The Commanders of World War II were for the most part career officers. They were forced to adapt to new technologies and shaped the direction of modern warfare. Some political leaders, particularly those of the principal dictatorships involved in the conflict, Adolf Hitler (Germany), Joseph Stalin (Soviet Union), Benito Mussolini (Italy) and Chiang Kai-shek (China), acted as supreme military commanders as well as civil commanders of their respective countries or empires.
Famous quotes containing the words world and/or war:
“I will use the world and sift it,
To a thousand humors shift it,
As you spin a cherry.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The war shook down the Tsardom, an unspeakable abomination, and made an end of the new German Empire and the old Apostolic Austrian one. It ... gave votes and seats in Parliament to women.... But if society can be reformed only by the accidental results of horrible catastrophes ... what hope is there for mankind in them? The war was a horror and everybody is the worse for it.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)