20th Century Leaders Set A

Neville Chamberlain

British Prime Minister from 1937-1940; known for his attempts at "appeasement" before World War II; signed the Munich Pact in 1938

Winston Churchill

British Prime Minister from 1940-1945; won the Nobel Prize in Literature; coined the term "Iron-Curtain"

Margaret Thatcher

First female Prime Minister of the UK from 1979-1990; known as the "Iron Lady"; privatized state-owned industries

Georges Clemenceau

Served as Prime Minister of France from 1917-1920; One of the principal architects of the Treaty of Versailles (1919)

Charles DeGaulle

French general and leader of Free France during WWII; after WWII he founded the French Fifth Republic and served as its first president.

Kaiser Wilhelm II

Last German Emperor/ Prussian King; ruled from 1888 to 1918

Francisco Franco

started the Spanish Civil War; leader of the Nationalists; supported by Hitler and Mussolini; leader of Spain from 1936 to 1975

Nicholas II

last czar of Russia, from 1894 to 1917; took the throne after Alexander II's assassination

Vladimir Lenin

Founder of the Russian Communist Party; led the November Revolution in 1917; ruled until his death in 1924; established the USSR

Joseph Stalin

head of the Soviet Communists after 1924, and dictator of the Soviet Union from 1928 to 1953; known for his purges and Five-Year Plans; responsible for the Holodomor (starvation of millions of Ukrainians)

Leon Trotsky

Russian Bolshevik revolutionary intellectual and close adviser to Lenin; was expelled from the Communist Party (1927) and banished (1929) for his opposition to the authoritarianism of Stalin; assassinated in 1940 in Mexico City

Nikita Khrushchev

Soviet leader from 1953 to 1964; built the Berlin Wall; led during the Cuban Missile Crisis; criticized Stalin

Leonid Brezhnev

Soviet leader from 1964 to 1982

Mikhail Gorbachev

led the Soviet Union from 1985 to 1991; supported economic reform (perestroika) and political openness (glasnost); withdrew Soviet military support from communist governments in Eastern European

Benito Mussolini

Italian dictator from 1922-1945; a.k.a. Il Duce; founded the Fascist Party in Italy; forced from power, later hanged

Mohandas Gandhi

(1869-1948) a lawyer from South Africa; fought against racial prejudice against Indians; pushed for Indian independence from UK; advocated civil disobedience; led Salt March and other protests; assassinated by a Hindu extremist for his beliefs

Jawaharlal Nehru

Indian leader after Gandhi; negotiated the end of British colonial rule in India and became India's first prime minister (1947-1964).

Indira Gandhi

daughter of Jawaharhal Nehru; the third prime minister of India; assassinated by her Sikh bodyguard in 1984

Ali Jinnah

first leader of Pakistan after its partition from India in 1947; led Muslims in India as they worked with Hindus to fight for independence from Britain.

Chiang Kai Shek

president of China 1928-31 and 1943-49 and of Taiwan 1950-75; tried to unite China in the 1930s, was defeated by the Communists; fled mainland China in 1949 and set up a separate Nationalist Chinese State in Taiwan.

Mao Zedong

led the Communist Party of China to victory in the Chinese Civil War; led the People's Republic of China from its establishment in 1949 to his death in 1976; oversaw the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, which brought the deaths of millions of Chinese citizens

Deng Xiaoping

Leader of China and the Communist Party following Mao Zedong's death (1976 to 1989); led China toward a mixed socialist and market economy