Byzantine Empire
The Byzantine Empire referred to as the Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantium, was the continuation of the Roman Empire in its eastern provinces during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, when its capital city was Constantinople. It survived the fragmentation and fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century AD and continued to exist for an additional thousand years until it fell to the Ottoman Turks in 1453. During most of its existence, the empire was the most powerful economic and military force in Europe. Both the terms "Byzantine Empire" and "Eastern Roman Empire" are historiographical terms created after the end of the realm. Several signal events from the 4th to 6th centuries mark the period of transition during which the Roman Empire's Greek East and Latin West diverged. Constantine I reorganised the empire, made Constantinople the new capital, legalised Christianity. Under Theodosius I, Christianity became the Empire's official state religion and other religious practices were proscribed.
Under the reign of Heraclius, the Empire's military and administration were restructured and adopted Greek for official use in place of Latin. Thus, although the Roman state continued and its traditions were maintained, modern historians distinguish Byzantium from ancient Rome insofar as it was centred on Constantinople, oriented towards Greek rather than Latin culture, characterised by Eastern Orthodox Christianity; the borders of the empire evolved over its existence, as it went through several cycles of decline and recovery. During the reign of Justinian I, the empire reached its greatest extent after reconquering much of the Roman western Mediterranean coast, including North Africa and Rome itself, which it held for two more centuries; the Byzantine–Sasanian War of 602–628 exhausted the empire's resources and contributed to major territorial losses during the Early Muslim conquests of the 7th century, when it lost its richest provinces and Syria, to the Arab caliphate. During the Macedonian dynasty, the empire expanded again and experienced the two-century long Macedonian Renaissance, which came to an end with the loss of much of Asia Minor to the Seljuk Turks after the Battle of Manzikert in 1071.
This battle opened the way for the Turks to settle in Anatolia. The empire recovered during the Komnenian restoration, by the 12th century Constantinople was the largest and wealthiest European city. However, it was delivered a mortal blow during the Fourth Crusade, when Constantinople was sacked in 1204 and the territories that the empire governed were divided into competing Byzantine Greek and Latin realms. Despite the eventual recovery of Constantinople in 1261, the Byzantine Empire remained only one of several small rival states in the area for the final two centuries of its existence, its remaining territories were progressively annexed by the Ottomans over the 15th century. The Fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Empire in 1453 ended the Byzantine Empire; the last of the imperial Byzantine successor states, the Empire of Trebizond, would be conquered by the Ottomans eight years in the 1461 Siege of Trebizond. The first use of the term "Byzantine" to label the years of the Roman Empire was in 1557, when the German historian Hieronymus Wolf published his work Corpus Historiæ Byzantinæ, a collection of historical sources.
The term comes from "Byzantium", the name of the city of Constantinople before it became Constantine's capital. This older name of the city would be used from this point onward except in historical or poetic contexts; the publication in 1648 of the Byzantine du Louvre, in 1680 of Du Cange's Historia Byzantina further popularised the use of "Byzantine" among French authors, such as Montesquieu. However, it was not until the mid-19th century that the term came into general use in the Western world; the Byzantine Empire was known to its inhabitants as the "Roman Empire", the "Empire of the Romans", "Romania", the "Roman Republic", as "Rhōmais". The inhabitants called themselves Romaioi and as late as the 19th century Greeks referred to Modern Greek as Romaiika "Romaic." After 1204 when the Byzantine Empire was confined to its purely Greek provinces the term'Hellenes' was used instead. While the Byzantine Empire had a multi-ethnic character during most of its history and preserved Romano-Hellenistic traditions, it became identified by its western and northern contemporaries with its predominant Greek element.
