1.
Royal Norwegian Navy
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The Royal Norwegian Navy is the branch of the Norwegian Armed Forces responsible for naval operations of the state of Norway. The navy also includes the Coast Guard, the Royal Norwegian Navy has a history dating back to 955. From 1509 to 1814, it formed part of the navy of Denmark-Norway, since 1814, the Royal Norwegian Navy has again existed as a separate navy. In Norwegian, Royal Norwegian Navy vessels have since 1946 been given the ship prefix KNM, in English, they are given the prefix HNoMS, short for His/Her Norwegian Majestys Ship. Coast Guard vessels are given the prefix KV for KystVakt in Norwegian, during the last part of the Middle Ages the system of levying of ships, equipment and manpower for the leidang was mainly used to levying tax and existed as such into the 1700th Century. During most of the union between Norway and Denmark the two countries had a common fleet and this fleet was established by King Hans in 1509 in Denmark. A large proportion of the crew and officers in this new Navy organisation were Norwegian, in 1709 there were about 15,000 personnel enrolled in the common fleet, of these 10,000 were Norwegian. When Tordenskjold carried out his famous raid at Dynekil in 1716 more than 80 percent of the sailors and 90 percent of the soldiers in his force were Norwegian, because of this the Royal Norwegian Navy shares its history from 1509 to 1814 with the Royal Danish Navy. The modern, separate Royal Norwegian Navy was founded on April 12,1814 by Prince Christian Fredrik on the remnants of the Dano-Norwegian Navy, at the time of separation, the Royal Dano-Norwegian Navy was in a poor state and Norway was left with the lesser share. All officers of Danish birth were ordered to return to Denmark and it then consisted of 39 officers, seven brigs, one schooner-brig, eight gun schooners,46 gun chalups and 51 gun barges. April 1,1815 the RNoNs leadership was reorganized into a navy ministry, Norway retained its independent armed forces, including the navy, during the union with Sweden. During most of the union the navy was subjected to low funding, in the late 19th century, the fleet was increased to defend a possible independent Norway from her Swedish neighbours. These were operated by 116 active duty officers and 700 petty officers, Norway was neutral during World War I, but the armed forces were mobilised to protect Norways neutrality. The neutrality was sorely tested – the nations merchant fleet suffered casualties to German U-Boats. World War II began for the Royal Norwegian Navy on April 8,1940, the artillery pieces inflicted heavy damage on the German heavy cruiser Blücher, which was subsequently sunk by torpedoes fired from Oscarsborgs land based torpedo battery. Blücher sank with over 1,000 casualties among its crew, the German invasion fleet – believing Blücher had struck a mine – retreated south and called for air strikes on the fortress. This delay allowed King Haakon VII of Norway and the Royal family, as well as the government, to escape captivity. On June 7,1940, thirteen vessels, five aircraft and 500 men from the Royal Norwegian Navy followed the King to the United Kingdom, the number of men was steadily increased as Norwegians living abroad, civilian sailors and men escaping from Norway joined the RNoN
2.
