2,425 articles
Robert Nairac
Robert Nairac (1948-1977), Grenadier Guards captain and undercover Military Intelligence Liaison Officer, abducted from the Three Steps Bar in Dromintee, south Armagh, killed by the Provisional IRA, awarded the George Cross; his remains remain unfound.
Robert Neller
Robert B. Neller (born 1953, East Lansing, Michigan) is a retired Marine Corps general, 37th Commandant (2015–2019), who led the Corps' pivot to great-power competition and later served on the Naming Commission.
Robert Ressler
Robert K. Ressler, also known for coining the term serial killer, was an FBI Behavioral Science Unit agent who interviewed imprisoned serial murderers, helped build criminal profiling and VICAP, and inspired the Mindhunter character Bill Tench.
Robert Rogers (British Army officer)
Robert Rogers (1731–1795) was a colonial American British Army officer who raised and led Rogers' Rangers in the French and Indian War and wrote the 28 Rules of Ranging, still issued to U.S. Army Rangers.
Robert Sink
Robert Frederick Sink (1905-1965), American Army lieutenant general, commanded the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment through World War II (D-Day, Market Garden, Bastogne), later led STRAC; portrayed by Dale Dye in Band of Brothers.
Robert Townsend (spy)
Robert Townsend (1753–1838), alias Samuel Culper Jr., code 723, was the Culper Spy Ring's principal collector in British-occupied New York, a Quaker merchant and journalist whose identity was revealed only in 1930.
Robert Venables
Robert Venables (1612/13 – July 1687) was an English Parliamentarian soldier and general of the land forces in Cromwell's Western Design of 1654–1655, which failed to take Hispaniola but captured Jamaica.
Robert-François Damiens
Robert-François Damiens (1715–1757) was a French domestic servant who stabbed Louis XV at Versailles on 5 January 1757. The last person in France drawn and quartered, executed 28 March 1757, he is famous through Foucault's Discipline and Punish.
Roberto Quintanilla
Roberto Quintanilla Pereira, Bolivian police intelligence chief under Arguedas, ordered the amputation of Che Guevara's hands in 1967; as consul general in Hamburg he was shot dead on 1 April 1971, an assassination attributed to ELN guerrilla Monika Ertl.
Rochus Misch
Rochus Misch (1917–2013), German Waffen-SS Oberscharführer, served as Hitler's bodyguard, courier, and telephone operator 1940–1945 and was the last surviving occupant of the Führerbunker, later a memoirist.
Roddie Edmonds
Roddie Edmonds (Roderick W. Edmonds, 1919-1985), U.S. Army master sergeant of Knoxville, Tennessee, senior NCO of 1,200 American POWs at Stalag IX-A, Ziegenhain, who declared "We are all Jews here" on January 27, 1945, saving about 200 Jewish prisoners; Righteous Among the Nations 2015, posthumous Medal of Honor 2026.
Rodolfo Graziani
Rodolfo Graziani (1882–1955), Italian marshal and colonial administrator, led Libya's reconquest and Ethiopia's occupation, served as Salò defense minister, and was tried for collaborationism in 1948–1950 but never for colonial crimes.
Rodolphe Haykal (رودولف هيكل)
Rodolphe Haykal (رودولف هيكل), born 1969 in Beirut, is a Lebanese army general appointed Commander in Chief of the Lebanese Armed Forces on 13 March 2025, overseeing the 'Shield of the Homeland' Hezbollah disarmament plan and army diplomacy.
Roger Faulques
Roger Faulques (1924-2011), French Foreign Legion paratroop officer and mercenary; Indochina RC4 survivor, Battle of Algiers intelligence officer, Katanga gendarmerie commander with Bob Denard in Yemen and Biafra.
Roger Rogerson
Roger Caleb Rogerson (1941-2024), "Roger the Dodger", was a decorated NSW police detective dismissed in 1986 who became Australia's most notorious corrupt officer, twice jailed for justice offences, and died in custody serving life for the 2014 murder of Jamie Gao.
