National Academy of Sciences
The National Academy of Sciences is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Medicine; as a national academy, new members of the organization are elected annually by current members, based on their distinguished and continuing achievements in original research. Election to the National Academy is one of the highest honors in the scientific field. Members serve pro bono as "advisers to the nation" on science and medicine; the group holds a congressional charter under Title 36 of the United States Code. Founded in 1863 as a result of an Act of Congress, approved by Abraham Lincoln, the NAS is charged with "providing independent, objective advice to the nation on matters related to science and technology. … to provide scientific advice to the government'whenever called upon' by any government department. The Academy receives no compensation from the government for its services."
As of 2016, the National Academy of Sciences includes about 2,350 members and 450 foreign associates. It employed about 1,100 staff in 2005; the current members annually elect new members for life. Up to 84 members who are US citizens are elected every year. 190 members have won a Nobel Prize. By its own admission in 1989, the addition of women to the Academy "continues at a dismal trickle", at which time there were 1,516 male members and 57 female members; the National Academy of Sciences is a member of the International Council for Science. The ICSU Advisory Committee, in the Research Council's Office of International Affairs, facilitates participation of members in international scientific unions and serves as a liaison for U. S. national committees for individual scientific unions. Although there is no formal relationship with state and local academies of science, there is informal dialogue; the National Academy is governed by a 17-member Council, made up of five officers and 12 Councilors, all of whom are elected from among the Academy membership.
About 85 percent of funding comes from the federal government through contracts and grants from agencies and 15 percent from state governments, private foundations, industrial organizations, funds provided by the Academies member organizations. The Council has the ability ad-hoc to delegate certain tasks to committees. For example, the Committee on Animal Nutrition has produced a series of Nutrient requirements of domestic animals reports since at least 1944, each one being initiated by a different sub-committee of experts in the field for example on dairy cattle; the National Academy of Sciences meets annually in Washington, D. C., documented in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, its scholarly journal. The National Academies Press is the publisher for the National Academies, makes more than 5,000 publications available on its website. From 2004 to 2017, the National Academy of Sciences administered the Marian Koshland Science Museum to provide public exhibits and programming related to its policy work.
The museum's exhibits focused on infectious disease. In 2017 the museum closed and made way for a new science outreach program called LabX; the National Academy of Sciences maintains multiple buildings around the United States. The National Academy of Sciences Building is located at 2101 Constitution Avenue, in northwest Washington, D. C.. S. State Department; the building has a neoclassical architectural style and was built by architect Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue. The building is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Goodhue engaged a team of artists and architectural sculptors including Albert Herter, Lee Lawrie, Hildreth Meiere to design interior embellishments celebrating the history and significance of science; the building is used for lectures, symposia and concerts, in addition to annual meetings of the NAS, NAE, NAM. The 2012 Presidential Award for Math and Science Teaching ceremony was held here on March 5, 2014. 150 staff members work at the NAS Building. In June 2012, it reopened to visitors after a major two-year restoration project which restored and improved the building's historic spaces, increased accessibility, brought the building's aging infrastructure and facilities up to date.
More than 1,000 National Academies staff members work at The Keck Center of the National Academies at 500 Fifth Street in northwest Washington, D. C; the Keck Center houses the National Academies Press Bookstore. The Marian Koshland Science Museum of the National Academy of Sciences – located at 525 E St. N. W. – hosted visits from the public, school field trips, traveling exhibits, permanent science exhibits. The NAS maintains conference centers in California and Massachusetts; the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Center is located on 100 Academy Drive in Irvine, near the campus of the University of California, Irvine. The J. Erik Jonsson Conference Center located at 314 Quissett Avenue in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, is another conference facility; the Act of Incorporation, signed by President Abraham Lincoln on March 3, 1863, created the National Academy of Sciences and named 50 charter members. Many of the original NAS members came from the so-called "Scientific Lazzaroni," an informal network of phy
Military
A military is a heavily-armed, highly-organised force intended for warfare known collectively as armed forces. It is officially authorized and maintained by a sovereign state, with its members identifiable by their distinct military uniform, it may consist of one or more military branches such as an Army, Air Force and in certain countries and Coast Guard. The main task of the military is defined as defence of the state and its interests against external armed threats. Beyond warfare, the military may be employed in additional sanctioned and non-sanctioned functions within the state, including internal security threats, population control, the promotion of a political agenda, emergency services and reconstruction, protecting corporate economic interests, social ceremonies and national honor guards. A nation's military may function as a discrete social subculture, with dedicated infrastructure such as military housing, utilities, hospitals, legal services, food production and banking services.