Nazi Germany
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Nazi Germany is the common English name for the period in German history from 1933 to 1945, when Germany was governed by a dictatorship under the control of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. Under Hitlers rule, Germany was transformed into a fascist state in which the Nazi Party took totalitarian control over all aspects of life. The official name of the state was Deutsches Reich from 1933 to 1943, the period is also known under the names the Third Reich and the National Socialist Period. The Nazi regime came to an end after the Allied Powers defeated Germany in May 1945, Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany by the President of the Weimar Republic Paul von Hindenburg on 30 January 1933. The Nazi Party then began to eliminate all opposition and consolidate its power. Hindenburg died on 2 August 1934, and Hitler became dictator of Germany by merging the powers and offices of the Chancellery, a national referendum held 19 August 1934 confirmed Hitler as sole Führer of Germany. All power was centralised in Hitlers person, and his word became above all laws, the government was not a coordinated, co-operating body, but a collection of factions struggling for power and Hitlers favour. In the midst of the Great Depression, the Nazis restored economic stability and ended mass unemployment using heavy military spending, extensive public works were undertaken, including the construction of Autobahnen. The return to economic stability boosted the regimes popularity, racism, especially antisemitism, was a central feature of the regime. The Germanic peoples were considered by the Nazis to be the purest branch of the Aryan race, millions of Jews and other peoples deemed undesirable by the state were murdered in the Holocaust. Opposition to Hitlers rule was ruthlessly suppressed, members of the liberal, socialist, and communist opposition were killed, imprisoned, or exiled. The Christian churches were also oppressed, with many leaders imprisoned, education focused on racial biology, population policy, and fitness for military service. Career and educational opportunities for women were curtailed, recreation and tourism were organised via the Strength Through Joy program, and the 1936 Summer Olympics showcased the Third Reich on the international stage. Propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels made effective use of film, mass rallies, the government controlled artistic expression, promoting specific art forms and banning or discouraging others. Beginning in the late 1930s, Nazi Germany made increasingly aggressive territorial demands and it seized Austria and Czechoslovakia in 1938 and 1939. Hitler made a pact with Joseph Stalin and invaded Poland in September 1939. In alliance with Italy and smaller Axis powers, Germany conquered most of Europe by 1940, reichskommissariats took control of conquered areas, and a German administration was established in what was left of Poland. Jews and others deemed undesirable were imprisoned, murdered in Nazi concentration camps and extermination camps, following the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, the tide gradually turned against the Nazis, who suffered major military defeats in 1943
3.
Kriegsmarine
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The Kriegsmarine was the navy of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945. It superseded the Imperial German Navy of the German Empire and the inter-war Reichsmarine, the Kriegsmarine was one of three official branches—along with the Heer and the Luftwaffe —of the Wehrmacht, the armed forces of Nazi Germany. The Kriegsmarine grew rapidly during German naval rearmament in the 1930s, Kriegsmarine ships were deployed to the waters around Spain during the Spanish Civil War, under the guise of enforcing non-intervention, but in reality supporting the Franco side of the war. In January 1939 Plan Z was ordered, calling for naval parity with the Royal Navy by 1944, however, when World War II broke out in September 1939, Plan Z was shelved in favour of building submarines and prioritizing land and air forces. The Commander-in-Chief of the Kriegsmarine was Adolf Hitler, who exercised his authority through the Oberkommando der Marine, the Kriegsmarines most famous ships were the U-boats, most of which were constructed after Plan Z was abandoned at the beginning of World War II. However, the adoption of convoy escorts, especially in the Atlantic, after the Second World War, the Kriegsmarines remaining ships were divided up amongst the Allied powers and were used for various purposes including minesweeping. Adolf Hitler was the Commander-in-Chief of all German armed forces, including the Kriegsmarine and his authority was exercised through the Oberkommando der Marine, or OKM, with a Commander-in-Chief, a Chief of Naval General Staff and a Chief of Naval Operations. The first Commander-in-Chief of the OKM was Erich Raeder who was the Commander-in-Chief of the Reichsmarine when it was renamed and reorganized in 1935, Raeder held the post until falling out with Hitler after the German failure in the Battle of the Barents Sea. He was replaced by Karl Dönitz on 30 January 1943 who held the command until he was appointed President of Germany upon Hitlers suicide in April 1945, hans-Georg von Friedeburg was then Commander-in-Chief of the OKM for the short period of time until Germany surrendered in May 1945. Subordinate to these were regional, squadron and temporary flotilla commands, regional commands covered significant naval regions and were themselves sub-divided, as necessary. They were commanded by a Generaladmiral or an Admiral, there was a Marineoberkommando for the Baltic Fleet, Nord, Nordsee, Norwegen, Ost/Ostsee, Süd and West. The Kriegsmarine used a form of encoding called Gradnetzmeldeverfahren to denote regions on a map, each squadron also had a command structure with its own Flag Officer. The commands were Battleships, Cruisers, Destroyers, Submarines, Torpedo Boats, Minesweepers, Reconnaissance Forces, Naval Security Forces, Big Guns and Hand Guns, major naval operations were commanded by a Flottenchef. The Flottenchef controlled a flotilla and organized its actions during the operation, the commands were, by their nature, temporary. As a result the German surface fleet was plagued by design flaws throughout the war, military aircraft were also banned, so Germany could have no naval aviation. Under the treaty Germany could only build new ships to replace old ones, All the ships allowed and personnel were taken over from the Kaiserliche Marine, renamed Reichsmarine. From the outset, Germany worked to circumvent the restrictions of the Treaty of Versailles. The launching of the first pocket battleship, Deutschland in 1931 was a step in the formation of a modern German fleet, modern destroyers and light cruisers were also built
4.
