Creighton W. Abrams b. September 15, 1914 - d. September 4, 1974
Creighton Williams Abrams Jr. succeeded Willam Westmoreland as the commander of US military operations in Vietnam from 1968-72. [more]

Dean Acheson b. April 11, 1893. – d. October 21, 1971
Dean Acheson was Secretary of State during the Truman Administration, 1949-1952. Acheson served for many years in both the public and private spheres. [more]

Konrad Adenauer b. January 5, 1876– d. April 19, 1967
West German Chancellor (1949-1963). Adenauer led the rebuilding of West Germany and the revitalization of its economy. [more]

Yuri Andropov b. June 2, 1914 - d. February 9, 1984
Yuri Andropov was a Soviet politician and General Secretary of the CPSU from November 12, 1982 until his death in 1984 [more]

Clement Attlee b. January 3, 1883 - d. October 8, 1967
Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1945-1951. Clement Attlee succeeded Winston Churchill, and was present at the final allied war conference in Postdam Germany in August 1945, and worked during his term to solidify relations with the U.S. [more]

James A. Baker b. April 28, 1930
James Addison Baker III, American politician and diplomat, was Chief of Staff in the President Ronald Reagan's first administration, and Secretary of State in the administration of President George H. W. Bush. [more]

George W. Ball b. December 19, 1909 - d. May 26, 1994
George Wildman Ball was U.S. Undersecretary of State in the administrations of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. [more]

Omar N. Bradley b. 1893 - d. April 8, 1981
Omar Bradley had a long and distinguished career in the U.S. Army. He commanded the Twelfth Army Group during WWII under Eisenhower, and was the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 1949-1953. [more]

Willy Brandt b. December 16, 1913
Mayor of West Berlin from 1958-1962. Brandt went on to be West German Chancellor, and he implemented a policy of "ostpolitik" which strove to reconcile West Germany with the communist eastern bloc. [more]

Leonid Illyich Brezhnev b. December 19, 1906 - d. Nov. 10, 1982
Soviet Premier from 1964-1982. Brezhnev asserted the USSR's right to intervene in the affairs of other socialist states, referred to as the "Brezhnev Doctrine." [more]

William P. Bundy b. September 24, 1917 - d. October 6, 2000
William Bundy was a member of the CIA and advisor to President Lyndon B. Johnson. He became the Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs, and played an important role in the Vietnam War. [more]

George H. W. Bush b. June 12, 1924
George Herbert Walker Bush was the 41st President of the United States. George Bush's many years of civic service climaxed with his presiding over the end of the Cold War. [more]

Chae Byong Duk b. 1915 - d. 1950
Chae Byong Duk was trained by the Japanese military and eventually rose to command the South Korean armies following the end of World War II. He was killed in action shortly after the North Korean invasion began in 1950. [more]

Nguyen Cao Ky b. 1930
Involved in the overthrow of President Diem in 1963, and Vice-President, Republic of South Vietnam (1967-1971). Cao Ky fled to the US in 1975 after the communist takeover. [more]

Nicolae Ceauşescu b. January 26, 1918 - d. December 25,1989
Nicolae Ceauşescu was the leader of Communist Romania from 1965 until his execution in 1989. [more]

Mark W. Clark b. May 1, 1896 - d. April 17, 1984
Mark Clark was a career Army officer who served with distinction during WWI and WWII. Following the conslusion of WWII Clark remained active in the Army, and became the commander of UN and US Forces in Korea from 1952-1953. [more]

Clark Clifford b. December 25, 1906- d. October 10, 1998
Served as President Johnson's Secretary of Defense from 1968-1969, and was frequently consulted by President Kennedy, and later by President Carter. [more]

Joseph Lawton Collins b. May 1, 1896 - d. September 12, 1987
Joseph Collins was a career Army officer. He commanded armies in both the Pacific and European theaters of WWII, and rose to become the Army Chief of Staff from 1949-1953 during the Korean War. Collins actively worked to meet the manpower needs of the army, and to integrate the racially segregated troops. [more]

Bao Dai b. October 22, 1913 - d. July 31, 1997
Bao Dai was the 13th and Last Emperor of Vietnam and South Vietnam 1926-1954. He was ousted from power by Diem in 1954 elections. [more]

William F. Dean b. August 1, 1899 - d. August 25, 1981
In October 1947 Dean became the military governor of Korea, and returned in 1950 from Japan to turn back the North Korean invasion. In the fighting around Taejon he was taken as a prisoner of war. [more]

