1.
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
2.
Invasion of Poland
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The campaign ended on 6 October with Germany and the Soviet Union dividing and annexing the whole of Poland under the terms of the German-Soviet Frontier Treaty. German forces invaded Poland from the north, south, and west the morning after the Gleiwitz incident, as the Wehrmacht advanced, Polish forces withdrew from their forward bases of operation close to the Polish–German border to more established lines of defence to the east. After the mid-September Polish defeat in the Battle of the Bzura, Polish forces then withdrew to the southeast where they prepared for a long defence of the Romanian Bridgehead and awaited expected support and relief from France and the United Kingdom. While those two countries had pacts with Poland and had declared war on Germany on 3 September, in the end their aid to Poland was very limited. The Soviet Red Armys invasion of Eastern Poland on 17 September, in accordance with a protocol of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. Facing a second front, the Polish government concluded the defence of the Romanian Bridgehead was no longer feasible, on 6 October, following the Polish defeat at the Battle of Kock, German and Soviet forces gained full control over Poland. The success of the invasion marked the end of the Second Polish Republic, the Soviet Union incorporated its newly acquired areas into its constituent Belarusian and Ukrainian republics, and immediately started a campaign of sovietization. In the aftermath of the invasion, a collective of underground resistance formed the Polish Underground State within the territory of the former Polish state. Many of the exiles that managed to escape Poland subsequently joined the Polish Armed Forces in the West. On 30 January 1933, the Nazi Party, under its leader Adolf Hitler, as part of this long-term policy, Hitler at first pursued a policy of rapprochement with Poland, trying to improve opinion in Germany, culminating in the German–Polish Non-Aggression Pact of 1934. Earlier, Hitlers foreign policy worked to weaken ties between Poland and France, and attempted to manoeuvre Poland into the Anti-Comintern Pact, forming a front against the Soviet Union. The Poles feared that their independence would eventually be threatened altogether, the so-called Polish Corridor constituted land long disputed by Poland and Germany, and inhabited by a Polish majority. The Corridor had become a part of Poland after the Treaty of Versailles, many Germans also wanted the city of Danzig and its environs to be reincorporated into Germany. Danzig was a city with a German majority. It had been separated from Germany after Versailles and made into the nominally independent Free City of Danzig, the series of border violations, which are unbearable to a great power, prove that the Poles no longer are willing to respect the German frontier. Poland participated with Germany in the partition of Czechoslovakia that followed the Munich Agreement and it coerced Czechoslovakia to surrender the region of Český Těšín by issuing an ultimatum to that effect on 30 September 1938, which was accepted by Czechoslovakia on 1 October. This region had a Polish majority and had been disputed between Czechoslovakia and Poland in the aftermath of World War I, the Polish annexation of Slovak territory later served as the justification for the Slovak state to join the German invasion. Poland rejected this proposal, fearing that after accepting these demands, it would become subject to the will of Germany
3.
Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany
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The rest of Nazi occupied Poland was renamed as the General Government district. The annexation was part of the partition of Poland by Nazi Germany. Some smaller territories were incorporated directly into the existing Gaue East Prussia and Silesia, while the bulk of the land was used to create new Reichsgaue Danzig-West Prussia, of those, Reichsgau Wartheland was the largest and the only one comprising solely the annexed territory. The official term used by the Nazi authorities for these areas was the incorporated Eastern territories and they planned for a complete Germanization of the annexed territories, considering them part of their lebensraum. The local Polish population was to be enslaved, exterminated. The Polish elite especially became subject to murder, and an estimated 780,000 Poles were subject to expulsion. The remaining Polish population was segregated from the German population. These included forced labour and their exclusion from all political and many aspects of society. After Vistula-Oder offensive in early 1945, the Soviet Union took control over the territories, the ethnic German population either fled the Red Army or were later expelled and the territories became part of the Peoples Republic of Poland. Already in the fall of 1933 Adolf Hitler revealed to his closest associates his intentions to annex western Poland into an envisioned Greater Germany. After the invasion of Poland in September 1939, the Third Reich, the remainder of the Polish territory was either annexed by the Soviet Union or made into the German-controlled General Government occupation zone. A tiny portion of pre-war Poland was annexed by Nazi Slovakia, since 1935, Nazi Germany was divided into provinces which had replaced the former German states and Prussian provinces. Of the territories annexed, some were attached to the already existing Gaue East Prussia and Silesia, while from others new Reichsgaue Danzig-West Prussia, Wartheland was the only Gau constituted solely from annexed territory, Danzig-West Prussia comprised also former German areas and the former Free City of Danzig. The occupied General Government remained outside the Third Reich, Nazi Germanys officials discussed the convention and tried to circumvent it by declaring the war against Poland over prior to the annexation, which in their view made the convention non-applicable. Based on laws of 21 May 1935 and 1 June 1938, Hitler appointed Arthur Greiser to become the CdZ of the Posen military district, and Danzigs Gauleiter Albert Forster to become the CdZ of the West Prussian military district. Frank was at the time appointed supreme chief administrator for all occupied territories. A decree issued by Hitler on 8 October 1939, provided for the annexation of western Polish areas, a separate by-law stipulated the inclusion of the area around Suwalki. These government regions were named after the German language names of their cities, Hohensalza, Posen, Kalisch, Bromberg, Danzig
4.
Ethnic cleansing
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Ethnic cleansing is the systematic forced removal of ethnic or religious groups from a given territory by a more powerful ethnic group, with the intent of making it ethnically homogeneous. The forces applied may be forms of forced migration, intimidation, as well as mass murder. An antecedent to the term is the Greek word andrapodismos, which was used in ancient texts to describe atrocities that accompanied Alexander the Greats conquest of Thebes in 335 BC. In the early 1900s, regional variants of the term could be found among the Czechs, the Poles, the French, a 1913 Carnegie Endowment report condemning the actions of all participants in the Balkan Wars contained various new terms to describe brutalities committed toward ethnic groups. During World War II, the euphemism čišćenje terena was used by the Croatian Ustaše to describe military actions in which non-Croats were purposely killed or otherwise uprooted from their homes. Viktor Gutić, a senior Ustaše leader, was one of the first Croatian nationalists on record to use the term as a euphemism for committing atrocities against Serbs. This process was repeated on a larger scale in 1939–41. During The Holocaust, Nazi Germany pursued a policy of ensuring that Europe was cleansed of Jews, according to Israeli historian Benny Morris, the term cleansing was used in Israeli military documents dating to the 1948 Israeli–Arab war, referring to the expulsion of Arabs from Israel. In the 1980s, the Soviets used the term ethnic cleansing to describe the violence in Nagorno-Karabakh. At around the time, the Yugoslav media used it to describe what they alleged was an Albanian nationalist plot to force all Serbs to leave Kosovo. It was widely popularized by the Western media during the Bosnian War, the first recorded mention of its use in the Western media can be traced back to an article in The New York Times dated 15 April 1992, in a quote by an anonymous Western diplomat. Those practices constitute crimes against humanity and can be assimilated to specific war crimes, furthermore, such acts could also fall within the meaning of the Genocide Convention. As a category, ethnic cleansing encompasses a continuum or spectrum of policies, in the words of Andrew Bell-Fialkoff, thnic cleansing defies easy definition. At one end it is virtually indistinguishable from forced emigration and population exchange while at the other it merges with deportation, at the most general level, however, ethnic cleansing can be understood as the expulsion of a population from a given territory. The term ethnic cleansing has frequently employed to refer to the events in Bosnia. General Assembly resolution 47/121 referred in its Preamble to the abhorrent policy of ethnic cleansing and it can only be a form of genocide within the meaning of the Convention, if it corresponds to or falls within one of the categories of acts prohibited by Article II of the Convention. The expulsion of a group or part of a group does not in itself suffice for genocide, there is no international treaty that specifies a specific crime of ethnic cleansing. There are however situations, such as the expulsion of Germans after World War II, timothy V. Waters argues that if similar circumstances arise in the future, this precedent would allow the ethnic cleansing of other populations under international law
5.
Lebensraum
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The German concept of Lebensraum refers to policies and practices of settler colonialism which proliferated in Germany from the 1890s to the 1940s. The most extreme form of ideology was supported by the Nazi Party in the Third Reich until the end of World War II. First popularized around 1901, Lebensraum became a goal of Imperial Germany in World War I originally. Following Adolf Hitlers rise to power Lebensraum became a principle of Nazism. The Nazi Generalplan Ost policy was based on its tenets, the Third Reich aimed at repopulating these lands with Germanic colonists in the name of Lebensraum during World War II and thereafter. The entire populations were to be decimated by starvation, allowing for their own agricultural surplus to feed Germany, hitler’s strategic program for world domination was based on the belief in the power of Lebensraum, pursued by a racially superior society. People deemed to be part of inferior races, within the territory of Lebensraum expansion, were subjected to expulsion or destruction. The eugenics of Lebensraum assumed the right of the German Aryan master race to remove indigenous people considered to be of inferior racial stock in the name of their own living space. Nazi Germany also supported other Arian nations pursuing their own Lebensraum, in the 19th century, the term Lebensraum was used by the German biologist, Oscar Peschel, in his 1860 review of Darwin’s Origins of Species. In 1901, Ratzel extended his thesis in his essay titled Lebensraum. S, established with the west-ward expansion of the American frontier, which was advocated and justified by the ideology of Manifest Destiny. Yet, to resolve German overpopulation, Ratzel said that Imperial Germany required overseas colonies to which surplus Germans ought to emigrate, the politician Adolf Hitler said that the National Socialist geopolitics of inevitable expansion would reverse overpopulation, provide natural resources, and uphold German national honor. The Russian recognition of Ukraines separation, exacted at Brest–Litovsk, represented the key element in German efforts to keep Russia perpetually subservient, in addition, German troops held the Crimea, and were stationed, in smaller numbers, in Transcaucasia. Even the unoccupied rump Russia appeared — with the conclusion of the German–Soviet Supplementary Treaty, on 28 August 1918 — to be in firm, though indirect, dependency on the Reich. Thus, Hitlers long-range aim, fixed in the 1920s, of erecting a German Eastern Imperium on the ruins of the Soviet Union was not simply a vision emanating from an abstract wish. In the Eastern sphere, established in 1918, this goal had a point of departure. The German Eastern Imperium had already been — if only for a short time — a reality, in The Origins of the Second World War the British historian A. J. P. Taylor wrote. It is equally obvious that Lebensraum always appeared as one element in these blueprints and this was not an original idea of Hitlers. It was commonplace at the time, volk ohne Raum, for instance, by Hans Grimm sold much better than Mein Kampf when it was published in 1925
6.
Generalplan Ost
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The Generalplan Ost, abbreviated GPO, was the Nazi German governments plan for the genocide and ethnic cleansing on a vast scale, and colonization of Central and Eastern Europe by Germans. It was to be undertaken in territories occupied by Germany during World War II, the plan entailed the enslavement, expulsion, and mass murder of most Slavic peoples in Europe along with planned destruction of their nations, whom the Aryan Nazis viewed as racially inferior. The programme operational guidelines were based on the policy of Lebensraum designed by Adolf Hitler, as such, it was intended to be a part of the New Order in Europe. The master plan was a work in progress, there are four known versions of it, developed as the time went on. After the invasion of Poland, the blueprint for Generalplan Ost was discussed by the RKFDV in mid-1940 during the Nazi–Soviet population transfers. The second known version of GPO was procured by the RSHA from Wetzel in April 1942, the third version was officially dated June 1942. The final settlement master plan for the East came in from the RKFDV on October 29,1942, however, after the German defeat at Stalingrad planning of the colonization in the East was suspended, and the programme was gradually abandoned. The body responsible for the drafting of General Plan East was the Reich Main Security Office of the SS under Heinrich Himmler, the actual document was revised several times between June 1941 and spring 1942 as the war in the east progressed successfully. According to testimony of SS-Standartenführer Dr. Hans Ehlich, the version of the plan was drafted in 1940. It had been preceded by the Ostforschung, a number of studies and research carried out over several years by various academic centres to provide the necessary facts. The preliminary versions were discussed by Heinrich Himmler and his most trusted colleagues even before the outbreak of war and this was mentioned by SS-Obergruppenführer Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski during his evidence as a prosecution witness in the trial of officials of the Race and Settlement Main Office. Nearly all the documentation on Generalplan Ost was deliberately destroyed shortly before Germanys defeat in May 1945. Thus, no set of originals have ever been found after the war. Apart from Ehlichs testimony, there are documents which refer to this plan or are supplements to it. Although no copies of the full proposal have survived, most of the plans essential elements have been reconstructed from related memos, abstracts. Wetzels memorandum was an elaboration of the Generalplan Ost proposal. But it came to only in 1957. In subsequent years, his declaration from Berghof has been referred to as Hitlers Armenian quote, both plans entailed the policy of ethnic cleansing
7.