U-boat
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U-boat is the anglicised version of the German word U-Boot, a shortening of Unterseeboot, literally undersea boat. While the German term refers to any submarine, the English one refers specifically to military submarines operated by Germany, particularly in the First and Second World Wars. Although at times they were efficient fleet weapons against enemy warships, they were most effectively used in an economic warfare role. Austro-Hungarian navy submarines were known as U-boats. The first submarine built in Germany, the three-man Brandtaucher, sank to the bottom of Kiel harbor on 1 February 1851 during a test dive, the inventor and engineer Wilhelm Bauer had designed this vessel in 1850, and Schweffel & Howaldt constructed it in Kiel. Dredging operations in 1887 rediscovered Brandtaucher, it was raised and put on display in Germany, there followed in 1890 the boats WW1 and WW2, built to a Nordenfelt design. The SM U-1 was a completely redesigned Karp-class submarine and only one was built, the Imperial German Navy commissioned it on 14 December 1906. It had a hull, a Körting kerosene engine. The 50%-larger SM U-2 had two torpedo tubes, the U-19 class of 1912–13 saw the first diesel engine installed in a German navy boat. At the start of World War I in 1914, Germany had 48 submarines of 13 classes in service or under construction, during that war the Imperial German Navy used SM U-1 for training. Retired in 1919, it remains on display at the Deutsches Museum in Munich, on 5 September 1914, HMS Pathfinder was sunk by SM U-21, the first ship to have been sunk by a submarine using a self-propelled torpedo. On 22 September, U-9 sank the obsolete British warships HMS Aboukir, HMS Cressy, for the first few months of the war, U-boat anticommerce actions observed the prize rules of the time, which governed the treatment of enemy civilian ships and their occupants. On 20 October 1914, SM U-17 sank the first merchant ship, surface commerce raiders were proving to be ineffective, and on 4 February 1915, the Kaiser assented to the declaration of a war zone in the waters around the British Isles. This was cited as a retaliation for British minefields and shipping blockades, under the instructions given to U-boat captains, they could sink merchant ships, even potentially neutral ones, without warning. In February 1915, a submarine U-6 was rammed and both periscopes were destroyed off Beachy Head by the collier SS Thordis commanded by Captain John Bell RNR after firing a torpedo, on 7 May 1915, SM U-20 sank the liner RMS Lusitania. The sinking claimed 1,198 lives,128 of them American civilians, munitions that it carried were thousands of crates full of ammunition for rifles, 3-inch artillery shells, and also various other standard ammunition used by infantry. The sinking of the Lusitania was widely used as propaganda against the German Empire, a widespread reaction in the U. S was not seen until the sinking of the ferry SS Sussex. The sinking occurred in 1915 and the United States entered the war in 1917, the initial U. S. response was to threaten to sever diplomatic ties, which persuaded the Germans to issue the Sussex pledge that reimposed restrictions on U-boat activity
5.