In broad usage, the terms "armed forces" and "military" are treated as synonymous, although in technical usage a distinction is sometimes made in which a country's armed forces may include both its military and other paramilitary forces. There are various forms of irregular military forces; the profession of soldiering as part of a military is older than recorded history itself. Some of the most enduring images of classical antiquity portray the power and feats of its military leaders; the Battle of Kadesh in 1274 BC was one of the defining points of Pharaoh Ramses II's reign, his monuments commemorate it in bas-relief. A thousand years the first emperor of unified China, Qin Shi Huang, was so determined to impress the gods with his military might that he had himself buried with an army of terracotta soldiers; the Romans paid considerable attention to military matters, leaving to posterity many treatises and writings on the subject, as well as a large number of lavishly carved triumphal arches and victory columns.
Issue: Possibly cognate with Thousand, cf. Latin and Romance language root word "mil-")The first recorded use of the word military in English, spelled militarie, was in 1582, it comes from the Latin militaris through French, but is of uncertain etymology, one suggestion being derived from *mil-it- – going in a body or mass. The word is now identified as denoting someone, skilled in use of weapons, or engaged in military service, or in warfare; as a noun, the military refers to a country's armed forces, or sometimes, more to the senior officers who command them. In general, it refers to the physicality of armed forces, their personnel and the physical area which they occupy; as an adjective, military referred only to soldiers and soldiering, but it soon broadened to apply to land forces in general, anything to do with their profession. The names of both the Royal Military Academy and United States Military Academy reflect this. However, at about the time of the Napoleonic Wars,'military' began to be used in reference to armed forces as a whole, in the 21st century expressions like'military service','military intelligence', and'military history' encompass naval and air force aspects.
As such, it now connotes any activity performed by armed force personnel. Military history is considered to be the history of all conflicts, not just the history of the state militaries, it differs somewhat from the history of war, with military history focusing on the people and institutions of war-making, while the history of war focuses on the evolution of war itself in the face of changing technology and geography. Military history has a number of facets. One main facet is to learn from past accomplishments and mistakes, so as to more wage war in the future. Another is to create a sense of military tradition, used to create cohesive military forces. Still, another may be to learn to prevent wars more effectively. Human knowledge about the military is based on both recorded and oral history of military conflicts, their participating armies and navies and, more air forces. There are two types of military history, although all texts have elements of both: descriptive history, that serves to chronicle conflicts without offering any statements about the causes, nature of conduct, the ending, effects of a conflict.
Despite the growing importance of military technology, military activity depends above all on people. For example, in 2000 the British Army declared: "Man is still the first weapon of war." The military organization is characterized by a strict hierarchy divided by military rank, with ranks grouped as officers, non-commissioned officers, personnel at the lowest rank. While senior officers make strategic decisions, subordinated military personnel fulfil them. Although rank titles vary by military branch and country, the rank hierarchy is common to all state armed forces worldwide. In addition to their rank, personnel occupy one of many trade roles, which are grouped according to
Star of David
The Star of David, known in Hebrew as the Shield of David or Magen David, is a recognized symbol of modern Jewish identity and Judaism. Its shape is that of the compound of two equilateral triangles. Unlike the menorah, the Lion of Judah, the shofar and the lulav, the Star of David was never a uniquely Jewish symbol; the symbol became representative of the worldwide Zionist community, the broader Jewish community, after it was chosen as the central symbol on a flag at the First Zionist Congress in 1897. The earliest Jewish usage of the symbol was inherited from medieval Arabic literature by Kabbalists for use in talismanic protective amulets where it was known as the Seal of Solomon among Muslims; the symbol was used in Christian churches as a decorative motif many centuries before its first known use in a Jewish synagogue. During the 19th century the symbol began to proliferate among the Jewish communities of Eastern Europe being used among the Jewish communities in the Pale of Settlement. A significant motivating factor, according to scholar Gershom Scholem, was the desire to represent Jewish religion and/or identity in the same manner the Christian cross identified that religion's believers.