The occasional use of the term "Empire of the Greeks" in the West to refer to the Eastern Roman Empire and of the Byzantine Emperor as Imperator Graecorum were used to separate it from the prestige of the Roman Empire within the new kingdoms of the West. No such distinction existed in the Islamic and Slavic worlds, where the Empire was more straightforwardly seen as the continuation of the Roman Empire. In the Islamic world, the Roman Empire was known as Rûm; the name millet-i Rûm, or "Roman nation," was used by the Ottomans through the 20th century to refer to the former subjects of the Byzantine Empire
Space opera
Space opera is a subgenre of science fiction that emphasizes space warfare, melodramatic adventure, interplanetary battles, chivalric romance, risk-taking. Set or in outer space, it involves conflict between opponents possessing advanced abilities, futuristic weapons, other sophisticated technology; the term has no relation to music, but is instead a play on the terms "soap opera" and "horse opera", the latter of, coined during the 1930s to indicate clichéd and formulaic Western movies. Space operas emerged in the 1930s and continue to be produced in literature, comics and video games. An early film, based on space opera comic strips was Flash Gordon created by Alex Raymond. In the late 1970s, the Star Wars franchise created by George Lucas brought a great deal of attention to the subgenre. After the convention-breaking "New Wave", followed by the enormous success of the Star Wars films, space opera became once again a critically acceptable subgenre. Throughout 1982–2002, the Hugo Award for best science fiction novel was given to a space opera nominee.
Space opera is defined as an adventure science-fiction story. The term "space opera" was coined in 1941 by fan writer and author Wilson Tucker as a pejorative term in an article in issue 36 of Le Zombie, a science fiction fanzine. At the time, serial radio dramas in the United States had become popularly known as soap operas because many were sponsored by soap manufacturers; the term "horse opera" had come into use to describe formulaic Western films. Tucker defined space opera as the science fiction equivalent: a "hacky, stinking, spaceship yarn". Fans and critics have noted that the plots of space operas have sometimes been taken from horse operas and translated into an outer space environment, as famously parodied on the back cover of the first issue of Galaxy Science Fiction. During the late 1920s and early 1930s, when the stories were printed in science-fiction magazines, the stories were referred to as "super-science epics". Beginning in the 1960s, accepted by the 1970s, the space opera was redefined, following Brian Aldiss' definition in Space Opera as – as paraphrased by Hartwell and Cramer – "the good old stuff".
Yet soon after his redefinition, it began to be challenged, for example, by the editorial practice and marketing of Judy-Lynn del Rey and in the reviews of her husband and colleague Lester del Rey. In particular, they disputed the claims that space operas were obsolete, Del Rey Books labeled reissues of earlier work of Leigh Brackett as space opera. By the early 1980s, space operas were again redefined, the label was attached to major popular culture works such as Star Wars. Only in the early 1990s did the term space opera began to be recognized as a legitimate genre of science fiction. Hartwell and Cramer define space opera as:... colorful, large-scale science fiction adventure and sometimes beautifully written focused on a sympathetic, heroic central character and plot action, set in the distant future, in space or on other worlds, characteristically optimistic in tone. It deals with war, military virtues, large-scale action, large stakes. Early works which preceded the subgenre contained many elements of.
They are today referred to as proto-space opera. Early proto-space opera was written by several 19th century French authors, for example, Les Posthumes by Nicolas-Edme Rétif, Star ou Psi de Cassiopée: Histoire Merveilleuse de l’un des Mondes de l’Espace by C. I. Defontenay and Lumen by Camille Flammarion. Not popular, proto-space operas were occasionally written during the late Victorian and Edwardian science-fiction era. Examples may be found in the works of Percy Greg, Garrett P. Serviss, George Griffith, Robert Cromie. One critic cites Robert William Cole's The Struggle for Empire: A Story of the Year 2236 as the first space opera; the novel depicts an interstellar conflict between solar men of Earth and a fierce humanoid race headquartered on Sirius. However, the idea for the novel arises out of a nationalistic genre of fiction popular from 1880 to 1914 called future-war fiction. Despite this early beginning, it was not until the late 1920s that the space opera proper began to appear in pulp magazines such as Amazing Stories.
