History’s biggest Badasses
Smedley D. Butler
Smedley D. Butler was a two-time Medal of Honor–winning U.S. Marine who spent decades fighting America’s overseas wars during the age of imperial expansion. After retiring, he became one of the nation’s fiercest critics of war profiteering, condemning the very system that had made him famous.
Rank - 148
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk was the soldier-statesman who crushed an invasion at Gallipoli and then dismantled a collapsing empire to build a fiercely secular modern Turkey.
Rank - 154
Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim
Finnish marshal who led the defense of Finland during the Winter War and preserved the nation’s independence against overwhelming Soviet force.
Rank - 155
Audie Murphy
At Holtzwihr, Audie Murphy climbed a burning tank destroyer and dared an armored battalion to try and take it back.
Rank - 156
Abd el-Krim
Abd el-Krim was the Amazigh strategist who united the Rif tribes, shattered Spain at Annual, and became a defining symbol of 20th-century anti-colonial resistance.
Rank - 171
Bernard Freyberg
A fearless New Zealand–born commander famed for leading from the front in both World Wars.
Rank - 173
Adrian Carton de Wiart
A walking catalogue of injuries, Adrian Carton de Wiart charged through the twentieth century’s worst battles with the attitude of a man personally offended by mortality.
Rank - 175
Otto Skorzeny
Otto Skorzeny (1908–1975) was an Austrian SS commando famed for his audacious World War II special operations.
Rank - 179
Paul Emil von Lettow-Vorbeck
In the steaming chaos of East Africa, Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck fought the entire British Empire to a standstill with nothing but mosquitoes, discipline, and pure Prussian spite.
Rank - 185