Ngo Dinh Diem b. January 3, 1901 - d. November 1, 1963
Diem was Prime Minister of South Vietnam from 1954-1963. His regime had little support stemming from its oppresive policies. With American approval the South Vietnamese military overthrew and assassinated Diem in November 1963. [more]

Ngo Dinh Nhu b. 1906- d. 1963
Ngo Dinh Nhu was the younger brother and chief political advisor of Ngo Dinh Diem. He operated the Can Lao, a domestic political espionage organization. He was assassinated, along with his brother, during the 1963 coup. [more]

Anatoly Dobrynin b. November 16, 1919
Anatoly Dobrynin served as the Soviet ambassador to the United States during six presidential administrations from Kennedy to Reagan. [more]

Le Duan b. 1908 - d. 1986
Le Duan was an original founder of the Indochina Communist Party, Le served on the North Vietnamese Central Committee under Ho Chi Minh, and directed the formation of an underground Communist organization in South Vietnam. After Ho Chi Minh's death, Duan assumed leadership of North Vietnam. [more]

Le Duc Tho b. Oct. 14, 1911 - d. Oct. 13, 1990
Le Duc Tho served as Special Adviser to the North Vietnamese Delegation at the Paris Peace Conference from 1968-1973. He was awarded but declined the Nobel Peace Prize in 1973. [more]

John F. Dulles b. February 25, 1888 - d. May 24, 1959
Dulles was an opponent of Truman's containment policy, and became Secretary of State under Eisenhower from 1953-1959. Dulles and Eisenhower began to speak of the "rollback" instead of the containment of communism. [more]

Dwight D. Eisenhower b. October 14, 1890 - d. March 28, 1969
US President from 1953-1961; Eishenhower also served as Supreme Allied Commander Europe during World War II. [more]

Zhou Enlai b. 1898 - d. January 8, 1976
Zhou Enlai, a co-founder of the Chinese Communist Party, rose to become the Chinese Foreign Minister from 1949-1976. Zhou was involved in the Korean War cease-fire talks. [more]

Gerald R. Ford b. July 14, 1913
Gerald R. Ford served as President of the US from 1973-1977. Ford became President after Richard Nixon resigned from the Presidency following the Watergate Scandel. Ford was President in 1975 when South Vietnam was invaded and conquered by the North Vietnamese. [more]

Mikhail Gorbachev b. March 2, 1931
Soviet premier from March 1985-1991. Gorbachev instituted the reform programs "perestroika" and "glasnost", and negotiated and argued for an end to the arms race. [more]

Andrei Gromyko b. July 6, 1909 -July 2, 1989
Gromyko was Soviet foreign minister for many years, and was heavily involved in numerous treaties and agreements between East and West during the Cold War. [more]

William Averell Harriman b. November 15, 1891 - d. July 26, 1986
William Averell Harriman came from an affluent background as an heir to the Union Pacific Railroad fortune. He appointed as Secretary of Commerce in 1946, and worked on the Marshall Plan from 1949-1950. He then served as Truman's national security adviser during the Korean War. [more]

Vaclav Havel b. October 5, 1936
Vaclav Havel was a leading figure in the Czecholsovakian "Velvet Revolution" of 1989. Havel became Czechoslovakia's first democractically elected President, and served in that position from 1992-2003. [more]

John Reed Hodge b. June 12, 1893 - d. November 12, 1963
John Hodge came from a military background, and served as the commander of the U.S. Third Army from September 1950 to May 1952. [more]

Erich Honecker b. August 25, 1912 - d. May 29, 1994
Leader of East Germany from 1971-1989. Hoencker was a hard-line communist, and resisted the reforms of Mikhail Gorbachev. [more]

Hubert H. Humphrey b. May 27, 1911 - d. January 13, 1978
Hubert Horatio Humphrey Jr. served as the 38th Vice President of the United States, and twice served as a United States Senator from Minnesota. [more]

Nguyen Huu Tho b. July 10, 1910 - d. December 24, 1996
Nguyen Huu Tho served as the acting President of Vietnam from March 30, 1980 to July 4, 1981. He also was the Chairman of the National Liberation Front from 1960-1969. [more]

Kim Il Sung b. April 15, 1912 - d. July 8, 1994
Kim Il Sung was an activist from his youth. He initially fought against Japanese occupation of Korea in the 1930s, and finally returned in 1945 as a major in the Soviet army to establish North Korea. Kim launched the Korean war in 1950 in an effort to unify the divided Korean peninsula. Kim served as the Premier of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea from 1948 to his death in 1994. [more]

Ion Iliescu b. March 3, 1930
Ion Iliescu was the first President of Romania after the fall of communism in 1989. [more]