In film, the genre began with the 1918 Danish film, Himmelskibet. Unlike earlier stories of space adventure, which either related the invasion of Earth by extraterrestrials, or concentrated on the invention of a space vehicle by a genius inventor, pure space opera took space travel for granted, skipped the preliminaries, launched straight into tales of derring-do among the stars. Early stories of this type include J. Schlossel's "Invaders from Outside", The Second Swarm and The Star Stealers, Ray Cummings' Tarrano the Conqueror, Edmond Hamilton's Across Space and Crashing Suns. Similar stories by other writers followed through 1929 and 1930. By 1931, the space opera was well established as a major subgenre of science fiction. However, the author cited most as the true father of the genre is E. E. "Doc" Smith. His first published work, The Skylark of Space, written in collaboration with Lee Hawkins Garby, is called the first great space opera, it merges the traditional tale of a scientist inventing a space-drive with planetary romance in the style of Edgar Rice Burroughs.
Smith's Lensman serie
Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith
Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith is a 2005 American epic space-opera film written and directed by George Lucas. It is the sixth entry in the Star Wars film series and stars Ewan McGregor, Natalie Portman, Hayden Christensen, Ian McDiarmid, Samuel L. Jackson, Christopher Lee, Anthony Daniels, Kenny Baker, Frank Oz, it is the third and final installment in the Star Wars prequel trilogy, following The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones. The film begins three years after the onset of the Clone Wars; the Jedi Knights are spread across the galaxy. The Jedi Council dispatches Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi to eliminate the notorious General Grievous, the leader of the Separatist Army. Meanwhile, Jedi Knight Anakin Skywalker grows close to Palpatine, the Supreme Chancellor of the Galactic Republic and, secretly, a Sith Lord known as Darth Sidious, their deepening friendship threatens the Jedi Order, the Republic, Anakin's best interest. Lucas began writing the script. Production of Revenge of the Sith started in September 2003, filming took place in Australia with additional locations in Thailand, China and the United Kingdom.
Revenge of the Sith premiered on May 15, 2005, at the Cannes Film Festival released worldwide on May 19, 2005. The film received favorable reviews from critics in contrast to the mixed reviews of the previous two prequels: praise was directed towards its action sequences, mature themes, musical score, visual effects, the performances of McGregor, McDiarmid, Oz, Jimmy Smits. Revenge of the Sith broke several box office records during its opening week and went on to earn over $848 million worldwide, making it, at the time, the third-highest-grossing film in the Star Wars franchise, unadjusted for inflation, it was the highest-grossing film in the U. S. in 2005 and the second-highest grossing film worldwide. The film holds the record for the highest opening day gross on a Thursday, making $50 million. Three years after the beginning of the Clone Wars, Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi and Jedi Knight Anakin Skywalker lead a mission to rescue the kidnapped Supreme Chancellor Palpatine from the cyborg Separatist commander, General Grievous, during a space battle over Coruscant.
After infiltrating Grievous's flagship, the Jedi battle Count Dooku, whom Anakin executes at Palpatine's urging. Grievous escapes the battle-torn ship. There, Anakin reunites with Padmé Amidala, who reveals that she is pregnant. While excited, Anakin begins to have prophetic visions of Padmé dying in childbirth. Palpatine appoints Anakin to the Jedi Council as his representative and informant, but the Council declines to grant Anakin the rank of Jedi Master, orders him to spy on Palpatine, diminishing Anakin's faith in the Jedi. Palpatine tempts Anakin with his knowledge of the dark side of the Force, including the power to prevent death. Meanwhile, Obi-Wan travels to Utapau, where he kills Grievous, Yoda travels to the Wookiee homeworld of Kashyyyk to defend it from invasion. Palpatine reveals to Anakin that he is the Sith Lord Darth Sidious and that he knows how to save Padmé. Anakin reports Palpatine's treachery to Mace Windu, who confronts and subdues the Sith Lord, disfiguring his face. However, fearing that he will lose Padmé, Anakin severs Windu's hand, allowing Palpatine to cast him out the window to his death.