Adolf Hitler
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Adolf Hitler was a German politician who was the leader of the Nazi Party, Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and Führer of Nazi Germany from 1934 to 1945. As dictator of the German Reich, he initiated World War II in Europe with the invasion of Poland in September 1939 and was central to the Holocaust, Hitler was born in Austria, then part of Austria-Hungary, and raised near Linz. He moved to Germany in 1913 and was decorated during his service in the German Army in World War I and he joined the German Workers Party, the precursor of the NSDAP, in 1919 and became leader of the NSDAP in 1921. In 1923 he attempted a coup in Munich to seize power, the failed coup resulted in Hitlers imprisonment, during which he dictated the first volume of his autobiography and political manifesto Mein Kampf. Hitler frequently denounced international capitalism and communism as being part of a Jewish conspiracy, by 1933, the Nazi Party was the largest elected party in the German Reichstag, which led to Hitlers appointment as Chancellor on 30 January 1933. Hitler aimed to eliminate Jews from Germany and establish a New Order to counter what he saw as the injustice of the post-World War I international order dominated by Britain, Hitler sought Lebensraum for the German people in Eastern Europe. His aggressive foreign policy is considered to be the cause of the outbreak of World War II in Europe. He directed large-scale rearmament and on 1 September 1939 invaded Poland, resulting in British, in June 1941, Hitler ordered an invasion of the Soviet Union. By the end of 1941 German forces and the European Axis powers occupied most of Europe, failure to defeat the Soviets and the entry of the United States into the war forced Germany onto the defensive and it suffered a series of escalating defeats. In the final days of the war, during the Battle of Berlin in 1945, Hitler married his long-time lover, on 30 April 1945, less than two days later, the two killed themselves to avoid capture by the Red Army, and their corpses were burned. Hitler and the Nazi regime were also responsible for the killing of an estimated 19.3 million civilians, in addition,29 million soldiers and civilians died as a result of military action in the European Theatre of World War II. The number of civilians killed during the Second World War was unprecedented in warfare, Hitlers father Alois Hitler Sr. was the illegitimate child of Maria Anna Schicklgruber. The baptismal register did not show the name of his father, in 1842, Johann Georg Hiedler married Aloiss mother Maria Anna. Alois was brought up in the family of Hiedlers brother, Johann Nepomuk Hiedler, in 1876, Alois was legitimated and the baptismal register changed by a priest to register Johann Georg Hiedler as Aloiss father. Alois then assumed the surname Hitler, also spelled Hiedler, Hüttler, the Hitler surname is probably based on one who lives in a hut. Nazi official Hans Frank suggested that Aloiss mother had been employed as a housekeeper by a Jewish family in Graz, and that the familys 19-year-old son Leopold Frankenberger had fathered Alois. No Frankenberger was registered in Graz during that period, and no record has been produced of Leopold Frankenbergers existence, Adolf Hitler was born on 20 April 1889 in Braunau am Inn, a town in Austria-Hungary, close to the border with the German Empire. He was one of six born to Alois Hitler and Klara Pölzl
8.
Volksdeutsche
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In terminology of Nazi Germany, Volksdeutsche were Germans in terms of people or race, regardless of citizenship. The term is the plural of volksdeutsch, with Volksdeutsche denoting a singular female, and Volksdeutsche. The words Volk and völkisch conveyed the meanings of folk and race while adding the sense of superior civilisation and this is in contrast to Imperial Germans, German citizens living within Germany. The term also contrasts with the usage of the term Auslandsdeutsche since 1936, Volksdeutsche were further divided into racial groups—a minority within a minority in a state—with a special cultural, social and historic development as described by Nazis. According to the historian Doris Bergen, Adolf Hitler is reputed to have coined the definition of Volksdeutsche which appeared in a 1938 memorandum of the German Reich Chancellery. In that document, the Volksdeutsche were defined as races whose language and culture had German origins, for Hitler and the other ethnic Germans of his time, the term Volksdeutsche also carried overtones of blood and race not captured in the common English translation ethnic Germans. According to German estimates in the 1930s, about 30 million Volksdeutsche and Auslandsdeutsche were living outside the Reich. A significant proportion of them were in Central Europe, Poland, Ukraine, the Baltic states, and Romania, Hungary and Yugoslavia, where many were located in villages along the Danube, and Russia. The Nazi goal of expansion assigned the Volksdeutsche a special role in German plans, to bring back to German citizenship. The Nazis detailed such goals in Generalplan Ost and these settlers were generally confined to the German Quarter in Moscow. They were only allowed in other cities, so as to prevent the spread of alien ideas to the general population. In his youth, Peter the Great spent much time in the German quarter, when he became Tsar, he brought more German experts into Russia, and particularly into government service, in his attempts to westernise the empire. He also brought in German engineers to supervise the construction of the new city of Saint Petersburg, catherine the Great, herself ethnically German, invited Germanic farmers to immigrate and settle in Russian lands along the Volga River. She guaranteed them the right to retain their language, religion, Ethnic Germans were also sent by her in organised colonisation attempts aiming at Germanisation of conquered Polish areas. Also in other areas with an ethnic German minority people of other than German descent assimilated with the ethnic German culture, examples are people of Baltic and Scandinavian descent, who assimilated into the minority of the Baltic Germans. But anti-Semitic Nazis later rejected Jewish ethnic Germans and all Jewish German citizens as racially German, frederick the Great settled around 300,000 colonists in the eastern provinces of Prussia, acquired in the First Partition of Poland of 1772, with the intention of replacing the Polish nobility. He treated the Poles with contempt and likened the slovenly Polish trash in newly occupied West Prussia to Iroquois, Prussia encouraged a second round of colonisation with the goal of Germanisation after 1832. Prussia passed laws to encourage Germanisation of the Prussian Partition including the provinces of Posen, the Prussian Settlement Commission relocated 154,000 colonists, including locals
9.
Austria
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Austria, officially the Republic of Austria, is a federal republic and a landlocked country of over 8.7 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Hungary and Slovakia to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, the territory of Austria covers 83,879 km2. The terrain is mountainous, lying within the Alps, only 32% of the country is below 500 m. The majority of the population speaks local Bavarian dialects of German as their native language, other local official languages are Hungarian, Burgenland Croatian, and Slovene. The origins of modern-day Austria date back to the time of the Habsburg dynasty, from the time of the Reformation, many northern German princes, resenting the authority of the Emperor, used Protestantism as a flag of rebellion. Following Napoleons defeat, Prussia emerged as Austrias chief competitor for rule of a greater Germany, Austrias defeat by Prussia at the Battle of Königgrätz, during the Austro-Prussian War of 1866, cleared the way for Prussia to assert control over the rest of Germany. In 1867, the empire was reformed into Austria-Hungary, Austria was thus the first to go to war in the July Crisis, which would ultimately escalate into World War I. The First Austrian Republic was established in 1919, in 1938 Nazi Germany annexed Austria in the Anschluss. This lasted until the end of World War II in 1945, after which Germany was occupied by the Allies, in 1955, the Austrian State Treaty re-established Austria as a sovereign state, ending the occupation. In the same year, the Austrian Parliament created the Declaration of Neutrality which declared that the Second Austrian Republic would become permanently neutral, today, Austria is a parliamentary representative democracy comprising nine federal states. The capital and largest city, with a population exceeding 1.7 million, is Vienna, other major urban areas of Austria include Graz, Linz, Salzburg and Innsbruck. Austria is one of the richest countries in the world, with a nominal per capita GDP of $43,724, the country has developed a high standard of living and in 2014 was ranked 21st in the world for its Human Development Index. Austria has been a member of the United Nations since 1955, joined the European Union in 1995, Austria also signed the Schengen Agreement in 1995, and adopted the euro currency in 1999. The German name for Austria, Österreich, meant eastern realm in Old High German, and is cognate with the word Ostarrîchi and this word is probably a translation of Medieval Latin Marchia orientalis into a local dialect. Austria was a prefecture of Bavaria created in 976, the word Austria is a Latinisation of the German name and was first recorded in the 12th century. Accordingly, Norig would essentially mean the same as Ostarrîchi and Österreich, the Celtic name was eventually Latinised to Noricum after the Romans conquered the area that encloses most of modern-day Austria, around 15 BC. Noricum later became a Roman province in the mid-first century AD, heers hypothesis is not accepted by linguists. Settled in ancient times, the Central European land that is now Austria was occupied in pre-Roman times by various Celtic tribes, the Celtic kingdom of Noricum was later claimed by the Roman Empire and made a province
10.
Czechoslovakia
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From 1939 to 1945, following its forced division and partial incorporation into Nazi Germany, the state did not de facto exist but its government-in-exile continued to operate. From 1948 to 1990, Czechoslovakia was part of the Soviet bloc with a command economy and its economic status was formalized in membership of Comecon from 1949, and its defense status in the Warsaw Pact of May 1955. A period of liberalization in 1968, known as the Prague Spring, was forcibly ended when the Soviet Union, assisted by several other Warsaw Pact countries. In 1993, Czechoslovakia split into the two states of the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Form of state 1918–1938, A democratic republic, 1938–1939, After annexation of Sudetenland by Nazi Germany in 1938, the region gradually turned into a state with loosened connections among the Czech, Slovak, and Ruthenian parts. A large strip of southern Slovakia and Carpatho-Ukraine was annexed by Hungary, 1939–1945, The region was split into the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia and the Slovak Republic. A government-in-exile continued to exist in London, supported by the United Kingdom, United States and its Allies, after the German invasion of Russia, Czechoslovakia adhered to the Declaration by United Nations and was a founding member of the United Nations. 1946–1948, The country was governed by a government with communist ministers, including the prime minister. Carpathian Ruthenia was ceded to the Soviet Union, 1948–1989, The country became a socialist state under Soviet domination with a centrally planned economy. In 1960, the country became a socialist republic, the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic. It was a state of the Soviet Union. 1989–1990, The federal republic consisted of the Czech Socialist Republic, 1990–1992, Following the Velvet Revolution, the state was renamed the Czech and Slovak Federal Republic, consisting of the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic. Neighbours Austria 1918–1938, 1945–1992 Germany Hungary Poland Romania 1918–1938 Soviet Union 1945–1991 Ukraine 1991–1992 Topography The country was of irregular terrain. The western area was part of the north-central European uplands, the eastern region was composed of the northern reaches of the Carpathian Mountains and lands of the Danube River basin. Climate The weather is mild winters and mild summers, influenced by the Atlantic Ocean from the west, Baltic Sea from the north, and Mediterranean Sea from the south. The area was long a part of the Austro Hungarian Empire until the Empire collapsed at the end of World War I, the new state was founded by Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, who served as its first president from 14 November 1918 to 14 December 1935. He was succeeded by his ally, Edvard Beneš. The roots of Czech nationalism go back to the 19th century, nationalism became a mass movement in the last half of the 19th century
11.
Poland
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Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe, situated between the Baltic Sea in the north and two mountain ranges in the south. Bordered by Germany to the west, the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south, Ukraine and Belarus to the east, the total area of Poland is 312,679 square kilometres, making it the 69th largest country in the world and the 9th largest in Europe. With a population of over 38.5 million people, Poland is the 34th most populous country in the world, the 8th most populous country in Europe, Poland is a unitary state divided into 16 administrative subdivisions, and its capital and largest city is Warsaw. Other metropolises include Kraków, Wrocław, Poznań, Gdańsk and Szczecin, the establishment of a Polish state can be traced back to 966, when Mieszko I, ruler of a territory roughly coextensive with that of present-day Poland, converted to Christianity. The Kingdom of Poland was founded in 1025, and in 1569 it cemented a political association with the Grand Duchy of Lithuania by signing the Union of Lublin. This union formed the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, one of the largest and most populous countries of 16th and 17th century Europe, Poland regained its independence in 1918 at the end of World War I, reconstituting much of its historical territory as the Second Polish Republic. In September 1939, World War II started with the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany, followed thereafter by invasion by the Soviet Union. More than six million Polish citizens died in the war, after the war, Polands borders were shifted westwards under the terms of the Potsdam Conference. With the backing of the Soviet Union, a communist puppet government was formed, and after a referendum in 1946. During the Revolutions of 1989 Polands Communist government was overthrown and Poland adopted a new constitution establishing itself as a democracy, informally called the Third Polish Republic. Since the early 1990s, when the transition to a primarily market-based economy began, Poland has achieved a high ranking on the Human Development Index. Poland is a country, which was categorised by the World Bank as having a high-income economy. Furthermore, it is visited by approximately 16 million tourists every year, Poland is the eighth largest economy in the European Union and was the 6th fastest growing economy on the continent between 2010 and 2015. According to the Global Peace Index for 2014, Poland is ranked 19th in the list of the safest countries in the world to live in. The origin of the name Poland derives from a West Slavic tribe of Polans that inhabited the Warta River basin of the historic Greater Poland region in the 8th century, the origin of the name Polanie itself derives from the western Slavic word pole. In some foreign languages such as Hungarian, Lithuanian, Persian and Turkish the exonym for Poland is Lechites, historians have postulated that throughout Late Antiquity, many distinct ethnic groups populated the regions of what is now Poland. The most famous archaeological find from the prehistory and protohistory of Poland is the Biskupin fortified settlement, dating from the Lusatian culture of the early Iron Age, the Slavic groups who would form Poland migrated to these areas in the second half of the 5th century AD. With the Baptism of Poland the Polish rulers accepted Christianity and the authority of the Roman Church
12.
German Question
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The German Question was a debate in the 19th century, especially during the Revolutions of 1848, over the best way to achieve the unification of Germany. From 1815–1866, about 37 independent German-speaking states existed within the German Confederation, the Großdeutsche Lösung favored unifying all German-speaking peoples under one state, and was promoted by the Austrian Empire and its supporters. The Kleindeutsche Lösung sought only to unify the northern German states and did not include Austria, the solutions are also referred to by the names of the states they proposed to create, Kleindeutschland and Großdeutschland. Both movements were part of a growing German nationalism, there is, in political geography, no Germany proper to speak of. There are Kingdoms and Grand Duchies, and Duchies and Principalities, inhabited by Germans, yet there is a natural undercurrent tending to a national feeling and toward a union of the Germans into one great nation, ruled by one common head as a national unit. Despite its later name affix of the German Nation, the Holy Roman Empire had never been a nation state, instead its rulers over the centuries had to cope with a continuous loss of authority to its constituent Imperial States. The many small city-states splintered, meanwhile, in the 18th century the Holy Roman Empire consisted of over 1800 separate territories governed by distinct authorities. This German dualism phenomenon at first culminated in the War of the Austrian Succession and outlasted the French Revolution, facing the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire, the ruling House of Habsburg proclaimed the Austrian Empire in the lands of the Habsburg Monarchy instead, retaining the imperial title. While a number of factors swayed allegiances in the debate, the most prominent was religion, the Großdeutsche Lösung would have implied a dominant position for Catholic Austria, the largest and most powerful German state of the early 19th century. As a result, Catholics and Austria-friendly states usually favored Großdeutschland, a unification of Germany led by Prussia would mean the domination of the new state by the Protestant House of Hohenzollern, a more palatable option to Protestant northern German states. Another complicating factor was the Austrian Empires inclusion of a number of non-Germans, such as Hungarians, Romanians, Croats. The Austrians were reluctant to enter a unified Germany if it meant giving up their non-German speaking territories, in 1848, German liberals and nationalists united in revolution, forming the Frankfurt Parliament. The Greater German movement within this National Assembly demanded the unification of all German-populated lands into one nation, in general, the left favored a republican Großdeutsche Lösung, whereas the liberal center favored the Kleindeutsche Lösung with a constitutional monarchy. Those supporting the Großdeutsche position argued that since the Habsburgs had ruled the Holy Roman Empire for 400 years, however, Austria posed a problem because the Habsburgs ruled large chunks of non-German-speaking territory. The largest such area was the Kingdom of Hungary, which included large Slovak, Romanian. The Czech politician František Palacký explicitly rejected the mandate to the Frankfurt assembly. Thus, some members of the assembly and namely Prussia promoted the Kleindeutsche Lösung and they argued that Prussia, as the only Great Power with a predominantly German-speaking population, should lead the unified Germany. Yet, the constitution provided for the possibility for Austria to join without its non-German possessions later
13.
