WWII Final Review - People

Benito Mussolini

Italian; Fascist dictator of Italy, allied with Nazi Germany.

Adolf Hitler

German; Nazi dictator, architect of WWII in Europe and the Holocaust.

Charles Lindbergh

American; famous aviator, leading isolationist and Nazi-sympathizer voice pre-war.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

American; U.S. president who led the U.S. through most of WWII.

Hideki Tojo

Japanese; prime minister and general, key decision-maker in Japan’s war effort.

Hirohito

Japanese; emperor during WWII, symbol of the Japanese state.

Chiang Kai-shek

Chinese; Nationalist leader fighting Japan and later Mao’s Communists.

Mao Zedong

Chinese; Communist leader who eventually won the Chinese Civil War.

Winston Churchill

British; prime minister, symbol of British resistance to Nazi Germany.

Charles de Gaulle

French; leader of Free France, resisted Nazi occupation

Hermann Göring

German; Nazi leader, head of the Luftwaffe, senior Hitler ally.

Josef Stalin

Soviet; dictator of the USSR, led the war against Nazi Germany.

Douglas MacArthur

American; general commanding Allied forces in the Pacific.

Dwight Eisenhower

American; Supreme Allied Commander in Europe (D-Day).

Erwin Rommel

German; famed general (“Desert Fox”), fought in North Africa.

Bernard Montgomery

British; general who defeated Rommel at El Alamein.

George Patton

American; aggressive U.S. general in North Africa and Europe.

Reinhold Niebuhr

American; theologian who argued moral realism and supported fighting Nazism.

Arthur Harris

British; RAF commander who led area bombing of German cities.

Ante Pavelić

Croatian; fascist leader of the Ustaše regime, committed genocide.

Marshal Tito

Yugoslav; Communist partisan leader who fought Nazis and later ruled Yugoslavia.

Ho Chi Minh

Vietnamese; anti-colonial leader who fought Japan and later France/US.

Aung San

Burmese; nationalist leader who fought colonial rule, later independence hero.

Sophie Scholl

German; anti-Nazi student, member of the White Rose resistance.

Omar Bradley

American; senior U.S. general in Europe under Eisenhower.

Claus von Stauffenberg

German; officer who led the failed July 20 plot to kill Hitler.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

German; theologian and anti-Nazi resistor executed by the regime.

Reinhard Heydrich

German; Nazi leader, architect of the Holocaust, head of RSHA.

Philippe Pétain

French; leader of Vichy France, collaborated with Nazi Germany

Szmul Ziegelbojm

Polish Jewish; Bund leader who committed suicide to protest Holocaust inaction.

Edward R. Murrow

American; journalist who reported vividly on the war and concentration camps.

Eugene Sledge

American; Marine whose memoir depicted brutal Pacific combat

Ira Hayes

American; Marine famous for raising the flag at Iwo Jima.

Curtis LeMay

American; general who directed firebombing of Japan

J. Robert Oppenheimer

American; scientific director of the Manhattan Project

Harry Truman

American; U.S. president who authorized atomic bombs and led postwar transition.

J.R.R. Tolkien

British; WWI veteran and scholar, reflects war’s moral weight (not a WWII leader).

Clement Attlee

British; postwar prime minister, built welfare state after victory.

Albert Speer

German; Nazi armaments minister who increased wartime production.

Robert Jackson

American; chief U.S. prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials.

Raphael Lemkin

Polish-Jewish; coined the term “genocide,” pushed international law.

Eleanor Roosevelt

American; First Lady, key force behind the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Konrad Adenauer

German; first chancellor of West Germany, rebuilt democracy after Nazism.

Bob Dole

American; WWII veteran, later U.S. senator and public figure.