Anakin pledges himself to Sidious. As the Supreme Chancellor, Palpatine issues an order that causes the clone troopers to betray and kill their commanding Jedi officers. Vader kills the remaining Jedi in the temple including the child younglings travels to the volcanic planet of Mustafar to slaughter the Separatist leaders. Palpatine declares himself Emperor before the Galactic Senate, transforming the Republic into the Galactic Empire. Having survived the chaos, Obi-Wan and Yoda return to learn of Vader's betrayal. Padmé implores Vader to return to the light side. Vader sees Obi-Wan on Padmé's ship, thinking they have conspired to kill him, angrily chokes Padmé. Obi-Wan engages Vader in a lightsaber duel, after gaining the higher ground, warns his former pupil to stand down; when Vader attacks, Obi-Wan severs his legs and arm, leaving him at the bank of a lava flow burned. On Coruscant, Yoda battles Palpatine. Yoda flees with Bail Organa while Palpatine, sensing that his apprentice is in danger, travels to Mustafar.
Obi-Wan regroups with Yoda on the asteroid Polis Massa, where Padmé gives birth to a boy and girl, whom she names Luke and Leia before dying. On Mustafar, Palpatine finds Vader still alive and brings him to Coruscant, where his mutilated body is treated and covered in a black armored suit. Meanwhile, Obi-Wan and Yoda conceal the twins from the Sith. Yoda exiles himself to the planet Dagobah, while Vader and the Emperor oversee the construction of the Death Star. Bail Organa adopts Leia and takes her to Alderaan, while Obi-Wan delivers Luke to his step-family and Beru Lars, on Tatooine. Ewan McGregor as Obi-Wan Kenobi: a Jedi Master and general for the Galactic Republic Natalie Portman as Padmé Amidala: a senator of Naboo, secretly Anakin Skywalker's wife Hayden Christensen as Anakin Skywalker / Darth Vader: a Jedi Knight and hero of the Clone Wars who turns to the dark side of the Force and becomes the Sith lord Darth Vader Ian McDiarmid as Chancellor Palpatine / Darth Sidious: the Supreme Chancellor of the Galactic Republic, secretly a Sith Lord, the founder, commander
Frank Herbert
Franklin Patrick Herbert Jr. was an American science fiction writer best known for the novel Dune and its five sequels. Though he became famous for his long novels, he was a newspaper journalist, short story writer, book reviewer, ecological consultant and lecturer; the Dune saga, set in the distant future and taking place over millennia, deals with complex themes such as human survival and evolution and the intersection of religion and power. Dune is the best-selling science fiction novel of all time and the series is considered to be among the classics of the genre. Frank Herbert was born on October 8, 1920, in Tacoma, Washington, to Frank Patrick Herbert Sr. and Eileen Herbert. Because of a poor home environment, he ran away from home in 1938 to live with an aunt and uncle in Salem, Oregon, he enrolled in high school at Salem High School. In 1939 he lied about his age to get his first newspaper job at the Glendale Star. Herbert returned to Salem in 1940 where he worked for the Oregon Statesman newspaper in a variety of positions, including photographer.
He served in the U. S. Navy's Seabees for six months as a photographer during World War II he was given a medical discharge, he married Flora Parkinson in San Pedro, California, in 1940. They had a daughter, but divorced in 1945. After the war, Herbert attended the University of Washington, where he met Beverly Ann Stuart at a creative writing class in 1946, they were the only students. They married in Seattle, Washington on June 20, 1946, had two sons, Brian Patrick Herbert and Bruce Calvin Herbert In 1949 Herbert and his wife moved to California to work on the Santa Rosa Press-Democrat. Here they befriended the psychologists Irene Slattery; the Slatterys introduced Herbert to the work of several thinkers who would influence his writing, including Freud, Jung and Heidegger. Herbert did not graduate from the university, he worked at the Seattle Star and the Oregon Statesman. He was a editor for the San Francisco Examiner's California Living magazine for a decade. In a 1973 interview, Herbert stated that he had been reading science fiction "about ten years" before he began writing in the genre, he listed his favorite authors as H. G. Wells, Robert A. Heinlein, Poul Anderson and Jack Vance.
