1.
Night and Fog (2009 film)
–
Night and Fog is a 2009 Hong Kong film directed by Ann Hui. Based on a case that happened in Tin Shui Wai in 2004. The film stars Simon Yam and Zhang Jingchu who play the couple and it is the second and final volume of Ann Huis Tin Shui Wai series, the first one being The Way We Are. The film was premiered at the 2009 Hong Kong International Film Festival on 22 March 2009 and it is on wide release in Hong Kong from 14 May 2009. 29th Hong Kong Film Awards Nominated, Best Director Nominated, Best Actor Nominated, Best Actress HKIFF Night and Fog page Night and Fog at the Internet Movie Database
Night and Fog (2009 film)
–
Night and Fog
2.
Nacht und Nebel (band)
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Nacht Und Nebel were a Belgian new wave band, founded by the late Patrick Marina Nebel best known for their 1984 hit single Beats of Love. Originally, Nebel debuted as a solo artist with a 4-track single in 1981 before finally forming the band and their first album, Casablanca followed right after, along with a series of gigs. The next 1983 album, Beats of Love featured the track that was to become their biggest hit. The single, sold 150,000 copies in Belgium and France and was covered by The Bollock Brothers on their 1989 album and they released a third album Victoria 2000 in 1985 which featured the singles Ready to Dance and Victoria 2000. Both singles made it to the charts where they were not as successful as their Beats of Love. Both songs did prove to be a success in the clubs. Nebel was greatly overweight and was treated in a Swiss sanatorium after the success of the first album and he was also addicted to alcohol and prescription drugs and suffered from a heart disease. This combination proved fatal in 1986, after the death of their front man, Nacht Und Nebel ceased to exist although there was one final album, Songs for Ever. Also, Koen Claeys Herman Celis / Pat Pattijn Chris Whitley List of new wave artists and bands Website dedicated to Nacht und Nebel Beats of Love
Nacht und Nebel (band)
–
Patrick Nebel, 1985.
3.
Hinzert concentration camp
–
Hinzert was a German concentration camp located in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany,30 km from the Luxembourg border. Between 1939 and 1945,13,600 political prisoners between the ages of 13 and 80 were imprisoned at Hinzert, many were in transit towards larger concentration camps where most would be killed. However, a significant number of prisoners were executed at Hinzert, the camp was administered, run, and guarded mainly by the SS, who, according to Hinzert survivors, were notorious for their brutality and viciousness. Located on the Hochwald plateau, and overlooking the Hunsrück mountain range, at an altitude of 550m, the plateau is exposed to much humidity, wind, strong precipitation, fog and glacial temperatures in winter. The camp was surrounded by a coniferous forest that provided lumber for the camps construction, an access road that first bordered the prisoners cemetery led to a first area guarded by the SS. This area contained seven huts, a guard post, the camps Kommandantur or command post, a garage, workshops and this area was decorated with floral and garden arrangements. Prisoners were kept in another area measuring approximately 200m by 200m, prisoners were housed in four barracks, each containing two spaces that in turn contained 26 bunk beds for the projected capacity of 208 prisoners. Later, straw mattresses were added to increase the capacity to 560. Certain rooms were reserved for a category of prisoners, such as the Night. Three other buildings in the contained the local Gestapo offices, the administrative offices. Different zones were located around one central area, the size of which was later reduced as the SS created a neighbouring vegetable patch. A mast stood in the centre of the area bearing loudspeakers through which orders were delivered. Prisoners sometimes had to stand still for hours facing the mast as punishment, the roll call area was also used as a drill and exercise area, where prisoners had to jump up and down at 4.30 am to the sound of a drum. The Hinzert concentration camp was first established in 1938 to house workers who were building the West Wall. These workers, many of whom had been brought in by the Bremen Gestapo worked not only on the West Wall, on July 1,1940, the camp was placed under the jurisdiction of the Inspector of Concentration Camps. On February 7,1942, command over the camp was transferred to the SS Central Office for Economics and it also then became a camp for the Gestapo of the Luxembourg and Trier area. Following the arrival of Night and Fog prisoners, the section and detention. Hinzert remained mainly autonomous until November 21,1944, when it was linked to the Buchenwald concentration camp
Hinzert concentration camp
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SS officers at a construction site in the Hinzert concentration camp
Hinzert concentration camp
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Historical road sign at the Hinzert concentration camp. The sign is presently part of the permanent exposition in the
National Resistance Museum in Esch-sur-Alzette, Luxembourg.
Hinzert concentration camp
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The Hinzert concentration camp panorama
Hinzert concentration camp
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Hinzert commemorative plaque of the Night and Fog victims.
4.
Adolf Hitler
–
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
Adolf Hitler
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Hitler in 1938
Adolf Hitler
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Adolf Hitler as an infant (c. 1889–90).
Adolf Hitler
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Hitler's mother,
Klara
Adolf Hitler
–
Hitler's father,
Alois
5.
Resistance movement
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It may seek to achieve its objectives through either the use of nonviolent resistance, or the use of force, whether armed or unarmed. The term resistance is used to designate a movement considered legitimate. Organizations and individuals critical of foreign intervention and supporting forms of organized movement tend to favor the term, when such a resistance movement uses violence, those favorably disposed to it may also speak of freedom fighters. More recently the 1977 Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, in which peoples are fighting against colonial domination and alien occupation and against racist regimes. This phraseology contains many ambiguities that cloud the issue of who is or is not a legitimate combatant, ultimately, the distinction is a political judgment. The modern usage of the term Resistance originates from the self-designation of many movements during World War II, the term is still strongly linked to the context of the events of 1939–45, and particularly to opposition movements in Axis-occupied countries. Using the term resistance to designate a movement meeting the definition prior to World War II might be considered by some to be an anachronism. However, such movements existed prior to World War II, and there have been many after it – for example in struggles against colonialism, Resistance has become a generic term that has been used to designate underground resistance movements in any country. Resistance movements can include any irregular armed force that rises up against an enforced or established authority, government and this frequently includes groups that consider themselves to be resisting tyranny. Some resistance movements are underground organizations engaged in a struggle for liberation in a country under military occupation or totalitarian domination. Any government facing violent acts from a resistance movement usually condemns such acts as terrorism, Resistance during World War II was mainly dedicated to fighting the Axis occupiers. Germany itself also had an anti-Nazi German resistance movement in this period, so, resistance is often understood as something that always opposes to power or domination. However, some scholars believe and argue that looking at resistance in relation to only power and domination will not provide us a full understanding of the actual nature of resistance. Not all power, domination or oppression leads to resistance, and not all cases of resistance are against or to oppose what we categorize as “power. ”In fact, they believe that resistance has its own characteristics and spatialities. There are various forms of resistance for various reasons, which then can be, again, different geographical spaces can also make different forms of resistance possible or impossible and more effective or less effective. The reason is that these variations can define the nature and outcome of resistance and he compared this accident with a similar fire accident at Triangle Shirtwaist Company, New York,1911, killing 146 workers, which caused a labor resistance by 100,000 people. For an effective resistance, he proposed that four tasks should be undertaken, There are many forms of resistance in relations to different power dominations and actors. Moreover, some other resistance takes place in order to resist or question the norms or discourse or in order to challenge a global trend called globalization
Resistance movement
–
Mujahideen loyal to Yunus Khalis, in October 1987
6.
World War II
–
World War II, also known as the Second World War, was a global war that lasted from 1939 to 1945, although related conflicts began earlier. It involved the vast majority of the worlds countries—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing alliances, the Allies and the Axis. It was the most widespread war in history, and directly involved more than 100 million people from over 30 countries. Marked by mass deaths of civilians, including the Holocaust and the bombing of industrial and population centres. These made World War II the deadliest conflict in human history, from late 1939 to early 1941, in a series of campaigns and treaties, Germany conquered or controlled much of continental Europe, and formed the Axis alliance with Italy and Japan. Under the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of August 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union partitioned and annexed territories of their European neighbours, Poland, Finland, Romania and the Baltic states. In December 1941, Japan attacked the United States and European colonies in the Pacific Ocean, and quickly conquered much of the Western Pacific. The Axis advance halted in 1942 when Japan lost the critical Battle of Midway, near Hawaii, in 1944, the Western Allies invaded German-occupied France, while the Soviet Union regained all of its territorial losses and invaded Germany and its allies. During 1944 and 1945 the Japanese suffered major reverses in mainland Asia in South Central China and Burma, while the Allies crippled the Japanese Navy, thus ended the war in Asia, cementing the total victory of the Allies. World War II altered the political alignment and social structure of the world, the United Nations was established to foster international co-operation and prevent future conflicts. The victorious great powers—the United States, the Soviet Union, China, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union and the United States emerged as rival superpowers, setting the stage for the Cold War, which lasted for the next 46 years. Meanwhile, the influence of European great powers waned, while the decolonisation of Asia, most countries whose industries had been damaged moved towards economic recovery. Political integration, especially in Europe, emerged as an effort to end pre-war enmities, the start of the war in Europe is generally held to be 1 September 1939, beginning with the German invasion of Poland, Britain and France declared war on Germany two days later. The dates for the beginning of war in the Pacific include the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War on 7 July 1937, or even the Japanese invasion of Manchuria on 19 September 1931. Others follow the British historian A. J. P. Taylor, who held that the Sino-Japanese War and war in Europe and its colonies occurred simultaneously and this article uses the conventional dating. Other starting dates sometimes used for World War II include the Italian invasion of Abyssinia on 3 October 1935. The British historian Antony Beevor views the beginning of World War II as the Battles of Khalkhin Gol fought between Japan and the forces of Mongolia and the Soviet Union from May to September 1939, the exact date of the wars end is also not universally agreed upon. It was generally accepted at the time that the war ended with the armistice of 14 August 1945, rather than the formal surrender of Japan
World War II
–
Clockwise from top left: Chinese forces in the
Battle of Wanjialing, Australian
25-pounder guns during the
First Battle of El Alamein, German
Stuka dive bombers on the
Eastern Front in December 1943, a U.S. naval force in the
Lingayen Gulf,
Wilhelm Keitel signing the
German Instrument of Surrender, Soviet troops in the
Battle of Stalingrad
World War II
–
The
League of Nations assembly, held in
Geneva,
Switzerland, 1930
World War II
–
Adolf Hitler at a German
National Socialist political rally in
Weimar, October 1930
World War II
–
Italian soldiers recruited in 1935, on their way to fight the
Second Italo-Abyssinian War
7.
