Nazi war criminal; executed in 1946
German politician and a head of the General Government in Nazi-occupied Poland during the Second World War.
Frank, the middle child of three, was born in Karlsruhe to Karl, a lawyer, and his wife, Magdalena (née Buchmaier), a daughter of a prosperous baker. He graduated from high school at Maximilians gymnasium in Munich. At age 17 he joined the German army and fought in World War I. After the war he got involved in the "freikorps" movement, extreme right-wing paramilitary units that engaged in intimidation, extortion, street brawls and political murders (many of these groups were later absorbed into the SS when the Nazis came to power).
In October 1923, he officially joined the NSDAP. In November of the same year, Frank took part in the "Beer Hall Putsch", the failed coup attempt. Frank later became a lawyer and a legal advisor to both Hitler and the Nazi party. After the Nazis came to power in Germany in 1933, Frank was appointed to a variety of important posts, including president of the Reichstag and minister of justice in the Nazi government.
After the German invasion of Poland in 1939, Frank was appointed governor-general, becoming the supreme chief of occupied Poland’s civil administration. An enthusiastic proponent of Nazi racist ideology, Frank ordered the execution of hundreds of thousands of Poles, the wholesale confiscation of Polish property, the enslavement of hundreds of thousands of Polish workers who were shipped to Germany, and the herding of most of Poland’s Jews into ghettos as a prelude to their extermination.
The General Government was the location of four out of six extermination camps, namely: Bełżec, Treblinka, Majdanek and Sobibór; Chełmno and Birkenau fell just outside the borders of the General Government.
Frank later claimed that the extermination of Jews was entirely controlled by Heinrich Himmler and the SS, and he - Frank - was unaware of the extermination camps in the General Government until early 1944, a claim found to be untrue by the Nuremberg tribunal.
Frank was captured by Allied forces in May of 1945 and placed on trial with other high Nazi officials at the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal, charged with, among other things, crimes against humanity.
During his testimony at Nuremberg, Frank claimed he submitted resignation requests to Hitler on 14 occasions, but Hitler would not allow him to resign. Frank fled the General Government in January 1945, as the Soviet Army advanced.
Frank was found guilty on counts three and four (war crimes and crimes against humanity) and sentenced to death. He was executed on October 16, 1946.
President of germany; admiral in command of german submarine forces during world war ii
German naval officer and the creator of Germany's World War Two U-boat fleet. He also briefly succeeded Adolf Hitler as German head of state in the last months of the war.
Karl Dönitz was born on 16 September 1891 near Berlin. When World War I began, he served on the light cruiser SMS Breslau in the Mediterranean Sea. On 22 March 1916, Dönitz was promoted to Oberleutnant zur See. He requested a transfer to the submarine forces, which became effective on 1 October 1916. He attended the submariner's school at Flensburg-Mürwik and passed out on 3 January 1917. He was captured by the British and incarcerated in the Redmires camp near Sheffield. He remained a prisoner of war until 1919 and in 1920 he returned to Germany.
In the aftermath of Hitler’s accession to power, Dönitz clandestinely supervised—despite the Treaty of Versailles’s absolute ban on German submarine construction—the creation of a new U-boat fleet, over which he was subsequently appointed commander (1936).
In the early part of the war, Dönitz did as much damage to the Allies as any German commander through his leadership of the U-boats in the Battle of the Atlantic. In the midst of World War II, in January 1943, he was called to replace Admiral Erich Raeder as commander in chief of the German navy. His loyalty and ability soon won him the confidence of Hitler.
During the last phase of World War II, he devoted his attention to organizing the evacuation by sea of German refugees and defeated military forces from northeastern Europe via the Atlantic.
On the eve of the Soviet attack on the city, Dönitz ordered thousands of German sailors to take up arms and help defend the capital. Hitler knew the war was lost and by April 27 had sent most of his personal staff away. He also permitted senior leaders such as Hermann Göring, Albert Speer, Heinrich Himmler, and Karl Dönitz to flee the doomed city.