Herbert's first science fiction story, "Looking for Something", was published in the April 1952 issue of Startling Stories a monthly edited by Samuel Mines. Three more of his stories appeared in 1954 issues of Astounding Science Amazing Stories, his career as a novelist began in 1955 with the serial publication of Under Pressure in Astounding from November 1955. The story explored sanity and madness in the environment of a 21st-century submarine and predicted worldwide conflicts over oil consumption and production, it was a critical success but not a major commercial one. During this time Herbert worked as a speechwriter for Republican senator Guy Cordon. Herbert began researching Dune in 1959, he was able to devote himself wholeheartedly to his writing career because his wife returned to work full-time as an advertising writer for department stores, becoming the breadwinner during the 1960s. He told Willis E. McNelly that the novel originated when he was supposed to do a magazine article on sand dunes in the Oregon Dunes near Florence, Oregon.
He ended up with far more raw material than needed for an article. The article was never written, but instead planted the seed. Dune took six years of research and writing to complete and it was much longer than commercial science fiction of the time was supposed to be. Analog published it in two parts comprising eight installments, "Dune World" from December 1963 and "Prophet of Dune" in 1965, it was rejected by nearly twenty book publishers. One editor prophetically wrote, "I might be making the mistake of the decade, but...". Sterling E. Lanier, an editor of Chilton Book Company had read the Dune serials and offered a $7,500 advance plus future royalties for the rights to publish them as a hardcover book. Herbert rewrote much of his text. Dune was soon a critical success, it won the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1965 and shared the Hugo Award in 1966 with... And Call Me Conrad by Roger Zelazny. Dune was the first major ecological science fiction novel, embracing a multitude of sweeping, interrelated themes and multiple character viewpoints, a method that ran through all Herbert's mature work.
Dune was not an immediate bestseller. By 1968 Herbert had made $20,000 from it, far more than most science fiction novels of the time were generating, but not enough to let him take up full-time writing. However, the publication of Dune did open doors for him, he was the Seattle Post-Intelligencer's education writer from 1969 to 1972 and lecturer in general studies and interdisciplinary studies at the University of Washington. He worked in Vietnam and Pakistan a
Augustus
Augustus was a Roman statesman and military leader, the first emperor of the Roman Empire, reigning from 27 BC until his death in AD 14. His status as the founder of the Roman Principate has consolidated an enduring legacy as one of the most effective and controversial leaders in human history; the reign of Augustus initiated an era of relative peace known as the Pax Romana. The Roman world was free from large-scale conflict for more than two centuries, despite continuous wars of imperial expansion on the Empire's frontiers and the year-long civil war known as the "Year of the Four Emperors" over the imperial succession. Augustus was born Gaius Octavius Thurinus into an old and wealthy equestrian branch of the plebeian gens Octavia, his maternal great-uncle Julius Caesar was assassinated in 44 BC, Octavius was named in Caesar's will as his adopted son and heir. Along with Mark Antony and Marcus Lepidus, he formed the Second Triumvirate to defeat the assassins of Caesar. Following their victory at the Battle of Philippi, the Triumvirate divided the Roman Republic among themselves and ruled as military dictators.