Trondheim
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Trondheim, historically Kaupangen, Nidaros and Trondhjem, is a city and municipality in Sør-Trøndelag county, Norway. It has a population of 187,353, and is the third most populous municipality in Norway and it is the third largest city in the country, with a population of 169,972 inhabitants within the city borders. The city functions as the centre of Sør-Trøndelag county. Trondheim lies on the shore of Trondheim Fjord at the mouth of the river Nidelva. The settlement was founded in 997 as a trading post, from 1152 to 1537, the city was the seat of the Catholic Archdiocese of Nidaros, since then, it has remained the seat of the Lutheran Diocese of Nidaros and the Nidaros Cathedral. The current municipality dates from 1964, when Trondheim merged with Byneset, Leinstrand, Strinda, for the ecclesiastical history, see Archiepiscopate of Nidaros Trondheim was named Kaupangen by Viking King Olav Tryggvason in 997. Shortly thereafter it came to be called Nidaros, in the beginning it was frequently used as a military retainer of King Olav I. It was frequently used as the seat of the king, and was the capital of Norway until 1217, people have been living in the region for thousands of years as evidenced by the rock carvings in central Norway, the Nøstvet and Lihult cultures and the Corded Ware culture. In ancient times, the Kings of Norway were hailed at Øretinget in Trondheim, Harald Fairhair was hailed as the king here, as was his son, Haakon I, called the Good. The battle of Kalvskinnet took place in Trondheim in 1179, King Sverre Sigurdsson, some scholars believe that the famous Lewis chessmen, 12th-century chess pieces carved from walrus ivory found in the Hebrides and now at the British Museum, may have been made in Trondheim. Trondheim was the seat of the Archdiocese of Nidaros for Norway from 1152, due to the introduction of Lutheran Protestantism in 1537, the last Archbishop, Olav Engelbrektsson, had to flee from the city to the Netherlands, where he died in present-day Lier, Belgium. The city has experienced major fires. Since much of the city was made of wooden buildings, many of the fires caused severe damage. Great fires ravaged the city in 1598,1651,1681,1708, twice in 1717,1742,1788,1841 and 1842, however, the 1651 fire destroyed 90% of all buildings within the city limits. The fire in 1681 led to an almost total reconstruction of the city, overseen by General Johan Caspar von Cicignon, broad avenues like Munkegaten were created, with no regard for property rights, in order to stop the next fire. At the time, the city had a population of roughly 8000 inhabitants, after the Treaty of Roskilde on 26 February 1658, Trondheim and the rest of Trøndelag, became Swedish territory for a brief period, but the area was reconquered 10 months later. The conflict was settled by the Treaty of Copenhagen on 27 May 1660. During World War II, Trondheim was occupied by Nazi Germany from 9 April 1940, the home of the most notorious Norwegian Gestapo agent, Henry Rinnan, was in Trondheim
6.
Battle of the Atlantic
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The Battle of the Atlantic was the longest continuous military campaign in World War II, running from 1939 to the defeat of Germany in 1945. At its core was the Allied naval blockade of Germany, announced the day after the declaration of war and it was at its height from mid-1940 through to the end of 1943. The convoys, coming mainly from North America and predominantly going to the United Kingdom and these forces were aided by ships and aircraft of the United States from September 13,1941. The Germans were joined by submarines of the Italian Royal Navy after their Axis ally Italy entered the war on June 10,1940, as an island nation, the United Kingdom was highly dependent on imported goods. Britain required more than a million tons of imported material per week in order to be able to survive and fight. In essence, the Battle of the Atlantic was a war, the Allied struggle to supply Britain. From 1942 onwards, the Axis also sought to prevent the build-up of Allied supplies, the defeat of the U-boat threat was a pre-requisite for pushing back the Axis. The outcome of the battle was a victory for the Allies—the German blockade failed—but at great cost,3,500 merchant ships and 175 warships were sunk for the loss of 783 U-boats. The name Battle of the Atlantic was coined by Winston Churchill in February 1941 and it has been called the longest, largest, and most complex naval battle in history. The campaign started immediately after the European war began, during the so-called Phoney War and it involved thousands of ships in more than 100 convoy battles and perhaps 1,000 single-ship encounters, in a theatre covering millions of square miles of ocean. The Allies gradually gained the hand, overcoming German surface raiders by the end of 1942 and defeating the U-boats by mid-1943. The first meeting of the Cabinets Battle of the Atlantic Committee was on March 19, Churchill claimed to have coined the phrase Battle of the Atlantic shortly before Alexanders speech, but there are several examples of earlier usage. Following the use of unrestricted submarine warfare by Germany in the First World War, countries tried to limit, even abolish, the effort failed. or active resistance to visit or search. This made restrictions on submarines effectively moot, in 1939, the Kriegsmarine lacked the strength to challenge the combined British Royal Navy and French Navy for command of the sea. Instead, German naval strategy relied on commerce raiding using capital ships, armed merchant cruisers, submarines and these ships immediately attacked British and French shipping. U-30 sank the ocean liner SS Athenia within hours of the declaration of war—in breach of her orders not to sink passenger ships, much of the early German anti-shipping activity involved minelaying by destroyers, aircraft and U-boats off British ports. With the outbreak of war, the British and French immediately began a blockade of Germany, the Royal Navy quickly introduced a convoy system for the protection of trade that gradually extended out from the British Isles, eventually reaching as far as Panama, Bombay and Singapore. Convoys allowed the Royal Navy to concentrate its escorts near the one place the U-boats were guaranteed to be found, each convoy consisted of between 30 and 70 mostly unarmed merchant ships
7.
