The MegaMilitary Project | Online Edition #489

Militarian - Biographies

War has proved to be man’s second most popular pastime throughout recorded history, supplying us with a vast number of historic warriors

What are some of the other characteristics of the great military leaders? What common ground can be found among people them? All-consuming ambition is usually one answer people offer. Some assume that great military leaders would ruthlessly sacrifice anyone and everything to get their goals. Certainly, that is true sometimes. Even if ambition is something these military leaders shared, then it must be stressed that some of them fought for larger and more selfless causes.

Uncompromising determination (to the extent of being reckless) is what best distinguishes many military leaders, and a lot of them have exerted their will and courage in ways that have shaped world history.

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General James Harold Doolittle

Militarians Biographies
A native of Alameda, California, Doolittle was educated at Los Angeles Junior College and at the University of California. He joined the Army Reserve Corps in October 1917, after the United States entered World War I and was assigned to the Signal Corps in which he served as a flight instructor through 1919. The following year, Doolittle was commissioned a first lieutenant in the Army Air Service and gained national attention by making the first transcontinental flight in less than fourteen hours on the 4th of September in 1922.
Eichmann was a German-Austrian Nazi SS-Obersturmbannführer (Senior Assault Unit Leader) who was Head of the Gestapo’s Section IV BG, the Department of Jewish Affairs. After the Wannsee Conference (January 1942) this department was put in charge to execute the "Final Solution" what meant to extermination of all Jews. On the 1st of July 1943, Eichmann got the final decree signed by Martin Bormann, which deprived Jews of all rights of appeal. Eichmann introduced the convoy systems to extermination camps and had gas chambers installed because they were the most efficient means of execution. Alt...

Field Marshal Ferdinand Foch

Militarians Biographies
Ferdinand Jean Marie Foch, a military theorist, French General and the Commander of the Allied Forces at the end of WW I, was born on October 2, 1851 in Tarbes, Hautes-Pyrenees, France. He attended school in Tarbes and Rodez and college in St. Etienne. Being inspired and influenced from early childhood by the stories of campaigns his maternal grandfather, who had been an officer during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic eras, told him about the Napoleonic Wars, he pursued a military career.

Reichsmarschall Hermann Wilhelm Göring

Militarians Biographies
Göring's position as second only to Adolf Hitler in the establishment and maintenance of the Nazi regime is unquestionable, although his influence diminished after 1942. His close and jealous rivals were Joseph Goebbels and, in the later years of the war, Heinrich Himmler and Martin Bormann. But none received, as Göring did in 1939, when Hitler publicly acknowledged him as his "successor". Rudolf Hess, commonly called Hitler's deputy, was never more than his deputy at the head of the party as distinct from the state.

Generaloberst Heinz Guderian

Militarians Biographies
Heinz Wilhelm Guderian, a German general during WWII, was the inventor and strong advocate of the "Blitzkrieg" (lightning war) warfare and became famous for his successes as a leader of Panzer (tank) units in Poland, France and in the Soviet Union. Born in KuIm, Germany (present-day Chelmno, Poland) in 1888 to Friedrich Guderian and Clara (née Kirchoff), he entered the German Army in 1907. He was commissioned into a Hanoverian rifle battalion in 1908 and then transferred to become a communications officer.
William Frederick Halsey Jr., a US naval commander who led many of the most important US naval campaigns in the Pacific during WW II, was born on October 30, 1882 in Elizabeth, New Jersey to US Navy Captain William F. Halsey Sr. and his wife Anne Masters Brewster. He attended the Pingry School in New Jersey and, while waiting to receive an appointment to the United States Naval Academy, started his medical studies at the University of Virginia. In 1900, he finally entered the US Naval Academy at Annapolis, from which he graduated in 1904.

Marshal-Admiral Togo Heihachiro

Militarians Biographies
Kōshaku (Marquess) Tōgō Heihachirō was born on January 27, 1848, in Kagoshima, Satsuma, Japan. He raised amidst the turmoil created by US commodore Oliver H. Perry's "opening up" of Japan to the West, Heihachiro Togo joined the Satsuma provincial navy in 1866. Four years later, he entered the new imperial Japanese navy as a cadet. From 1871 to 1878, he studied naval science and tactics in England. He admired Admiral Horatio Nelson and made it a point to travel to Cape Trafalgar to see the site of his hero's greatest victory.

General Masaharu Homma

Militarians Biographies
Masaharu Homma was a lieutenant general in the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II. Homma commanded the Japanese 14th Army, which invaded the Philippines and perpetrated the Bataan Death March. Homma was born on Sado Island, in the Sea of Japan, off Niigata Prefecture and entered the military at an early age. 

Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek

Militarians Biographies
Chiang Kai-shek was born into a prosperous family in rural Chekiang. His father died when Chiang was young and he was raised by his mother, who sent him to excellent schools, where he got the classical Confucian education reserved for the children of the moderately wealthy.
One of the 20th century's most iconic characters was Thomas Edward Lawrence (1888–1935), known as "Lawrence of Arabia". Though not a career soldier, his World War I achievements changed the outcome. In fact, this amateur soldier helped create the contemporary Middle East.
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