The Triumvirate was torn apart by the competing ambitions of its members. Lepidus was driven into exile and stripped of his position, Antony committed suicide following his defeat at the Battle of Actium by Octavian in 31 BC. After the demise of the Second Triumvirate, Augustus restored the outward façade of the free Republic, with governmental power vested in the Roman Senate, the executive magistrates, the legislative assemblies. In reality, however, he retained his autocratic power over the Republic as a military dictator. By law, Augustus held a collection of powers granted to him for life by the Senate, including supreme military command, those of tribune and censor, it took several years for Augustus to develop the framework within which a formally republican state could be led under his sole rule. He rejected monarchical titles, instead called himself Princeps Civitatis; the resulting constitutional framework became known as the Principate, the first phase of the Roman Empire. Augustus enlarged the Empire, annexing Egypt, Pannonia and Raetia, expanding possessions in Africa, completing the conquest of Hispania, but suffered a major setback in Germania.
Beyond the frontiers, he secured the Empire with a buffer region of client states and made peace with the Parthian Empire through diplomacy. He reformed the Roman system of taxation, developed networks of roads with an official courier system, established a standing army, established the Praetorian Guard, created official police and fire-fighting services for Rome, rebuilt much of the city during his reign. Augustus died in AD 14 at the age of 75 from natural causes. However, there were unconfirmed rumors, he was succeeded as emperor by his adopted son Tiberius. As a consequence of Roman customs and personal preference, Augustus was known by many names throughout his life: Gaius Octavius Thurinus: He received his birth name, after his biological father, in 63 BC. "Gaius" was his praenomen, "Octavius" was his nomen, "Thurinus" was his cognomen. His rival Mark Antony used the name "Thurinus" as an insult, to which Augustus replied, surprised that "using his old name was thought to be an insult".
Gaius Julius Caesar: After he was adopted by Julius Caesar, he adopted Caesar's name in accordance with Roman naming conventions. While he dropped all references to the gens Octavia, people colloquially added the epithet Octavianus to his legal name, either to differentiate him from his adoptive father or to highlight his more modest origins. Modern historians refer to him using the anglicized form "Octavian" between 44 BC and 27 BC. Gaius Julius Caesar Divi Filius: Two years after his adoption, he founded the Temple of Caesar additionally adding the title Divi Filius to his name in attempt to strengthen his political ties to Caesar's former soldiers, following the deification of Caesar. Imperator Caesar Divi Filius: From 38 BC, Octavian opted to use Imperator, the title by which troops hailed their leader after military success, his name is translated as "Commander Caesar, Son of the Divine". Imperator Caesar Divi Filius Augustus: Following his 31 BC defeat of Mark Antony and Cleopatra on his own insistence, the Roman Senate granted him the additional name, "Augustus", which he added to his previous names thereafter.
Historians use this name to refer to him from 27 BC until his death in AD 14. While his paternal family was from the town of Velletri 40 kilometres from Rome, Augustus was born in the city of Rome on 23 September 63 BC, he was born at Ox Head, a small property on the Palatine Hill close to the Roman Forum. He was given the name Gaius Octavius Thurinus, his cognomen commemorating his father's victory at Thurii over a rebellious band of slaves. Suetonius wrote: "There are many indications that the Octavian family was in days of old a distinguished one at Velitrae; this man was leader in a war with a neighbouring town..." Due to the crowded nature of Rome at the time, Octavius was taken to his father's home village at Velletri to be raised. Octavius mentions his father's equestrian family only in his memoirs, his paternal great-grandfather Gaius Octavius was a military tribune in Sicily during the Second Punic War. His grandfather had served in several lo
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany is the common English name for Germany between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party controlled the country through a dictatorship. Under Hitler's rule, Germany was transformed into a totalitarian state that controlled nearly all aspects of life via the Gleichschaltung legal process; the official name of the state was Deutsches Reich until 1943 and Großdeutsches Reich from 1943 to 1945. Nazi Germany is known as the Third Reich, meaning "Third Realm" or "Third Empire", the first two being the Holy Roman Empire and the German Empire; the Nazi regime ended. Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany by the President of the Weimar Republic, Paul von Hindenburg, on 30 January 1933; the NSDAP began to eliminate all political opposition and consolidate its power. Hindenburg died on 2 August 1934 and Hitler became dictator of Germany by merging the offices and powers of the Chancellery and Presidency. A national referendum held 19 August 1934 confirmed Hitler as sole Führer of Germany.