Treaty of Versailles
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The Treaty of Versailles was the most important of the peace treaties that brought World War I to an end. The Treaty ended the state of war between Germany and the Allied Powers and it was signed on 28 June 1919, exactly five years after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. The other Central Powers on the German side of World War I signed separate treaties, although the armistice, signed on 11 November 1918, ended the actual fighting, it took six months of Allied negotiations at the Paris Peace Conference to conclude the peace treaty. The treaty was registered by the Secretariat of the League of Nations on 21 October 1919 and this article, Article 231, later became known as the War Guilt clause. The treaty forced Germany to disarm, make substantial territorial concessions, in 1921 the total cost of these reparations was assessed at 132 billion marks. On the other hand, prominent figures on the Allied side such as French Marshal Ferdinand Foch criticized the treaty for treating Germany too leniently, although it is often referred to as the Versailles Conference, only the actual signing of the treaty took place at the historic palace. Most of the negotiations were in Paris, with the Big Four meetings taking place generally at the Quai dOrsay, the First World War was fought across Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia. Countries beyond the war zones were also affected by the disruption of trade, finance. In 1917, two revolutions occurred within the Russian Empire, which led to the collapse of the Imperial Government, the American war aim was to detach the war from nationalistic disputes and ambitions after the Bolshevik disclosure of secret treaties between the Allies. The existence of these treaties tended to discredit Allied claims that Germany was the power with aggressive ambitions. On 8 January 1918, United States President Woodrow Wilson issued a statement that became known as the Fourteen Points and this speech outlined a policy of free trade, open agreements, democracy and self-determination. After the Central Powers launched Operation Faustschlag on the Eastern Front and this treaty ended the war between Russia and the Central powers and annexed 1,300,000 square miles of territory and 62 million people. During the autumn of 1918, the Central Powers began to collapse, desertion rates within the German army began to increase, and civilian strikes drastically reduced war production. On the Western Front, the Allied forces launched the Hundred Days Offensive, sailors of the Imperial German Navy at Kiel mutinied, which prompted uprisings in Germany, which became known as the German Revolution. The German government tried to obtain a settlement based on the Fourteen Points. Following negotiations, the Allied powers and Germany signed an armistice, the terms of the armistice called for an immediate evacuation of German troops from occupied Belgium, France, and Luxembourg within fifteen days. In addition, it established that Allied forces would occupy the Rhineland, in late 1918, Allied troops entered Germany and began the occupation. Both the German Empire and Great Britain were dependent on imports of food and raw materials, primarily from the Americas, the Blockade of Germany was a naval operation conducted by the Allied Powers to stop the supply of raw materials and foodstuffs reaching the Central Powers
14.
Second Polish Republic
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The Second Polish Republic, also known as the Second Commonwealth of Poland or interwar Poland, refers to the country of Poland between the First and Second World Wars. Officially known as the Republic of Poland or the Commonwealth of Poland and it had access to the Baltic Sea via a short strip of coastline either side of the city of Gdynia. Between March and August 1939, Poland also shared a border with the then-Hungarian governorate of Subcarpathia, the Second Republic was significantly different in territory to the current Polish state. It included substantially more territory in the east and less in the west, the Second Republics land area was 388,634 km2, making it, in October 1938, the sixth largest country in Europe. After the annexation of Zaolzie, this grew to 389,720 km2, according to the 1921 census, the number of inhabitants was 27.2 million. By 1939, just before the outbreak of World War II, almost a third of population came from minority groups,13. 9% Ukrainians, 10% Jews,3. 1% Belarusians,2. 3% Germans and 3. 4% Czechs, Lithuanians and Russians. At the same time, a significant number of ethnic Poles lived outside the country borders, Poland maintained a slow but steady level of economic development. By 1939, the Republic had become one of Europes major powers, the victorious Allies of World War I confirmed the rebirth of Poland in the Treaty of Versailles of June 1919. It was one of the stories of the 1919 Paris Peace Conference. Poland solidified its independence in a series of wars fought by the newly formed Polish Army from 1918 to 1921. The extent of the half of the interwar territory of Poland was settled diplomatically in 1922. In the course of World War I, Germany gradually gained overall dominance on the Eastern Front as the Imperial Russian Army fell back, German and Austro-Hungarian armies seized the Russian-ruled part of what became Poland. In a failed attempt to resolve the Polish question as quickly as possible, Berlin set up a German puppet state on 5 November 1916, with a governing Provisional Council of State, the Council administered the country under German auspices, pending the election of a king. A month before Germany surrendered on 11 November 1918 and the war ended, the Regency Council had dissolved the Council of State, with the notable exception of the Marxist-oriented Social Democratic Party of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania, most Polish political parties supported this move. On 23 October the Regency Council appointed a new government under Józef Świeżyński, in 1918–1919, over 100 workers councils sprang up on Polish territories, on 5 November 1918, in Lublin, the first Soviet of Delegates was established. On 6 November socialists proclaimed the Republic of Tarnobrzeg at Tarnobrzeg in Austrian Galicia, the same day the Socialist, Ignacy Daszyński, set up a Provisional Peoples Government of the Republic of Poland in Lublin. On Sunday,10 November at 7 a. m, Józef Piłsudski, newly freed from 16 months in a German prison in Magdeburg, returned by train to Warsaw. Piłsudski, together with Colonel Kazimierz Sosnkowski, was greeted at Warsaws railway station by Regent Zdzisław Lubomirski, next day, due to his popularity and support from most political parties, the Regency Council appointed Piłsudski as Commander in Chief of the Polish Armed Forces
15.
Sudetenland
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The Sudeten crisis of 1938 was provoked by the demands of Nazi Germany that the Sudetenland be annexed to Germany, which in fact took place after the later infamous Munich Agreement. Part of the borderland was invaded and annexed by Poland, when Czechoslovakia was reconstituted after the Second World War, the Sudeten Germans were largely expelled, and the region today is inhabited almost exclusively by Czech speakers. Parts of the current Czech regions of Karlovy Vary, Liberec, Olomouc, Moravia-Silesia, the Celtic and Boii tribes settled there and the region was first mentioned on the map of Ptolemaios in the 2nd century AD. The Germanic tribe of the Marcomanni dominated the core of the region in later centuries. Those tribes already built cities like Brno, but moved west during the Migration Period, in the 7th century AD Slavic people moved in and were united under Samos realm. Later in the High Middle Ages Germans settled into the less populated border region, in the Middle Ages the regions situated on the mountainous border of the Duchy and the Kingdom of Bohemia had since the Migration Period been settled mainly by western Slavic Czechs. In the course of the Ostsiedlung German settlement from the 13th century onwards continued to move into the Upper Lusatia region, after the extinction of the Přemyslid dynasty in 1306, the Bohemian nobility backed John of Luxembourg as king against his rival Duke Henry of Carinthia. His son, Bohemian King Charles IV, was elected King of the Romans in 1346 and he added the Lusatias to the Lands of the Bohemian Crown, which then comprised large territories with a significant German population. In the hilly border regions German settlers established major manufactures of forest glass, the situation of the German population was aggravated by the Hussite Wars, though there were also some Germans among the Hussite insurgents. The city of Prague had a German-speaking majority from the last third of the 17th century until 1860, from the Luxembourgs, the rule over Bohemia passed through George of Podiebrad to the Jagiellon dynasty and finally to the House of Habsburg in 1526. Both Czech and German Bohemians suffered heavily in the Thirty Years War, Bohemia lost 70% of its population. From the defeat of the Bohemian Revolt that collapsed at the 1620 Battle of White Mountain, during the subsequent Counter-Reformation, less populated areas were resettled with Catholic Germans from the Austrian lands. Also in 1749 Austrian Empire enforced German as the language again. Emperor Joseph II in 1780 renounced the coronation ceremony as Bohemian king, nevertheless, German cultural influence grew stronger during the Age of Enlightenment and Weimar Classicism. The Bohemian Kingdom remained a part of the Austrian Empire and Austria-Hungary until its dismemberment after the First World War, in the wake of growing nationalism, the name Sudetendeutsche emerged by the early 20th century. Of these three terms, only the term Sudetendeutsche survived, because of the ethnic and cultural conflicts within Bohemia, thirty-four of each 1,000 inhabitants were killed. Austria-Hungary broke apart at the end of World War I, late in October 1918, an independent Czechoslovak state, consisting of the lands of the Bohemian kingdom and areas belonging to the Kingdom of Hungary, was proclaimed. The German deputies of Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia in the Imperial Council referred to the Fourteen Points of U. S, on 20 September 1918, the Prague government asked the United Statess opinion for the Sudetenland
16.
Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle
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The Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle or VoMi was an NSDAP agency founded to manage the interests of the ethnic Germans. It would later, under Allgemeine-SS administration, become responsible for orchestrating the Nazi ideology of Lebensraum in Eastern Europe and it was founded in 1937 under the command of SS-Obergruppenführer Werner Lorenz as a state office of the Nazi Party. Its headquarters were on Unter den Linden, Berlin, voMis primary task was the resettlement of German peoples outside Germany. Between 1939 and 1942, VoMi had resettled half a million ethnic Germans into the occupied territories of the Reich under the slogan Heim ins Reich. These territories included the Reichsgaus of the German Reich, these included Wartheland and this position authorized the SS to plan, initiate, and control the pace of germanisation, settlement and population transfer projects in occupied Poland, this was later expanded to occupied Russia. In 1941 the VoMi was upgraded to an SS Main Office with control over all VoMi personnel, in June 1941 VOMI was absorbed into the office of the Reich Commissioner for the Strengthening of German Ethnic Stock run by Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler. As RKFDV chief, Himmler authorized the SS-Einsatzgruppen and other SS police units to round up and kill Jews, Slavs, in June 1942 Himmler put all VoMi personnel under the jurisdiction of the SS Police and Courts. With Hitlers blessing, Himmler now had control over VoMi, ethnic Germans outside Imperial Germany policy. Although VoMi remained technically an office of the Nazi Party until the end of the Second World War, the RKFDV-VOMi was organized into 11 departments, This department, unlike other VoMi Amts, contained only SS personnel. It contained SS legal officers and a Waffen-SS unit and this was managed by an SD officer. It dealt with SS and non-SS personnel within the Volksdeutsche, in the later period of the war, Amt IIs importance increased as it was responsible for allocating Volksdeutsche to the Reich Labor Service. It was responsible for financing VoMi projects and distributing funds to Volksdeutsche and it was the only department that remained under complete control of the Nazi State and not the Allgemeine SS. This department documented and reported all VoMi activity and resettlement projects and it worked closely with Joseph Goebbels Ministry of Information. Amt IV also published information journals for the German settlers and this provided cultural and educational services to help Volksdeutsche assimilate to German ways. This office looked after the welfare of ethnic Germans that had allowed to settle within the borders of Germany. It also assessed potential candidates for settlement grading them on their ethnicity, politics, however, Amt VI, although tasked with the welfare of Volksdeutsche, worked closely with the Gestapo and the SD of the RSHA. It had a role as Amt VI but looked after the welfare of ethnic Germans in Eastern Europe, such as in occupied Poland. It had field offices in Krakow, Riga and Kiev and this section was engaged in collating and archiving the cultural history of resettled Volksdeutsche
17.
Nazi Party
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Its precursor, the German Workers Party, existed from 1919 to 1920. The party emerged from the German nationalist, racist, and populist Freikorps paramilitary culture, the party was created as a means to draw workers away from communism and into völkisch nationalism. Pseudo-scientific racism theories were central to Nazism, the Nazis propagated the idea of a peoples community. Their aim was to unite racially desirable Germans as national comrades, while excluding those deemed either to be political dissidents, to maintain the supposed purity and strength of the Aryan race, the Nazis sought to exterminate Jews, Romani, and the physically and mentally handicapped. They imposed exclusionary segregation on homosexuals, Africans, Jehovahs Witnesses, the partys leader since 1921, Adolf Hitler, was appointed Chancellor of Germany by President Paul von Hindenburg on 30 January 1933. Hitler rapidly established a regime known as the Third Reich. The term Nazi derives from the name given in German to a party member Nationalsozialist and was coined in response to the German term Sozi, members of the party referred to themselves as Nationalsozialisten, rarely as Nazis. The term Parteigenosse was commonly used among Nazis, with the feminine form Parteigenossin used when it was appropriate, the term was in use before the rise of the party as a colloquial and derogatory word for a backward peasant, characterising an awkward and clumsy person. It derived from Ignaz, being a version of Ignatius, a common name in Bavaria. Opponents seized on this and shortened the name in intentional association to the long-time existing Sozi to the dismissive Nazi. In 1933, when Adolf Hitler assumed power of the German government, usage of the designation Nazi diminished in Germany, the use of Nazi Germany, and Nazi regime, was popularised by anti-Nazis and German exiles abroad. Thereafter, the spread into other languages and eventually was brought back to Germany after the Second World War. The party grew out of political groups with a nationalist orientation that formed in the last years of World War I. In 1918, a called the Freien Arbeiterausschuss für einen guten Frieden was created in Bremen. On 7 March 1918, Anton Drexler, an avid German nationalist, Drexler saw the situation of political violence and instability in Germany as the result of the new Weimar Republic being out-of-touch with the masses, especially the lower classes. These were all well-known themes popular with various Weimar paramilitary groups such as the Freikorps, though very small, Drexlers movement did receive attention and support from some influential figures. Supporter Dietrich Eckhart brought military figure Count Felix Graf von Bothmer, later in 1918, Karl Harrer, convinced Drexler and several others to form the Politischer Arbeiterzirkel. The members met periodically for discussions with themes of nationalism and racism directed against the Jews and they became one of many völkisch movements that existed in Germany at the time
18.