Before the 19th century, official use in Jewish communities was known only in the region of today's Czech Republic and parts of Southern Germany, having begun in medieval Prague. The identification of the term "Star of David" or "Shield of David" with the hexagram shape dates to the 17th century; the term "Shield of David" is used in the Siddur as a title of the God of Israel. The hexagram does appear in Jewish contexts since antiquity as a decorative motif. For example, in Israel, there is a stone bearing a hexagram from the arch of a 3rd–4th century synagogue in the Galilee; the hexagram may have been employed as an architectural ornament on synagogues, as it is, for example, on the cathedrals of Brandenburg and Stendal, on the Marktkirche at Hanover. A hexagram in this form is found on the ancient synagogue at Capernaum. In the synagogues it was associated with the mezuzah; the use of the hexagram in a Jewish context as a meaningful symbol may occur as early as the 11th century, in the decoration of the carpet page of the famous Tanakh manuscript, the Leningrad Codex dated 1008.
The symbol illuminates a medieval Tanakh manuscript dated 1307 belonging to Rabbi Yosef bar Yehuda ben Marvas from Toledo, Spain. A Siddur dated 1512 from Prague displays a large hexagram on the cover with the phrase, "He will merit to bestow a bountiful gift on anyone who grasps the Shield of David." A hexagram has been noted on a Jewish tombstone in Taranto, Apulia in Southern Italy, which may date as early as the third century CE. The Jews of Apulia were noted for their scholarship in Kabbalah, connected to the use of the Star of David. Medieval Kabbalistic grimoires show hexagrams among the tables of segulot, but without identifying them as "Shield of David". In the Renaissance Period, in the 16th-century Land of Israel, the book Ets Khayim conveys the Kabbalah of Ha-Ari who arranges the traditional items on the seder plate for Passover into two triangles, where they explicitly correspond to Jewish mystical concepts; the six sfirot of the masculine Zer Anpin correspond to the six items on the seder plate, while the seventh sfira being the feminine Malkhut corresponds to the plate itself.
However, these seder-plate triangles are parallel, one above the other, do not form a hexagram. According to G. S. Oegema Isaac Luria provided the hexagram with a further mystical meaning. In his book Etz Chayim he teaches that the elements of the plate for the Seder evening have to be placed in the order of the hexagram: above the three sefirot "Crown", "Wisdom", "Insight", below the other seven. M. Costa wrote that M. Gudemann and other researchers in the 1920s claimed that Isaac Luria was influential in turning the Star of David into a national Jewish emblem by teaching that the elements of the plate for the Seder evening have to be placed in the order of the hexagram. Gershom Scholem disagrees with this view, arguing that Isaac Luria talked about parallel triangles one beneath the other and not about the hexagram; the Star of David at least since the 20th century remains associated with the number seven and thus with the Menorah, popular accounts associate it with the six directions of space plus the center, or the Six Sefirot of the Male united with the Seventh Sefirot of the Female.
Some say that one triangle represents the ruling tribe of Judah and the other the former ruling tribe of Benjamin. It is seen as a dalet and yud, the two letters assigned to Judah. There are 12 Vav, or "men," representing patriarchs of Israel. In 1354, King of Bohemia Charles IV prescribed for the Jews of Prague a red flag with both David's shield and Solomon's seal, while the red flag with which the Jews met King Matthias of Hungary in the 15th century showed two pentagrams with two golden stars. In 1460, the Jews of Ofen received King Matthias Corvinus with a red flag on which were two Shields of David and two stars. In the first Hebrew prayer book, printed in Prague in 1512, a large hexagram appears on the cover. In the colophon is written: "Each man beneath his flag according to the house of their fathe
Operation Overlord
Operation Overlord was the codename for the Battle of Normandy, the Allied operation that launched the successful invasion of German-occupied Western Europe during World War II. The operation was launched on 6 June 1944 with the Normandy landings. A 1,200-plane airborne assault preceded an amphibious assault involving more than 5,000 vessels. Nearly 160,000 troops crossed the English Channel on 6 June, more than two million Allied troops were in France by the end of August; the decision to undertake a cross-channel invasion in 1944 was taken at the Trident Conference in Washington in May 1943. General Dwight D. Eisenhower was appointed commander of Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force, General Bernard Montgomery was named as commander of the 21st Army Group, which comprised all the land forces involved in the invasion; the coast of Normandy of northwestern France was chosen as the site of the invasion, with the Americans assigned to land at sectors codenamed Utah and Omaha, the British at Sword and Gold, the Canadians at Juno.