All power was centralised in Hitler's person and his word became the highest law. The government was not a coordinated, co-operating body, but a collection of factions struggling for power and Hitler's favour. In the midst of the Great Depression, the Nazis restored economic stability and ended mass unemployment using heavy military spending and a mixed economy. Extensive public works were undertaken, including the construction of Autobahnen; the return to economic stability boosted the regime's popularity. Racism antisemitism, was a central feature of the regime; the Germanic peoples were considered by the Nazis to be the master race, the purest branch of the Aryan race. Discrimination and persecution against Jews and Romani people began in earnest after the seizure of power; the first concentration camps were established in March 1933. Jews and others deemed undesirable were imprisoned, liberals and communists were killed, imprisoned, or exiled. Christian churches and citizens that opposed Hitler's rule were oppressed, many leaders imprisoned.
Education focused on racial biology, population policy, fitness for military service. Career and educational opportunities for women were curtailed. Recreation and tourism were organised via the Strength Through Joy program, the 1936 Summer Olympics showcased Germany on the international stage. Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels made effective use of film, mass rallies, Hitler's hypnotic oratory to influence public opinion; the government controlled artistic expression, promoting specific art forms and banning or discouraging others. The Nazi regime dominated neighbours through military threats in the years leading up to war. Nazi Germany made aggressive territorial demands, threatening war if these were not met, it seized Austria and Czechoslovakia in 1938 and 1939. Germany signed a non-aggression pact with the USSR, invaded Poland on 1 September 1939, launching World War II in Europe. By early 1941, Germany controlled much of Europe. Reichskommissariats took control of conquered areas and a German administration was established in the remainder of Poland.
Germany exploited labour of both its occupied territories and its allies. In the Holocaust, millions of Jews and other peoples deemed undesirable by the state were imprisoned, murdered in Nazi concentration camps and extermination camps, or shot. While the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 was successful, the Soviet resurgence and entry of the US into the war meant the Wehrmacht lost the initiative on the Eastern Front in 1943 and by late 1944 had been pushed back to the pre-1939 border. Large-scale aerial bombing of Germany escalated in 1944 and the Axis powers were driven back in Eastern and Southern Europe. After the Allied invasion of France, Germany was conquered by the Soviet Union from the east and the other Allies from the west, capitulated in May 1945. Hitler's refusal to admit defeat led to massive destruction of German infrastructure and additional war-related deaths in the closing months of the war; the victorious Allies initiated a policy of denazification and put many of the surviving Nazi leadership on trial for war crimes at the Nuremberg trials.
The official name of the state was Deutsches Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Großdeutsches Reich from 1943 to 1945, while common English terms are "Nazi Germany" and "Third Reich". The latter, adopted by Nazi propaganda as Drittes Reich, was first used in Das Dritte Reich, a 1923 book by Arthur Moeller van den Bruck; the book counted the Holy Roman Empire as the German Empire as the second. Germany was known as the Weimar Republic during the years 1919 to 1933, it was a republic with a semi-presidential system. The Weimar Republic faced numerous problems, including hyperinflation, political extremism, contentious relationships with the Allied victors of World War I, a series of failed attempts at coalition government by divided political parties. Severe setbacks to the German economy began after World War I ended because of reparations payments required under the 1919 Treaty of Versailles; the government printed money to make the payments and to repay the country's war debt, but the resulting hyperinflation led to inflated prices for consumer goods, economic chaos, food riots.
