2. Napoleon Bonaparte
Had it not been for the Quadruple Alliance (Russia, Prussia, Austria and the UK) and other countries, Napoleon Bonaparte would have been close to achieving what nobody had done before and what Hitler dreamed 130 years later: to conquer all of the Europe.
He was a short man but he still commanded the respect of his armies with his tactic maneuvers and brilliance. He led his Grande Armee on a 4-year streak of victorious battles such as at Austerlitz and Ulm, where he was outnumbered.
At Austerlitz, being outnumbered by 20,000 more troops, he forged a risky plan to get the upper hand and break through the Allied front. He tricked the Russian-Austrian allies into attacking his right flank, thereby leaving their forces weak in the center. Napoleon attacked the weakened center and send the Allies retreating. His modernization of artillery also led to the success, with cannon artillery becoming more mobile. However, after the 1812 invasion of Russia, his Grande Armee never recovered.
Beating the Russians back to their motherland, he made a mistake of not equipping his troops for harsh winters. January and February arrived and froze his troops in their way, killing more men than any battle during the war. The Russians also implemented a scorched earth policy, denying the French troops food and shelter.
Of the 600,000 troops that marched toward Russia, only about 200,000 made it back. After he had been sent to the island of Elba, he managed to escape, raise an army and fight his last battle at Waterloo against the British General Duke of Wellington. However waited too long to attack, and the badly needed reinforcements from Wellington saved the day.
He was then exiled to the island of Saint Helena where he spent the rest of his years and died in 1821 at the age of 51.