German language
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German is a West Germanic language that is mainly spoken in Central Europe. It is the most widely spoken and official language in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, South Tyrol, the German-speaking Community of Belgium and it is also one of the three official languages of Luxembourg. Major languages which are most similar to German include other members of the West Germanic language branch, such as Afrikaans, Dutch, English, Luxembourgish and it is the second most widely spoken Germanic language, after English. One of the languages of the world, German is the first language of about 95 million people worldwide. The German speaking countries are ranked fifth in terms of publication of new books. German derives most of its vocabulary from the Germanic branch of the Indo-European language family, a portion of German words are derived from Latin and Greek, and fewer are borrowed from French and English. With slightly different standardized variants, German is a pluricentric language, like English, German is also notable for its broad spectrum of dialects, with many unique varieties existing in Europe and also other parts of the world. The history of the German language begins with the High German consonant shift during the migration period, when Martin Luther translated the Bible, he based his translation primarily on the standard bureaucratic language used in Saxony, also known as Meißner Deutsch. Copies of Luthers Bible featured a long list of glosses for each region that translated words which were unknown in the region into the regional dialect. Roman Catholics initially rejected Luthers translation, and tried to create their own Catholic standard of the German language – the difference in relation to Protestant German was minimal. It was not until the middle of the 18th century that a widely accepted standard was created, until about 1800, standard German was mainly a written language, in urban northern Germany, the local Low German dialects were spoken. Standard German, which was different, was often learned as a foreign language with uncertain pronunciation. Northern German pronunciation was considered the standard in prescriptive pronunciation guides though, however, German was the language of commerce and government in the Habsburg Empire, which encompassed a large area of Central and Eastern Europe. Until the mid-19th century, it was essentially the language of townspeople throughout most of the Empire and its use indicated that the speaker was a merchant or someone from an urban area, regardless of nationality. Some cities, such as Prague and Budapest, were gradually Germanized in the years after their incorporation into the Habsburg domain, others, such as Pozsony, were originally settled during the Habsburg period, and were primarily German at that time. Prague, Budapest and Bratislava as well as cities like Zagreb, the most comprehensive guide to the vocabulary of the German language is found within the Deutsches Wörterbuch. This dictionary was created by the Brothers Grimm and is composed of 16 parts which were issued between 1852 and 1860, in 1872, grammatical and orthographic rules first appeared in the Duden Handbook. In 1901, the 2nd Orthographical Conference ended with a standardization of the German language in its written form
German language
–
Old Frisian (Alt-Friesisch)
German language
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The widespread popularity of the
Bible translated into German by
Martin Luther helped establish modern German
German language
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Examples of German language in
Namibian everyday life
German language
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German-language newspapers in the U.S. in 1922
8.
Das Rheingold
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Das Rheingold, WWV 86A, is the first of the four music dramas that constitute Richard Wagners Der Ring des Nibelungen, or in English, The Ring of the Nibelung. Das Rheingold premiered at the National Theatre Munich on 22 September 1869, with August Kindermann in the role of Wotan, Heinrich Vogl as Loge, and Karl Fischer as Alberich. Wagner wanted this work to premiere as part of the entire cycle, the work was first performed as part of the complete cycle on 13 August 1876, in the Bayreuth Festspielhaus. Although Das Rheingold comes first in the sequence of Ring operas, so in August 1851, Wagner wrote in Eine Mittheilung an meine Freunde, I propose to produce my myth in three complete dramas. However, by October, he had decided that this required a prelude. To the sentence quoted above he added the words, which will be preceded by a great prelude, a letter Wagner wrote to Theodor Uhlig confirms that at this time the opera was intended to have three acts. Wagner continued to develop the text and storyline of the prelude in parallel with those of Die Walküre, the prose draft of Das Rheingold was completed between 21 March and 23 March 1852 and its verse draft between 15 September and 3 November. A fair copy of the text was finished by 15 December, during the early years of the 1850s Wagner produced some musical sketches for parts of the Ring and noted down various motifs that were to be used in the work. There also exist three sets of isolated musical sketches for Das Rheingold which were composed between 15 September 1852 and November 1853. The first of these was entered into the draft of the text, the second into Wagners copy of the 1853 printing of the text. All three were used by Wagner. Proper sequential development of the score started on 1 November 1853, by 14 January, Wagner had completed the first draft of the opera on between two and three staves. The next stage involved the development of a detailed draft that indicated most of the vocal and instrumental details. This was completed by 28 May, in parallel with this, Wagner started work on a fair copy of the score on 15 February, a task he completed on 26 September 1854, by which time he had also started work on the sketches of Die Walküre. Das Rheingold was first performed at Munich on 22 September 1869 and its first performance as part of the complete Ring cycle took place at Bayreuth on 13 August 1876. It continues to be performed on a regular basis both in Bayreuth and elsewhere, Das Rheingold, considerably shorter than its three successors, consists of four scenes performed without a break. It has been noted as one of the best-known drone examples in the concert repertory, the curtain rises to show, at the bottom of the Rhine, the three Rhine maidens, Woglinde, Wellgunde, and Flosshilde, playing together. The key shifts to A flat as Woglinde begins an innocent song whose melody is used to characterise the Rhine maidens later in the cycle
Das Rheingold
–
Emil Fischer in the role of Wotan at the 1889 New York premiere of Das Rheingold.
Das Rheingold
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First performance in Bayreuth, 1876
Das Rheingold
–
Scene 1 of Das Rheingold from the
Bayreuth Festival production in 1876
Das Rheingold
–
The giants seize
Freia
9.
Thomas Mann
–
Paul Thomas Mann was a German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and the 1929 Nobel Prize in Literature laureate. His highly symbolic and ironic epic novels and novellas are noted for their insight into the psychology of the artist and his analysis and critique of the European and German soul used modernized German and Biblical stories, as well as the ideas of Goethe, Nietzsche and Schopenhauer. Mann was a member of the Hanseatic Mann family and portrayed his family and class in his first novel and his older brother was the radical writer Heinrich Mann and three of his six children, Erika Mann, Klaus Mann and Golo Mann, also became important German writers. When Hitler came to power in 1933, Mann fled to Switzerland, when World War II broke out in 1939, he moved to the United States, returning to Switzerland in 1952. Thomas Mann is one of the exponents of the so-called Exilliteratur. Manns work influenced many authors, including Heinrich Böll, Joseph Heller, Yukio Mishima. Paul Thomas Mann was born to a family in Lübeck. His mother was Roman Catholic but Mann was baptised into his fathers Lutheran religion, Manns father died in 1891 and his trading firm was liquidated. The family subsequently moved to Munich, Mann lived in Munich from 1891 until 1933, with the exception of a year in Palestrina, Italy, with his novelist elder brother Heinrich. Thomas worked with the South German Fire Insurance Company in 1894-95 and his career as a writer began when he wrote for Simplicissimus. Manns first short story, Little Mr Friedemann, was published in 1898, in 1905, Mann married Katia Pringsheim, daughter of a wealthy, secular Jewish industrialist family. She later joined the Lutheran church, today the cottage is a cultural center dedicated to him, with a small memorial exhibition. In 1933, while traveling in the South of France, Mann heard from Klaus and Erika in Munich, the family emigrated to Küsnacht, near Zurich, Switzerland but received Czechoslovak citizenship and a passport in 1936. After Nazi Germany took over Czechoslovakia, he emigrated to the United States in 1939. In 1942, the Mann family moved to 1550 San Remo Drive in the Pacific Palisades suburb of Los Angeles, on 23 June 1944 Thomas Mann was naturalized as a citizen of the United States. The Manns lived in Los Angeles until 1952, the outbreak of World War II on 1 September 1939, prompted Mann to offer anti-Nazi speeches to the German people via the BBC. In October 1940 he began monthly broadcasts, recorded in the U. S. and flown to London, in these eight-minute addresses, Mann condemned Hitler and his paladins as crude philistines completely out of touch with European culture. In one noted speech he said, The war is horrible, Mann was one of the few publicly active opponents of Nazism among German expatriates in the U. S
Thomas Mann
–
Mann in 1937
Thomas Mann
–
Mann's summerhouse in
Nida (German: Nidden), today a museum.
Thomas Mann
–
Family grave in which are buried: Thomas, Katia, Erika, Monika, Michael and Elisabeth Mann, in Kilchberg, Switzerland.
Thomas Mann
–
Mann in the early period of his writing career
10.
Der Zauberberg
–
The Magic Mountain is a novel by Thomas Mann, first published in November 1924. It is widely considered to be one of the most influential works of 20th century German literature, Mann started writing what was to become The Magic Mountain in 1912. It began as a shorter narrative which revisited in a comic manner aspects of Death in Venice. In May and June 1912 Mann visited her and became acquainted with the team of doctors who were treating her in this cosmopolitan institution. According to Mann, in the afterword that was included in the English translation. The outbreak of the First World War interrupted work on the book and he was also drawn to speculate about more general questions surrounding personal attitudes to life, health, illness, sexuality and mortality. Given this, Mann felt compelled to radically revise and expand the text before completing it in 1924. Der Zauberberg was eventually published in two volumes by S. Fischer Verlag in Berlin, Manns vast composition is erudite, subtle, ambitious, but, most of all, ambiguous, since its original publication it has been subject to a variety of critical assessments. For example, the book blends a scrupulous realism with deeper symbolic undertones, given this complexity, each reader is obliged to weigh up the artistic significance of the pattern of events set out within the narrative, a task made more difficult by the authors irony. Mann himself was aware of his books elusiveness, but offered few clues about approaches to the text. The narrative opens in the decade before World War I and he is in his early 20s, about to take up a shipbuilding career in Hamburg, his home town. Castorps departure from the sanatorium is repeatedly delayed by his failing health, what at first appears to be a minor bronchial infection with slight fever is diagnosed by the sanatoriums chief doctor and director, Hofrat Behrens, as symptoms of tuberculosis. Hans is persuaded by Behrens to stay until his health improves, during his extended stay, Castorp meets and learns from a variety of characters, who together represent a microcosm of pre-war Europe. In the end, Castorp remains in the atmosphere of the sanatorium for seven years. At the conclusion of the novel, the war begins, Castorp volunteers for the military, the Magic Mountain can be read both as a classic example of the European Bildungsroman – a novel of education or novel of formation – and as a sly parody of this genre. Also embedded within this vast novel are extended reflections on the experience of time, music, nationalism, Hans Castorp’s stay in the rarefied air of The Magic Mountain thus provides him with a panoramic view of pre-war European civilization and its discontents. These themes relate to the development of Castorps character over the span covered by the novel. At the core of complex work is an encyclopaedic survey of the ideas
Der Zauberberg
–
First US edition
Der Zauberberg
–
Der Zauberberg, first German edition, 1924
Der Zauberberg
–
Mountain scenery at
Davos, the novel's Alpine setting
Der Zauberberg
–
Thomas Mann, 1926
11.