When the government defaulted on their reparations payments in January 1923, French troops occupied German industrial areas along the Ruhr and widespread civil unrest followed. The National Socialist German Workers' Party (National
Speed of light
The speed of light in vacuum denoted c, is a universal physical constant important in many areas of physics. Its exact value is 299,792,458 metres per second, it is exact because by international agreement a metre is defined as the length of the path travelled by light in vacuum during a time interval of 1/299792458 second. According to special relativity, c is the maximum speed at which all conventional matter and hence all known forms of information in the universe can travel. Though this speed is most associated with light, it is in fact the speed at which all massless particles and changes of the associated fields travel in vacuum; such particles and waves travel at c regardless of the motion of the source or the inertial reference frame of the observer. In the special and general theories of relativity, c interrelates space and time, appears in the famous equation of mass–energy equivalence E = mc2; the speed at which light propagates through transparent materials, such as glass or air, is less than c.
The ratio between c and the speed v at which light travels in a material is called the refractive index n of the material. For example, for visible light the refractive index of glass is around 1.5, meaning that light in glass travels at c / 1.5 ≈ 200,000 km/s. For many practical purposes and other electromagnetic waves will appear to propagate instantaneously, but for long distances and sensitive measurements, their finite speed has noticeable effects. In communicating with distant space probes, it can take minutes to hours for a message to get from Earth to the spacecraft, or vice versa; the light seen from stars left them many years ago, allowing the study of the history of the universe by looking at distant objects. The finite speed of light limits the theoretical maximum speed of computers, since information must be sent within the computer from chip to chip; the speed of light can be used with time of flight measurements to measure large distances to high precision. Ole Rømer first demonstrated in 1676 that light travels at a finite speed by studying the apparent motion of Jupiter's moon Io.
In 1865, James Clerk Maxwell proposed that light was an electromagnetic wave, therefore travelled at the speed c appearing in his theory of electromagnetism. In 1905, Albert Einstein postulated that the speed of light c with respect to any inertial frame is a constant and is independent of the motion of the light source, he explored the consequences of that postulate by deriving the theory of relativity and in doing so showed that the parameter c had relevance outside of the context of light and electromagnetism. After centuries of precise measurements, in 1975 the speed of light was known to be 299792458 m/s with a measurement uncertainty of 4 parts per billion. In 1983, the metre was redefined in the International System of Units as the distance travelled by light in vacuum in 1/299792458 of a second; the speed of light in vacuum is denoted by a lowercase c, for "constant" or the Latin celeritas. In 1856, Wilhelm Eduard Weber and Rudolf Kohlrausch had used c for a different constant shown to equal √2 times the speed of light in vacuum.
The symbol V was used as an alternative symbol for the speed of light, introduced by James Clerk Maxwell in 1865. In 1894, Paul Drude redefined c with its modern meaning. Einstein used V in his original German-language papers on special relativity in 1905, but in 1907 he switched to c, which by had become the standard symbol for the speed of light. Sometimes c is used for the speed of waves in any material medium, c0 for the speed of light in vacuum; this subscripted notation, endorsed in official SI literature, has the same form as other related constants: namely, μ0 for the vacuum permeability or magnetic constant, ε0 for the vacuum permittivity or electric constant, Z0 for the impedance of free space. This article uses c for the speed of light in vacuum. Since 1983, the metre has been defined in the International System of Units as the distance light travels in vacuum in 1⁄299792458 of a second; this definition fixes the speed of light in vacuum at 299,792,458 m/s. As a dimensional physical constant, the numerical value of c is different for different unit systems.
In branches of physics in which c appears such as in relativity, it is common to use systems of natural units of measurement or the geometrized unit system where c = 1. Using these units, c does not appear explicitly because multiplication or division by 1 does not affect the result; the speed at which light waves propagate in vacuum is independent both of the motion of the wave source and of the inertial frame of reference of the observer. This invariance of the speed of light was postulated by Einstein in 1905, after being motivated by Maxwell's theory of electromagnetism and the lack of evidence for the luminiferous aether, it is only possible to verify experimentally that the two-way speed of light is frame-independent, because it is impossible to measure the one-way speed of light without some convention as to how clocks at the source and at the detector should be synchronized. However