In accordance with a secret decree Hitler signed in July 1941, Luftwaffe commander Hermann Göring would succeed Hitler as leader of the Reich upon the latter’s impending death. That changed on April 23, 1945, when Göring sent Hitler a telegram asking whether the latter was still capable of governing. Göring declared that if he did not receive an answer to his telegram within two hours, he would presume Hitler was incapacitated and Göring would assume leadership of the Reich. Hitler was livid. He expelled Göring from the Nazi party, labelled him a traitor, and ordered the Luftwaffe commander’s arrest. With Russian soldiers mere blocks from the Fürhrerbunker, Hitler dictated his final will and testament on April 29. In this document, Hitler declared Karl Dönitz would become the head of state, commander of the German armed forces, and Reichspräsident upon Hitler’s death. Joseph Goebbels would become the new Chancellor. The next day, Hitler and Eva Braun committed suicide. When Goebbels and his family committed suicide on May 1, Dönitz was elevated to the sole leadership of the crumbling Reich.
Dönitz was surprised when he learned he had been named Hitler’s successor. Assuming the reins of government on May 2, 1945, Dönitz retained office for only a few days. Early in the morning of 7 May 1945, a German delegation, on the orders of Dönitz, went to General Eisenhower's headquarters in Rheims and signed the surrender documents. During the interval of surrender, 1,800,000 German troops - 55% of the army of the east - were transferred into the British-US area of control. Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin then insisted on another signing ceremony in Berlin which took place in the early morning hours of May 9.
In 1946, Dönitz was sentenced to ten years' imprisonment by the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg. He was released from prison in 1956, and retired on a government pension. He died on 24 December 1980.
German nazi leader
German politician and a leading member of Nazi party.
Hess, the eldest of three children, was born on 26 April 1894 in Ibrahimieh, a suburb of Alexandria, Egypt (then under British occupation, though formally a part of the Ottoman Empire), into a wealthy German family. Hess attended a German language Protestant school in Alexandria from 1900 to 1908, when he was sent back to Germany to study at a boarding school in Bad Godesberg. He demonstrated aptitudes for science and mathematics, but his father wished him to join the family business, Hess & Co., so he sent him in 1911 to study at the École supérieure de commerce in Neuchâtel, Switzerland. After a year there, Hess took an apprenticeship at a trading company in Hamburg.
Hess served in the German army during World War I. After the war, he studied at the University of Munich, where he engaged in nationalist propaganda. They held a shared belief in the stab-in-the-back myth, the notion that Germany's loss in World War I was caused by a conspiracy of Jews and Bolsheviks rather than a military defeat. Hess joined the fledgling Nazi Party in 1920 and quickly became Hitler’s friend and confidant. After participating in the abortive November 1923 Munich (Beer Hall) Putsch, he escaped to Austria but returned voluntarily to Landsberg prison, where he took down and edited much of Hitler’s dictation for Mein Kampf.
Hitler was released on parole on 20 December 1924 and Hess ten days later. The ban on the Nazi Party and SA was lifted in February 1925, and the party grew to 100,000 members in 1928 and 150,000 in 1929. Hitler named Hess his private secretary in April 1925 at a salary of 500 Reichsmarks per month, and named him as personal adjutant on 20 July 1929. Hess accompanied Hitler to speaking engagements around the country and became his friend and confidante. Hess was one of the few people who could meet with Hitler at any time without an appointment. His influence in the Party continued to grow. On 15 December 1932 Hess was named head of the Party Liaison Staff and Chairman of the Party Central Political Commission.
In April 1933 Hess became deputy party leader and in December entered the cabinet. In 1939 Hitler declared him second to Hermann Göring in the line of succession.
Hess had a reputation for absolute loyalty to Hitler. During the later 1930s and the first years of World War II, however, when military and foreign policy preoccupied Hitler, Hess’s power waned, and his influence was further undermined by Martin Bormann and other top Nazi leaders.
