WW2 Your World War II Resource	Biographies MDSWW-- The Macmillan Dictionary of the Second World War OCWW2--The Oxford Companion to World War II OEGWW2--The Oxford Essential Guide to World War II PWE: The Pacific War Encyclopedia RMEWW2--Rand McNally Encyclopedia of World War II WAWW2--The World Almanac of World War II WW2AVE--World War II: A Visual Encyclopedia WW2AW--World War II: America at War, 1941-1945 WWWW2: Who was Who in World War II INDEX
Abrams, Lt. Col. Creighton	(1914-1974) US armored force commander in Europe in 1944-1945. Abrams established a reputation for aggressive leadership as commander of the 37th Tank Battalion (4th Armored Division). In France in Sept. 1944, during a counterattack, he drove his tanks deep into German-held territory, and in a single day he took 354 prisoners and captured or destroyed twelve tanks, eighty-five other vehicles, and five heavy guns; Abram's losses were twelve dead and sixteen wounded, with no tanks lost. His battalion led the US forces breaking the German siege of Bastogne during the battle of the Bulge in Dec. 1944. Abrams was commander of the US forces fighting in Vietnam from 1968 to 1972, and was US Army Chief of Staff at the time of his death. [WW2AW]
Acheson, Dean	(1893-1971) US government official. A World War I Navy ensign, Acheson became active in Maryland politics in the 1920s and was an early backer of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Acheson briefly served the new President as under secretary of the Treasury in 1933. He left the Treasury after a disagreement over policy. A tireless supporter of Roosevelt's prewar pro-British policies, Acheson returned to government in Feb. 1941 as assistant secretary of state. Acheson...was...skilled in back-channel manipulation of State Department responses to White House demands. He was the US member and chairman of the council of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration. He was also a key US negotiator in the Bretton Woods Conference that set global postwar economic policies. In Aug. 1945 he became under secretary of state to Secretary of State James F. Byrnes. Acheson touched off a minor political controversy by publicly criticizing Gen. Douglas MacArthur, saying that the United States government, not MacArthur's occupation force, would set policy for the governing of Japan .... In 1949 he succeeded George C. Marshall as secretary of State and became a close ally of President Truman in the management of the Cold War and the diplomatic aspects of the Korean War. He remained secretary of state until 1953. [WW2AW]
Adachi, Lt. Gen. Hataro	(1890-1947) Graduate of the Japanese Military Academy and the War College, Adachi was apponted to lead the Japanese 18th Army in November 1942, a command which he retained until the end of the war. Adachi led the fighting to retain New Guinea, commanding forces retreating to Buna, Sio and then to Madang against General MacArthur's forces, which finally pinned down the 18th Army at Wewak in mid-1944. Adachi committed suicide in September 1947, an act which demonstrated his acceptance of personal responsibility for war crimes charged to his subordinates at the Rabaul prison camp. [MDSWW]
Adenauer, Konrad	(1876-1967) Catholic Mayor of Cologne from 1917 to 1933 when he was dismissed by the Nazis, Adenauer was among those arrested following the July Bomb attempt on Hitler's life in 1944, but avoided sentence to a concentration camp. He was placed in charge of Cologne's administration by the US Army when it was occupied in December. The British military government dismissed Adenauer in September 1945. He subsequently became first Chancellor of the new German Bundesrepublik at the head of the new Christian Democrat Party. [MDSWW]
Ainsworth, Rear Adm. Walden	(1886-1960) Ainsworth held numerous commands in the Pacific but he is best remembered for his part in the Battles of Kula Gulf and Kolombangara. Ainsworth was in command of a task force of three cruisers and five destroyers which was escorting the invasion force to New Guinea. On 4-5 July 1942 his guns shelled Vila and Bairoko but he lost a destroyer in this action. On the night of 5-6 July Ainsworth's force was patrolling the Kula Gulf when they ran into Japanese transports on a reinforcement mission to New Guinea. The "battle" was very confused: the US ships did not stay in formation and one cruiser, the Helena, was sunk. It was thought that Ainsworth had repulsed the transports but the Japanese had landed in New Guinea. On the night of 12-13 July Ainsworth took part in his fifteenth combat mission up the Slot, the channel dividing the Solomons in two. The US had the advantage of radar but the Japanese had an anti-radar tracking device. The Japanese were also equipped with "Long Lance" torpedoes. Ainsworth did not know of the potential of these torpedoes and was lucky to lose only one destroyer in this action. [He] continued to serve in the Pacific and supported the amphibious operation in the Marianas. He retired in 1948. [WWWW2]