To meet the conditions expected on the Normandy beachhead, special technology was developed, including two artificial ports called Mulberry harbours and an array of specialised tanks nicknamed Hobart's Funnies. In the months leading up to the invasion, the Allies conducted a substantial military deception, Operation Bodyguard, using both electronic and visual misinformation; this misled the Germans as to the location of the main Allied landings. Führer Adolf Hitler placed German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel in charge of developing fortifications all along Hitler's proclaimed Atlantic Wall in anticipation of an invasion; the Allies failed to accomplish their objectives for the first day, but gained a tenuous foothold that they expanded when they captured the port at Cherbourg on 26 June and the city of Caen on 21 July. A failed counterattack by German forces on 8 August left 50,000 soldiers of the 7th Army trapped in the Falaise pocket; the Allies launched a second invasion from the Mediterranean Sea of southern France on 15 August, the Liberation of Paris followed on 25 August.
German forces retreated east across the Seine on 30 August 1944, marking the close of Operation Overlord. In June 1940, Germany's leader Adolf Hitler had triumphed in what he called "the most famous victory in history"—the fall of France. British craft evacuated to England over 338,000 Allied troops trapped along the northern coast of France in the Dunkirk evacuation. British planners reported to Prime Minister Winston Churchill on 4 October that with the help of other Commonwealth countries and the United States, it would not be possible to regain a foothold in continental Europe in the near future. After the Axis invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin began pressing for a second front in Western Europe. Churchill declined because he felt that with American help the British did not have adequate forces for such a strike, he wished to avoid costly frontal assaults such as those that had occurred at the Somme and Passchendaele in World War I. Two tentative plans code-named Operation Roundup and Operation Sledgehammer were put forward for 1942–43, but neither was deemed by the British to be practical or to succeed.
Instead, the Allies expanded their activity in the Mediterranean, launching the invasion of French North Africa in November 1942, the invasion of Sicily in July 1943, invading Italy in September. These campaigns provided the troops with valuable experience in amphibious warfare. Attendees at the Trident Conference in Washington in May 1943 took the decision to launch a cross-Channel invasion within the next year. Churchill favoured making the main Allied thrust into Germany from the Mediterranean theatre, but his American allies, who were providing the bulk of the men and equipment, over-ruled him. British Lieutenant-General Frederick E. Morgan was appointed Chief of Staff, Supreme Allied Commander, to begin detailed planning; the initial plans were constrained by the number of available landing-craft, most of which were committed in the Mediterranean and in the Pacific. In part because of lessons learned in the Dieppe Raid of 19 August 1942, the Allies decided not to directly assault a defended French seaport in their first landing.
The failure at Dieppe highlighted the need for adequate artillery and air support close air support, specialised ships able to travel close to shore. The short operating-range of British aircraft such as the Spitfire and Typhoon limited the number of potential landing-sites, as comprehensive air-support depended upon having planes overhead for as long as possible. Morgan considered four sites for the landings: Brittany, the Cotentin Peninsula and the Pas de Calais; as Brittany and Cotentin are peninsulas, the Germans could have cut off the Allied advance at a narrow isthmus, so these sites were rejected. Pas de Calais, the closest point in continental Europe to Britain, was the location of launch sites for V-1 and V-2 rockets still under development; the Germans regarded it as the most initial landing zone, accordingly made it the most fortified region. It offered the Allies few opportunities for expansion, however, as the area is bounded by numerous rivers and canals, whereas landings on a broad front in Normandy would permit simultaneous threats against the port of Cherbourg, coastal ports further west in Brittany, an overland attack towards Paris and into Germany.
Normandy was therefore chosen as the landing site. The most serious drawback of the Normandy coast—the lack of
Grande Armée
The Grande Armée was the army commanded by Napoleon I during the Napoleonic Wars. From 1805 to 1809, the Grande Armée scored a series of historic victories that gave the French Empire an unprecedented grip on power over the European continent. Acknowledged to be one of the greatest fighting forces assembled, it suffered terrible losses during the French invasion of Russia in 1812 and never recovered its tactical superiority after that campaign, it was renamed in 1805 from the army that Napoleon had assembled on the French coast of the English Channel for the proposed invasion of Britain. Napoleon deployed the army east in order to eliminate the threat of Austria and Russia, which were part of the Third Coalition assembled against France. Thereafter, the name was used for the principal French army deployed in the Campaigns of 1805 and 1807, where it got its prestige, 1809, 1812, 1813–14. In practice, the term Grande Armée is used in English to refer to all of the multinational forces gathered by Napoleon in his campaigns of the early 19th century.