Hess decided in the spring of 1941 to bring the continuing military struggle between Germany and Britain to an end by means of a spectacular coup and thereby restore his flagging prestige. On May 10 he secretly flew alone from Augsburg and landed by parachute in Scotland with peace proposals, demanding a free hand for Germany in Europe and the return of former German colonies as compensation for Germany’s promise to respect the integrity of the British Empire. Hess’s proposals met with no response from the British government, which treated him as a prisoner of war and held him throughout World War II. His quixotic action was likewise rejected by Hitler himself, who accused Hess of suffering from “pacifist delusions.”
Hess was transferred back to Nuremberg for the post-war trials in October, 1945, where he escaped the hangman but was sentenced to life in prison. He spent the rest of his long life, 46 years, as Prisoner Number 7 in Spandau where he lingered long after the other Nazis were freed. Hess was the facility's only prisoner for more than 20 years, his term ending only when the 93-year-old was found hanging from a lamp cord in a garden building in August 1987. The suicide was denounced as a murder by those, including Hess's own son, who suspected he'd been silenced.
Russian general
Russian Imperial Major General
The future general was born in a noble family in 1871. On the way to the rank of Major General Krymov managed to go through the First World War and Russo-Japanese war, as well as revolutionary events. Aleksandr Mikhailovich took an active part in overtwhrow of Nicholas II, whom he considered a bad ruler.
General Krymov actively supported the idea of Lavr Kornilov about holfing the front during the war. In addition, Alexander Mikhailovich shared the opinion of Kornilov that the Provisional Government should be removed from power.
In August 1917, speeches of Soviets and Bolsheviks were being prepared in Petrograd with the aim of displacing the Provisional Government and seizing power in their hands. General Kornilov could not allow such a turn of events, so he sent Krymov’s unit to the capital. As a result, all parts of the general’s army were scattered along the road from Mogilev. On 30 August Krymov agreed to travel with a government representative to Petrograd, and on 31 August he met with Kerensky, where he tried to explain that he had only brought his troops in an attempt to defend the government, but Kerensky ordered him to trial by military court.
After much swearing and recognition of his own unenviable position, General Krymov shot himself: when he left Kerensky’s office, Alexander Mikhailovich directed the gun barrel into his chest. He could still be saved, but in the hospital the military fell into the hands of haters of Russian officers who began to scoff at this worthy man. As a result, General Alexander Krymov died of his own wound, and Kornilov lost his most devoted associate, ready for anything to achieve a common goal.
After the death of Krymov, repressive actions against Russian officers began. A series of arrests of army officials followed, who did not want to cooperate with Kerensky. In fact, the head of the Provisional Government set fire to the fire of a future Civil War, which turned the tide of the history of the Russian state.
Imperial russianRussian army general
Lavr Kornilov was born in Ust-Kamenogorsk in 1870. During the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905 Kornilov became the Chief of staff of the 1st Infantry Brigade, and was heavily involved in the Battle of Sandepu and the Battle of Mukden. In 1914, at the start of World War I, Kornilov was appointed commander of the 48th Infantry Division. He was given command of the Petrograd Military District in March 1917. At the end of August, Kornilov sent troops toward Petrograd; Kerensky, interpreting this as an attempted military coup d’état, dismissed Kornilov and ordered him to come to Petrograd (August 27). Kornilov refused, and railroad workers prevented his troops from reaching their destination; on September 1 he surrendered and was imprisoned at Bykhov. Kornilov later escaped, and, after the Bolsheviks seized power (October 1917), he assumed military command of the anti-Bolshevik (“White”) volunteer army in the Don region. Several months later he was killed during a battle for Ekaterinodar.
April 13, 1918
February 24, 1918
November 1917
September 1, 1917
August 27, 1917
July 24, 1917
March 1917
July 1916
April 1915
1914
1904
1885
Boris Mikhaylovich Shaposhnikov was a Soviet military commander, Chief of the Staff of the Red Army, and Marshal of the Soviet Union.