SS
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The Schutzstaffel was a major paramilitary organization under Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist German Workers Party in Nazi Germany. It began with a guard unit known as the Saal-Schutz made up of NSDAP volunteers to provide security for party meetings in Munich. In 1925, Heinrich Himmler joined the unit, which had by then been reformed, under his direction, it grew from a small paramilitary formation to one of the most powerful organizations in Nazi Germany. From 1929 until the collapse in 1945, the SS was the foremost agency of security, surveillance. The two main constituent groups were the Allgemeine SS and Waffen-SS, the Allgemeine SS was responsible for enforcing the racial policy of Nazi Germany and general policing, whereas the Waffen-SS consisted of combat units of troops within Nazi Germanys military. A third component of the SS, the SS-Totenkopfverbände, ran the concentration camps, additional subdivisions of the SS included the Gestapo and the Sicherheitsdienst organizations. The SS was the organization most responsible for the killing of an estimated 5.5 to 6 million Jews. Members of all of its branches committed war crimes and crimes against humanity during World War II, the SS was also involved in commercial enterprises and exploited concentration camp inmates as slave labor. After Nazi Germanys defeat, the SS and the NSDAP were judged by the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg to be criminal organizations, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, the highest-ranking surviving SS officer at the time, was found guilty of crimes against humanity at the Nuremberg trials and hanged in 1946. By 1923, the Nazi Party led by Adolf Hitler had created a volunteer guard unit known as the Saal-Schutz to provide security at their meetings in Munich. The same year, Hitler ordered the formation of a bodyguard unit dedicated to his personal service. He wished it to be separate from the mass of the party, including the paramilitary Sturmabteilung. The new formation was designated the Stabswache, originally the unit was composed of eight men, commanded by Julius Schreck and Joseph Berchtold, and was modeled after the Erhardt Naval Brigade, a Freikorps of the time. The unit was renamed Stoßtrupp in May 1923, the Stoßtrupp was abolished after the failed 1923 Beer Hall Putsch, an attempt by the NSDAP to seize power in Munich. In 1925, Hitler ordered Schreck to organize a new bodyguard unit and it was tasked with providing personal protection for Hitler at NSDAP functions and events. That same year, the Schutzkommando was expanded to an organization and renamed successively the Sturmstaffel. Officially, the SS marked its foundation on 9 November 1925, the new SS was to provide protection for NSDAP leaders throughout Germany. Hitlers personal SS protection unit was enlarged to include combat units
19.
World War I
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World War I, also known as the First World War, the Great War, or the War to End All Wars, was a global war originating in Europe that lasted from 28 July 1914 to 11 November 1918. More than 70 million military personnel, including 60 million Europeans, were mobilised in one of the largest wars in history and it was one of the deadliest conflicts in history, and paved the way for major political changes, including revolutions in many of the nations involved. The war drew in all the worlds great powers, assembled in two opposing alliances, the Allies versus the Central Powers of Germany and Austria-Hungary. These alliances were reorganised and expanded as more nations entered the war, Italy, Japan, the trigger for the war was the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, by Yugoslav nationalist Gavrilo Princip in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914. This set off a crisis when Austria-Hungary delivered an ultimatum to the Kingdom of Serbia. Within weeks, the powers were at war and the conflict soon spread around the world. On 25 July Russia began mobilisation and on 28 July, the Austro-Hungarians declared war on Serbia, Germany presented an ultimatum to Russia to demobilise, and when this was refused, declared war on Russia on 1 August. Germany then invaded neutral Belgium and Luxembourg before moving towards France, after the German march on Paris was halted, what became known as the Western Front settled into a battle of attrition, with a trench line that changed little until 1917. On the Eastern Front, the Russian army was successful against the Austro-Hungarians, in November 1914, the Ottoman Empire joined the Central Powers, opening fronts in the Caucasus, Mesopotamia and the Sinai. In 1915, Italy joined the Allies and Bulgaria joined the Central Powers, Romania joined the Allies in 1916, after a stunning German offensive along the Western Front in the spring of 1918, the Allies rallied and drove back the Germans in a series of successful offensives. By the end of the war or soon after, the German Empire, Russian Empire, Austro-Hungarian Empire, national borders were redrawn, with several independent nations restored or created, and Germanys colonies were parceled out among the victors. During the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, the Big Four imposed their terms in a series of treaties, the League of Nations was formed with the aim of preventing any repetition of such a conflict. This effort failed, and economic depression, renewed nationalism, weakened successor states, and feelings of humiliation eventually contributed to World War II. From the time of its start until the approach of World War II, at the time, it was also sometimes called the war to end war or the war to end all wars due to its then-unparalleled scale and devastation. In Canada, Macleans magazine in October 1914 wrote, Some wars name themselves, during the interwar period, the war was most often called the World War and the Great War in English-speaking countries. Will become the first world war in the sense of the word. These began in 1815, with the Holy Alliance between Prussia, Russia, and Austria, when Germany was united in 1871, Prussia became part of the new German nation. Soon after, in October 1873, German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck negotiated the League of the Three Emperors between the monarchs of Austria-Hungary, Russia and Germany
20.
German Empire
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The German Empire was the historical German nation state that existed from the unification of Germany in 1871 to the abdication of Kaiser Wilhelm II in 1918, when Germany became a federal republic. The German Empire consisted of 26 constituent territories, with most being ruled by royal families and this included four kingdoms, six grand duchies, five duchies, seven principalities, three free Hanseatic cities, and one imperial territory. Although Prussia became one of kingdoms in the new realm, it contained most of its population and territory. Its influence also helped define modern German culture, after 1850, the states of Germany had rapidly become industrialized, with particular strengths in coal, iron, chemicals, and railways. In 1871, it had a population of 41 million people, and by 1913, a heavily rural collection of states in 1815, now united Germany became predominantly urban. During its 47 years of existence, the German Empire operated as an industrial, technological, Germany became a great power, boasting a rapidly growing rail network, the worlds strongest army, and a fast-growing industrial base. In less than a decade, its navy became second only to Britains Royal Navy, after the removal of Chancellor Otto von Bismarck by Wilhelm II, the Empire embarked on a bellicose new course that ultimately led to World War I. When the great crisis of 1914 arrived, the German Empire had two allies, Italy and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Italy, however, left the once the First World War started in August 1914. In the First World War, German plans to capture Paris quickly in autumn 1914 failed, the Allied naval blockade caused severe shortages of food. Germany was repeatedly forced to send troops to bolster Austria and Turkey on other fronts, however, Germany had great success on the Eastern Front, it occupied large Eastern territories following the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. German declaration of unrestricted submarine warfare in early 1917 was designed to strangle the British, it failed, but the declaration—along with the Zimmermann Telegram—did bring the United States into the war. Meanwhile, German civilians and soldiers had become war-weary and radicalised by the Russian Revolution and this failed, and by October the armies were in retreat, Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire had collapsed, Bulgaria had surrendered and the German people had lost faith in their political system. The Empire collapsed in the November 1918 Revolution as the Emperor and all the ruling monarchs abdicated, and a republic took over. The German Confederation had been created by an act of the Congress of Vienna on 8 June 1815 as a result of the Napoleonic Wars, German nationalism rapidly shifted from its liberal and democratic character in 1848, called Pan-Germanism, to Prussian prime minister Otto von Bismarcks pragmatic Realpolitik. He envisioned a conservative, Prussian-dominated Germany, the war resulted in the Confederation being partially replaced by a North German Confederation in 1867, comprising the 22 states north of the Main. The new constitution and the title Emperor came into effect on 1 January 1871, during the Siege of Paris on 18 January 1871, William accepted to be proclaimed Emperor in the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles. The second German Constitution was adopted by the Reichstag on 14 April 1871 and proclaimed by the Emperor on 16 April, the political system remained the same. The empire had a parliament called the Reichstag, which was elected by universal male suffrage, however, the original constituencies drawn in 1871 were never redrawn to reflect the growth of urban areas
21.
Austria-Hungary
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The union was a result of the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867 and came into existence on 30 March 1867. Austria-Hungary consisted of two monarchies, and one region, the Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia under the Hungarian crown. It was ruled by the House of Habsburg, and constituted the last phase in the evolution of the Habsburg Monarchy. Following the 1867 reforms, the Austrian and the Hungarian states were co-equal, Foreign affairs and the military came under joint oversight, but all other governmental faculties were divided between respective states. Austria-Hungary was a state and one of the worlds great powers at the time. Austria-Hungary was geographically the second-largest country in Europe after the Russian Empire, at 621,538 km2, the Empire built up the fourth-largest machine building industry of the world, after the United States, Germany, and the United Kingdom. After 1878, Bosnia and Herzegovina was under Austro-Hungarian military and civilian rule until it was annexed in 1908. The annexation of Bosnia also led to Islam being recognized as a state religion due to Bosnias Muslim population. Austria-Hungary was one of the Central Powers in World War I and it was already effectively dissolved by the time the military authorities signed the armistice of Villa Giusti on 3 November 1918. The realms full, official name was The Kingdoms and Lands Represented in the Imperial Council, each enjoyed considerable sovereignty with only a few joint affairs. Certain regions, such as Polish Galicia within Cisleithania and Croatia within Transleithania, enjoyed autonomous status, the division between Austria and Hungary was so marked that there was no common citizenship, one was either an Austrian citizen or a Hungarian citizen, never both. This also meant that there were always separate Austrian and Hungarian passports, however, neither Austrian nor Hungarian passports were used in the Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia-Dalmatia. Instead, the Kingdom issued its own passports which were written in Croatian and French and it is not known what kind of passports were used in Bosnia-Herzegovina, which was under the control of both Austria and Hungary. The Kingdom of Hungary had always maintained a separate parliament, the Diet of Hungary, the administration and government of the Kingdom of Hungary remained largely untouched by the government structure of the overarching Austrian Empire. Hungarys central government structures remained well separated from the Austrian imperial government, the country was governed by the Council of Lieutenancy of Hungary – located in Pressburg and later in Pest – and by the Hungarian Royal Court Chancellery in Vienna. The Hungarian government and Hungarian parliament were suspended after the Hungarian revolution of 1848, despite Austria and Hungary sharing a common currency, they were fiscally sovereign and independent entities. Since the beginnings of the union, the government of the Kingdom of Hungary could preserve its separated. After the revolution of 1848–1849, the Hungarian budget was amalgamated with the Austrian, from 1527 to 1851, the Kingdom of Hungary maintained its own customs controls, which separated her from the other parts of the Habsburg-ruled territories
22.
Paris Peace Conference, 1919
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It took place in Paris during 1919 and involved diplomats from more than 32 countries and nationalities. The main result was the Treaty of Versailles with Germany, which in section 231 laid the guilt for the war on the aggression of Germany and this provision proved humiliating for Germany and set the stage for the expensive reparations Germany was intended to pay. They met together informally 145 times and made all the major decisions, the conference opened on 18 January 1919. Key recommendations were folded into the Treaty of Versailles with Germany, the five major powers controlled the Conference. Amongst the Big Five, in practice Japan played a small role, the four met together informally 145 times and made all the major decisions, which in turn were ratified by other attendees. The open meetings of all the approved the decisions made by the Big Four. The conference came to an end on 21 January 1920 with the inaugural General Assembly of the League of Nations, the main result was the Treaty of Versailles, with Germany, which in section 231 laid the guilt for the war on the aggression of Germany and her allies. This provision proved humiliating for Germany and set the stage for very high reparations Germany was supposed to pay, republican Germany was not invited to attend the conference at Versailles. Representatives of White Russia were present, a central issue of the Conference was the disposition of the overseas colonies of Germany. The British dominions wanted their reward for their sacrifice, Australia wanted New Guinea, New Zealand wanted Samoa, and South Africa wanted South West Africa. Wilson wanted the League of Nations to administer all the German colonies until such time as they were ready for independence, Lloyd George realized he needed to support his dominions, and he proposed a compromise that there be three types of mandates. Mandates for the Turkish provinces were one category, they would be divided up between Britain and France, Wilson and the others finally went along with the solution. The dominions received Class C Mandates to the colonies they wanted, Japan obtained mandates over German possessions north of the equator. Wilson wanted no mandates for the United States, his top advisor Colonel House was deeply involved in awarding the others, Wilson was especially offended by Australian demands. He and Hughes had some clashes, with the most famous being, Wilson, But after all. Hughes, I represent sixty thousand dead, prior to Wilsons arrival in Europe in December 1918, no American president had ever visited Europe while in office. High hopes and expectations were placed on him to deliver what he had promised for the post-war era, in doing so, Wilson ultimately began to lead the foreign policy of the United States toward interventionism, a move strongly resisted in some domestic circles. Once Wilson arrived, however, he found rivalries, and conflicting claims previously submerged and he worked mostly trying to sway the direction that the French and British delegations were taking towards Germany and its allies in Europe, as well as the former Ottoman lands in the Middle East
23.