Norway
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The Antarctic Peter I Island and the sub-Antarctic Bouvet Island are dependent territories and thus not considered part of the Kingdom. Norway also lays claim to a section of Antarctica known as Queen Maud Land, until 1814, the kingdom included the Faroe Islands, Greenland, and Iceland. It also included Isle of Man until 1266, Shetland and Orkney until 1468, Norway has a total area of 385,252 square kilometres and a population of 5,258,317. The country shares a long border with Sweden. Norway is bordered by Finland and Russia to the north-east, Norway has an extensive coastline, facing the North Atlantic Ocean and the Barents Sea. King Harald V of the Dano-German House of Glücksburg is the current King of Norway, erna Solberg became Prime Minister in 2013, replacing Jens Stoltenberg. A constitutional monarchy, Norway divides state power between the Parliament, the Cabinet and the Supreme Court, as determined by the 1814 Constitution, the kingdom is established as a merger of several petty kingdoms. By the traditional count from the year 872, the kingdom has existed continuously for 1,144 years, Norway has both administrative and political subdivisions on two levels, counties and municipalities. The Sámi people have an amount of self-determination and influence over traditional territories through the Sámi Parliament. Norway maintains close ties with the European Union and the United States, the country maintains a combination of market economy and a Nordic welfare model with universal health care and a comprehensive social security system. Norway has extensive reserves of petroleum, natural gas, minerals, lumber, seafood, the petroleum industry accounts for around a quarter of the countrys gross domestic product. On a per-capita basis, Norway is the worlds largest producer of oil, the country has the fourth-highest per capita income in the world on the World Bank and IMF lists. On the CIAs GDP per capita list which includes territories and some regions, from 2001 to 2006, and then again from 2009 to 2017, Norway had the highest Human Development Index ranking in the world. It also has the highest inequality-adjusted ranking, Norway ranks first on the World Happiness Report, the OECD Better Life Index, the Index of Public Integrity and the Democracy Index. Norway has two names, Noreg in Nynorsk and Norge in Bokmål. The name Norway comes from the Old English word Norðrveg mentioned in 880, meaning way or way leading to the north. In contrasting with suðrvegar southern way for Germany, and austrvegr eastern way for the Baltic, the Anglo-Saxon of Britain also referred to the kingdom of Norway in 880 as Norðmanna land. This was the area of Harald Fairhair, the first king of Norway, and because of him
8.
