Every historical era has its share of larger-than-life leaders, and the Cold War was no exception, beginning with the “Big Three”—Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin—who led the the United States, United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union, respectively, through World War II and into the Cold War. Leaders from this period loom large in the national mythologies of their countries, from France’s Charles de Gaulle and Poland’s Lech Wałęsa to Josip Broz Tito of the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Because of the bifurcating nature of the Cold War rivalry, the leaders of the period are often remembered in pairs, along with the counterpart with whom they faced off in ideological combat. Soviet leader Nikita Khruschev and U.S. Pres. John F. Kennedy are forever linked by the Cuban Missile Crisis, Mao Zedong and Chiang Kai-shek by the Chinese Civil War, and U.S. Pres. Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev by the roles they played in bringing the Cold War to an end.