Anschluss
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Anschluss is the term used to describe the annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany in March 1938. German spelling, until the German orthography reform of 1996, was Anschluß, the idea of an Anschluss began after the Unification of Germany excluded Austria and the Austrian Germans from the Prussian-dominated German nation-state in 1871. Austria was annexed by Nazi Germany on 12 March 1938, there had been several years of pressure from supporters in Austria and Germany for the Heim ins Reich movement. Earlier, Nazi Germany had provided support for the Austrian National Socialist Party in its bid to seize power from Austrias Fatherland Front government. Infuriated, on 11 March, Adolf Hitler threatened invasion of Austria, and demanded Chancellor von Schuschniggs resignation, Hitlers plan was for Seyss-Inquart to call immediately for German troops to rush to Austrias aid, restoring order and giving the invasion an air of legitimacy. In the face of threat, Schuschnigg informed Seyss-Inquart that the plebiscite would be cancelled. Nevertheless, the German Führer underestimated his opposition, Schuschnigg did resign on the evening of 11 March, but President Wilhelm Miklas refused to appoint Seyss-Inquart as Chancellor. At 8,45 pm, Hitler, tired of waiting, around 10 pm, a forged telegram was sent in Seyss-Inquarts name asking for German troops, since he was not yet Chancellor and was unable to do so himself. Seyss-Inquart was not installed as Chancellor until after midnight, when Miklas resigned himself to the inevitable, clearly it was Hitler, and not Schuschnigg, who was terrified by the potential results of the scheduled plebiscite, and that was the best indication of where Austrians loyalty lay. The newly installed Nazis, within two days, transferred power to Germany, and Wehrmacht troops entered Austria to enforce the Anschluss, Austrian citizens of Jewish origin were not allowed to vote. No military confrontation took place, and even the strongest voices against the annexation, particularly Fascist Italy, France, the loudest verbal protest was voiced by the government of Mexico. Although Austria had never been a part of the German Empire, Austria was predominantly ethnically German, prior to annexing Austria in 1938, Nazi Germany had remilitarized the Rhineland, and the Saar region was returned to Germany after 15 years of occupation through a plebiscite. In March 1939, Hitler then dismantled Czechoslovakia by recognising the independence of Slovakia and that same year, Memelland was returned from Lithuania. With the Anschluss, the Republic of Austria ceased to exist as an independent state, at the end of World War II, a Provisional Austrian Government under Karl Renner was set up by conservatives, social democrats and communists on 27 April 1945. It cancelled the Anschluss the same day and was recognized by the Allies in the following months. In 1955 the Austrian State Treaty re-established Austria as a sovereign state, the idea of grouping all Germans into a nation-state country had been the subject of debate in the 19th century from the ending of the Holy Roman Empire until the ending of the German Confederation. Austria had wanted a Großdeutsche Lösung, whereby the German states would be united under the leadership of the Austrian Germans and this solution would include all the German states, but Prussia would have to take second place. This controversy, called dualism, dominated Prusso-Austrian diplomacy and the politics of the German states, by 1871, the decision was to form a kleindeutsch German Empire based on Prussia and excluding Austria
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Munich
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Munich is the capital and largest city of the German state of Bavaria, on the banks of River Isar north of the Bavarian Alps. Munich is the third largest city in Germany, after Berlin and Hamburg, the Munich Metropolitan Region is home to 5.8 million people. According to the Globalization and World Rankings Research Institute Munich is considered an alpha-world city, the name of the city is derived from the Old/Middle High German term Munichen, meaning by the monks. It derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who ran a monastery at the place that was later to become the Old Town of Munich, Munich was first mentioned in 1158. From 1255 the city was seat of the Bavarian Dukes, black and gold—the colours of the Holy Roman Empire—have been the citys official colours since the time of Ludwig the Bavarian, when it was an imperial residence. Following a final reunification of the Wittelsbachian Duchy of Bavaria, previously divided and sub-divided for more than 200 years, like wide parts of the Holy Roman Empire, the area recovered slowly economically. In 1918, during the German Revolution, the house of Wittelsbach, which governed Bavaria since 1180, was forced to abdicate in Munich. In the 1920s, Munich became home to political factions, among them the NSDAP. During World War II, Munich was heavily bombed and more than 50% of the entire city, the postwar period was characterised by American occupation until 1949 and a strong increase of population and economic power during the years of the Wirtschaftswunder after 1949. The city is home to corporations like BMW, Siemens, MAN, Linde, Allianz and MunichRE as well as many small. Munich is home to national and international authorities, major universities, major museums. Its numerous architectural attractions, international events, exhibitions and conferences. Munich is one of the most prosperous and fastest growing cities in Germany and it is a top-ranked destination for migration and expatriate location, despite being the municipality with the highest density of population in Germany. Munich nowadays hosts more than 530,000 people of foreign background, the year 1158 is assumed to be the foundation date, which is the earliest date the city is mentioned in a document. The document was signed in Augsburg, by that time the Guelph Henry the Lion, Duke of Saxony and Bavaria, had built a bridge over the river Isar next to a settlement of Benedictine monks—this was on the Old Salt Route and a toll bridge. In 1175, Munich was officially granted city status and received fortification, in 1180, with the trial of Henry the Lion, Otto I Wittelsbach became Duke of Bavaria and Munich was handed over to the Bishop of Freising. In 1240, Munich was transferred to Otto II Wittelsbach and in 1255, Duke Louis IV, a native of Munich, was elected German king in 1314 and crowned as Holy Roman Emperor in 1328. He strengthened the position by granting it the salt monopoly
25.
Federal State of Austria
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The Federal State of Austria was a continuation of the First Austrian Republic between 1934 and 1938 when it was a one-party state led by the clerico-fascist Fatherland Front. The Ständestaat concept, derived from the notion of Stände, was advocated by leading regime politicians such as Engelbert Dollfuss. The result was a government based on a mix of conservative Catholic. Strongly referring to the doctrine of Catholic social teaching, the CS agitated against the Austrian labour movement led by the Social Democratic Party of Austria, the CS also spread antisemitic prejudices, albeit never as virulent as the Nazis eventually became. Dollfuss called the incident a self-elimination of the parliament and had the meeting on 15 March forcibly prorogued by the forces of the Vienna police department. His party fellow, President Wilhelm Miklas, with regard to Adolf Hitlers victory in the German elections of 5 March 1933 did not take any action to restore democracy. Instead on 20 May 1933 he had established the Fatherlands Front as a unity party of an autonomous, Christian, German, on 12 February 1934 the governments attempts to enforce the ban of the Schutzbund at the Hotel Schiff in Linz sparked the Austrian Civil War. The revolt was suppressed with support by the Bundesheer and right-wing Heimwehr troops under Ernst Rüdiger Starhemberg, ending with the ban of the Social Democratic Party and the trade unions. The path to dictatorship completed on 1 May 1934, when the Constitution was recast into a severely authoritarian document by a rump National Council, Dollfuss continued to rule by emergency measures until his assassination during the Nazi July Putsch on 25 July 1934. Although the coup initially had the encouragement of Hitler, it was suppressed and his education minister, Kurt Schuschnigg. Hitler officially denied any involvement in the coup détat, nevertheless, he continued to destabilize the Austrian government system by secretly supporting Nazi sympathizers like Arthur Seyss-Inquart and Edmund Glaise-Horstenau. In turn Austria under Schuschnigg sought the backing by its southern neighbour, tables turned after the Second Italo-Abyssinian War in 1935/36, when Mussolini, internationally isolated, approached Hitler. According to the Hossbach Memorandum, Hitler in November 1937 declared his plans for an Austrian campaign in a meeting with Wehrmacht commanders. Schuschnigg, impressed by the presence of OKW chief General Wilhelm Keitel, gave in, Hitler reacted with the mobilization of Wehrmacht troops at the Austrian border and demanded the appointment of Seyss-Inquart as Austrian chancellor. On 11 March Austrian Nazis stormed the Federal Chancellery and forced Schuschnigg to resign, Seyss-Inquart was sworn in as his successor by Miklas and the next day Wehrmacht troops crossed the border meeting no resistance. Hitler had originally intended to retain Austria as a puppet state headed by Seyss-Inquart, however, the enthusiastic support for Hitler led him to change his stance and support a full Anschluss between Austria and Nazi Germany. On 13 March Seyss-Inquart formally decreed the Anschluss, though President Miklas avoided signing the law by resigning immediately, Seyss-Inquart then took over most of Miklas duties and signed the Anschluss bill into law. Two days later in his speech at the Vienna Heldenplatz, Hitler proclaimed the accession of my homeland to the German Reich
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Pan-Germanism
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Pan-Germanism or Pan-Germanicism is a pan-nationalist political idea. Pan-Germanists originally sought to unify all the German and possibly also Germanic-speaking peoples in a single known as Großdeutschland. As a result of the disaster of World War II, Pan-Germanism was mostly seen as an ideology in the postwar period in both West and East Germany. Today, Pan-Germanism is mostly limited to some nationalist groups in Germany, the word pan is a Greek word element meaning all, every, whole, all-inclusive. The word German in this context derives from Latin Germani originally used by Julius Caesar referring to tribes or a tribe in northeastern Gaul. In the Late Middle Ages it acquired a loose meaning referring to the speakers of Germanic languages most of whom spoke dialects ancestral to modern German, in English, Pan-German was first attested in 1892. In German there exists a synonym Alldeutsche Bewegung which is a calque using German instead of Latin, pan-Germanisms origins began with the birth of Romantic nationalism during the Napoleonic Wars, with Friedrich Ludwig Jahn and Ernst Moritz Arndt being early proponents. Advocates of the Großdeutschland solution sought to unite all the German-speaking people in Europe, Pan-Germanism was widespread among the revolutionaries of 1848, notably among Richard Wagner and the Brothers Grimm. For the Pan-Germanists this movement was seen as a Drang nach Osten, there is, in political geography, no Germany proper to speak of. There are Kingdoms and Grand Duchies, and Duchies and Principalities, inhabited by Germans, yet there is a natural undercurrent tending to a national feeling and toward a union of the Germans into one great nation, ruled by one common head as a national unit. – article published in the New York Times on 1 July 1866 By the 1860s the Kingdom of Prussia, both sought to expand their influence and territory. Under Prussian leadership Otto von Bismarck would ride on the coat-tails of nationalism to unite all of the northern German lands, after World War I the Pan-Germanist philosophy changed drastically during the ascendancy of Adolf Hitler. Georg Schönerer and Karl Hermann Wolf articulated Pan-Germanist sentiments in Austria-Hungary, there was also a rejection of Roman Catholicism with the Away from Rome. Movement calling for German-speakers to identify with Lutheran or Old Catholic churches, the organization achieved great support among the educated middle and upper class, it promoted German nationalist consciousness, especially among ethnic Germans outside Germany. In his three-volume work, Deutsche Politik, Hasse called for German imperialist expansion in Europe, the Munich professor Karl Haushofer, Ewald Banse, and Hans Grimm preached similar expansionist policies. Schönerers völkisch and racist German nationalism was an inspiration to Hitlers ideology, with Anschluss of Austria in 1938, the historic aim of Austrias German nationalists was achieved. After 1945, the German national camp was revived in the Federation of Independents, the idea of including the North Germanic-speaking Scandinavians into a Pan-German state, sometimes referred to as Pan-Germanicism, was promoted alongside mainstream pan-German ideas. He also pointed out that Germany had more solid historical claims to parts of France and England
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1939 German ultimatum to Lithuania
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1939 German ultimatum to Lithuania was an oral ultimatum presented to Juozas Urbšys, Foreign Minister of Lithuania, by Joachim von Ribbentrop, Foreign Minister of Nazi Germany, on 20 March 1939. The Germans demanded that Lithuania give up the Klaipėda Region, which had detached from Germany after World War I. After years of rising tension between Lithuania and Germany, increasing pro-Nazi propaganda in the region, and continued German expansion, the ultimatum was issued just five days after the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia. The four signatories of the 1924 Klaipėda Convention, which had guaranteed the protection of the status quo in the region, the United Kingdom and France followed a policy of appeasement, while Italy and Japan openly supported Germany. Lithuania was forced to accept the ultimatum on 22 March, for Germany it was the last territorial acquisition before World War II, for Lithuania it was a major downturn in economy and morale, for Europe it was further escalation in pre-war tensions. Klaipėda, an important seaport in East Prussia, was detached from Germany by Article 28 of the Treaty of Versailles and was governed by the Allies according to Article 99, Poland also laid claim to the territory. Soviet Russia and Germany supported the action, the region, as an autonomous territory with its own parliament, was attached to Lithuania. The region covered about 2,400 km² and had a population of approximately 140,000, during the 1920s, Lithuania and Germany maintained a relatively normal relationship as they were united by anti-Polish sentiment. In January 1928, after long and difficult negotiations, Germany and Lithuania signed a border treaty, however, tensions began rising in the 1930s after the Weimar Republic was replaced with Nazi Germany. An especially tense period came in February 1934 when the Lithuanian government arrested dozens of pro-Nazi activists, in response to these arrests and trials, Germany declared a boycott of Lithuanian agricultural imports. The boycott caused a crisis in Suvalkija, where farmers organized violent protests. However, after the plebiscite in Saar most of the prisoners received amnesty. In the wake of the amnesties, Lithuanian prestige suffered both abroad and in Klaipėda, allowing Germany to strengthen its influence in the region, in the spring of 1938 Adolf Hitler personally stated that gaining Klaipėda was one of his highest priorities, second only to gaining the Sudetenland. Its points were worded in a vague manner, which would enable Germany to accuse Lithuania of violations. Lithuania chose to postpone dealing with the problem, hoping that the situation would improve. In the meantime it hoped to give the German population no reasons for complaint and this tactic did not prove successful, pro-Nazi propaganda and protests were rampant, even among the Lithuanian population, and the local government was powerless to prevent them. The Nazis physically harassed Lithuanian organizations, on 1 November 1938 Lithuania was pressured into lifting martial law and press censorship. During the December elections to the Klaipėda Parliament, pro-German parties received 87% of votes in the Klaipėda territory, dr. Ernst Neumann, the chief defendant in the 1934 trials, was released from prison in February 1938 and became the leader of Klaipėdas pro-German movement
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Lithuania
