The MegaMilitary Project | Online Edition #560

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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Vice Admiral Hiroaki Abe

Militarians Biographies
Hiroaki Abe was an admiral in the Imperial Japanese Navy during World War II. Abe graduated from the Japanese Naval Academy (1911) and Naval Staff College (1925). He rose through the ranks as a torpedo officer and during 1922-23 commanded a destroyer.

General Creighton Williams Abrams Jr.

Militarians Biographies
Abrams was a native of Springfield, Massachusetts, and received an appointment to West Point, where he was a superb student, graduating in 1936, eighteenth in a class of 276. Commissioned a second lieutenant of cavalry, he was promoted to captain in 1940 and transferred to armor. In Europe, during World War II, he brilliantly commanded the Thirty-Seventh Tank Battalion and, at the critical Battle of the Bulge.

Major General Avraham "Bren" Adan

Militarians Biographies
Avraham Adan was a controversial Israeli military leader who advocated and helped create the "Bar Lev Line" of fortified observation posts along the troubled Suez In 1969. A native-born Israeli, Avraham Man enlisted in 1943, at age seventeen, in the Palmach.
Allenby was born in Nottinghamshire and joined the Inniskilling Dragoons in 1882. With this unit, he served in the Bechuanaland (Botswana) expedition of 1884-85. At the turn of the century, during 1900-1902 he saw service in the Second Anglo-Boer War on the staff of Lord Kitchener and in the field. In 1902, he returned to England to command of the Fifth Lancers (1902-1905).

General Henry Harley "Hap" Arnold

Militarians Biographies
A native of Gladwyne, Pennsylvania, Arnold attended West Point, from which he graduated in 1907, and was commissioned an officer in the infantry. His first service was in the Philippines during 1907-1909, but he became passionately interested in flying and was a pioneer in military aviation.
Auchinleck was the son of an army officer and, destined for a military career, was educated at Wellington and Sandhurst. He became an officer in the Indian army and saw service during World War I against Turkish forces in the Middle East. During the Great War, he rocketed through the ranks, becoming a lieutenant colonel by 1917.

General Louis Botha

Militarians Biographies
Botha was born near Greytown in Natal and, the son of a farming family, was given very little formal education. He was, however, intensely interested in politics and took part in creating the New Republic around Vryheid in 1884. He settled in that region, becoming field cornet (military leader) of Vryheid in 1894 and gaining election to the Volksraad (parliament) of Transvaal four years later.

General Omar Nelson Bradley

Militarians Biographies
Bradley was Born in Clark, Missouri, and received an appointment to West Point, from which he graduated in 1915 with a commission as second lieutenant in the infantry. During 1915-18, he served in the West in a series of posts in Washington and Arizona and rose rapidly through the ranks, gaining promotion to major in June 1918. He was not shipped overseas during World War I.
Alan Brooke was born in 1883 at Bagnères-de-Bigorre, Hautes-Pyrénées (France), to a prominent Anglo-Irish family from West Ulster with a long military tradition and was educated on the continent. After returning to England, he joined the army as a junior artillery officer (1902) and saw service on the Western Front during World War I, where he was given command of Canadian and Indian troops.
Semyon Mikhailovich Budyonny (Russian: Семён Миха́йлович Будённый) was born near Rostov-on-the-Don, the heart of the Don Cossack region, where he was steeped in the fighting traditions of the Cossack's. Although he received no formal education, Budyonny was literate.
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