Heinrich Himmler
–
Heinrich Luitpold Himmler was Reichsführer of the Schutzstaffel, and a leading member of the Nazi Party of Nazi Germany. Nazi leader Adolf Hitler briefly appointed him a commander and later Commander of the Replacement Army. Himmler was one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany, as a member of a reserve battalion during World War I, Himmler did not see active service. He studied agronomy in college, and joined the Nazi Party in 1923, in 1929, he was appointed Reichsführer-SS by Hitler. Over the next 16 years, he developed the SS from a mere 290-man battalion into a paramilitary group. He was known to have good skills and for selecting highly competent subordinates. From 1943 onwards, he was both Chief of German Police and Minister of the Interior, overseeing all internal and external police and security forces, on Hitlers behalf, Himmler formed the Einsatzgruppen and built extermination camps. Most of them were Polish and Soviet citizens, realising that the war was lost, he attempted to open peace talks with the western Allies without Hitlers knowledge shortly before the war ended. Hearing of this, Hitler dismissed him all his posts in April 1945. Himmler attempted to go into hiding, but was detained and then arrested by British forces once his identity became known, while in British custody, he committed suicide on 23 May 1945. Heinrich Luitpold Himmler was born in Munich on 7 October 1900 into a conservative middle-class Roman Catholic family and his father was Gebhard Himmler, a teacher, and his mother was Anna Maria Himmler, a devout Roman Catholic. Heinrich had two brothers, Gebhard Ludwig and Ernst Hermann, Himmlers first name, Heinrich, was that of his godfather, Prince Heinrich of Bavaria, a member of the royal family of Bavaria, who had been tutored by Gebhard Himmler. He attended a school in Landshut, where his father was deputy principal. While he did well in his schoolwork, he struggled in athletics and he had poor health, suffering from lifelong stomach complaints and other ailments. In his youth he trained daily with weights and exercised to become stronger, other boys at the school later remembered him as studious and awkward in social situations. Himmlers diary, which he kept intermittently from the age of ten, shows that he took a keen interest in current events, dueling, in 1915, he began training with the Landshut Cadet Corps. His father used his connections with the family to get Himmler accepted as an officer candidate. His brother, Gebhard, served on the front and saw combat, receiving the Iron Cross
Heinrich Himmler
–
Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Himmler
–
Himmler in early SS uniform, with rank of Oberführer
Heinrich Himmler
–
Himmler in 1929, photograph by
Heinrich Hoffmann.
Heinrich Himmler
–
Himmler (front right, beside prisoner) visiting the
Dachau Concentration Camp in 1936
12.
Holocaust
–
The Holocaust, also referred to as the Shoah, was a genocide in which some six million European Jews were killed by Adolf Hitlers Nazi Germany, and the World War II collaborators with the Nazis. The victims included 1.5 million children, and represented about two-thirds of the nine million Jews who had resided in Europe, killings took place throughout German-occupied Europe, as well as within Nazi Germany, and across all territories controlled by its allies. Other victims of Nazi crimes included ethnic Poles and other Slavs, Soviet citizens and Soviet POWs, communists, homosexuals, Freemasons, Jehovahs Witnesses, some 42,500 detention facilities were utilized in the concentration of victims for the purpose of gross violations of human rights. Over 200,000 people are estimated to have been Holocaust perpetrators, the persecution was carried out in stages, culminating in the policy of extermination of European Jews termed the Final Solution to the Jewish Question. Following Hitlers rise to power, the German government passed laws to exclude Jews from civil society, starting in 1933 the Nazis began to establish a network of concentration camps. After the outbreak of war in 1939 both German and foreign Jews were herded into wartime ghettos, in 1941, as Germany began to conquer new territory in the East, all anti-Jewish measures radicalized. Specialized paramilitary units called Einsatzgruppen murdered around two million Jews in mass shootings actions in less than a year, by mid-1942, victims were being regularly transported by freight trains to extermination camps where, if they survived the journey, most were systematically killed in gas chambers. This continued until the end of World War II in Europe in April–May 1945, the most notable exception was the Warsaw Ghetto uprising of 1943, when thousands of poorly-armed Jewish fighters held the Waffen-SS at bay for four weeks. An estimated 20, 000–30,000 Jewish partisans actively fought against the Nazis, French Jews took part in the French Resistance, which conducted a guerilla campaign against the Nazis and Vichy French authorities. Over a hundred armed Jewish uprisings took place, the term holocaust comes from the Greek adjective holókaustos, a variant of holókautos, referring to an animal sacrifice offered to a god in which the whole animal is completely burnt. Often used substantively in apposition with the noun thysia, the term appears in a fragment of pseudo-Callisthenes, writing in Latin, Jerome Latinized the Greek word as a neuter noun holocaustum, using it to translate references to the Jewish burnt offering in his translations of Exodus and Leviticus. In his Chronicon de rebus gestis Ricardi Primi, Richard of Devizes, the English poet John Milton had used the word to denote a conflagration in his 1671 poem Samson Agonistes and the word gradually developed to mean a massacre thereon. The term was used in the 1950s by historians as a translation of the Jewish word shoah to refer specifically to the Nazi genocide of Jews, the television mini-series Holocaust is credited with introducing the term into common parlance after 1978. The biblical word shoah, meaning calamity became the standard Hebrew term for the Holocaust as early as the 1940s, especially in Europe and Israel. Shoah is preferred by some Jews for several reasons including the offensive nature of the word holocaust which they take to refer to the Greek pagan custom. The Nazis used the phrase Final Solution to the Jewish Question, all branches of Germanys bureaucracy were engaged in the logistics that led to the genocides, turning the Third Reich into what one Holocaust scholar, Michael Berenbaum, has called a genocidal state. Every arm of the countrys sophisticated bureaucracy was involved in the killing process, as prisoners entered the death camps, they were made to surrender all personal property, which was catalogued and tagged before being sent to Germany to be reused or recycled. Berenbaum writes that the Final Solution of the Jewish question was in the eyes of the perpetrators, through a concealed account, the German National Bank helped launder valuables stolen from the victims
Holocaust
–
Hungarian Jews are selected by Nazis to be sent to the
gas chamber at
Auschwitz concentration camp, May/June 1944.
Holocaust
–
Romani children in
Auschwitz, victims of medical experiments.
Holocaust
–
In Germany,
Sturmabteilung stormtroopers urge a national boycott of all Jewish businesses on 1 April 1933. These SA stormtroopers are outside
Israel's Department Store in Berlin to deter customers. The signs read: "Germans! Defend yourselves! Don't buy from Jews." (" Deutsche! Wehrt Euch! Kauft nicht bei Juden! ") The store was later ransacked during
Kristallnacht in 1938, then handed over to a non-Jewish family.
13.
Political prisoner
–
A political prisoner is someone imprisoned because they have opposed or criticized the government responsible for their imprisonment. The term is used by persons or groups challenging the legitimacy of the detention of a prisoner, supporters of the term define a political prisoner as someone who is imprisoned for his or her participation in political activity. If a political offense was not the reason for the prisoners detention. Some understand the political prisoner narrowly, equating it with the term prisoner of conscience. Amnesty International campaigns for the release of prisoners of conscience, which include political prisoners as well as those imprisoned for their religious or philosophical beliefs. To reduce controversy, and as a matter of principle, the organizations policy applies only to prisoners who have not committed or advocated violence, thus, there are political prisoners who do not fit the narrower criteria for POCs. The organisation defines the differences as follows, AI uses the political prisoner broadly. It does not use it, as others do, to imply that all such prisoners have a special status or should be released. It uses the only to define a category of prisoners for whom AI demands a fair. Governments often say they have no political prisoners, only prisoners held under the criminal law. AI however describes cases like the examples given above as political, for instance, French anarchist groups typically call the former members of Action Directe held in France political prisoners. While the French government deemed Action Directe illegal, the group fashioned itself as a guerilla movement. In this sense, political prisoner can be used to describe any politically active prisoner who is held in custody for a violent action which supporters deem ethically justified, some libertarians also include all convicted for treason and some convicted of espionage in the category of political prisoners. Currently, there is much controversy and debate around how to define this term. Political prisoners can also be imprisoned with no legal veneer by extrajudicial processes, some political prisoners need not be imprisoned at all. Supporters of Gedhun Choekyi Nyima in the 11th Panchen Lama controversy have called him a political prisoner and he is held under secluded house arrest. This is common in situations which may otherwise be decried nationally and internationally as a human rights violation or suppression of a political dissident, particularly in this latter situation, whether an individual is regarded as a political prisoner may depend upon subjective political perspective or interpretation of the evidence. In the Soviet Union, dubious psychiatric diagnoses were sometimes used to political prisoners in the so-called psikhushkas
Political prisoner
–
Basque Nationalist Party (PNV) member
Sabino Arana in Larrinaga prison, Bilbao, 1895. He defended independence for
Cuba.
Political prisoner
–
A painted portrait of
Nelson Mandela, one of the most famous political prisoners.
Political prisoner
–
Sahrawi activist
Ali Salem Tamek in Ait Melloul prison, Agadir, 2005. He was incarcerated on accusation of "incitement to trouble the public order"
14.
German-occupied Europe
–
Several German occupied countries entered World War II as Allies of the United Kingdom or the Soviet Union. Some were forced to such as Czechoslovakia, others like Poland were conquered in battle. In some cases, the legitimate governments went into exile, in cases the governments-in-exile were formed by their citizens in other Allied countries. Selected countries occupied by Nazi Germany were officially neutral
German-occupied Europe
–
Map of
Europe at the height of German control in 1942
15.
Geneva Convention
–
The Geneva Conventions comprise four treaties, and three additional protocols, that establish the standards of international law for the humanitarian treatment in war. The treaties of 1949 were ratified, in whole or with reservations, the Swiss businessman Henry Dunant went to visit wounded soldiers after the Battle of Solferino in 1859. He was shocked by the lack of facilities, personnel, as a result, he published his book, A Memory of Solferino, in 1862, on the horrors of war. The latter led to the 1864 Geneva Convention, the first codified international treaty that covered the sick, for both of these accomplishments, Henry Dunant became corecipient of the first Nobel Peace Prize in 1901. The ten articles of this first treaty were initially adopted on 22 August 1864 by twelve nations, on 20 October 1868 the first, unsuccessful, attempt to expand the 1864 treaty was undertaken. With the Additional Articles relating to the Condition of the Wounded in War an attempt was undertaken to clarify some rules of the 1864 convention, the Articles were signed but never ratified by all parties. Only the Netherlands and the United States ratified the Articles, the Netherlands later withdrew their ratification. The protection of the victims of warfare would later be realized by the third Hague Convention of 1899. In 1906 thirty-five states attended a conference convened by the Swiss government and it remained into force until 1970 when Costa Rica acceded to the 1949 Geneva Conventions. The 1929 conference yielded two conventions that were signed on July 27th 1929, one, the Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded and Sick in Armies in the Field, was the third version to replace the original convention of 1864. The other was adopted after experiences in World War I had shown the deficiencies in the protection of prisoners of war under the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907. The Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War was not to replace these earlier conventions signed at The Hague, the Second Geneva Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of Wounded, Sick and Shipwrecked Members of Armed Forces at Sea replaced the Hague Convention of 1907. It was the first Geneva Convention on the protection of the victims of warfare and mimicked the structure. The Third Geneva Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War replaced the 1929 Geneva Convention that dealt with prisoners of war. In addition to these three conventions, the conference added a new elaborate Fourth Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War. It was the first Geneva Convention not to deal with combatants, the 1899 and 1907 Hague Conventions had already contained some provisions on the protection of civilians and occupied territory. Article 154 specifically provides that the Fourth Geneva Convention is supplementary to these provisions in the Hague Conventions, despite the length of these documents, they were found over time to be incomplete. In light of developments, two Protocols were adopted in 1977 that extended the terms of the 1949 Conventions with additional protections
Geneva Convention
–
The Geneva Convention: the signature-and-seals page of the
1864 Geneva Convention, that established humane rules of war.
Geneva Convention
–
Original document, single pages as PDF, 1864
Geneva Convention
–
Red Cross poster from the
First World War.