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Lithuania, officially the Republic of Lithuania, is a country in Northern Europe. One of the three Baltic states, it is situated along the shore of the Baltic Sea, to the east of Sweden. It is bordered by Latvia to the north, Belarus to the east and south, Poland to the south, Lithuania has an estimated population of 2.9 million people as of 2015, and its capital and largest city is Vilnius. The official language, Lithuanian, along with Latvian, is one of two living languages in the Baltic branch of the Indo-European language family. For centuries, the shores of the Baltic Sea were inhabited by various Baltic tribes. In the 1230s, the Lithuanian lands were united by Mindaugas, the King of Lithuania, and the first unified Lithuanian state, with the Lublin Union of 1569, Lithuania and Poland formed a voluntary two-state union, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. The Commonwealth lasted more than two centuries, until neighboring countries systematically dismantled it from 1772–95, with the Russian Empire annexing most of Lithuanias territory. As World War I neared its end, Lithuanias Act of Independence was signed on 16 February 1918, in the midst of the Second World War, Lithuania was first occupied by the Soviet Union and then by Nazi Germany. As World War II neared its end and the Germans retreated, Lithuania is a member of the European Union, the Council of Europe, a full member of the Eurozone, Schengen Agreement and NATO. It is also a member of the Nordic Investment Bank, the United Nations Human Development Index lists Lithuania as a very high human development country. Lithuania has been among the fastest growing economies in the European Union and is ranked 21st in the world in the Ease of Doing Business Index, the first people settled in the territory of Lithuania after the last glacial period in the 10th millennium BC. Over a millennium, the Indo-Europeans, who arrived in the 3rd – 2nd millennium BC, mixed with the local population, the first written mention of Lithuania is found in a medieval German manuscript, the Annals of Quedlinburg, in an entry dated 9 March 1009. Initially inhabited by fragmented Baltic tribes, in the 1230s the Lithuanian lands were united by Mindaugas, after his assassination in 1263, pagan Lithuania was a target of the Christian crusades of the Teutonic Knights and the Livonian Order. Despite the devastating century-long struggle with the Orders, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania expanded rapidly, by the end of the 14th century, Lithuania was one of the largest countries in Europe and included present-day Belarus, Ukraine, and parts of Poland and Russia. The geopolitical situation between the west and the east determined the multicultural and multi-confessional character of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the ruling elite practised religious tolerance and Chancery Slavonic language was used as an auxiliary language to the Latin for official documents. In 1385, the Grand Duke Jogaila accepted Polands offer to become its king, Jogaila embarked on gradual Christianization of Lithuania and established a personal union between Poland and Lithuania. It implied that Lithuania, the fiercely independent land, was one of the last pagan areas of Europe to adopt Christianity, after two civil wars, Vytautas the Great became the Grand Duke of Lithuania in 1392. During his reign, Lithuania reached the peak of its expansion, centralization of the state began
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Progress (history)
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Many high-level theories, such as the Idea of Progress are available, such as the Western notion of monotonic change in a straight, linear fashion. Alternative conceptions exist, such as the theory of eternal return, or the spiral-shaped dialectic progress of Hegel, Marx. Time was generally regarded as the enemy of humanity which depreciates the value of the world, Robert Nisbet and Gertrude Himmelfarb have attributed a notion of progress to other Greeks. Xenophanes said The gods did not reveal to men all things in the beginning, platos Book III of The Laws depicts humanitys progress from a state of nature to the higher levels of culture, economy, and polity. Platos The Statesman also outlines a historical account of the progress of mankind, during the Medieval period, science was to a large extent based on Scholastic interpretations of Aristotles work. The Renaissance of the 15th, 16th and 17th Centuries changed the mindset in Europe towards an empirical view and this induced a revolution in curiosity about nature in general and scientific advance, which opened the gates for technical and economic advance. Furthermore, the potential was seen as a never-ending quest for being God-like, paving the way for a view of Man based on unlimited perfection. The scientific advances of the 16th and 17th centuries provided a basis for the optimistic outlook of Bacons New Atlantis, the epistemology of John Locke provided support and was popularized by the Encyclopedists Diderot, Holbach, and Condorcet. Locke had a influence on the American Founding Fathers. In the Enlightenment, French historian and philosopher Voltaire was a proponent of the possibility of progress. At first Voltaires thought was informed by the Idea of Progress coupled with rationalism and his subsequent notion of the historical idea of progress saw science and reason as the driving forces behind societal advancement. The first complete statement of progress is that of Turgot, in his A Philosophical Review of the Successive Advances of the Human Mind. For Turgot progress covers not simply the arts and sciences but, on their base, the whole of culture—manner, mores, institutions, legal codes, economy, scottish theorist Adam Ferguson defined human progress as the working out of a divine plan. The difficulties and dangers of life provided the necessary stimuli for human development, while the human ability to evaluate led to ambition. Man found his happiness only in effort, thus was born the idea of inevitable American future progress. The most original New World contribution to historical thought was the idea that history is not exhausted, besides rejecting the lessons of the past, the Jeffersonians Americanized the idea of progress by democratizing and vulgarizing it to include the welfare of the common man as a form of republicanism. As Romantics deeply concerned with the past, collecting materials and founding historical societies. They saw man in control of his destiny, saw virtue as a characteristic of a republic, and were concerned with happiness, progress
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Germanisation
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Germanisation refers to the spread of the German language, people and culture or policies which introduced these changes. It was a plank of German conservative thinking in the 19th and 20th centuries. In linguistics, Germanisation also occurs when a word from the German language is adopted into a foreign language, during the Nazi era, Germanisation turned into a policy of ethnic cleansing and later into genocide of non-Germans. Historically, there are different forms and degrees of the expansion of the German language. There are examples of complete assimilation into German culture, as happened with the pagan Slavs in the Diocese of Bamberg in the 11th century. A perfect example of adoption of German culture is the field of law in Imperial and present-day Japan. Germanisation took place by cultural contact, by decision of the adopting party. Since the flight and expulsion of Germans from Central and Eastern Europe however, another form of Germanisation is the forceful imposition of German culture, language and people upon non-German people, Slavs in particular. Early forms of Germanisation were related by German monks in manuscripts like Chronicon Slavorum, a complex process of Germanisation took place in Bohemia after the defeat of Bohemian Protestants at the Battle of White Mountain in 1620. The German prince and Frederick V, Elector Palatine, elected as king of Bohemia by the Bohemian estates in 1619, was defeated by Catholic forces loyal to the Habsburg Emperor, Ferdinand II. Among the Bohemian lords who were punished and had their lands expropriated after Fredericks defeat in 1620 were German-, thus, this conflict was feudal in nature, not national. This linguistic border remained almost unchanged until the late 19th century, in Tyrol there was a Germanisation of the Ladino-Romantsch of the Venosta Valley promoted by the Austria in the 16th century. There was made for avoiding contact with Protestants of the Graubünden, in the German colonies, the policy of having German as an official language led to the forming of German-based pidgins and German-based creole languages, such as Unserdeutsch. Joseph II, a leader influenced by the Enlightenment, sought to control of the empire. He decreed that German replace Latin as the official language. Hungarians perceived Josephs language reform as German cultural hegemony, and they reacted by insisting on the right to use their own tongue, as a result, Hungarian lesser nobles sparked a renaissance of the Hungarian language and culture. The lesser nobles questioned the loyalty of the magnates, of less than half were ethnic Magyars. The Magyar national revival subsequently triggered similar movements among the Slovak, Romanian, Serbian, following the partitions, the previous Germanisation attempts pursued by Frederick the Great in Silesia were extended to the newly gained Polish territories
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Luxembourg
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Luxembourg /ˈlʌksəmbɜːrɡ/, officially the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, is a landlocked country in western Europe. It is bordered by Belgium to the west and north, Germany to the east and its culture, people and languages are highly intertwined with its neighbours, making it essentially a mixture of French and Germanic cultures. It comprises two regions, the Oesling in the north as part of the Ardennes massif. With an area of 2,586 square kilometres, it is one of the smallest sovereign states in Europe, Luxembourg had a population of 524,853 in October 2012, ranking it the 8th least-populous country in Europe. As a representative democracy with a monarch, it is headed by a Grand Duke, Henri, Grand Duke of Luxembourg. Luxembourg is a country, with an advanced economy and the worlds highest GDP per capita. Luxembourg is a member of the European Union, OECD, United Nations, NATO, and Benelux, reflecting its political consensus in favour of economic, political. The city of Luxembourg, which is the capital and largest city, is the seat of several institutions. Luxembourg served on the United Nations Security Council for the years 2013 and 2014, around this fort, a town gradually developed, which became the centre of a state of great strategic value. In the 14th and early 15th centuries, three members of the House of Luxembourg reigned as Holy Roman Emperors, in the following centuries, Luxembourgs fortress was steadily enlarged and strengthened by its successive occupants, the Bourbons, Habsburgs, Hohenzollerns and the French. After the defeat of Napoleon in 1815, Luxembourg was disputed between Prussia and the Netherlands and this arrangement was revised by the 1839 First Treaty of London, from which date Luxembourgs full independence is reckoned. In 1842 Luxembourg joined the German Customs Union, the King of the Netherlands remained Head of State as Grand Duke of Luxembourg, maintaining a personal union between the two countries until 1890. At the death of William III, the throne of the Netherlands passed to his daughter Wilhelmina and this allowed Germany the military advantage of controlling and expanding the railways there. In August 1914, Imperial Germany violated Luxembourgs neutrality in the war by invading it in the war against France and this allowed Germany to use the railway lines, while at the same time denying them to France. Nevertheless, despite the German occupation, Luxembourg was allowed to maintain much of its independence, in 1940, after the outbreak of World War II, Luxembourgs neutrality was again violated when the Wehrmacht of Nazi Germany entered the country, entirely without justification. A government in exile based in London supported the Allies, sending a group of volunteers who participated in the Normandy invasion. Luxembourg was liberated in September 1944, and became a member of the United Nations in 1945. Luxembourgs neutral status under the constitution formally ended in 1948, in 2005, a referendum on the EU treaty establishing a constitution for Europe was held
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German Americans
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The German American ethnic group consists of Americans who have full or partial German ancestry. With an estimated size of approximately 46 million in 2014, German Americans are the largest of the groups reported by the US Census Bureau in its American Community Survey. The group accounts for about 1⁄3 of the total ethnic German population in the world, none of the German states had American colonies. In the 1670s the first significant groups of German immigrants arrived in the British colonies, settling primarily in New York, immigration continued in very large numbers during the 19th century, with eight million arrivals from Germany. Between 1820 and 1870 over seven and a half million German immigrants came to the United States — more than doubling the population of the country. By 2010, their population grew to 49.8 million immigrants, there is a German belt that extends all the way across the United States, from eastern Pennsylvania to the Oregon coast. The state of Pennsylvania has 3.5 million people of German ancestry and they were pulled by the attractions of land and religious freedom, and pushed out of Europe by shortages of land and religious or political oppression. Many arrived seeking religious or political freedom, others for economic opportunities greater than those in Europe, the arrivals before 1850 were mostly farmers who sought out the most productive land, where their intensive farming techniques would pay off. After 1840, many came to cities, where Germania—German-speaking districts—soon emerged, German Americans established the first kindergartens in the United States, introduced the Christmas tree tradition, and introduced popular foods such as hot dogs and hamburgers to America. The great majority of people with some German ancestry have become Americanized and hardly can be distinguished, traditional Oktoberfest celebrations and the German-American Day are popular festivities. There are major events in cities with German heritage including Chicago, Cincinnati, Milwaukee, Pittsburgh, San Antonio. The Germans included many quite distinct subgroups with differing religious and cultural values and they generally opposed womens suffrage but this was used as argument in favor of suffrage when German Americans became pariahs during World War I. The first English settlers arrived at Jamestown, Virginia in 1607 and he was followed in 1608 by five glassmakers and three carpenters or house builders. The first permanent German settlement in what became the United States was Germantown, Pennsylvania, large numbers of Germans migrated from the 1680s to 1760s, with Pennsylvania the favored destination. They migrated to America for a variety of reasons, often immigrants paid for their passage by selling their labor for a period of years as indentured servants. Large sections of Pennsylvania and upstate New York attracted Germans, most were Lutheran or German Reformed, many belonged to small religious sects such as the Moravians and Mennonites. German Catholics did not arrive in number until after the War of 1812, in 1709, Protestant Germans from the Pfalz or Palatine region of Germany escaped conditions of hardship, traveling first to Rotterdam and then to London. Anne, Queen of Great Britain, helped them get to her colonies in America, the trip was long and difficult to survive because of the poor quality of food and water aboard ships and the infectious disease typhus
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United States
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Forty-eight of the fifty states and the federal district are contiguous and located in North America between Canada and Mexico. The state of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east, the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean, the geography, climate and wildlife of the country are extremely diverse. At 3.8 million square miles and with over 324 million people, the United States is the worlds third- or fourth-largest country by area, third-largest by land area. It is one of the worlds most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, paleo-Indians migrated from Asia to the North American mainland at least 15,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century, the United States emerged from 13 British colonies along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the following the Seven Years War led to the American Revolution. On July 4,1776, during the course of the American Revolutionary War, the war ended in 1783 with recognition of the independence of the United States by Great Britain, representing the first successful war of independence against a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, after the Articles of Confederation, the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, were ratified in 1791 and designed to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties. During the second half of the 19th century, the American Civil War led to the end of slavery in the country. By the end of century, the United States extended into the Pacific Ocean. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the status as a global military power. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the sole superpower. The U. S. is a member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States. The United States is a developed country, with the worlds largest economy by nominal GDP. It ranks highly in several measures of performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP. While the U. S. economy is considered post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge economy, the United States is a prominent political and cultural force internationally, and a leader in scientific research and technological innovations. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America after the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci
34.
