U.S. General John Malchase David Shalikashvili (born 1936) was appointed chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in August 1993, culminating a military career that began in 1958.

John Shalikashvili was born in Warsaw, Poland, on June 27, 1936, one of three children of Dimitri Shalikashvili and Maria Ruediger, daughter of a czarist general. Dimitri Shalikashvili, who had gone into exile from his native Georgia following communist victory in the Russian Civil War, was serving as a contract (foreign national) officer in the Polish army when World War II began. Demobilized after Poland's surrender to Germany, Dimitri Shalikashvili joined the Georgian Legion in 1942, a military unit composed of Georgian expatriates who believed they could free their homeland from communist oppression by aligning themselves with Germany. The Georgian Legion was later placed under the direct command of the Waffen SS, an elite branch of the German armed forces that included Germans as well...