16.
Gestapo
–
The Gestapo, abbreviation of Geheime Staatspolizei, or the Secret State Police, was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and German-occupied Europe. The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various security agencies of Prussia into one organization. Then from 27 September 1939 forward, it was administered by the Reichssicherheitshauptamt and was considered an organization to the SS Sicherheitsdienst. This gave Göring command of the largest police force in Germany, soon afterward, Göring detached the political and intelligence sections from the police and filled their ranks with Nazis. On 26 April 1933, Göring merged the two units as the Geheime Staatspolizei, which was abbreviated for a stamp and became known as the Gestapo. He originally wanted to name it the Secret Police Office, and its first commander was Rudolf Diels, a protégé of Göring. Diels was appointed with the title of chief of Abteilung Ia of the Political Police of the Prussian Interior Ministry, Diels was best known as the primary interrogator of Marinus van der Lubbe after the Reichstag fire. In late 1933, the Reich Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick wanted to integrate all the forces of the German states under his control. Göring outflanked him by removing the Prussian political and intelligence departments from the interior ministry. Göring himself took over the Gestapo in 1934 and urged Hitler to extend the agencys authority throughout Germany and this represented a radical departure from German tradition, which held that law enforcement was a Land and local matter. In this, he ran into conflict with Heinrich Himmler, who was chief of the second most powerful German state. Frick did not have the muscle to take on Göring by himself so he allied with Himmler, with Fricks support, Himmler took over the political police of state after state. Concerned that Diels was not ruthless enough to counteract the power of the Sturmabteilung, Göring handed over control of the Gestapo to Himmler on 20 April 1934. Also on that date, Hitler appointed Himmler chief of all German police outside Prussia, Heydrich, named chief of the Gestapo by Himmler on 22 April 1934, also continued as head of the SS Security Service. Himmler wanted to free himself entirely from Roehm, who he viewed as an obstacle, roehms position was menacing as upwards of over 4. Several Nazi chieftains, among them Goering, Joseph Goebbels, Rudolf Hess, both the SD and Gestapo released information concerning an imminent putsch by the SA. Once persuaded, Hitler acted by setting Himmlers SS into action, on 17 June 1936, Hitler decreed the unification of all police forces in the Reich and named Himmler as Chief of German Police. This action effectively merged the police into the SS and removed it from Fricks control, Himmler was nominally subordinate to Frick as police chief, but as Reichsführer-SS, he answered only to Hitler
Gestapo
–
Plainclothes Gestapo agents during the
White Buses operations in 1945.
Gestapo
–
Rudolf Diels, first Commander of the Gestapo; 1933–1934
Gestapo
–
1938 Gestapo border inspection stamp applied when entering German controlled Silesia.
Gestapo
–
Heinrich Himmler and
Hermann Göring at the meeting to formally hand over control of the Gestapo (Berlin, 1934).
17.
Oberkommando der Wehrmacht
–
The Oberkommando der Wehrmacht was part of the command structure of the Wehrmacht of Nazi Germany during World War II. Created in 1938, the OKW had nominal oversight over the Heer, the Kriegsmarine, rivalry with the armed services branch commands, mainly with the Oberkommando des Heeres, prevented the OKW from becoming a unified German General Staff in an effective chain of command. However, it did coordinate operations between the three services, during the war, the OKW, subordinate to Adolf Hitler as Supreme Commander of the Wehrmacht, acquired more and more operational powers. By 1942, OKW had responsibility for all theaters except for the Eastern Front against the Soviet Union, Hitler manipulated the bipolar system to keep ultimate decisions in his own hands. Hitler took the chance to get rid of his critics within the armed forces, the Reich War Ministry was dissolved and replaced with the OKW led by devoted General Wilhelm Keitel in the rank of a Reich Minister, with Alfred Jodl as Chief of the Operations Staff. Nevertheless, all Supreme Commanders of the service branches, like OKH Chief General Walther von Brauchitsch, had direct access to Hitler and were able to circumvent Keitels command. By June 1938, the OKW comprised four departments, Wehrmacht-Führungsamt – operational orders, Chief, Major General Hasso von Wedel,1 September 1939 –8 May 1945 Heeresstab – army staff. Chief, General Walther Buhle,15 February 1942 –8 May 1945 Inspekteur der Wehrmachtnachrichtenverbände – Chief of Staff, Chief, Major General Hans Oster,1 September 1939 – January 1944 Abteilung Ausland – foreign. Hitler promoted Keitel to Chief of the OKW, i. e, Chief of the Supreme Command of the Armed Forces. As head of the WFA, Keitel appointed Max von Viebahn although after two months he was removed from command, and this post was not refilled until the promotion of Alfred Jodl, to replace Jodl at Abteilung Landesverteidigungsführungsamt, Walther Warlimont was appointed. In December 1941 further changes took place with Abteilung Landesverteidigungsführungsamt being merged into the Wehrmacht-Führungsamt and these changes were largely cosmetic however as key staff remained in post and continued to fulfill the same duties. The OKW directed the operations of the German Armed Forces during World War II, the OKW was almost always represented at daily situation conferences by Jodl, Keitel, and the officer serving as Hitlers adjutant. During these conferences situation reports prepared by the head of WFA/L would be delivered to Hitler, following these discussions, Hitler would issue further operational orders. These orders were then relayed back to WFA/L by Jodl along with the minutes of the meeting and these would then be converted into orders for issuance to the appropriate commanders. Officially, the OKW served as the general staff for the Third Reich, coordinating the efforts of the Army, Navy. In practice, the OKW acted as Hitlers personal military staff, translating his ideas into military orders, however, as the war progressed the OKW found itself exercising increasing amounts of direct command authority over military units, particularly in the West. This created a situation such that by 1942 the OKW held the de facto command of Western forces while the Army High Command exercised de facto command of the Eastern Front. It was not until 28 April 1945 that Hitler placed OKH under OKW, since most German operations during World War II were Army controlled, the OKH demanded control over German military forces
Oberkommando der Wehrmacht
–
Command flag of the Chief of the OKW with the rank of
Generalfeldmarschall (1941–1945)
18.
Wilhelm Keitel
–
Wilhelm Keitel was a German field marshal who served as chief of the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht for most of World War II. Following the war, Keitel was charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity by the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg and he was found guilty, sentenced to death and executed in 1946. He was the third highest-ranking German officer to be tried at Nuremberg, Keitel was born in the village of Helmscherode near Gandersheim in the Duchy of Brunswick, the eldest son of Carl Keitel, a middle class landowner, and his wife Apollonia Vissering. After he completed his education at gymnasium in Göttingen, his plan to take over his familys estates foundered on his fathers resistance, instead, he embarked on a military career in 1901, becoming an officer cadet of the Prussian Army. As a commoner he did not join the cavalry, but the mounted 46th Lower-Saxon Field Artillery Regiment in Wolfenbüttel, on 18 April 1909, Keitel married Lisa Fontaine, a wealthy landowners daughter at Wülfel near Hanover. Together they had six children, one of whom died in infancy and his eldest son, Karl-Heinz Keitel went on to serve as a divisional commander in the Waffen-SS. During World War I, Keitel served on the Western Front with his regiment and took part in the fighting in Flanders. Elevated to the rank of a captain, Keitel quickly recovered and he later went on to fight in the First Battle of the Marne, the Battle of Verdun, and in the Battle of Passchendaele, being awarded the Iron Cross 2nd and 1st Class. He also served as a divisional General Staff officer of the 6th Prussian Artillery Regiment, in late 1924, Keitel was transferred to the German Ministry of War in Berlin, serving with the Troop Office, the post-Versailles disguised German General Staff. Three years later, he returned to the 6th Prussian Artillery Regiment as commander of the 2nd Department, playing a vital role in the German re-armament, he at least once travelled to the Soviet Union to inspect secret Reichswehr training camps. Shortly after this, in the autumn of 1932, he suffered from a heart attack, despite being Chief of the OKW, Keitel lacked independent command authority, merely acting as Hitlers agent and issuing orders on his behalf. In 1937, Keitel was promoted to the rank of full general, in the following year, after the Blomberg–Fritsch affair, the War Ministry was replaced by the Supreme Command of the Armed Forces, and Keitel was appointed as its chief. This effectively made him Germanys War Minister, and accordingly, he was appointed to the Hitler Cabinet, however, the cabinet never held a formal meeting after the Blomberg-Fritsch Affair. Soon after his appointment, he convinced Hitler to appoint his friend, Walther von Brauchitsch. For a brief period in October 1938, Keitel was Military Governor of the Sudetenland, in February 1939 Keitel again became chief of OKW, a post he held until the end of the war. During World War II, Keitel was one of the planners of the Wehrmacht campaigns and operations on the Western. He advised Hitler against invading France and opposed Operation Barbarossa, both times he backed down in the face of Hitler and tendered his resignation, which Hitler refused to accept. In 1940, after the French campaign, he was promoted to field marshal during the 1940 Field Marshal Ceremony along with other generals
Wilhelm Keitel
–
Wilhelm Keitel
Wilhelm Keitel
–
Keitel
Wilhelm Keitel
–
Keitel (center) talks with Japanese
Minister of Foreign Affairs Yōsuke Matsuoka (left) and
Heinrich Georg Stahmer in Berlin on 28 March 1941.
Wilhelm Keitel
–
Keitel, signing the ratified surrender terms for the German Army in Berlin, 8/9 May 1945
19.
Military occupation
–
Military occupation is effective provisional control by a certain ruling power over a territory which is not under the formal sovereignty of that entity, without the volition of the actual sovereign. Military government may be characterized as the administration or supervision of occupied territory. Military government is distinguished from law, which is the temporary rule by domestic armed forces over disturbed areas. The rules of government are delineated in various international agreements, primarily the Hague Convention of 1907. A country that establishes a government and violates internationally agreed upon norms runs the risk of censure, criticism. In the current era, the practices of government have largely become a part of customary international law. Article 42 of the 1907 Hague Convention on Land Warfare specify that erritory is considered occupied when it is placed under the authority of the hostile army. The form of administration by which an occupying power exercises government authority over occupied territory is called military government, neither the Hague Conventions nor the Geneva Conventions specifically define or distinguish an act of invasion. The terminology of occupation is used exclusively, the clear distinction has been recognized among the principles of international law since the end of the Napoleonic wars in the 19th century. These customary laws of belligerent occupation which evolved as part of the laws of war gave some protection to the population under the occupation of a belligerent power. The first two articles of that state, Art. Territory is considered occupied when it is placed under the authority of the hostile army. The occupation extends only to the territory where such authority has been established, in 1949 these laws governing belligerent occupation of an enemy states territory were further extended by the adoption of the Fourth Geneva Convention. Much of GCIV is relevant to protected persons in occupied territories and Section III, Article 6 restricts the length of time that most of GCIV applies, The present Convention shall apply from the outset of any conflict or occupation mentioned in Article 2. In the territory of Parties to the conflict, the application of the present Convention shall cease on the close of military operations. GCIV emphasised an important change in international law, the Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies. S. are not signatory to this additional protocol. The military government of the occupying power will continue past the point in time when the peace treaty comes into force. Military government continues until legally supplanted is the rule, as stated in Military Government and Martial Law, by William E. Birkhimer, see Birkhimer, p. 25–26, No proclamation of part of the victorious commander is necessary to the lawful inauguration and enforcement of military government
Military occupation
–
Stamp of the Belgian Military Occupation in
East Africa, captured from the Germans during
World War I
20.