The first Grande Armée consisted of six corps under the command of Napoleon's marshals and senior generals. When Napoleon discovered that Russian and Austrian armies were preparing to invade France in late 1805, the Grande Armée was ordered across the Rhine into Southern Germany, leading to Napoleon's victories at Ulm and Jena; the army grew. It reached its largest size of 1,000,000 men at the start of the invasion of Russia in 1812, with 680,000 men participating in the Russian campaign; the contingents were commanded except for the Polish corps and an Austrian one. The huge multinational army marched east, the Russians fell back with its approach. After the capture of Smolensk and victory in the Battle of Borodino, Napoleon and a part of the Grande Armée reached Moscow on 14 September 1812. However, the army was drastically reduced because of deaths and injuries from battles with the Russians, disease and long communication lines; the army spent a month in Moscow but was forced to march back westward.
It started to suffer from cold and disease, was harassed by Cossacks and Russian irregulars, so that the Grande Armée was utterly destroyed as a fighting force. Only 120,000 men survived to leave Russia. Of these, 50,000 were Austrians and other Germans, 20,000 were Poles, just 35,000 Frenchmen; as many as 380,000 died in the campaign. Napoleon led a new army to the Battle of the Nations at Leipzig in 1813, in the defence of France in 1814 and in the Waterloo Campaign in 1815, but the Napoleonic French army would never regain the heights of the Grande Armée of June 1812. For a history of the French army in the period 1792–1804 during the wars of the First and Second Coalitions see French Revolutionary Armies; the Grande Armée was formed as L'Armée des côtes de l'Océan intended for the invasion of England, at the port of Boulogne in 1803. Following Napoleon's coronation as Emperor of the French in 1804, the Third Coalition was formed against him and La Grande Armée turned its sights eastwards in 1805.
They left the Boulogne camps late in August and through a rapid march surrounded General Karl Mack's isolated Austrian army at the fortress of Ulm. The Ulm Campaign, as it came to be known, resulted in 60,000 Austrian captives at the cost of just 2,000 French soldiers. By November Vienna was taken. However, Austria refused maintaining an army in the field. In addition, their Russian allies had yet to commit to action; the war would continue for a while longer. Affairs were decisively settled on December 2, 1805, at the Battle of Austerlitz, where a numerically inferior Armée routed a combined Russo-Austrian army led by Czar Alexander I; the stunning victory led to the Treaty of Pressburg on December 26, 1805, with the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire coming the following year. The alarming increase of French power in Central Europe disturbed Prussia, which had remained neutral in the conflicts of the previous year. After much diplomatic wrangling, Prussia secured promises of Russian military aid and the Fourth Coalition against France came into being in 1806.
La Grande Armée advanced into Prussian territory with the famed bataillon-carré system, whereby corps marched in close supporting distances and became vanguards, rearguards, or flank forces as the situation demanded, defeated the Prussian armies at the Battle of Jena and the Battle of Auerstadt, both fought on October 14, 1806. After a legendary pursuit, the French captured about 140,000 Prussians and killed and wounded 25,000. Davout's III Corps, the victors at Auerstadt, received the honours of first marching into Berlin. Once more, the French had defeated an enemy before allies could arrive, once more, this did not bring peace. Napoleon now turned his attentions to Poland, where the remaining Prussian armies were linking up with their Russian counterparts. A difficult winter campaign produced nothing but a stalemate, made worse by the Battle of Eylau on February 7–8, 1807, where Russian and French casualties soared for little gain; the campaign resumed in the Spring and this time Bennigsen's Russian army was soundly defeated at the Battle of Friedland on June 14, 1807.