Alexander, Field Marshal Sir Harold	(1891-1961) British Army officer who, from commanding the 1st British Division during the fall of France rose to become Allied Supreme Commander in the Mediterranean. Alexander, who was the fourth son of the Earl of Caledon, served with great distinction in the First World War and by 1937 was the youngest general in the British Army. He took command of the British Expeditionary Force during the Dunkirk evacuation of May-June 1940, was promoted lt-general that December, and succeeded Auchinleck at Southern Command. In March 1942 he was sent to reverse British defeats in the Burma campaign but could only organize the retreat of his forces into India, which he did very ably. Promoted to general in April 1942, he was appointed C-in-C First Army for the North African campaign which started that November. However, in August, Churchill appointed him C-in-C Middle East Command with Montgomery under him. It was a formidable team which turned the tide of war in the Western Desert campaigns. Alexander, with typical generosity, but also as a deliberate policy, always insisted that the victories were Montgomery's; but it was Alexander's tactful handling of his brilliant but difficult subordinate which gave Montgomery the scope and the resources he needed. In January 1943 Alexander was summoned to the Casablanca conference where he was appointed Eisenhower's deputy and ground commander of the Allied armies then fighting the North African campaign. As C-in-C of the newly formed Eighteenth Army Group, he took command on 20 February 1943, reorganized the confused Allied front and, in a campaign of great panache, forced the surrender of all Axis forces in North Africa that May. He was then appointed C-in-C Fifteenth Army Group, which launched the Sicilian campaign in July 1943. He was later criticized for his handling of the campaign as he appeared rather too ready to accept what Montgomery told him and not ready enough to employ the mobility and striking power of Patton's raw but aggressive Seventh US Army. In the Italian campaign which followed, Alexander served as C-in-C of all Allied forces and then, from 27 November 1944, as Allied Supreme Commander in the Mediterranean. On the same day he was promoted field marshal, back-dated to 4 June 1944, the day his troops had entered Rome. With the main Allied effort taking place in north-west Europe, Italy became a backwater. But instead of allowing the campaign to fade into stalemate, Alexander planned the destruction of the German forces facing him, and on 29 April 1945 he personally accepted their unconditional surrender. Alexander was no original thinker but he had many virtues, not the least of which were his personal courage, his imperturbability in battle, and his ability to make friends among whom Churchill counted himself one. He was a charming, affable man who, it was said, defeated his enemies without making any. Having been knighted in 1942, he was created a viscount in 1946, and became governor-general of Canada, a post he held until 1952 when he was created Earl Alexander of Tunis. [OCWW2]
Allen, Maj. Gen. Terry de la Mesa	(1888-1969) Commander of the 1st Infantry Division (the "Big Red One") during the Northwest Africa campaign. He and his executive officer, Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., cultivated an iconoclastic leadership style that amounted to "us" (any soldier in the 1st) against "them" (anyone else, including enemy forces, rear-echelon soldiers, even superior officers). Allen courted court-martial proceedings several times during his career. Although the 1st Division in the Tunisian campaign was creditable, out of battle the 1st gained a reputation for bad conduct that began at the top. Allen, independent and moody, refused to respond to demands that he shape up his soldiers. So insubordinate was the 1st that Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower nearly dropped it from the landing forces for the invasion of Sicily. But the 1st was restored to the landing force and Allen was retained as its commander. Allen's troops fought well in the first days, but after a lackluster performance in attacks in early August, Lt. Gen. Omar N. Bradley relieved both Allen and Roosevelt. Remarkably, Allen commanded another division later in the war, the only US general to do so. He trained the new 104th Division and commanded it in northwest Europe from Sept. 1944 to the end of the war. [WW2AW]
