succeeded Badoglio as Chief of Staff of the Italian Army in December 1940. Considered to have been pro-German, Cavallero attempted to modernize the Army along the lines of the German Army.

However, he was dismissed after the fall of Tripoli in January 1943.

General Vittorio Ambrosio
1879 - 1950

Ambrosio became Chief of Staff to Mussolini in January 1943 following the dismissal of Cavallero. He attempted to persuade Mussolini to sign an armistice with the Allies and subsequently assisted in the overthrow of the dictator and negotiations with the Allies. Cavallero, however was not trusted by the Allies and was not appointed as Chief of Staff in the new non-Fascist government


ZSSR-----------------------

Joseph Stalin 1879 - 1953
  Soviet Dictator and Commander in Chief of the Red Army. Having drastically reduced the effectiveness of the Red Army by executing most of its more able commanders shortly before the war, Stalin tried in vain to stall the German invasion of the USSR by placating Hitler in any way possible. Stalin was probably the most evil person to have lived this century. He was totally ruthless and thought nothing of sacrificing hundreds of thousands of his own troops as cannon-fodder.
Viachislav Molotov 1890 - 1986
  Soviet Commissar for Foreign Affairs. Molotov was instrumental in the signing of non-agression pacts with both Germany and Japan. He was involved in virtually all meetings outside the USSR and often took the place of Stalin during Allied conferences in Moscow.
Marshal Alexander Vasilievsky 1895 - 1977
  Chief of General Staff of the Red Army. Vasilievsky took an active role in the planning and co-ordination of  most strategic operations during the war.
Marshal Georgi Zhukov 1896- 1974
  Deputy Supreme Commander in Chief of the Red Army. Zhukov directed the defence of Moscow against the German Army in 1941. Susequently he was instrumental in organizing the successful Soviet counter-offensive which ultimately led to the downfall of the Wehrmacht.
Lavrenty Beria 1899 - 1954
Head of  Soviet intelligence organization, the NKVD. Beria was also responsible for propaganda, partisan activities and Soviet prisoner of war camps.
Marshal Boris Shaposhnikov 1882 - 1945
Soviet Chief of General Staff before Vasilievsky took over when Shaposhnikov became ill in November 1941.
Georgy Malenkov 1902 - 1988
Responsible for equipment production for the Red Army and various political and economic affairs.
Admiral Nikolai Kuznetsov 1902 - 1974
Commander in Chief of the Soviet Navy.
Col. General Aleksandr Novikov 1900 - 1976
Commander in Chief of the Soviet Air Force (VVS).
Marshal Semyon Timoshenko 1895 - 1970
Commissar of Defence responsible for the re-organization of the Red Army.