This victory produced the Treaty of Tilsit between France and Russia in July, leaving Napoleon with no enemies on the continent. Portugal's refusal to comply with the Continental System led to a punitive French expedition in late 1807; this campaign formed the basis for the Peninsular War, to
Geneva Conventions
The Geneva Conventions comprise four treaties, three additional protocols, that establish the standards of international law for humanitarian treatment in war. The singular term Geneva Convention denotes the agreements of 1949, negotiated in the aftermath of the Second World War, which updated the terms of the two 1929 treaties, added two new conventions; the Geneva Conventions extensively defined the basic rights of wartime prisoners, established protections for the wounded and sick, established protections for the civilians in and around a war-zone. The treaties of 1949 were ratified, by 196 countries. Moreover, the Geneva Convention defines the rights and protections afforded to non-combatants, because the Geneva Conventions are about people in war, the articles do not address warfare proper—the use of weapons of war—which is the subject of the Hague Conventions, the bio-chemical warfare Geneva Protocol; the Swiss businessman Henry Dunant went to visit wounded soldiers after the Battle of Solferino in 1859.
He was shocked by the lack of facilities and medical aid available to help these soldiers. As a result, he published his book, A Memory of Solferino, on the horrors of war, his wartime experiences inspired Dunant to propose: A permanent relief agency for humanitarian aid in times of war A government treaty recognizing the neutrality of the agency and allowing it to provide aid in a war zoneThe former proposal led to the establishment of the Red Cross in Geneva. The latter led to the 1864 Geneva Convention, the first codified international treaty that covered the sick and wounded soldiers in the battlefield. On 22 August 1864, the Swiss government invited the governments of all European countries, as well as the United States and Mexico, to attend an official diplomatic conference. Sixteen countries sent a total of twenty-six delegates to Geneva. On 22 August 1864, the conference adopted the first Geneva Convention "for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded in Armies in the Field".
Representatives of 12 states and kingdoms signed the convention: For both of these accomplishments, Henry Dunant became corecipient of the first Nobel Peace Prize in 1901. On 20 October 1868 the first, attempt to expand the 1864 treaty was undertaken. With the'Additional Articles relating to the Condition of the Wounded in War' an attempt was initiated to clarify some rules of the 1864 convention and to extend them to maritime warfare; the Articles was only ratified by the Netherlands and North America. The Netherlands withdrew their ratification; the protection of the victims of maritime warfare would be realized by the third Hague Convention of 1899 and the tenth Hague Convention of 1907. In 1906 thirty-five states attended. On 6 July 1906 it resulted in the adoption of the "Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded and Sick in Armies in the Field", which improved and supplemented, for the first time, the 1864 convention, it remained in force until 1970. The 1929 conference yielded two conventions that were signed on 27 July 1929.
One, the "Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded and Sick in Armies in the Field", was the third version to replace the original convention of 1864. The other was adopted after experiences in World War I had shown the deficiencies in the protection of prisoners of war under the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907; the "Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War" was not to replace these earlier conventions signed at The Hague, rather it supplemented them. Inspired by the wave of humanitarian and pacifistic enthusiasm following World War II and the outrage towards the war crimes disclosed by the Nuremberg Trials, a series of conferences were held in 1949 reaffirming and updating the prior Geneva and Hague Conventions, it yielded four distinct conventions: The First Geneva Convention "for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded and Sick in Armed Forces in the Field" was the fourth update of the original 1864 convention and replaced the 1929 convention on the same subject matter.
The Second Geneva Convention "for the Amelioration of the Condition of Wounded and Shipwrecked Members of Armed Forces at Sea" replaced the Hague Convention of 1907. It was the first Geneva Convention on the protection of the victims of maritime warfare and mimicked the structure and provisions of the First Geneva Convention; the Third Geneva Convention "relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War" replaced the 1929 Geneva Convention that dealt with prisoners of war. In addition to these three conventions, the conference added a new elaborate Fourth Geneva Convention "relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War", it was the first Geneva Convention not to deal with combatants, rather it had the protection of civilians as its subject matter. The 1899 and 1907 Hague Conventions had contained some provisions on the protection of civilians and occupied territory. Article 154 provides that the Fourth Geneva Convention is supplementary to these provisions in the Hague Conventions.
Despite the length of these documents, they were found over time to be incomplete. In fact, the nature of armed conflicts had changed with the beginning of the Cold War era, leading many to believe that the 1949 Geneva Conventions were addressing a extinct reality: on the one hand, most armed conflicts had
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