Sicherheitsdienst
–
Sicherheitsdienst, full title Sicherheitsdienst des Reichsführers-SS, or SD, was the intelligence agency of the SS and the Nazi Party in Nazi Germany. The organization was the first Nazi Party intelligence organization to be established and was considered an organization with the Gestapo. Between 1933 and 1939, the SD was administered as an independent SS office, after which it was transferred to the authority of the Reich Main Security Office, as one of its seven departments/offices. Its first director, Reinhard Heydrich, intended for the SD to bring every single individual within the Third Reichs reach under continuous supervision. Heydrichs successor, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, was convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity at the Nuremberg trials, sentenced to death and hanged in 1946. The SD was one of the oldest security organizations of the SS and was first formed in 1931 as the Ic-Dienst, operating out of a single apartment, Himmler appointed a former naval officer, Reinhard Heydrich, to organise the small agency. The office was renamed Sicherheitsdienst in the summer of 1932, the SD became more powerful after the Nazis took control of Germany and the SS started infiltrating all leading positions of the security apparatus of the Reich. Once Hitler was appointed Chancellor by German President Paul von Hindenburg, Himmlers SS and SD made their presence felt at once by helping rid the regime of its known political enemies and its perceived ones, as well. As far as Heydrich and Himmler were concerned, the SD left their mission somewhat vaguely defined so as to remain an instrument for all eventualities, one of those eventualities would soon arise. For a while, the SS was in ‘competition’ with the Sturmabteilung for influence within Germany, Himmler distrusted the SA and came to deplore the ‘rabble-rousing’ brownshirts and what they considered to be the indecent sexual deviants amid its leadership. On 20 April 1934 Hermann Göring handed over control of the Geheime Staatspolizei to Himmler, Heydrich, named chief of the Gestapo by Himmler on 22 April 1934, also continued as head of the SD. Thereafter, the SD was made the sole Party information service on 9 June 1934, additionally, reports were coming in to the SD and Gestapo that the vulgarity of the SAs behavior was damaging the party and was even making antisemitism less palatable. Moreover, the crushing of the SA and its leadership sent a clear message to everyone that opposition to Hitler’s regime could be deadly. During the autumn of 1937, Hitler secured Mussolini’s support to annex Austria, nonetheless, to facilitate the incorporation of Austria into the greater Reich, the SD and Gestapo went to work arresting people right away using lists compiled by Heydrich. Heydrich’s SD and Austrian SS members received financing from Berlin to harass Austrian Chancellor von Schuschnigg’s government all throughout 1937, one section of the SD that was nothing more than a front for subversive activities against Austria ironically promoted “German-Austrian peace. Once the annexation was official, the Austrian police was immediately subordinated to Heydrich’s SD, SS and the Gestapo. Machinations by the SD, the Gestapo, and the SS helped to bring Austria fully into Hitlers grasp and on 13 March 1938, concomitant to their machinations against Austria, the SD was also involved in subversive activities throughout Czechoslovakia. This SD intelligence operation was akin to their efforts in Austria, however, unlike Austria
Sicherheitsdienst
–
Reinhard Heydrich
Sicherheitsdienst
–
Ernst Kaltenbrunner
Sicherheitsdienst
–
Uniform jacke of a SD
Unterscharführer of the SS with the typical SD sleeve insignia and the shoulder boards of the Schutzpolizei
Sicherheitsdienst
–
SD personnel in Poland
21.
Forced disappearance
–
On 20 December 2006, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance. The victim in such a case is abducted, illegally detained and often tortured during interrogation, typically, a murder will be surreptitious, with the corpse disposed of to escape discovery so that the person apparently vanishes. The party committing the murder has plausible deniability, as nobody can provide evidence of the victims death, disappearing political rivals is also a way for regimes to engender feelings of complicity in populations. The difficulty of fighting a government that murders in secret can result in widespread pretense that everything is normal. In international human rights law, disappearances at the hands of the state have been codified as enforced or forced disappearances since the Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action. There is also some authority indicating that enforced disappearances occurring during armed conflict, such as the Third Reichs Night and Fog program and its main task is to assist families in determining the fate or whereabouts of their family members who are reportedly disappeared. In August 2014, the Working Group reported 43,250 unresolved cases of disappearances in 88 different States and it gives victims families the right to seek reparations, and to demand the truth about the disappearance of their loved ones. The Convention provides for the not to be subjected to enforced disappearance. The Convention further sets forth the obligation of international co-operation, both in the suppression of the practice, and in dealing with aspects related to the crime. The Convention establishes a Committee on Enforced Disappearances, which will be charged with important and innovative functions of monitoring, currently, an international campaign of the International Coalition against Enforced Disappearances is working towards universal ratification of the Convention. Disappearances entail the violation of fundamental human rights. Their families, who spend the rest of their lives searching for information on the disappeared, are also victims. NGOs such as Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch record in their report the number of known cases of forced disappearance. Disappearances continued up to the late 1990s, but thereafter dropped off sharply with the decline in violence in 1997, some of the disappeared were kidnapped or killed by the guerrillas, but others are presumed to have been taken by state security services. This latter group has become the most controversial and their exact numbers remain disputed, but the government has acknowledged a figure of just over 6,000 disappeared, now presumed dead. Opposition sources claim the number is closer to 17,000. In 2005 a controversial amnesty law was approved in a referendum and it granted financial compensation to families of the disappeared, but also effectively ended the police investigations into the crimes. Other detention camps include those of Garaje Azopardo and Orletti, to name just a few and these places of torture, located in Buenos Aires, Argentina, contributed over 6,000 desaparecidos, or disappeared persons, to the overall count in the Dirty War
Forced disappearance
–
Criminology and
penology
Forced disappearance
–
Moroccan writer
Malika Oufkir daughter of General
Mohamed Oufkir is a former "disappeared" in Morocco
Forced disappearance
–
A mass grave of
Spanish republicans located near
Estépar in Northern Spain. The excavation took place in July–August of 2014.
22.
War crime
–
A war crime is an act that constitutes a serious violation of the law of war that gives rise to individual criminal responsibility. The concept of war crimes emerged at the turn of the century when the body of customary international law applicable to warfare between sovereign states was codified. Moreover, trials in national courts during this period further helped clarify the law, following the end of World War II, major developments in the law occurred. Numerous trials of Axis war criminals established the Nuremberg principles, such as notion that war crimes constituted crimes defined by international law, additionally, the Geneva Conventions in 1949 defined new war crimes and established that states could exercise universal jurisdiction over such crimes. The trial of Peter von Hagenbach by an ad hoc tribunal of the Holy Roman Empire in 1474 was the first international war crimes trial, and also of command responsibility. He was convicted and beheaded for crimes that he as a knight was deemed to have a duty to prevent, although he had argued that he was only following orders. In 1654 a Major Connaught was tried at Chester Assizes and hanged for his part in the massacre of villagers in the church at the village of Boughton, twelve villagers were smoked out, stripped naked and had their throats cut. He was hanged at the scene of the crime having been convicted of striking a blow to the head of John Fowler with an axe. The Geneva Conventions are four related treaties adopted and continuously expanded from 1864 to 1949 that represent a legal basis, accordingly, states retain different codes and values with regard to wartime conduct. Some signatories have routinely violated the Geneva Conventions in a way which either uses the ambiguities of law or political maneuvering to sidestep the laws formalities and principles. Three conventions were revised and expanded with the one added in 1949, First Geneva Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded. Second Geneva Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of Wounded, Sick, third Geneva Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War. Fourth Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, Protocol II relating to the Protection of Victims of Non-International Armed Conflicts. Protocol III relating to the Adoption of an Additional Distinctive Emblem, a small number of German military personnel of the First World War were tried in 1921 by the German Supreme Court for alleged war crimes. The modern concept of war crime was further developed under the auspices of the Nuremberg Trials based on the definition in the London Charter that was published on August 8,1945. Along with war crimes the charter also defined crimes against peace and crimes against humanity, on July 1,2002, the International Criminal Court, a treaty-based court located in The Hague, came into being for the prosecution of war crimes committed on or after that date. Several nations, most notably the United States, China, Russia, the United States still participates as an observer. Article 12 of the Rome Statute provides jurisdiction over the citizens of non-contracting states in the event that they are accused of committing crimes in the territory of one of the state parties
War crime
–
Criminology and
penology
War crime
–
A picture taken by the
Polish Underground of
Nazi Secret Police rounding up Polish intelligentsia at
Palmiry near
Warsaw in 1940 for mass execution (
German AB-Aktion in occupied Poland).
War crime
–
Suchow, China, 1938. A ditch full of the bodies of Chinese civilians, killed by
Japanese soldiers.
War crime
–
HRW wrote that the
Saudi Arabian-led military intervention in Yemen that began on 26 March 2015 had conducted airstrikes in apparent violation of the laws of war.
23.
