List of Famous people who died in 1946

Cornelius Cooper "Corny" Johnson was an American athlete in the high jump. Born in Los Angeles in 1913, Johnson first competed in organized track and field events at Berendo Junior High School. He achieved greater athletic success as a student at Los Angeles High School, competing in the sprint and in the high jump. Before going to the Olympics as a junior, he won the CIF California State Meet in 1932. He had been second the year before. In 2016, the 1936 Olympic journey of the eighteen Black American athletes, including Johnson, was documented in the film Olympic Pride, American Prejudice.

Jeannette Thurber was amongst the first major patrons of classical music in the United States. Thurber established the National Conservatory of Music of America in 1885—the first of its kind and an endeavor that some say ushered in the first orchestral music with a distinctively American sound. But in a very radical stance for the day, Thurber championed the rights of women, people of color and the handicapped to attend her school, sometimes on full scholarship. This was 1885—not too long after the Civil War—and her school was racially integrated, promoted women, and had an inclusive stance toward the handicapped.

Gusztáv Gratz was a Hungarian politician, who served as Minister of Foreign Affairs in 1921. He was a correspondent member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Gratz published in the Huszadik Század and the Társadalomtudományi Társaság newspapers. He was a representative in the National Assembly from 1906. He also served as managing director of the National Association of Manufacturers (GYOSZ). In 1917 he was appointed Minister of Finance in Móric Esterházy's cabinet. He took part in the peace negotiations' economical parts during the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk and Treaty of Bucharest.

Joseph Warren Stilwell was a United States Army general who served in the China Burma India Theater during World War II. An early American popular hero of WW2 for leading a column walking out of Burma pursued by victorious Japanese forces, his implacable demands for units debilitated by disease to be sent into heavy combat resulted in Merrill's Marauders becoming disenchanted with him. Infuriated by the 1944 fall of Changsha to a Japanese offensive, Stilwell threatened Chiang Kai-shek that Lend-Lease aid to China would be cut off. This led Ambassador Patrick J. Hurley to decide Stilwell had to be replaced. Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek had been intent on keeping Lend-Lease supplies for fighting Communists, while Stilwell had been obeying instructions to get the Chinese Communists and Nationalists to cooperate against Japan. Influential voices such as journalist Brooks Atkinson viewed the Chinese Communists as benign and Stilwell as a victim of a corrupt regime. The ousting of Stilwell sparked the beginning of anti-Chiang Kai-shek feeling among US policymakers that culminated in the 1947 ceasing of American assistance to Nationalist Chinese forces in the Chinese Civil War. Admirers of Stilwell saw him as having been given resources and authority that were so insufficient, his task was virtually impossible. Critics viewed him as a hard-charging, but ultimately unprofessional officer whose failings contributed to the Loss of China.

Winfield Scott Mattraw was an American film and television actor. He provided the voice of Bashful in Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.