Albert Jacka was an Australian soldier and the first from his nation to receive the Victoria Cross in World War I for recapturing a trench at Gallipoli in 1915. He survived extraordinary frontline violence only to die young in peacetime, his legend growing larger as his body finally gave out.
Rank - 128
A founding member of the SAS and one of World War II’s most feared raiders, leading audacious nighttime attacks that destroyed enemy airfields and shattered the myth of rear-area safety. Brilliant, violent, and deeply unstable, he embodied the brutal effectiveness of irregular warfare and became a lasting archetype of special forces legend.
Rank - 131
A British Army officer in World War II who went into combat armed with a broadsword, longbow, and bagpipes, turning audacity and spectacle into battlefield weapons. He became legendary for leading commando raids and capturing enemy soldiers through sheer nerve in an age dominated by guns, tanks, and artillery.
Rank - 132
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 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
Finnish marshal who led the defense of Finland during the Winter War and preserved the nation’s independence against overwhelming Soviet force.
Rank - 155
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 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
A fearless New Zealand–born commander famed for leading from the front in both World Wars.
Rank - 173
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 (1908–1975) was an Austrian SS commando famed for his audacious World War II special operations.
Rank - 179
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
The Escadrille Lafayette was a World War I fighter squadron formed in 1916 by American volunteer pilots flying for France before the United States formally entered the war. Celebrated as both a combat unit and a propaganda symbol, it helped shape early air combat doctrine while cementing the myth of the fighter pilot as a modern warrior.
Group Rank - 175
They were a brotherhood sealed inside steel, waging a silent war of endurance and arithmetic against the Atlantic until the ocean and industry finally broke them.
Group Rank - 179
The French Fusiliers Marins are naval infantry trained to fight ashore with the discipline of sailors, the endurance of infantry, and a collective refusal to break once committed.
Group Rank - 181
Russian Grenadiers advanced like a moving wall of frostbitten resolve, breaking armies through sheer inevitability long after the grenades themselves stopped mattering.
Group Rank - 187
Dropped into a doomed battle they didn’t start, the Polish 1st Parachute Brigade fought through smoke, chaos, and betrayal to become the fiercest ghosts of Arnhem.
Group Rank - 197
They fought like master craftsmen in a slaughterhouse, carving their legend in steel and smoke while serving a regime that was already rotting beneath their boots.
Group Rank - 198
The Solomonic Knights fought for seven centuries with blades, faith, and terrifying resolve, carving Ethiopia’s destiny into the highlands one battlefield at a time.
Group Rank - 199
Francis Pegahmagabow was a quiet Ojibwe sniper who turned World War I’s chaos into a disciplined ledger of survival and fear. He came home decorated, unheard, and spent the rest of his life fighting a country that loved his kills more than his voice.
Rank - 126