Leaders of World War I

  • Albert I

    King Albert I led the Belgian army and remained with his troops while Germany occupied most of his country.

  • H.H. Asquith, 1st earl of Oxford and Asquith

    Asquith led Britain during the first two years of World War I.

  • Sir Robert Borden

    Borden led Canada throughout the war and asserted Canada’s independence in international relations.

  • Georges Clemenceau

    Clemenceau was a dominant figure in the French Third Republic and a framer of the postwar Treaty of Versailles.

  • Constantine I

    Constantine I became king of Greece in 1913, but he was deposed four years later by the Western Allies and his Greek opponents for his pro-German attitude.

  • Ferdinand I

    Though a member of the Hohenzollern dynasty that ruled the German Empire, Ferdinand I of Romania supported the Allies in World War I.

  • Andrew Fisher

    Fisher led Australia into World War I, pledging support to “the last man and the last shilling,” but he was forced to resign as prime minister barely a year later.

  • George V

    King George V of the United Kingdom was the first cousin of German Emperor William II and Russian Tsar Nicholas II, but family ties did little to slow the march to war.

  • William Morris Hughes

    The second of Australia’s two wartime prime ministers, Hughes sponsored a pair of unsuccessful referenda on introducing conscription to Australia.

  • Vladimir Ilich Lenin

    As unrest gripped Petrograd in March 1917, Germany saw an opportunity to strike a fatal blow to the Russian war effort by facilitating Lenin’s return to Russia.

  • David Lloyd George

    As prime minister, Lloyd George dominated the British political scene in the latter part of World War I.

  • Tomáš Masaryk

    Masaryk was the leader of the Czech liberation movement, and he forged former Austrian territories into an independent Czechoslovakia.

  • Nicholas II

    The last emperor of Russia was killed by the Bolsheviks after the October Revolution.

  • Vittorio Orlando

    Orlando led Italy in the concluding years of World War I and headed his country’s delegation to the Versailles Peace Conference.

  • Nikola Pašić

    After the assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand, Pašić tried to placate Austria-Hungary but was unable to avert the Austrian declaration of war on Serbia on July 28, 1914.

  • Raymond Poincaré

    Poincaré largely determined the policies that led to France’s involvement in World War I.

  • Taishō

    The Japanese emperor asserted little political power, but he held the throne during a period of Japan’s continued rise on the international scene.

  • Eleuthérios Venizélos

    This Greek politician doubled the size of Greece during the Balkan Wars and also gained territory for Greece after World War I.

  • Victor Emmanuel III

    Although Italy had been in an alliance with Germany and Austria-Hungary since 1882, Victor Emmanuel guided his country into war on the side of the Allies.

  • Woodrow Wilson

    The American president pledged to keep his country out of war, but the U.S. Senate kept him out of the postwar peace, twice rejecting the Treaty of Versailles.

  • Ferdinand

    Ferdinand provoked his allies in the First Balkan War into uniting against him in the Second. Bulgaria’s defeat in the latter conflict brought it into alignment with the Central Powers.

  • Franz Ferdinand, archduke of Austria-Este

    The archduke’s visit to Sarajevo in June 1914 was designed to be an imperial show of force. Instead, it led to the deaths of millions and the disintegration of the Dual Monarchy.

  • Franz Joseph

    The aging emperor viewed Franz Ferdinand’s assassination as an act of divine retribution for his nephew’s having married below his station.

  • Said Halim Paşa

    Although he had signed a treaty allying the Ottoman Empire with Germany, Grand Vizier Said opposed his country’s involvement in World War I.

  • Mehmed V

    The last sultan of the Ottoman Empire lived just long enough to see large swathes of his country conquered by Allied armies.

  • Talat Paşa

    The Ottoman interior minister oversaw the ethnic cleansing and genocide of hundreds of thousands of Armenians during World War I.

  • William II

    Kaiser Wilhelm encouraged the grandiose war aims of his generals, but the Allied victory led to the dismemberment of the German Empire.

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