Wojciech W. Jaruzelski b. July 6, 1923
Wojciech Witold Jaruzelski was a communist Polish political and military leader. He served as the party's national secretary and prime minister form 1981-1990. [more]

Lyndon B. Johnson b. August 27, 1908 – d. January 22, 1973
Johnson became the Vice President under John F. Kennedy in 1961, and later became President following Kennedy's assassination. Under Johnson US forces began military action against the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong. [more]

Charles Turner Joy b. February 17, 1895 - d. June, 1956
Charles Joy served as the commander of US Naval Forces in Far East from 1949-1952. Joy was involved in the Korean action, and was selected by General Matthew Ridgeway to serve as a senior delegate and chief of the U.N. Command delegation to the Korean Armistice Conference. [more]

János Kádár b. May 26, 1912 - d. July 6, 1989
János Kádár, was the General Secretary of the Communist Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party from 1956 to 1988, and twice served as prime minister of Hungary, from 1956 to 1958 and from 1961 to 1965. [more]

Chiang Kai-shek b. October 31, 1887 - d. April 5, 1975
Chiang Kai-Shek, the Chinese Nationalist leader, fought against Chinese Communists for decades before fleeing to the island of Taiwan. Chaing was President of the Republic of China on Taiwan from 1950-1975. He worked with MacArthur in trying to expand the Korean conflict beyond the peninsula. [more]

John F. Kennedy b. May 29, 1917 - d. November 22, 1963
US President from 1961-1963. Kennedy also served in the US House of Representatives, US Senate, and was a veteran of World War II. [more]

Nguyen Khanh b. 1927
Nguyen Khanh served as Prime Minister of South Vietnam from 1964-1965. Khanh called for expanding the war into North Vietnam, and led a military coup on August 16 replacing Duong Van Minh as Prime Minister. [more]

Nikita S. Khrushchev b. April 17th, 1894 - d. September 11, 1971
First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) from 1953 to 1964; concurrently held the post of President of the Council of Ministers (Prime Minister) from 1958 to 1964. [more]

Henry A. Kissinger b. May 27, 1923
Henry A. Kissinger, a German immigrant, served as Secretary of State for Richard Nixon and was one of his principal advisers during the Vietnam War. [more]

Helmut Kohl b. April 3, 1930
As West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl is widely recognized for managing the process of German reunification that started with the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989, and formally completed on October 3, 1990. [more]

Aleksey Nikolayevich Kosygin b. February 21, 1904 - d. December 18, 1980
Aleksey Kosygin was a politician and administrator in the Soviet Union. Kosygin was Premier of the USSR from 1964 to 1980. [more]

Leonid M. Kravchuk b. January 10, 1934
Leonid Makarovych Kravchuk is a Ukrainian politican, and was a key supporter of the Ukrainian independence movement. [more]

Egon Krenz b. March 19, 1937
Egon Krenz is a former German Communist politician, who briefly served as leader of East Germany in 1989 replacing Erich Honecker. [more]

Vladimir A. Kryuchkov b. 1924
Vladimir Aleksandrovich Kryuchkov was a Russian politician, statesman, and Army General. Kryuchkov was a leader of the attempted August Coup of 1991. [more]

Curtis LeMay b. November 15, 1906 - d. October 3, 1990
Curtis LeMay served in command positions in the Air Force from WWII to 1965. He was the commander of SAC (Strategic Air Command) from 1948-1957. [more]

Trygve Lie b. July, 1896 - d. December 30, 1968
Trygve Lie, a Norwegian, served as the first Secretary General of the United Nations from 1946-1952. [more]

Douglas MacArthur b. January 26, 1880 - d. April 5, 1964
Douglas MacArthur served for almost his whole life in the Armed Forces. He served in WWI, WWII, and the Korean War. In Korea he was the commander of UN Forces in Korea from 1950-1951. A gifted and driven leader, MacArthur was a major figure in the Korean War. His ideas and goals conflicted with the Truman administration and eventually led to his dismissal. [more]

Jacob Malik b. 1906 - d. 1980
Malik was the Soviet Respresentative to UN Security Council from 1948-1953. In 1951 he first recommended negotiations to end the Korean War. A cease fire did not offically take hold until two years later in 1953. [more]

George C. Marshall b. December 31, 1880 – d. October 16, 1959
George C. Marshall was a key militay figure during WWII, and the period directly following it. Marshall was involved in the reconstruction of Europe, and formed the "Marshall Plan" to help devestated western Europe get back on its feet. [more]