Shaposhnikov was born in 1882. He joined the army of the Russian Empire in 1901 as an officer cadet, and graduated from the Nicholas General Staff Academy in 1910, reaching the rank of colonel in the Caucasus Grenadiers division in September 1917 during World War I. Also in 1917, unusually for an officer of his rank, he supported the Russian Revolution, and in May 1918 joined the Red Army.
Shaposhnikov was one of the few Red Army commanders with formal pre-revolutionary military training, and in 1921 he became 1st Deputy Chief of Staff of the Army's General Staff, where he served until 1925.
In 1937 he was appointed as Chief of the General Staff. In May 1940 he was appointed a Marshal of the Soviet Union.
Following the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941, he was reinstated (29 July 1941) as Chief of the General Staff and also became Deputy People's Commissar for Defence. Died from pulmonary tuberculosis in 1945, 26th March.
March 26, 1945
July 29, 1941
1940
1937
1921
1917
1901
October 2, 1882
Boris Mikhaylovich Shaposhnikov was a Soviet military commander, Chief of the Staff of the Red Army, and Marshal of the Soviet Union.
A Soviet fighter pilot, Hero of the Soviet Union ( posthmously)
Timur Frunze was born on 5 April 1923 in Kharkov, Ukrainian SSR, to Mikhail and Sophia Frunze. His father, Mikhail Frunze, was the famous revolutionary leader and reformer of the Red Army, who in January 1925 was appointed People's Commissar for Military and Navy Affairs and President of the Military Revolutionary Council. However, he died of surgery in October when Timur was only two years old. Timur's mother Sophia committed suicide in 1926. As a result, both Timur and his sister Tatyana were raised by their grandmother.
Following the death of their grandmother in 1931, Timur and Tatyana were adopted by their father's friend People's Commissar Kliment Voroshilov, who received permission for adoption by a special resolution of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. Voroshilov had no children of his own, and he permanently adopted Timur and Tatyana in 1931.
In 1938, Frunze became a member of the Komsomol. After graduating from high school, he entered the Kachin Red Banner Military Aviation School named after A.F. Myasnikov. One of his friends in the aviation school was Stepan Mikoyan, the son of Soviet Politburo member Anastas Mikoyan.
Following the outbreak of Operation Barbarossa in July 1941, many of the children of the Soviet leaders were among the first to volunteer to fight in the front. In December 1941, Frunze was assigned to the 161st Fighter Aviation Regiment.
From 7 January 1942, the 161st Fighter Aviation Regiment, as part of the 57th Mixed Aviation Division of the Northwestern Front, he participated in the offensive at the Demyansk Pocket. During this time, Frunze flew nine successful sorties to provide air cover for his airfield and ground troops in the area of Staraya Russa. In aerial battles, he was credited with 2 solo and 1 shared aerial shootdowns of enemy aircraft.
On 19 January 1942, while carrying out a combat mission to provide air cover for ground troops, Frunze, together with his flight commander, found 30 German bombers accompanied by eight escort fighters. Deciding to attack, the flight shot down a Henschel Hs 126 spotter aircraft. In the ensuing battle with four Bf 109s and Bf 110s the flight shot down a Bf 109. Soon three more Bf 110s joined the air battle, and Frunze's flight commander was shot down. Covering the damaged plane of his wingman, Frunze used up all the ammunition and was shot down. His aircraft went into a tailspin and crashed northwest of the village of Otvidino in Starorussky District, killing him.
By the decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on 16 March 1942, Frunze was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union for "exemplary performance of command missions and for display of courage and heroism".
Frunze was buried at the Yamskoye Cemetery in the village of Kresttsy. After the end of war, in the 1950s, at the request of his sister Tatyana, he was reburied at the Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow
A Soviet fighter pilot, Hero of the Soviet Union ( posthmously)