Viking ships
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Viking ships were marine vessels of unique design, built by the Vikings during the Viking Age. The boat-types were quite varied, depending on what the ship was intended for and they were clinker built, which is the overlapping of planks riveted together. Some might have had a head or other circular object protruding from the bow and stern, for design. Viking ships were not just used for their military prowess but for long-distance trade, in the literature, Viking ships are usually seen divided into two broad categories, merchant ships and warships. These categories are overlapping, some kinds of merchant ships, built for transporting cargo specifically, were regularly deployed as warships. The majority of Viking ships were designed for sailing rivers, fjords and coastal waters, while a few types, such as the knarr, could navigate the open sea and even the ocean. The Viking ships ranged from the Baltic Sea to far from the Scandinavian homelands, to Iceland, the Faroe Islands, Greenland, Newfoundland, the Mediterranean, the Black Sea and Africa. Scandinavia is a region with relatively high mountain ranges, dense forests. Consequently, trade routes were operated via shipping, as inland travel was both more hazardous and cumbersome. The Viking kingdoms developed into cities, all of which were deeply dependent on the North Sea. Control of the waterways was of importance, and consequently advanced war ships were in high demand. But in fact, because of their importance, ships became a mainstay of the Viking pagan religion, as they evolved into symbols of power. Throughout the first millennium, respectable Viking chieftains and noblemen were commonly buried with an intact, furthermore, the Hedeby coins, among the earliest known Danish currency, have ships as emblems, showing the importance of naval vessels in the area. Through such cultural and practical significance, the Viking ship progressed into the most powerful, a faering is an open rowboat with two pairs of oars, commonly found in most boat-building traditions in Western and Northern Scandinavia, dating back to the Viking Age. Knarr is the Norse term for ships that were built for Atlantic voyages and they were cargo ships averaging a length of about 54 feet, a beam of 15 feet, and a hull capable of carrying up to 122 tons. Because of this, the knarr was used for longer voyages, ocean going transports, the design of the knarr later influenced the design of the cog, used in the Baltic Sea by the Hanseatic League. Longships were naval vessels made and used by the Vikings from Scandinavia and Iceland for trade, commerce, exploration, and warfare during the Viking Age. The longships design evolved over years, beginning in the Stone Age with the invention of the umiak and continuing up to the 9th century with the Nydam
9.
Dora I
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Dora I is a former German submarine base and submarine pen or bunker built in Trondheim, Norway. Construction of the bunker was undertaken during the Second World War, nearby is the uncompleted Dora II. Trondheim was traditionally referred to as Drontheim in German, and the name DORA is the letter D in the German phonetic alphabet, following the occupation of Norway in 1940, it was soon realised that the country only had limited facilities for minor naval repairs. More extensive work usually meant a return to Germany, nevertheless, better protection for U-boats from aerial attack was required so a bunker-building programme was instigated. German U-boat bases in occupied Norway operated between 1940 and 1945, when the Kriegsmarine, converted several naval bases in Norway into submarine bases, Trondheim was an important U-boat base in Norway during the war. It was the home of the 13th U-boat Flotilla and it had 55 U-boats assigned to the flotilla during its service. Construction of the bunker which would part of the largest German naval base in Northern Europe, started in the autumn of 1941. The concrete roof was 3.5 m thick and reinforced with steel, the walls were also concrete but these were 3 m thick. The whole bunker was 153 m ×105 m, the work was undertaken by the Todt Organisations Einsatzgruppe Wiking and the Sager & Wörner construction company from Munich. The OT used slave labour extensively, five Serbian workers died when a wall fell on them and this incident fuelled a widespread rumor that the Germans simply left the bodies inside the wall. While German engineers did calculate that the five bodies would not weaken the fortification considerably, difficulties with the labour force was not the only problem. The acquisition of raw materials was also a problem, many Norwegian buildings were erected from timber so cement, sand and aggregate - components essential for the production of concrete - were often hard to extract in sufficient quantities. The steel required for reinforcing was mostly imported from Germany, the weather also played its part, roads and railways were often affected by snow and ice. Pre-fabricated accommodation units from Germany proved to be inadequate, more ships were delayed by the weather than enemy interference. Most construction machinery also had to be imported, the bunkers in Norway were originally slated for a second floor to be built over the submarine pens. This was to house accommodation, workshops and offices, the idea was abandoned at the end of 1941 due to the problems already mentioned. The choice of site did not help either, construction of a smaller bunker just west of it, Dora II, was started in 1942, but it was only half-completed by the end of the war. This building is used by a shipyard
10.