Catherine the Great
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Catherine II of Russia, also known as Catherine the Great, was a Russian monarch. She was the female leader of Russia, reigning from 1762 until her death in 1796 at the age of 67. She came to following a coup détat when her husband. Russia was revitalised under her reign, growing larger and stronger than ever, in both her accession to power and in rule of her empire, Catherine often relied on her noble favourites, most notably Grigory Orlov and Grigory Potemkin. In the west, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, ruled by Catherines former lover, king Stanisław August Poniatowski, was eventually partitioned, in the east, Russia started to colonise Alaska, establishing Russian America. Catherine reformed the administration of Russian guberniyas, and many new cities, an admirer of Peter the Great, Catherine continued to modernise Russia along Western European lines. However, military conscription and the continued to depend on serfdom. This was one of the reasons behind several rebellions, including the large-scale Pugachevs Rebellion of cossacks. The period of Catherine the Greats rule, the Catherinian Era, is considered the Golden Age of the Russian Empire. The Manifesto on Freedom of the Nobility, issued during the reign of Peter III and confirmed by Catherine. Construction of many mansions of the nobility, in the classical style endorsed by the Empress and she enthusiastically supported the ideals of The Enlightenment, thus earning the status of an enlightened despot. Catherine was born in Stettin, Pomerania, Kingdom of Prussia as Princess Sophie Friederike Auguste von Anhalt-Zerbst-Dornburg, she was nicknamed Figchen. Her father, Christian August, Prince of Anhalt-Zerbst, belonged to the ruling German family of Anhalt, two of her first cousins became Kings of Sweden, Gustav III and Charles XIII. In accordance with the then prevailing in the ruling dynasties of Germany, she received her education chiefly from a French governess. She once wrote to her correspondent Baron Grimm, I see nothing of interest in it, although Catherine was born a princess, her family had very little money. Catherines rise to power was supported by her mothers relatives who were both wealthy nobles and royal relations. Catherine first met Peter III at the age of 10, based on her writings, she found Peter detestable upon meeting him. She disliked his pale complexion and his fondness for alcohol at such a young age, Peter also still played with toy soldiers
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Goths
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The Goths were an East Germanic people, two of whose branches, the Visigoths and the Ostrogoths, played an important role in the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the emergence of Medieval Europe. In the Gothic language they were called the Gut-þiuda, most commonly translated as Gothic people, gut-þiudai, or Gutans Inferred from gen. pl. gutani in Pietroassa inscription. In Old Norse they were known as the Gutar or Gotar, in Latin as the Gothi, the exact origin of the ancient Goths is unknown. Evidence of them before they interacted with the Romans is limited, Modern academics have generally abandoned this theory. Today, the Wielbark culture is thought to have developed from earlier cultures in the same area, archaeological finds show close contacts between southern Sweden and the Baltic coastal area on the continent, and further towards the south-east, evidenced by pottery, house types and graves. Rather than a migration, similarities in the material cultures may be products of long-term regular contacts. However, the record could indicate that while his work is thought to be unreliable. Sometime around the 1st century AD, Germanic peoples may have migrated from Scandinavia to Gothiscandza, early archaeological evidence in the traditional Swedish province of Östergötland suggests a general depopulation during this period. However, there is no evidence for a substantial emigration from Scandinavia. Upon their arrival on the Pontic Steppe, the Germanic tribes adopted the ways of the Eurasian nomads, the first Greek references to the Goths call them Scythians, since this area along the Black Sea historically had been occupied by an unrelated people of that name. The earliest known material culture associated with the Goths on the southern coast of the Baltic Sea is the Wielbark culture, centered on the modern region of Pomerania in northern Poland. This culture replaced the local Oxhöft or Oksywie culture in the 1st century, the culture of this area was influenced by southern Scandinavian culture beginning as early as the late Nordic Bronze Age and early Pre-Roman Iron Age. In Eastern Europe they formed part of the Chernyakhov culture and it has been suggested that the Goths maintained contact with southern Sweden during their migration. In the first attested incursion in Thrace, the Goths were mentioned as Boranoi by Zosimus, the first incursion of the Roman Empire that can be attributed to Goths is the sack of Histria in 238. Several such raids followed in subsequent decades, in particular the Battle of Abrittus in 251, led by Cniva, at the time, there were at least two groups of Goths, the Thervingi and the Greuthungs. Goths were subsequently recruited into the Roman Army to fight in the Roman-Persian Wars. The Moesogoths settled in Thrace and Moesia, the first seaborne raids took place in three subsequent years, probably 255-257. An unsuccessful attack on Pityus was followed in the year by another
36.
Holy Roman Empire
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The Holy Roman Empire was a multi-ethnic complex of territories in central Europe that developed during the Early Middle Ages and continued until its dissolution in 1806. On 25 December 800, Pope Leo III crowned the Frankish king Charlemagne as Emperor, reviving the title in Western Europe, more than three centuries after the fall of the Western Roman Empire. The title was revived in 962 when Otto I was crowned emperor, fashioning himself as the successor of Charlemagne, some historians refer to the coronation of Charlemagne as the origin of the empire, while others prefer the coronation of Otto I as its beginning. Scholars generally concur, however, in relating an evolution of the institutions and principles constituting the empire, the office of Holy Roman Emperor was traditionally elective, although frequently controlled by dynasties. Emperor Francis II dissolved the empire on 6 August 1806, after the creation of the Confederation of the Rhine by Napoleon, before 1157, the realm was merely referred to as the Roman Empire. In a decree following the 1512 Diet of Cologne, the name was changed to Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, by the end of the 18th century, the term Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation had fallen out of official use. As Roman power in Gaul declined during the 5th century, local Germanic tribes assumed control, by the middle of the 8th century, however, the Merovingians had been reduced to figureheads, and the Carolingians, led by Charles Martel, had become the de facto rulers. In 751, Martel’s son Pepin became King of the Franks, the Carolingians would maintain a close alliance with the Papacy. In 768 Pepin’s son Charlemagne became King of the Franks and began an expansion of the realm. He eventually incorporated the territories of present-day France, Germany, northern Italy, on Christmas Day of 800, Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne emperor, restoring the title in the west for the first time in over three centuries. After the death of Charles the Fat in 888, however, the Carolingian Empire broke apart, according to Regino of Prüm, the parts of the realm spewed forth kinglets, and each part elected a kinglet from its own bowels. After the death of Charles the Fat, those crowned emperor by the pope controlled only territories in Italy, the last such emperor was Berengar I of Italy, who died in 924. Around 900, autonomous stem duchies reemerged in East Francia, on his deathbed, Conrad yielded the crown to his main rival, Henry the Fowler of Saxony, who was elected king at the Diet of Fritzlar in 919. Henry reached a truce with the raiding Magyars, and in 933 he won a first victory against them in the Battle of Riade, Henry died in 936, but his descendants, the Liudolfing dynasty, would continue to rule the Eastern kingdom for roughly a century. Upon Henry the Fowlers death, Otto, his son and designated successor, was elected King in Aachen in 936 and he overcame a series of revolts from an elder brother and from several dukes. After that, the managed to control the appointment of dukes. In 951, Otto came to the aid of Adelaide, the queen of Italy, defeating her enemies, marrying her. In 955, Otto won a victory over the Magyars in the Battle of Lechfeld
37.
Joseph Goebbels
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Paul Joseph Goebbels was a German politician and Reich Minister of Propaganda of Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945. He advocated progressively harsher discrimination, including the extermination of the Jews in the Holocaust, Goebbels, who aspired to be an author, obtained a Doctor of Philosophy degree from the University of Heidelberg in 1921. He joined the Nazi Party in 1924, and worked with Gregor Strasser in their northern branch and he was appointed as Gauleiter for Berlin in 1926, where he began to take an interest in the use of propaganda to promote the party and its programme. After the Nazi Seizure of Power in 1933, Goebbels Propaganda Ministry quickly gained and exerted controlling supervision over the media, arts. He was particularly adept at using the new media of radio. Topics for party propaganda included antisemitism, attacks on the Christian churches, as the war drew to a close and Nazi Germany faced defeat, Magda Goebbels and the Goebbels children joined him in Berlin. They moved into the underground Vorbunker, part of Hitlers underground bunker complex, Hitler committed suicide on 30 April. In accordance with Hitlers will, Goebbels succeeded him as Chancellor of Germany, the following day, Goebbels and his wife committed suicide, after poisoning their six children with cyanide. Paul Joseph Goebbels was born on 29 October 1897 in Rheydt, both of his parents were Catholics with modest family backgrounds. His father Fritz was a clerk, his mother Katharina was ethnically Dutch. Goebbels had five siblings, Konrad, Hans, Maria, Elisabeth, and Maria, in 1932, Goebbels published a pamphlet of his family tree to refute the rumors that his grandmother was of Jewish ancestry. During childhood, Goebbels suffered from ill health, which included a bout of inflammation of the lungs. He had a right foot that turned inwards, due to a congenital deformity. It was thicker and shorter than his left foot and he underwent a failed operation to correct it just prior to starting grammar school. Goebbels wore a metal brace and special shoe because of his shortened leg and he was rejected for military service in World War I due to his deformity. Goebbels was educated at a Christian Gymnasium, where he completed his Abitur in 1917 and he was the top student of his class and was given the traditional honor to speak at the awards ceremony. His parents initially hoped that he would become a Catholic priest and he studied literature and history at the universities of Bonn, Würzburg, Freiburg, and Munich, aided by a scholarship from the Albertus Magnus Society. By this time Goebbels had begun to distance himself from the church, historians, including Richard J. Evans and Roger Manvell, speculate that Goebbels lifelong pursuit of women may have been in compensation for his physical disabilities
38.
Belgium
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Belgium, officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a sovereign state in Western Europe bordered by France, the Netherlands, Germany, Luxembourg, and the North Sea. It is a small, densely populated country which covers an area of 30,528 square kilometres and has a population of about 11 million people. Additionally, there is a group of German-speakers who live in the East Cantons located around the High Fens area. Historically, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg were known as the Low Countries, the region was called Belgica in Latin, after the Roman province of Gallia Belgica. From the end of the Middle Ages until the 17th century, today, Belgium is a federal constitutional monarchy with a parliamentary system of governance. It is divided into three regions and three communities, that exist next to each other and its two largest regions are the Dutch-speaking region of Flanders in the north and the French-speaking southern region of Wallonia. The Brussels-Capital Region is a bilingual enclave within the Flemish Region. A German-speaking Community exists in eastern Wallonia, Belgiums linguistic diversity and related political conflicts are reflected in its political history and complex system of governance, made up of six different governments. Upon its independence, declared in 1830, Belgium participated in the Industrial Revolution and, during the course of the 20th century, possessed a number of colonies in Africa. This continuing antagonism has led to several far-reaching reforms, resulting in a transition from a unitary to a federal arrangement during the period from 1970 to 1993. Belgium is also a member of the Eurozone, NATO, OECD and WTO. Its capital, Brussels, hosts several of the EUs official seats as well as the headquarters of major international organizations such as NATO. Belgium is also a part of the Schengen Area, Belgium is a developed country, with an advanced high-income economy and is categorized as very high in the Human Development Index. A gradual immigration by Germanic Frankish tribes during the 5th century brought the area under the rule of the Merovingian kings, a gradual shift of power during the 8th century led the kingdom of the Franks to evolve into the Carolingian Empire. Many of these fiefdoms were united in the Burgundian Netherlands of the 14th and 15th centuries, the Eighty Years War divided the Low Countries into the northern United Provinces and the Southern Netherlands. The latter were ruled successively by the Spanish and the Austrian Habsburgs and this was the theatre of most Franco-Spanish and Franco-Austrian wars during the 17th and 18th centuries. The reunification of the Low Countries as the United Kingdom of the Netherlands occurred at the dissolution of the First French Empire in 1815, although the franchise was initially restricted, universal suffrage for men was introduced after the general strike of 1893 and for women in 1949. The main political parties of the 19th century were the Catholic Party, French was originally the single official language adopted by the nobility and the bourgeoisie
39.
Netherlands
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The Netherlands, also informally known as Holland is the main constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. It is a densely populated country located in Western Europe with three territories in the Caribbean. The European part of the Netherlands borders Germany to the east, Belgium to the south, and the North Sea to the northwest, sharing borders with Belgium, the United Kingdom. The three largest cities in the Netherlands are Amsterdam, Rotterdam and The Hague, Amsterdam is the countrys capital, while The Hague holds the Dutch seat of parliament and government. The port of Rotterdam is the worlds largest port outside East-Asia, the name Holland is used informally to refer to the whole of the country of the Netherlands. Netherlands literally means lower countries, influenced by its low land and flat geography, most of the areas below sea level are artificial. Since the late 16th century, large areas have been reclaimed from the sea and lakes, with a population density of 412 people per km2 –507 if water is excluded – the Netherlands is classified as a very densely populated country. Only Bangladesh, South Korea, and Taiwan have both a population and higher population density. Nevertheless, the Netherlands is the worlds second-largest exporter of food and agricultural products and this is partly due to the fertility of the soil and the mild climate. In 2001, it became the worlds first country to legalise same-sex marriage, the Netherlands is a founding member of the EU, Eurozone, G-10, NATO, OECD and WTO, as well as being a part of the Schengen Area and the trilateral Benelux Union. The first four are situated in The Hague, as is the EUs criminal intelligence agency Europol and this has led to the city being dubbed the worlds legal capital. The country also ranks second highest in the worlds 2016 Press Freedom Index, the Netherlands has a market-based mixed economy, ranking 17th of 177 countries according to the Index of Economic Freedom. It had the thirteenth-highest per capita income in the world in 2013 according to the International Monetary Fund, in 2013, the United Nations World Happiness Report ranked the Netherlands as the seventh-happiest country in the world, reflecting its high quality of life. The Netherlands also ranks joint second highest in the Inequality-adjusted Human Development Index, the region called Low Countries and the country of the Netherlands have the same toponymy. Place names with Neder, Nieder, Nether and Nedre and Bas or Inferior are in use in all over Europe. They are sometimes used in a relation to a higher ground that consecutively is indicated as Upper, Boven, Oben. In the case of the Low Countries / the Netherlands the geographical location of the region has been more or less downstream. The geographical location of the region, however, changed over time tremendously
40.
