Louis Mountbatten, Earl Mountbatten of Burma, was a British naval leader and statesman who served his country from 1920 until his assassination by Irish terrorists in 1979. Mountbatten was the last British viceroy in India, guiding the new nations of India and Pakistan to independence in 1947. Mountbatten was born on June 25, 1900 in Windsor, England. He was the son of Prince Louis Alexander, a cousin of King George V of England. Mountbatten was educated at the Royal Naval Academy at Dartmouth and entered the British Navy in 1913. He was the uncle of Queen Elizabeth's husband, Prince Philip, and the great-uncle of Prince Charles.

Commissioned as a naval lieutenant in 1920, Mountbatten became the aide-de-camp to his cousin, the Prince of Wales (later King Edward VIII) in 1921. Promoted to captain in the early 1930s, Mountbatten was a world traveler, fluent in French and German. By the late 1930s he had become the aide-de-camp...