End of World War II in Europe
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The final battles of the European Theatre of World War II as well as the German surrender to the Soviet Union and the Western Allies took place in late April and early May 1945. Allied forces begin to take large numbers of Axis prisoners, The total number of prisoners taken on the Western Front in April 1945 by the Western Allies was 1,500,000. April also witnessed the capture of at least 120,000 German troops by the Western Allies in the last campaign of the war in Italy, in the three or four months up to the end of April, over 800,000 German soldiers surrendered on the Eastern Front. In early April, the first Allied-governed Rheinwiesenlagers were established in western Germany to hold hundreds of thousands of captured or surrendered Axis Forces personnel, Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force reclassified all prisoners as Disarmed Enemy Forces, not POWs. The legal fiction circumvented provisions under the Geneva Convention of 1929 on the treatment of former combatants, by October, thousands had died in the camps from starvation, exposure and disease. Liberation of Nazi Concentration Camps and refugees, Allied forces begin to discover the scale of The Holocaust, the advance into Germany uncovers numerous Nazi concentration camps and forced labor facilities. Up to 60,000 prisoners were at Bergen-Belsen when it was liberated on April 15,1945, Four days later troops from the American 42nd Infantry Division found Dachau. Allied troops force the remaining SS guards to gather up the corpses, due to the prisoners poor physical condition, thousands continue to die after liberation. Captured SS guards are subsequently tried at Allied war crimes tribunals where many are sentenced to death, however, up to 10,000 Nazi war criminals will eventually flee Europe using ratlines such as ODESSA. Germans leave Finland, On 25 April 1945, the last Germans were expelled by the Finnish Army from Finland, Mussolinis death, On 25 April 1945, Italian partisans liberated Milan and Turin. On 27 April 1945, as Allied forces closed in on Milan, Italian dictator Benito Mussolini was captured by Italian partisans and it is disputed whether he was trying to flee from Italy to Switzerland, and was traveling with a German anti-aircraft battalion. On 28 April, Mussolini was executed in Giulino, the other Fascists captured with him were taken to Dongo, the bodies were then taken to Milan and hung up on the Piazzale Loreto of the city. On 29 April, Rodolfo Graziani surrendered all Fascist Italian armed forces at Caserta, Graziani was the Minister of Defence for Mussolinis Italian Social Republic. Upper Inn river to the American General Jacob L. Devers, hitler appointed his successors as follows, Großadmiral Karl Dönitz as the new Reichspräsident and Joseph Goebbels as the new Reichskanzler. However, Goebbels committed suicide the day, leaving Dönitz as the sole leader of Germany. In the document, the Germans agreed to a ceasefire and surrender of all the forces under the command of Vietinghoff at 2pm on 2 May, German forces in Berlin surrender, The Battle of Berlin ended on 2 May. On that date, General der Artillerie Helmuth Weidling, the commander of the Berlin Defense Area, on the same day the officers commanding the two armies of Army Group Vistula north of Berlin, surrendered to the Western Allies. Lehrter Bahnhof is close to where the remains of Bormann, confirmed as his by a DNA test in 1998, were unearthed on 7 December 1972, the number of German land, sea and air forces involved in this surrender amounted to 1,000,000 men
11.
World War II
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World War II, also known as the Second World War, was a global war that lasted from 1939 to 1945, although related conflicts began earlier. It involved the vast majority of the worlds countries—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing alliances, the Allies and the Axis. It was the most widespread war in history, and directly involved more than 100 million people from over 30 countries. Marked by mass deaths of civilians, including the Holocaust and the bombing of industrial and population centres. These made World War II the deadliest conflict in human history, from late 1939 to early 1941, in a series of campaigns and treaties, Germany conquered or controlled much of continental Europe, and formed the Axis alliance with Italy and Japan. Under the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of August 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union partitioned and annexed territories of their European neighbours, Poland, Finland, Romania and the Baltic states. In December 1941, Japan attacked the United States and European colonies in the Pacific Ocean, and quickly conquered much of the Western Pacific. The Axis advance halted in 1942 when Japan lost the critical Battle of Midway, near Hawaii, in 1944, the Western Allies invaded German-occupied France, while the Soviet Union regained all of its territorial losses and invaded Germany and its allies. During 1944 and 1945 the Japanese suffered major reverses in mainland Asia in South Central China and Burma, while the Allies crippled the Japanese Navy, thus ended the war in Asia, cementing the total victory of the Allies. World War II altered the political alignment and social structure of the world, the United Nations was established to foster international co-operation and prevent future conflicts. The victorious great powers—the United States, the Soviet Union, China, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union and the United States emerged as rival superpowers, setting the stage for the Cold War, which lasted for the next 46 years. Meanwhile, the influence of European great powers waned, while the decolonisation of Asia, most countries whose industries had been damaged moved towards economic recovery. Political integration, especially in Europe, emerged as an effort to end pre-war enmities, the start of the war in Europe is generally held to be 1 September 1939, beginning with the German invasion of Poland, Britain and France declared war on Germany two days later. The dates for the beginning of war in the Pacific include the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War on 7 July 1937, or even the Japanese invasion of Manchuria on 19 September 1931. Others follow the British historian A. J. P. Taylor, who held that the Sino-Japanese War and war in Europe and its colonies occurred simultaneously and this article uses the conventional dating. Other starting dates sometimes used for World War II include the Italian invasion of Abyssinia on 3 October 1935. The British historian Antony Beevor views the beginning of World War II as the Battles of Khalkhin Gol fought between Japan and the forces of Mongolia and the Soviet Union from May to September 1939, the exact date of the wars end is also not universally agreed upon. It was generally accepted at the time that the war ended with the armistice of 14 August 1945, rather than the formal surrender of Japan
12.