Hague Conventions (1899 and 1907)
–
The Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 are a series of international treaties and declarations negotiated at two international peace conferences at The Hague in the Netherlands. The First Hague Conference was held in 1899 and the Second Hague Conference in 1907, along with the Geneva Conventions, the Hague Conventions were among the first formal statements of the laws of war and war crimes in the body of secular international law. A third conference was planned for 1914 and later rescheduled for 1915, the 1874 Brussels Declaration listed 56 articles that drew inspiration from the Lieber Code. Much of the regulations in the Hague Conventions were borrowed heavily from the Lieber Code, both conferences included negotiations concerning disarmament, the laws of war and war crimes. This effort, however, failed at both conferences, instead a voluntary forum for arbitration, the Permanent Court of Arbitration, was established, the peace conference was proposed on 24 August 1898 by Russian Tsar Nicholas II. Nicholas and Count Mikhail Nikolayevich Muravyov, his minister, were instrumental in initiating the conference. The conference opened on 18 May 1899, the Tsars birthday, the treaties, declarations, and final act of the conference were signed on 29 July of that year, and they entered into force on 4 September 1900. Convention with respect to the Laws and Customs of War on Land This voluminous convention contains the laws to be used in all wars on land between signatories, inhabitants of occupied territories may not be forced into military service against their own country and collective punishment is forbidden. The section was ratified by all major powers mentioned above and it too was ratified by all major powers. The declaration was ratified by all the powers mentioned above, except the United Kingdom. Ratified by all major powers, except the United States and this directly banned soft-point bullets and cross-tipped bullets. It was ratified by all major powers, except the United States, the second conference, in 1907, resulted in conventions containing only few major advancements from the 1899 Convention. However, the meeting of powers did prefigure later 20th-century attempts at international cooperation. The second conference was called at the suggestion of U. S. President Theodore Roosevelt in 1904, the Second Peace Conference was held from 15 June to 18 October 1907. The intent of the conference was to expand upon the 1899 Hague Convention by modifying some parts and adding new topics, in particular, the 1907 conference had an increased focus on naval warfare. The British attempted to secure limitation of armaments, but these efforts were defeated by the powers, led by Germany. Germany also rejected proposals for compulsory arbitration, however, the conference did enlarge the machinery for voluntary arbitration and established conventions regulating the collection of debts, rules of war, and the rights and obligations of neutrals. The treaties, declarations, and final act of the Second Conference were signed on 18 October 1907, Convention respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land This convention confirms, with minor modifications, the provisions of Convention of 1899
Hague Conventions (1899 and 1907)
–
The First Hague Conference in 1899
Hague Conventions (1899 and 1907)
–
The Second Hague Conference in 1907
Hague Conventions (1899 and 1907)
–
Nicholas II of Russia
Hague Conventions (1899 and 1907)
–
Commemorative medal of the 1907 convention
24.
France
–
France, officially the French Republic, is a country with territory in western Europe and several overseas regions and territories. The European, or metropolitan, area of France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, Overseas France include French Guiana on the South American continent and several island territories in the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans. France spans 643,801 square kilometres and had a population of almost 67 million people as of January 2017. It is a unitary republic with the capital in Paris. Other major urban centres include Marseille, Lyon, Lille, Nice, Toulouse, during the Iron Age, what is now metropolitan France was inhabited by the Gauls, a Celtic people. The area was annexed in 51 BC by Rome, which held Gaul until 486, France emerged as a major European power in the Late Middle Ages, with its victory in the Hundred Years War strengthening state-building and political centralisation. During the Renaissance, French culture flourished and a colonial empire was established. The 16th century was dominated by civil wars between Catholics and Protestants. France became Europes dominant cultural, political, and military power under Louis XIV, in the 19th century Napoleon took power and established the First French Empire, whose subsequent Napoleonic Wars shaped the course of continental Europe. Following the collapse of the Empire, France endured a succession of governments culminating with the establishment of the French Third Republic in 1870. Following liberation in 1944, a Fourth Republic was established and later dissolved in the course of the Algerian War, the Fifth Republic, led by Charles de Gaulle, was formed in 1958 and remains to this day. Algeria and nearly all the colonies became independent in the 1960s with minimal controversy and typically retained close economic. France has long been a centre of art, science. It hosts Europes fourth-largest number of cultural UNESCO World Heritage Sites and receives around 83 million foreign tourists annually, France is a developed country with the worlds sixth-largest economy by nominal GDP and ninth-largest by purchasing power parity. In terms of household wealth, it ranks fourth in the world. France performs well in international rankings of education, health care, life expectancy, France remains a great power in the world, being one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council with the power to veto and an official nuclear-weapon state. It is a member state of the European Union and the Eurozone. It is also a member of the Group of 7, North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the World Trade Organization, originally applied to the whole Frankish Empire, the name France comes from the Latin Francia, or country of the Franks
France
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One of the
Lascaux paintings: a horse –
Dordogne, approximately 18,000 BC
France
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Flag
France
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The
Maison Carrée was a temple of the
Gallo-Roman city of Nemausus (present-day
Nîmes) and is one of the best preserved vestiges of the
Roman Empire.
France
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With
Clovis ' conversion to Catholicism in 498, the
Frankish monarchy,
elective and
secular until then, became
hereditary and of
divine right.
25.
Belgium
–
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
Belgium
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Charlemagne and
Charles V
Belgium
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Flaga
Belgium
Belgium
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Episode of the
Belgian Revolution of 1830 (1834), by
Egide Charles Gustave Wappers
26.
Luxembourg
–
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
Luxembourg
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Historic map (undated) of Luxembourg city's fortifications
Luxembourg
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Flag
Luxembourg
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Photograph of the fortress of Luxembourg prior to demolition in 1867
Luxembourg
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Luxembourg City: The Passerelle, also known as the viaduct or old bridge, over the
Pétrusse river valley, opened 1861
27.
Denmark
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Denmark, officially the Kingdom of Denmark, is a Scandinavian country in Europe and a sovereign state. The southernmost and smallest of the Nordic countries, it is south-west of Sweden and south of Norway, Denmark also comprises two autonomous constituent countries in the North Atlantic Ocean, the Faroe Islands and Greenland. Denmark has an area of 42,924 square kilometres. The country consists of a peninsula, Jutland, and an archipelago of 443 named islands, with the largest being Zealand, the islands are characterised by flat, arable land and sandy coasts, low elevation and a temperate climate. The unified kingdom of Denmark emerged in the 10th century as a proficient seafaring nation in the struggle for control of the Baltic Sea, Denmark, Sweden and Norway were ruled together under the Kalmar Union, established in 1397 and ending with Swedish secession in 1523. Denmark and Norway remained under the monarch until outside forces dissolved the union in 1814. The union with Norway made it possible for Denmark to inherit the Faroe Islands, Iceland, beginning in the 17th century, there were several cessions of territory to Sweden. In the 19th century there was a surge of nationalist movements, Denmark remained neutral during World War I. In April 1940, a German invasion saw brief military skirmishes while the Danish resistance movement was active from 1943 until the German surrender in May 1945, the Constitution of Denmark was signed on 5 June 1849, ending the absolute monarchy which had begun in 1660. It establishes a constitutional monarchy organised as a parliamentary democracy, the government and national parliament are seated in Copenhagen, the nations capital, largest city and main commercial centre. Denmark exercises hegemonic influence in the Danish Realm, devolving powers to handle internal affairs, Home rule was established in the Faroe Islands in 1948, in Greenland home rule was established in 1979 and further autonomy in 2009. Denmark became a member of the European Economic Community in 1973, maintaining certain opt-outs, it retains its own currency, the krone. It is among the members of NATO, the Nordic Council, the OECD, OSCE. The etymology of the word Denmark, and especially the relationship between Danes and Denmark and the unifying of Denmark as a kingdom, is a subject which attracts debate. This is centred primarily on the prefix Dan and whether it refers to the Dani or a historical person Dan and the exact meaning of the -mark ending. Most handbooks derive the first part of the word, and the name of the people, from a word meaning land, related to German Tenne threshing floor. The -mark is believed to mean woodland or borderland, with references to the border forests in south Schleswig. The first recorded use of the word Danmark within Denmark itself is found on the two Jelling stones, which are believed to have been erected by Gorm the Old and Harald Bluetooth
Denmark
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The gilded side of the
Trundholm sun chariot dating from the Nordic Bronze Age.
Denmark
–
Flag
Denmark
–
The
Ladby ship, the largest ship burial found in Denmark.
Denmark
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Larger of the two Jelling stones, raised by
Harald Bluetooth.
28.
Netherlands
–
The Netherlands 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
Netherlands
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The Netherlands in 5500 BC
Netherlands
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Flag
Netherlands
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The Netherlands in 500 BC
Netherlands
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An oak figurine found in
Willemstad, North Brabant (4500 BC).
29.
Norway
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The Antarctic Peter I Island and the sub-Antarctic Bouvet Island are dependent territories and thus not considered part of the Kingdom. Norway also lays claim to a section of Antarctica known as Queen Maud Land, until 1814, the kingdom included the Faroe Islands, Greenland, and Iceland. It also included Isle of Man until 1266, Shetland and Orkney until 1468, Norway has a total area of 385,252 square kilometres and a population of 5,258,317. The country shares a long border with Sweden. Norway is bordered by Finland and Russia to the north-east, Norway has an extensive coastline, facing the North Atlantic Ocean and the Barents Sea. King Harald V of the Dano-German House of Glücksburg is the current King of Norway, erna Solberg became Prime Minister in 2013, replacing Jens Stoltenberg. A constitutional monarchy, Norway divides state power between the Parliament, the Cabinet and the Supreme Court, as determined by the 1814 Constitution, the kingdom is established as a merger of several petty kingdoms. By the traditional count from the year 872, the kingdom has existed continuously for 1,144 years, Norway has both administrative and political subdivisions on two levels, counties and municipalities. The Sámi people have an amount of self-determination and influence over traditional territories through the Sámi Parliament. Norway maintains close ties with the European Union and the United States, the country maintains a combination of market economy and a Nordic welfare model with universal health care and a comprehensive social security system. Norway has extensive reserves of petroleum, natural gas, minerals, lumber, seafood, the petroleum industry accounts for around a quarter of the countrys gross domestic product. On a per-capita basis, Norway is the worlds largest producer of oil, the country has the fourth-highest per capita income in the world on the World Bank and IMF lists. On the CIAs GDP per capita list which includes territories and some regions, from 2001 to 2006, and then again from 2009 to 2017, Norway had the highest Human Development Index ranking in the world. It also has the highest inequality-adjusted ranking, Norway ranks first on the World Happiness Report, the OECD Better Life Index, the Index of Public Integrity and the Democracy Index. Norway has two names, Noreg in Nynorsk and Norge in Bokmål. The name Norway comes from the Old English word Norðrveg mentioned in 880, meaning way or way leading to the north. In contrasting with suðrvegar southern way for Germany, and austrvegr eastern way for the Baltic, the Anglo-Saxon of Britain also referred to the kingdom of Norway in 880 as Norðmanna land. This was the area of Harald Fairhair, the first king of Norway, and because of him
Norway
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The
helmet found at Gjermundbu near
Haugsbygd,
Buskerud, is the only
Viking Age helmet that has been found.
Norway
–
Flag
Norway
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The
Gokstad ship at the
Viking Ship Museum in
Oslo, Norway
Norway
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The
Battle of the Sound between an allied Dano-Norwegian–
Dutch fleet and the Swedish navy, 8 November 1658 (29 October
O.S.)
30.