Robert S. McNamara b. June 9, 1916
Robert Strange McNamara, American businessman and politician, was Secretary of Defense from 1961 to 1968. He resigned that position to become President of the World Bank from 1968 to 1981. [more]

Ho Chi Minh b. May 19, 1890 - d. September 3, 1969
Ho Chi Minh was President of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam from 1945-1969. He was the founder and leader of the Vietnamese communist movement. [more]

Vyacheslav Molotov b. February 25, 1890 - d. November 8, 1986
Most notably comissar of foreign affairs; Molotov negotiated the German-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact (1939), and mutual aid treaties with Britain, the US, at Tehran (1943), Yalta (1945) and Potsdam (1945). [more]

John J. Muccio
Special Representative of the President to Korea, 1948-49; Ambassador to Korea, 1949-52 [more]

Miklós Németh b. 1948
Miklós Németh, born in 1948 in Monok, Hungary, served as prime minister of Hungary from 23 November 1988 to 23 May 1990. [more]

Vo Nguyen Giap b. 1912
Vo Nguyen Giap was the Defense Minister of North Vietnam from 1944-1980. He was the principal individual in charge of North Vietnamese strategy during the Vietnam War. [more]

Richard Milhouse Nixon b. January 9, 1913 - d. April 22, 1994
Richard Nixon served as US Vice President, from 1953-1959, and as US President from 1969-1974. Nixon oversaw the gradual decline and departure of US forces from South Vietnam. [more]

Frank Pace, Jr. b. July 5, 1912 - d. January 8, 1988
Frank Pace was the Secretary of the Army from 1950-1953. Pace was a first-rate administrator during his service. Following his resignation as Secretary of the Army, Pace went on to serve in the private sector. [more]

Valentin Pavlov b. September 26, 1937 - d. March 30, 2003
Valentin Sergeyevich Pavlov was the Prime Minister of the Soviet Union from January to August 1991. He was one of the leaders of the August Coup that attempted to depose Mikhail Gorbachev in 1991. [more]

Boris K. Pugo b. February 19, 1937 - d. August 22, 1991
Boris Karlovich Pugo was a Latvian Communist political figure who was a leader of the failed 1991 August Coup. [more]

Lewis B. Puller b. June 26, 1898 – d. October 11, 1971
Lewis B. "Chesty" Puller is the most decorated Marine in history. Puller served in many conflicts and was a promoted to brigadier general during the Korean War. He served as an officer in the US Marine Corps from 1918-1955. [more]

Ronald Reagan b. February 6, 1911 - d. June 5, 2004
US President, 1981-1989. Reagan, a staunch anti-communist, presided over improving US-Soviet relations and negotiated arms reduction treaties with Mikhail Gorbachev. [more]

Syngman Rhee b. April 26, 1875 - d. July 19, 1965
A nationalist and a christian, Syngman Rhee formed a Korean exile government during the Japanese occupation. In 1948 Rhee was elected president of South Korea, and he served in the position from 1948-1960. [more]

Matthew B. Ridgway b. 1895 d. July 26, 1993
Matthew Ridgway rose to command UN and US Troops in Korea from 1951-1952. He was tasked with stabilizing and saving the peninsula. Ridgway was able to successfully prepare the way for armistice talks by stabilizing the line on and around the 38th parallel. [more]

Walt W. Rostow b. October 7, 1916 - d. February 13, 2003
Rostow served as an adviser on national security affairs under John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson administrations. [more]

Dean Rusk b. February 9, 1909 – d. December 21, 1994
David Dean Rusk was the United States Secretary of State from 1961 to 1969 under presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. Rusk was very much in support of US actions in Vietnam. [more]

Eduard Shevardnadze b. January 25, 1928
Eduard Amvrosiyevich Shevardnadze is a Georgian politician. He served under Mikhail Gorbachev as the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Soviet Union from 1985 to 1990. [more]

Oliver P. Smith b. October 26, 1893 - d. December 25, 1977
A career marine officer, Oliver P. Smith, served as the Marine Corps Chief of Staff, from 1948-1950. He commanded the successful retreat and extraction of the 1st Marine Division from an overwhelming Chinese counter-offensive near the Chosin Resevoir. [more]

Joseph Stalin b. December 21, 1879 - d. March 5, 1953
CPSU Secretary General 1922-1953; Stalin was a brutal leader who oversaw the Soviet victory in WWII, and Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe and East Germany. [more]

Paik Sun Yup b. 1921
Paik Sun Yup served as a ROK military officer for the duration of the Korean War. Notably, he was a Major General, ROK Army, from 1945-1950, and ROK Army Chief of Staff from 1952-1953. [more]