Roland L. Bragg
Roland Leon Bragg (1923–1999), Maine-born US Army paratrooper of the 513th PIR, 17th Airborne Division, won the Silver Star and Purple Heart in the Battle of the Bulge for driving a captured German ambulance 20 miles under fire; Fort Bragg was renamed for him in 2025.
Rolando Galman
Rolando Galman, Filipino man killed at Manila airport August 21, 1983, moments after Ninoy Aquino; military named him the communist-hired assassin, but the Agrava Board and 1990 retrial treated him as a scapegoat victim.
Rom Braslavski (רום ברסלבסקי)
Rom Braslavski, a German-Israeli man and former IDF soldier, was taken hostage by Palestinian Islamic Jihad on October 7, 2023. He was held for 738 days.
Romaine-la-Prophétesse
Romaine-la-Prophétesse, born Romaine Rivière around 1760, was a free black insurgent and prophet who led thousands in Saint-Domingue during the Haitian Revolution until his defeat in 1792.
Roman Gofman (רומן גופמן)
Roman Gofman (רומן גופמן), born 1976 in Mazyr, Belarus, is an Israeli major general and 14th Mossad director since June 2026, formerly Netanyahu's military secretary, a 7th Brigade and 210th Division commander wounded fighting Hamas on October 7, 2023.
Roman von Ungern-Sternberg (Роман фон Унгерн-Штернберг)
Roman von Ungern-Sternberg (Роман фон Унгерн-Штернберг, 1885/1886–1921), the Baltic German "Mad Baron," was a tsarist cavalry officer and White warlord who seized Urga in February 1921, restored the Bogd Khan, ruled Mongolia brutally, and was captured and executed by the Red Army in September 1921.
Roméo Dallaire
Roméo Dallaire (born 1946), retired Canadian lieutenant-general and senator, commanded UNAMIR in Rwanda during the 1994 genocide; later author, PTSD advocate, and founder of the Dallaire Institute against child soldiers.
Ron Stallworth
Ron Stallworth, first African-American detective of the Colorado Springs Police Department, infiltrated the local Ku Klux Klan in 1978-79 by phone while a white stand-in attended meetings; memoir Black Klansman inspired the 2018 film BlacKkKlansman.
Ronald Speirs
Ronald C. Speirs (1920-2007), US Army officer of the 506th PIR, 101st Airborne; Dog Company platoon leader who took command of Easy Company at Foy on January 13, 1945, ran through German lines to contact I Company and back; later Korea, Spandau Prison governor, Laos.
Rōnin (浪人)
A rōnin (浪人) was a samurai in Japan who had no lord, whether through his master's death or lost service; hundreds of thousands existed in the early Edo period.
Rosie Cordero-Stutz
Rosanna "Rosie" Cordero-Stutz, Miami-Dade County Sheriff since January 7, 2025, the county's first female sheriff and Florida's first Hispanic woman sheriff, after a Miami-Dade Police Department career from 1996 patrol officer to assistant director.
Rowland Hill, 1st Viscount Hill
Rowland Hill, 1st Viscount Hill, known as "Daddy Hill," was a British general, a trusted commander under Wellington in the Peninsular War and at Waterloo.
Roy Benavidez
Roy Benavidez (Raul Perez Benavidez, 1935-1998), Army Special Forces master sergeant who received the Medal of Honor in 1981 for his May 2, 1968 rescue of a surrounded team west of Loc Ninh, Vietnam, after earlier receiving the Distinguished Service Cross.
Roza Shanina (Роза Георгиевна Шанина)
Roza Georgiyevna Shanina (Роза Георгиевна Шанина), Soviet female sniper of the 3rd Belorussian Front, credited with 59 confirmed kills, first woman of her front awarded the Order of Glory, killed in East Prussia in January 1945.
Rudolf Abel
Rudolf Abel, real name William Fisher (born England, 1903), was a Soviet KGB illegal spymaster in the US, convicted in the 1957 Hollow Nickel Case and exchanged for U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers in 1962.