Natzweiler
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Natzweiler-Struthof was the only concentration camp established by the Nazis on present-day French territory, though there were French-run temporary camps such as the one at Drancy. At the time from 1941 to 1944, the Alsace area in which it was established was administered by Germany as it was a part of the German Reich. The camp operated from 21 May 1941 to early September 1944 with prisoners, a small staff of Nazi SS remained, found when the camp was liberated by the French First Army under the command of the U. S. Sixth Army Group on 23 November 1944, about 52,000 prisoners were estimated to be held there in its time of operation. The prisoners were taken from the resistance movements in German-occupied territories. It was a camp, transit camp and as the war went on. Some died from the exertions of the labor and the poor food, there were an estimated 22,000 deaths at the camp, including the network of subcamps. August Hirt conducted some of his efforts in making a Jewish skeleton collection in this camp, a documentary movie has been made about the 86 named men and women who were killed there for that project. Some of the responsible for atrocities in this camp came to trial after the war ended. The camp is preserved as a museum in memory of those held or killed there, the European Centre of Deported Resistance Members is located at this museum, focusing on those held at this camp. The Monument to the Departed stands at the site, the present museum was restored in 1980, after damage by neo-Nazis in 1976. Among other notable prisoners, the writer Boris Pahor was interned in Natzweiler-Struthof, Natzweiler-Struthof operated between 21 May 1941 and the beginning of September 1944, when the SS evacuated the camp to Dachau. Its construction was overseen by Hans Hüttig in the spring of 1941, the camp was evacuated and its surviving prisoners sent on a death march in early September 1944 with only a small SS unit keeping the camps operations. On 23 November 1944, this camp with its staff was discovered and liberated by the French First Army as part of the U. S. Sixth Army Group, on the day that the city of Strasbourg was liberated by the Allies. Through 1945, Natzweiler-Struthof had a complex of about 70 subcamps or annex camps, the total number of prisoners reached 52,000 over the three years, of 32 nationalities. Inmates originated from countries, including Poland, the Soviet Union. The camp was set up for Nacht und Nebel prisoners, in most cases
Natzweiler
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Overview of present-day Struthof Concentration Camp in Natzweiler, France
Natzweiler
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Natzweiler-Struthof Camp entrance Monument to the Departed in background
Natzweiler
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Camp entrance
Natzweiler
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Panorama of Natzweiler-Struthof
31.
Esterwegen
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Esterwegen is a municipality in the Emsland district, in Lower Saxony, Germany. Esterwegen lies in northwest Germany, less than 30 kilometres from the Dutch border, in 2013 the population was 5,193. In 1933 a concentration camp was established in Esterwegen, in 1936 the camp was dissolved and used till 1945 as a prisoner camp, for political prisoners and later for prisoners of the decree Nacht und Nebel
Esterwegen
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Inmates at Esterwegen.
Esterwegen
32.
Night and Fog (1955 film)
–
Night and Fog is a 1956 French documentary short film. Directed by Alain Resnais, it was ten years after the liberation of Nazi concentration camps. The title is taken from the notorious Nacht und Nebel program of forced abductions, the documentary features the abandoned grounds of Auschwitz and Majdanek while describing the lives of prisoners in the camps. Night and Fog was made in collaboration with scriptwriter Jean Cayrol, the music of the soundtrack was composed by Hanns Eisler. Resnais was originally hesitant about making the film and refused the offer to make it until Cayrol was contracted to write the script, the film was shot entirely in the year 1955 and is composed of contemporary shots of the camps, plus stock footage. Resnais and Cayrol found the very difficult to make due to its graphic nature. Night and Fog was released to acclaim, and still receives very high praise today. It was re-shown on French television nationwide in 1990, to remind the people of the horrors of war, Night and Fog is a documentary that alternates between past and present, using both black-and-white and color footage. The first part of Night and Fog shows remnants of Auschwitz while the narrator Michel Bouquet describes the rise of Nazi ideology, the film continues with comparisons of the life of the Schutzstaffel to the starving prisoners in the camps. Bouquet then addresses the sadism inflicted upon the inmates, including torture, scientific and medical experiments, executions. The next section is completely in black-and-white, and depicts images of gas chambers. The final topic of the film depicts the liberation of the country, the discovery of the horror of the camps, from 1954 to 1955, a number of activities took place observing the tenth anniversary of the liberation of France and of the concentration camps. One of these was an exhibition curated by Olga Wormser and Henri Michel, Resistance, Liberation, Deportation, the exhibit was based on Michel and Wormsers monograph which had appeared earlier in 1954 in a special issue of Revue dhistoire de la Deuxième Guerre mondiale. The first public notice of a film project was given during a radio broadcast on 10 November 1954. Michel recognized that this approach would enable broader financing, and both re-envisioned the film as communicating historical research through contemporary media, initially, Michel thought the film could take the form of a montage of news reports. The genocide of the Jews was treated in French remembrance as more of a side issue—something that was in any case supposedly a matter for the Jews themselves and not for the majority of society. Michel and Wormser might have wanted scholarly objectivity instead of the heroism favoured by the deportees association. Film producers Anatole Dauman, Samy Halfton and Philippe Lifchitz were invited to this exhibit and felt that a film should be made on the subject. Anatole Dauman, originally from Warsaw, undertook the production for Argos Films and arranged for co-financing by Films Polski, Dauman approached filmmaker Alain Resnais who had experience with documentary films since 1948
Night and Fog (1955 film)
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Film poster
Night and Fog (1955 film)
–
A still from Night and Fog, showing a French police officer, identifiable by his
kepi, guarding the
Pithiviers deportation camp. This shot was censored in some versions of the film.
Night and Fog (1955 film)
–
Censored version of the image, with a support partially obscuring the distinctive headwear
33.
Alain Resnais
–
Alain Resnais was a French film director and screenwriter whose career extended over more than six decades. After training as an editor in the mid-1940s, he went on to direct a number of short films which included Night and Fog. These films were contemporary with, and associated with, the French New Wave and he had closer links to the Left Bank group of authors and filmmakers who shared a commitment to modernism and an interest in left-wing politics. This led to adaptations of plays by Alan Ayckbourn, Henri Bernstein and Jean Anouilh. His films frequently explore the relationship between consciousness, memory, and the imagination, and he was noted for devising innovative formal structures for his narratives, throughout his career, he won many awards from international film festivals and academies. Resnais was born in 1922 at Vannes in Brittany, where his father was a pharmacist, an only child, he was often ill with asthma in childhood, which led to his being withdrawn from school and educated at home. He was a reader, in a range that extended from classics to comic books. For his twelfth birthday his parents gave him a Kodak 8mm camera with which he began to make his own short films, around the age of 14, he discovered surrealism and through that an interest in the works of André Breton. Visits to the theatre in Paris gave Resnais the desire to be an actor, from 1940 to 1942 he studied acting in the Cours René-Simon, but he then decided in 1943 to apply to the newly formed film school IDHEC to study film editing. The film-maker Jean Grémillon was one of the teachers who had the most influence on him at that period and he returned to Paris in 1946 to start his career as a film editor, but also began making short films of his own. Finding himself to be a neighbour of the actor Gérard Philipe, he persuaded him to appear in a 16mm surrealist short, a more ambitious feature-length work, Ouvert pour cause dinventaire, has also vanished without trace. He filmed it at first in 16mm, but when the producer Pierre Braunberger saw the results, van Gogh received a prize at the Venice Biennale in 1948, and also won an Oscar for Best 2-reel Short in 1949. Nuit et Brouillard was one of the first documentaries about the Nazi concentration camps, the accompanying narration was intentionally understated to add to the distancing effect. Although the film encountered problems with the French government, its impact was immense. In 1958 Resnais undertook a commission from the Pechiney company to make short film, in colour and wide-screen, extolling the merits of plastics, poetry was brought to the project, literally, by Raymond Queneau who wrote the narration for the film in rhyming couplets. Similar collaborations underpinned his work in feature films. Resnaiss first feature film was Hiroshima mon amour, in the film, the themes of memory and forgetting are explored via new narrative techniques which balance images with narrated text and ignore conventional notions of plot and story development. The film was shown at the 1959 Cannes Film Festival, alongside Truffauts Les Quatre Cents Coups, Resnaiss next film was LAnnée dernière à Marienbad, which he made in collaboration with the novelist Alain Robbe-Grillet
Alain Resnais
34.
Eastern Front (World War II)
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The battles on the Eastern Front constituted the largest military confrontation in history. They were characterized by unprecedented ferocity, wholesale destruction, mass deportations, and immense loss of life due to combat, starvation, exposure, disease, and massacres. The Eastern Front, as the site of nearly all extermination camps, death marches, ghettos, of the estimated 70 million deaths attributed to World War II, over 30 million, many of them civilian, occurred on the Eastern Front. The Eastern Front was decisive in determining the outcome of the European portion of World War II and it resulted in the destruction of the Third Reich, the partition of Germany for nearly half a century and the rise of the Soviet Union as a military and industrial superpower. The two principal belligerent powers were Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, along with their respective allies. Though never engaged in action in the Eastern Front, the United Kingdom. The joint German–Finnish operations across the northernmost Finnish–Soviet border and in the Murmansk region are considered part of the Eastern Front, in addition, the Soviet–Finnish Continuation War may also be considered the northern flank of the Eastern Front. Despite their ideological antipathy, both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union shared a dislike for the outcome of World War I. The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact signed in August 1939 was an agreement between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. It contained a secret protocol aiming to return Central Europe to the pre–World War I status quo by dividing it between Germany and the Soviet Union, Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania would return to Soviet control, while Poland and Romania would be divided. I need the Ukraine so that they cant starve us out, the two powers invaded and partitioned Poland in 1939. The annexations were never recognized by most Western states, the annexed Romanian territory was divided between the Ukrainian and Moldavian Soviet republics. Adolf Hitler had argued in his autobiography Mein Kampf for the necessity of Lebensraum, acquiring new territory for Germans in Eastern Europe, Wehrmacht officers told their troops to target people who were described as Jewish Bolshevik subhumans, the Mongol hordes, the Asiatic flood and the red beast. The vast majority of German soldiers viewed the war in Nazi terms, Hitler referred to the war in unique terms, calling it a war of annihilation which was both an ideological and racial war. In addition, the Nazis also sought to wipe out the large Jewish population of Central, after Germanys initial success at the Battle of Kiev in 1941, Hitler saw the Soviet Union as militarily weak and ripe for immediate conquest. On 3 October 1941, he announced, We have only to kick in the door, thus, Germany expected another short Blitzkrieg and made no serious preparations for prolonged warfare. Throughout the 1930s the Soviet Union underwent massive industrialization and economic growth under the leadership of Joseph Stalin, Stalins central tenet, Socialism in one country, manifested itself as a series of nationwide centralized Five-Year Plans from 1929 onwards. It served as a testing ground for both the Wehrmacht and the Red Army to experiment with equipment and tactics that they would later employ on a wider scale in the Second World War
Eastern Front (World War II)
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German infantry in June 1943
Eastern Front (World War II)
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Clockwise from top left: Soviet
Il-2 ground attack aircraft in Berlin sky; German
Tiger I tanks during the
Battle of Kursk; German
Stuka dive bombers on the Eastern Front, winter 1943–1944; Killings of Jews by German
Einsatzgruppen in Ukraine;
Wilhelm Keitel signing the
German Instrument of Surrender; Soviet troops in the
Battle of Stalingrad
Eastern Front (World War II)
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Map of
South Western Front (Ukrainian) at 22 June 1941
Eastern Front (World War II)
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The corpses of victims of Stalin's
NKVD murdered in the last few days of June 1941, just after the outbreak of war
35.