Margaret Thatcher b. October 13, 1925
British Prime Minister, known as "the Iron Lady," Margaret Thatcher played an important role in the peaceful end of the Cold War in Europe. A staunch conservative, she balanced a tough line on Communism with skillful personal diplomacy with President Reagan and Soviet leader Michael Gorbachev. [more]

Margaret Thatcher
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Margaret Thatcher
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Van Tien Dung b. 1917 - d. 2002
Van Tien Dung served as the Military Chief of Staff for North Vietnam from 1953-1980. He commanded military operations during the war, and conducted the final offensive which overran South Vietnam in 1975. [more]

Harry S. Truman b. May 8, 1884 - d. December 26, 1972
US president from 1945-1953. Truman negotiated the post World War II peace with the USSR, and had a policy of "containing" communism. [more]

Walter Ulbricht b. June 30, 1893 - d. August 1, 1973
Walter Ulbrict was a hard-line communist and acted as the head of East Germany until 1971 when he was forced to retire. Ulbrict spent WWII in exile in the USSR, and returned following the war as the most influential German communist. [more]

Yo Un-hyong b. 1885 - d. 1947
Yo Un-hyong was a Korean populist leader, and stood in opposition to the Japanese occupation. Following the conclusion of WWII Yo worked to create the Korean People's Republic (KPR). but the Leader, Korean People's Republic, 1945-1947. [more]

Pham Van Dong b. March 1, 1906 - d. April 29, 2000
Pham Van Dong was an associate of Ho Chi Minh who helped establish the Indochinese Communist Party. He served as Prime Minister of North Vietnam from 1954 through 1976. [more]

James A. Van Fleet b. March 19, 1892 - 1992
James Van Fleet was a dynamic and capable officer. Van Fleet achieved distinction in serving in WWII, and in Greece. He was the commanding general of the US Eighth Army in Korea from 1951-1953. [more]

Duong Van Minh b. February 16, 1916 - d. August, 2001
Dương Van Minh led the South Vietnamese army under Prime Minister Ngo Dinh Diem. In 1963, he became leader of South Vietnam after a coup in which Diem was murdered. Duong's rule lasted only two months. He briefly led South Vietnam again in 1975 before surrendering the nation to Communist forces. [more]

Nguyen Van Thieu b. April 5, 1923 - d. September 29, 2001
He served as South Vietnam's ceremonial head of state in Prime Minister Nguyen Cao Ky's government from 1965 - 67. In September 3, 1967, he ran successfully for the new executive presidency of South Vietnam and held that position until South Vietnam fell in 1975. [more]

Tran Van Tra b. 1918 - d. April, 1996
Tran Van Tra was the chair of the Military Affairs Committee of the CSOVN from 1964-1976. As a deputy commander in the Communist military, Tran Van Tra also led the attack on Saigon during the Tet Offensive. [more]

Hoyt S. Vandenberg b. January 24, 1899 - d. April 4, 1954
Hoyt S. Vandenberg served as Chief of Staff of the Air Force from 1948-1953. In this capacity Vandenberg oversaw the Berlin Airlift and Korean operations. He was a strong advocate of keeping the war limited to avoid the possibility of a larger worldwide war. [more]

Lech Walesa b. September 29, 1943
He founded Solidarity (Solidarność), the Soviet bloc's first independent trade union, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983, and served as President of Poland from 1990 to 1995. [more]

Walton H. Walker b. 1889 - d. december 22, 1950
Walton H. Walker served as Major General of the U.S. Eighth Army 1949-1950. Walker is credited with helping to turn the North Korean tide in the initial stages of the war, and to successfully keep the Eighth Army from being overrun. [more]

William C. Westmoreland b. March 26, 1914
William Westmoreland commanded US military operations in the Vietnam War from 1964-68. He later served as the Army's Chief of Staff. [more]

Gennadiy Yanayev b. 1937
Gennadiy Yanayev was Vice-President of the Soviet Union under Mikhail Gorbachev and leader of the August Coup of 1991. [more]

Dmitriy Yazov b. 1924
Dmitry Timofeyevich Yazov was Marshal of the Soviet Union and Defense Minister from 1987-1991. He also participated in the failed 1991 August Coup. [more]

Boris Yeltsin b. February 1, 1931
Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin became the first President of Russia in 1991, and the first democratically elected leader in the country's history. [more]

Mao Zedong b. December 26, 1893 - d. September 9, 1976
Mao Zedong was the influential leader of the Chinese communist party, and the subsequent leader of the People's Republic of China 1949-1976. On his decision, the Chinese unoffically entered the conflict on the side of North Korea. [more]