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Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria (March 29, 1899 - December 23, 1953) was a Georgian Bolshevik and Soviet politician, state security administrator, chief of the Soviet security, and chief of the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD) under Joseph Stalin during World War II. In 1941, Beria was made a Commissar General of State Security, the highest quasi-military rank within the Soviet police system of that time, effectively comparable to a Marshal of the Soviet Union. He simultaneously administered vast sections of the Soviet state, and acted as the de facto Marshal of the Soviet Union in command of NKVD field units, and Soviet partisans, intelligence and sabotage operations on the Eastern Front during World War II.
In February 1941, Beria became Deputy chairman of the Council of People's Commissars, and in June, following Nazi Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union, he became a member of the State Defense Committee (GKO). He took control of the manufacture of armaments, and aircraft and aircraft engines.