French First Republic
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In the history of France, the First Republic, officially the French Republic, was founded on 21 September 1792 during the French Revolution. The First Republic lasted until the declaration of the First Empire in 1804 under Napoleon, under the Legislative Assembly, which was in power before the proclamation of the First Republic, France was engaged in war with Prussia and Austria. The foreign threat exacerbated Frances political turmoil amid the French Revolution and deepened the passion, in the violence of 10 August 1792, citizens stormed the Tuileries Palace, killing six hundred of the Kings Swiss guards and insisting on the removal of the king. A renewed fear of action prompted further violence, and in the first week of September 1792, mobs of Parisians broke into the citys prisons. This included nobles, clergymen, and political prisoners, but also numerous common criminals, such as prostitutes and petty thieves, many murdered in their cells—raped, stabbed and this became known as the September Massacres. The resulting Convention was founded with the purpose of abolishing the monarchy. The Conventions first act, on 10 August 1792, was to establish the French First Republic, the King, by then a private citizen bearing his family name of Capet, was subsequently put on trial for crimes of high treason starting in December 1792. On 16 January 1793 he was convicted, and on 21 January, throughout the winter of 1792 and spring of 1793, Paris was plagued by food riots and mass hunger. The new Convention did little to remedy the problem until late spring of 1793, despite growing discontent with the National Convention as a ruling body, in June the Convention drafted the Constitution of 1793, which was ratified by popular vote in early August. The Committees laws and policies took the revolution to unprecedented heights, after the arrest and execution of Robespierre in July 1794, the Jacobin club was closed, and the surviving Girondins were reinstated. A year later, the National Convention adopted the Constitution of the Year III and they reestablished freedom of worship, began releasing large numbers of prisoners, and most importantly, initiated elections for a new legislative body. On 3 November 1795, the Directory was established, the period known as the French Consulate began with the coup of 18 Brumaire in 1799. Members of the Directory itself planned the coup, indicating clearly the failing power of the Directory, Napoleon Bonaparte was a co-conspirator in the coup, and became head of the government as the First Consul. He would later proclaim himself Emperor of the French, ending the First French Republic and ushering in the French First Empire
41.
North Sea
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The North Sea is a marginal sea of the Atlantic Ocean located between Great Britain, Scandinavia, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, and France. An epeiric sea on the European continental shelf, it connects to the ocean through the English Channel in the south and it is more than 970 kilometres long and 580 kilometres wide, with an area of around 570,000 square kilometres. The North Sea has long been the site of important European shipping lanes as well as a major fishery, the North Sea was the centre of the Vikings rise. Subsequently, the Hanseatic League, the Netherlands, and the British each sought to dominate the North Sea and thus the access to the markets, as Germanys only outlet to the ocean, the North Sea continued to be strategically important through both World Wars. The coast of the North Sea presents a diversity of geological and geographical features, in the north, deep fjords and sheer cliffs mark the Norwegian and Scottish coastlines, whereas in the south it consists primarily of sandy beaches and wide mudflats. Due to the population, heavy industrialization, and intense use of the sea and area surrounding it. In the southwest, beyond the Straits of Dover, the North Sea becomes the English Channel connecting to the Atlantic Ocean, in the east, it connects to the Baltic Sea via the Skagerrak and Kattegat, narrow straits that separate Denmark from Norway and Sweden respectively. In the north it is bordered by the Shetland Islands, and connects with the Norwegian Sea, the North Sea is more than 970 kilometres long and 580 kilometres wide, with an area of 570,000 square kilometres and a volume of 54,000 cubic kilometres. Around the edges of the North Sea are sizeable islands and archipelagos, including Shetland, Orkney, the North Sea receives freshwater from a number of European continental watersheds, as well as the British Isles. A large part of the European drainage basin empties into the North Sea including water from the Baltic Sea, the largest and most important rivers flowing into the North Sea are the Elbe and the Rhine – Meuse watershed. Around 185 million people live in the catchment area of the rivers discharging into the North Sea encompassing some highly industrialized areas, for the most part, the sea lies on the European continental shelf with a mean depth of 90 metres. The only exception is the Norwegian trench, which extends parallel to the Norwegian shoreline from Oslo to a north of Bergen. It is between 20 and 30 kilometres wide and has a depth of 725 metres. The Dogger Bank, a vast moraine, or accumulation of unconsolidated glacial debris and this feature has produced the finest fishing location of the North Sea. The Long Forties and the Broad Fourteens are large areas with uniform depth in fathoms. These great banks and others make the North Sea particularly hazardous to navigate, the Devils Hole lies 200 miles east of Dundee, Scotland. The feature is a series of trenches between 20 and 30 kilometres long,1 and 2 kilometres wide and up to 230 metres deep. Other areas which are less deep are Cleaver Bank, Fisher Bank, the International Hydrographic Organization defines the limits of the North Sea as follows, On the Southwest
42.
Ural Mountains
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The mountain range forms part of the conventional boundary between the continents of Europe and Asia. Vaygach Island and the islands of Novaya Zemlya form a continuation of the chain to the north into the Arctic Ocean. The mountains lie within the Ural geographical region and significantly overlap with the Ural Federal District and they have rich resources, including metal ores, coal, precious and semi-precious stones. Since the 18th century the mountains have contributed significantly to the sector of the Russian economy. As attested by Sigismund von Herberstein, in the 16th century Russians called the range by a variety of names derived from the Russian words for rock and it might have been a borrowing from either Turkic stone belt, or Ob-Ugric. From the 13th century, in Bashkortostan there has been a legend about a hero named Ural and he sacrificed his life for the sake of his people and they poured a stone pile over his grave, which later turned into the Ural Mountains. Possibilities include Bashkir үр elevation, upland or Mansi ур ала mountain peak, top of the mountain, tatischev believes that this oronym is set to belt and associates it with the Turkic verb oralu- gird. Dobrodomov suggests a transition from Aral to Ural explained on the basis of ancient Bulgar-Chuvash dialects, hawks believes that the name goes back to the Bashkir folklore Ural-Batyr. Shumilov suggested a Mongolian origin, Khural Uul, that is, the Evenk geographical term era mountain has also been theorized. Finno-Ugrist scholars consider Ural deriving from the Mansi word urr meaning a mountain, turkologists, on the other hand, have achieved majority support for their assertion that ural in Tatar means a belt, and recall that an earlier name for the range was stone belt. During the next few centuries Novgorodians engaged in fur trading with the population and collected tribute from Yugra and Great Perm. The rivers Chusovaya and Belaya were first mentioned in the chronicles of 1396 and 1468, in 1430 the town of Solikamsk was founded on the Kama at the foothills of the Ural, where salt was produced in open pans. Ivan III of Moscow captured Perm, Pechora and Yugra from the declining Novgorod Republic in 1472, with the excursions of 1483 and 1499–1500 across the Ural Moscow managed to subjugate Yugra completely. The Middle and Southern Ural were still largely unavailable and unknown to the Russian or Western European geographers, the Stroganovs land provided the staging ground for Yermaks incursion into Siberia. Yermak crossed the Ural from the Chusovaya to the Tagil around 1581, in 1597 Babinovs road was built across the Ural from Solikamsk to the valley of the Tura, where the town of Verkhoturye was founded in 1598. Customs was established in Verkhoturye shortly thereafter and the road was made the legal connection between European Russia and Siberia for a long time. In 1648 the town of Kungur was founded at the foothills of the Middle Ural. During the 17th century the first deposits of iron and copper ores, mica, gemstones, iron and copper smelting works emerged
43.
Reichsgau Wartheland
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The Reichsgau Wartheland was a Nazi German Reichsgau formed from parts of Polish territory annexed in 1939 during World War II. It comprised the region of Greater Poland and adjacent areas, parts of Warthegau matched the similarly named pre-Versailles Prussian province of Posen. The name was derived from the capital city, Posen. During the Partitions of Poland from 1793, the bulk of the area had been annexed by the Kingdom of Prussia until 1807 as South Prussia. From 1815 to 1849, the territory was within the autonomous Grand Duchy of Posen, the area is currently the Greater Poland Voivodeship. After the invasion of Poland, the territory of Greater Poland was split between four different Reichsgaue and the General Government area. The Militärbezirk Posen was created in September 1939, and on 8 October 1939 annexed by Germany, as the Reichsgau Posen, the name Reichsgau Wartheland was introduced on 29 January 1940. The Wehrmacht established there the Wehrkreis XXI, based at Poznań and its primary operational unit was the 48th Panzer Korps, covering so-called Militärische Unterregion-Hauptsitze including Poznań, Leszno, Inowrocław, Włocławek, Kalisz, and Łódź. It maintained training areas at Sieradz and Biedrusko, the Governor of Reichsgau Wartheland, Arthur Greiser, embarked on a program of complete removal of the formerly Polish citizenry upon his nomination by Heinrich Himmler. The plan also entailed the re-settling of ethnic Germans from the Baltic and other regions into farms and homes owned by Poles. He also authorized the operation of exterminating 100,000 Polish Jews. By the end of 1940, some 325,000 Poles and Jews from the Wartheland and the Polish Corridor were expelled to General Government, often forced to abandon most of their belongings. In 1941, the Nazis expelled a further 45,000 people, Reichsgau Wartheland had the population,4,693,700 by 1941. Most German residents along with over a million colonists fled westward, some did not, due to restrictions by Germanys own government and the quickly advancing Red Army. An estimated 50,000 refugees died from the winter conditions. The remaining ethnically German population was expelled to new Germany after the war ended
44.
Arthur Greiser
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Arthur Karl Greiser was a Nazi German politician, SS-Obergruppenführer and Reichsstatthalter of the German-occupied territory of Wartheland. He was one of the persons responsible for organizing the Holocaust in Poland. Arrested by the Americans in 1945, he was tried, convicted and executed by hanging in Poland in 1946, Greiser was born in Schroda, Province of Posen, Imperial Germany, Greiser was the son of a minor local bailiff. He learned to speak Polish fluently during his childhood, in August 1914, he volunteered to join the Imperial German Navy. He served in the Kiel harbour naval forts at Korugen, Falckenstein and he was then assigned as an artillery observer in Flanders as well as participating in minesweeping operations in Friedrichsort. In April,1917, he volunteered for service in the Naval Flying Corps where he served as an observer with SEE I and II and then with Küstenfliegerstaffel I. From August,1917 to August,1918, he was assigned as a naval aviator to Marine Schutzstaffel I, during this time, he was transferred to Seeflugstation Flandern II and he later flew with the Seefrontstaffel and MFJ IV. From December,1917 to January,1918, he was attached to the KE-Schule Langfuhr, while deployed to combat duty, he flew missions over the North Sea between the southern English and Belgian coasts. He was later shot down and wounded by gunfire, on 30 September 1919, he was classified as 50% war-disabled and discharged from naval service. He earned the Iron Cross, the Honour Cross of the World War 1914/1918, from 1919 to May 1921, he served in the Freikorps Grenzschutz Ost and fought in the Baltic states. Greiser was fanatically anti-Christian and an member of the Nazi Party. After many years with the nationalist Deutschsoziale Partei founded by Richard Kunze and membership in the Stahlhelm in the mid-1920s, he joined the NSDAP and he joined the SS on 30 June 1931 and was later awarded the Golden Party Badge. He was the Senate President of the Free City of Danzig in 1935–1939, as Senate President of Danzig, he was described as a hotheadand was a serious rival to his nominal superior Albert Forster, Gauleiter of the city since 1930. Greiser was part of the SS empire whilst Forster was closely aligned to the Nazi Party Mandarins Rudolf Hess, Greiser was directly responsible for escalating tensions between the Free City and the Republic of Poland in 1939. The notice was so rudely worded that the Polish diplomatic representative to Danzig, Marian Chodacki, refused to forward it to Beck, the military administration ended the following month, and he was then appointed Gauleiter and Reichsstatthalter für den Reichsgau Posen. On 29 January 1940, the region was renamed Reichsgau Wartheland, although every Gauleiter was expected to fully Germanize his assigned area by any means, Greiser emphasized brutality to achieve this goal. He was an ardent racist who enthusiastically pursued an ethnic cleansing program to rid the Warthegau of Poles and this was along the lines of the racial theories espoused by Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler. Mass expulsions of Poles from the Warthegau to the General Government, a Polish servant in Greisers house described him as a powerfully built figure
listen); meaning "back home to the Reich") was a foreign policy pursued by Adolf Hitler during World War II, beginning in 1938. The aim of Hitler's initiative was to convince all Volksdeutsche (ethnic Germans) who were living outside Nazi Germany (e.g. in Austria, Czechoslovakia and the western districts of Poland) that they should strive to bring these regions "home" into Greater Germany, but also, relocate from territories that were not under German control, following the conquest of Poland in accordance with the Nazi-Soviet pact.[2] The Heim ins Reich manifesto targeted areas ceded in Versailles to the newly reborn nation of Poland, as well as other areas that were inhabited by significant German populations such as the Sudetenland, Danzig, and the south-eastern and north-eastern regions of Europe after October 6, 1939.[3]