German Type VII submarine
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Type VII U-boats were the most common type of German World War II U-boat. U-boat stands for Unterseeboot, which means submarine in German, the Finnish Vetehinen class and Spanish Type E-1 also provided some of the basis for the Type VII design. These designs led to the Type VII along with Type I, the production of Type I was cut down only after two boats, the reasons for this are not certain and range from political decisions to faults of the type. The design of the Type I was further used in the development of the Type VII, Type VII submarines were the most widely used U-boats of the war and were the most produced submarine class in history, with 703 built. The Type VII was the most numerous U-boat type to be involved in the Battle of the Atlantic, Type VIIA U-boats were designed in 1933–34 as the first series of a new generation of attack U-boats. Most Type VIIA U-boats were constructed at Deschimag AG Weser in Bremen with the exception of U-33 through U-36, also, the smaller boats lower endurance meant patrols were shorter. They were much more powerful than the smaller Type II U-boats they replaced, with four bow, usually carrying 11 torpedoes on board, they were very agile on the surface and mounted the 8.8 centimetres quick-firing deck gun with about 220 rounds. Ten Type VIIA boats were built between 1935 and 1937, all but two Type VIIA U-boats were sunk during World War II. The boat was powered on the surface by two MAN AG,6 cylinder 4-stroke M6V 40/46 diesel engines giving a total of 2,100 to 2,310 brake horsepower at 470 to 485 rpm. When submerged it was propelled by two Brown, Boveri & Cie GG UB 720/8 double-acting electric motors giving a total of 750 horsepower at 322 rpm and they were slightly faster than the VIIA, and had two rudders for greater agility. The torpedo armament was improved by moving the aft tube to the inside of the boat, the only exception was U-83, which lacked a stern tube and carried only 12 torpedoes. Type VIIBs included many of the most famous U-boats of World War II, including U-48, Priens U-47, Kretschmers U-99, and Schepkes U-100. On the surface the boat was powered by two supercharged MAN,6 cylinder 4-stroke M6V 40/46 diesels giving a total of 2, 800–3,200 metric horsepower at 470 to 490 rpm. When submerged, the boat was powered by two AEG GU 460/8-276 electric motors giving a total of 750 metric horsepower at 295 rpm, the Type VIIC was the workhorse of the German U-boat force, with 568 commissioned from 1940 to 1945. The first VIIC boat commissioned was the U-69 in 1940, Type VIIC differed from the VIIB only in the addition of an active sonar and a few minor mechanical improvements, making it 2 feet longer and 8 tons heavier. Speed and range were essentially the same, many of these boats were fitted with snorkels in 1944 and 1945. On the surface the boats were propelled by two supercharged Germaniawerft,6 cylinder, 4-stroke M6V 40/46 diesels totaling 2,800 to 3,200 PS at 470 to 490 rpm, for submerged propulsion, several different electric motors were used. Early models used the VIIB configuration of two AEG GU 460/8-276 electric motors, totaling 750 PS with a max rpm of 296, RP 137/c or Siemens-Schuckert-Werke GU 343/38-8 electric motors with the same power output as the AEG motors
Nazi Germany
German Navy