Ambrosio, Gen. Vittorio	(1879-1958) Commander of Italian occupation forces in Yugoslavia before becoming Army Chief of Staff in January 1942. In February 1943 he replaced Cavallero as Chief of the Italian High Command, a post in which he intrigued against Mussolini, whose fall he helped to bring about. On 9 September 1943, after the announcement of the Italian armistice with the Allies, he fled from Rome before the Germans occupied it, and was subsequently appointed minister of war in Badaglio's government while remaining head of Comando Supremo. In November 1943 he relinquished both posts and was appointed Inspector-General of Italian forces. [OCWW2]
Anami, Gen. Korechika	(1887-1945) Japanese Vice Minister of War under Konoe in 1940, Anami took part in the political intrigues which brought the extreme militarist General Tojo to power as Prime Minister of Japan in  October 1941. During much of WW2, Anami commanded forces fighting in China, Dutch East Indies and New Guinea. Appointed War Minister in Kantaro Suzuki's cabinet in April 1945, Anami sought to delay surrender to the Americans, though he clearly appreciated the inevitability of Japan's eventual defeat. His final refusal to join a group of officers planning a coup to forestall the Emperor's declaration of surrender was influential in ensuring the acceptance of surrender by most of the highest ranking Japanese officers. He nevertheless committed hari-kiri at his official residence in August 1945, shortly before the broadcast of Emperor Hirohito's acceptance of the Allied peace terms. [MDSWW]
Anders, Gen. Wladyslaw	(1892-1970) Polish military commander, captured with his retreating army by the Russians at the fall of Poland in September 1939. Anders was imprisoned in the Lubianka after his refusal to join the Red Army (a choice made by many Polish soldiers), but was released in 1941 as part of an agreement between Russia and the Polish government-in-exile forced by the German invasion of the Soviet Union. Anders was given permission to trace and recruit Polish POWs held in Soviet labour camps. He subsequently arranged the evacuation of nearly 160,000 men to Persia (Iran) and Palestine, where they were trained by British military staff and later integrated into the British 8th Army as the 2nd Polish Corps. Landed in Italy as part of the 8th Army invasion force in September 1943, the 2nd Corps fought with particular distinction, most notably at Monte Cassino, which was captured at enormous cost in casualties after three attempts by other units had failed. General Anders then led 2nd Corps in the battles up the Adriatic coast and in the clearance of the Po valley. After the German surrender in 1945, Anders was appointed C-in-C of the Polish Army by the Polish government-in-exile, though "Anders' Army" itself was now a political embarrassment to the United States and Britain in their relations with the Soviet Union and was therefore disbanded .... In the years following the war, General Anders increasingly became a national figure and political focus for Polish exiles in Britain .... [MDSWW]
Anderson, Sir John	(1882-1958) Anderson was a very influential figure in Churchill's Cabinet and had been British Home Secretary in Chamberlain's [C]abinet. His name became a household word when he introduced a scheme to build special steel shelters -- called the Anderson shelter -- to protect 20,000,000 people in 1940. As Lord Privy Seal, he was responsible for air-raid precautions and national voluntyary service. From 1940-1943 Amderson was Lord President of the Council, and sat on the Manpower Committee which had to decide manpower priorities. He also sat on a committee which examined policy-making in all governmental departments. From 1943-45 he served as Chancellor of the Exchequer and was responsible for introducing the Pay-As-You-Earn system of income tax collection, which had been devised by his predecessor, Sir Kingsley Wood. He was also put in charge of Tube Alloys, the atomic bomb project. Anderson's job essentially was to run home affairs smoothly while Churchill ran the war. He performed his job well and unobtrusively. [WWWW2]
Anderson, Gen. Sir Kenneth	(1891-1959) Commander of the British 3rd Division during the France and Low Country campaign in 1940; the 3rd was evacuated from Dunkirk in June 1940. He commanded the Eastern Task Force, landing in Algiers, Algeria, in the ... invasion of North Africa. Anderson, cautious and hesitant, did not exploit opportunities. Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, who found it difficult to speak ill of any Allied officer, characterized Anderson as "a gallant Scot, devoted to duty, and absolutely selfless. Honest and straightforward, he was blunt, sometimes to the point of rudeness, and this trait, curiously enough, seemed to bring him into conflict with his British confreres more than it did with the Americans." Gen. Omar Bradley thought that "as an army commander, Anderson was in over his head." In part, Anderson was the victim of the very rawness of the Anglo-American team in North Africa. But his bluntness offended many of his peers, especially as it was coupled with so little apparent talent for leadership. [WW2AW]