Holocaust train
–
Modern historians suggest that without the mass transportation of the railways, the scale of the Final Solution would not have been possible. The most modern accurate numbers on the scale of the Final Solution still rely partly on shipping records of the German railways, the first mass deportation of Jews from Nazi Germany occurred in less than a year before the outbreak of war. It was the eviction of German Jews with Polish citizenship fuelled by the Kristallnacht. Approximately 30,000 Jews were rounded up and sent via rail to refugee camps, in July 1938 both the United States and Britain at the Évian Conference in France refused to accept any more Jewish immigrants. The British Government agreed to take in the shipment of children arranged by Nicholas Winton in Prague, Czechoslovakia, on the conditions that he pay the cost, Winton managed to arrange for 669 children to get out on eight trains to London. The ninth train was to leave Prague on 3 September 1939, the train never left the station, and none of the 250 children on board were seen again. All European Jews trapped under the Nazi regime became the target of Hitlers Final Solution to the Jewish Question, within various phases of the Holocaust, the trains were employed differently. At first, they were used to concentrate the Jewish populations in the ghettos, in 1939 for logistical reasons the Jewish communities in settlements without railway lines in occupied Poland were dissolved. By the end of 1941, about 3.5 million Polish Jews had been segregated and ghettoised by the SS in a massive deportation action involving the use of freight trains. Permanent ghettos had direct connections, because the food aid was completely dependent on the SS similar to all newly built labour camps. Jews were legally banned from baking bread and they were sealed off from the general public in hundreds of virtual prison-islands called Jüdischer Wohnbezirk or Wohngebiet der Juden. However, the new system was unsustainable, by the end of 1941, most ghettoised Jews had no savings left to pay the SS for further bulk food deliveries. The quagmire was resolved at the Wannsee conference of 20 January 1942 near Berlin and it was a euphemism referring to the Nazi plan for the annihilation of the Jewish people. During the liquidation of the ghettos starting in 1942, the trains were used to transport the condemned populations to death camps, to implement the Final Solution, the Nazis made their own Deutsche Reichsbahn an indispensable element of the mass extermination machine, wrote historian Raul Hilberg. Although the prisoner trains took away valuable track space, they allowed for the mass scale, the fully enclosed nature of the locked and windowless cattle wagons greatly reduced the number and skill of troops required to transport the condemned Jews to their destinations. The use of railroads enabled the Nazis to lie about the resettlement program and, at the time, build. The Nazis disguised their Final Solution as the mass resettlement to the east, the victims were told they were being taken to labour camps in Ukraine. In reality, from 1942 on for most Jews, deportations meant only death at either Bełżec, Chełmno, Sobibór, Majdanek, Treblinka, some trains that had already transported goods to the Eastern front on their return carried human cargo bound for extermination camps
Holocaust train
–
Polish Jews being loaded onto trains at
Umschlagplatz of the
Warsaw Ghetto, 1942. The site is preserved today as the Polish national monument
Holocaust train
–
Entrance, or so-called "death gate", to Auschwitz II-Birkenau, the extermination camp
Holocaust train
–
"Selection" on the Judenrampe, May–June 1944. To be sent to the right meant assignment to a work detail; to the left, the
gas chambers. This image shows the arrival of Hungarian Jews from
Carpatho-Ruthenia, many of them from the
Berehov ghetto; the image was taken by Ernst Hofmann or Bernhard Walter of the SS. The main entrance, or "death gate", is visible in the background. Courtesy of
Yad Vashem.
Holocaust train
–
Interior of a
boxcar used to transport
Jews and other
Holocaust victims during
World War II, the
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.
36.
History of the Jews during World War II
–
The history of the Jews during World War II is almost synonymous with the Jewish persecution and murder of unprecedented scale in modern times in political Europe inclusive of European North Africa. The genocide known as HaShoah in Hebrew, aimed at the elimination of the Jewish people on the European continent and it was a broadly organized operation led by Nazi Germany, in which approximately six million Jews were murdered methodically and with horrifying cruelty. During the Holocaust in occupied Poland, more than one million Jews were murdered in gas chambers of the Auschwitz concentration camp alone, as the war started, massacres of Jews took place originally as part of Operation Tannenberg against the Polish nation. The much larger and methodical mass killings of Jews began with the onset of Operation Barbarossa, Jews were beaten to death,30,000 Jewish men were taken to concentration camps, and 1,668 synagogues ransacked with 267 set on fire. Perhaps the deadliest of these Holocaust-era pogroms was the Iași pogrom in Romania, in which as many as 14,000 Jews were killed by Romanian citizens, police, by December 1941, Adolf Hitler decided to completely exterminate European Jews. In January 1942, during the Wannsee conference, several Nazi leaders discussed the details of the Final Solution of the Jewish question, dr. Josef Bühler urged Reinhard Heydrich to proceed with the Final Solution in the General Government. By the end of the war, much of the Jewish population of Europe had been killed in the Holocaust. Poland, home of the largest Jewish community in the world before the war, had over 90% of its Jewish population, or about 3,000,000 Jews, murdered by the Nazis. Greece, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Lithuania, Bohemia, the Netherlands, Slovakia, during the war, Spain became an unlikely haven for several thousand Jews. They were mainly from Western Europe, fleeing deportation to camps from occupied France. Trudy Alexy refers to the absurdity and paradox of refugees fleeing the Nazis Final Solution to seek asylum in a country where no Jews had been allowed to openly as Jews for over four centuries. Approximately 1.5 million Jews served in the regular Allied militaries during World War II, approximately 550,000 American Jews served in the various branches of the United States armed services. Roughly 52,000 received U. S. military awards, another 500,000 served in the Red Army, and more than 160,000 earned citations, with over 150 receiving the Hero of the Soviet Union award. Some 100,000 Jews served in the Polish Army during the German invasion, over 60,000 Jews served in the British Armed Forces, including 14,000 in the Royal Air Force and 15,000 in the Royal Navy. About 30,000 Jews from Palestine also served in the British military, Jewish partisans also fought throughout occupied Europe and were organized into groups such as the Bielski partisans, United Partisan Organization and the Parczew partisans. Jewish Partisans took part in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, the Warsaw uprising and many other battles throughout the war
History of the Jews during World War II
–
Group of Jewish parachutists under British command, who was sent into
Slovakia.
Palestine, wartime
37.
Holocaust victims
–
Holocaust victims were people who were targeted by the government of Nazi Germany for various discriminatory practices due to ethnicity, religion, political beliefs, or sexual orientation. Of those murdered for being Jewish, more than half were Ashkenazi Polish Jews, taking into account all of the victims of persecution, the Nazis systematically killed an estimated six million Jews and an additional 11 million people during the war. Donald Niewyk suggests that the broadest definition, including Soviet civilian deaths, despite widely varying treatment, some died in concentration camps such as Dachau and others from various forms of Nazi brutality. The military campaign to remove certain classes of persons from Germany and other German-held territories during World War II and it was carried out primarily by German forces and collaborators, German and non-German. Early in the war, millions of Jews were concentrated in urban ghettos, in 1941 Jews were massacred, and by December Hitler had decided to exterminate all Jews living in Europe at that time. In all, more than 30 percent of the Jews in Europe were murdered in the Holocaust, Poland, home of the worlds largest Jewish community before the war, lost 3,300,000 of its Jewish population. Although the Germans rigorously imposed the penalty for hiding Jews, some Poles hid Jews despite the risk to themselves. Over one-third of the Soviet Unions Jews were killed, France, the rescue allowed the vast majority of Denmarks Jewish population to avoid capture by the Nazis. Jews outside Europe under Axis occupation were also affected by the Holocaust in Italian Libya, Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco, Iraq, Japan, although Jews are an ethnoreligious group, they were defined by the Nazis on purely racial grounds. The Nazi Party viewed the Jewish religion as irrelevant, persecuting Jews in accordance with antisemitic stereotypes of an alleged biologically determined heritage, defining Jews as the chief enemy, Nazi racial ideology was also used to persecute other minorities. The Nazi genocide of the Romani people was ignored by scholars until the 1980s, according to historians Donald Niewyk and Francis Nicosia, the genocide of the Romani began later than that of the Jews and a smaller percentage was killed. Hitlers genocidal campaign against Europes Romani population involved the application of Nazi racial hygiene, although despite discriminatory measures some Romani were spared deportation and death, the remaining Romani groups suffered a fate similar to that of the Jews. Romani were deported to the Jewish ghettos, shot by SS Einsatzgruppen in their villages, or deported and gassed in Auschwitz-Birkenau, estimates of the Romani death toll in World War II range from 220,000 to 1,500,000. The Romani genocide was formally recognized by West Germany in 1982, the Slavs were one of the most widely persecuted groups during the war, with many Poles, Russians, Ukrainians, Serbs and others killed by the Nazis. Its second goal was to eliminate Slavs from central and eastern Europe, as Bartov shows, it barbarised the German armies on the eastern front. Most of their three million men, from generals to ordinary soldiers, helped exterminate captured Slav soldiers and civilians and this was sometimes cold and deliberate murder of individuals, sometimes generalised brutality and neglect. German soldiers letters and memoirs reveal their terrible reasoning, Slavs were the Asiatic-Bolshevik horde, only a minority of officers and men were Nazi members. Between 1941 and 1945, approximately three million Ukrainian and other gentiles were killed as part of Nazi extermination policies in present-day Ukraine, more Ukrainians were killed fighting the Wehrmacht in the Red Army than American, British and French soldiers combined
Holocaust victims
–
Rough approximation of Holocaust victims by criteria. Shades of blue are Jewish victims (Polish Jews, Soviet Jews, etc.), orange represents Eastern European victims (Poles, Ukrainians and Belarusians but not Yugoslavians) and red represents Soviet prisoners of war (click on image for more detail).
Holocaust victims
–
Polish priests and civilians in Bydgoszcz's Old Market Square, 9 September 1939. The Polish Church experienced
brutal persecution under Nazi occupation.
Holocaust victims
–
German nun
Edith Stein; ethnically Jewish, she was arrested at a Netherlands convent and killed at Auschwitz after a protest by Dutch bishops against the abduction of Jews.
38.
Fresnes Prison
–
Fresnes Prison is the second largest prison in France, located in the town of Fresnes, Val-de-Marne South of Paris. It comprises a large mens prison of about 1200 cells, a one for women. Fresnes is one of the three main prisons of the Paris area, the Fleury-Mérogis Prison and the La Santé Prison being the other two, the prison was constructed between 1895 and 1898 according to a design devised by the architect, Henri Poussin. An example of the so-called telephone-pole design, the facility was radically different from previous prisons, at Fresnes prison, for the first time, cell houses extended crosswise from a central corridor. The design, an example of which is the Rikers Island prison in New York City, was used extensively in North America for much of the next century. During World War II, Fresnes prison was used by the Germans to house captured British SOE agents, held in horrific conditions, these prisoners were tortured, and some, such as Berty Albrecht, co-founder of the Combat movement, died there. As soon as the Allied forces broke through at Normandy and fought their way to liberate Paris, christopher Burney was freed in 1945, and published Solitary Confinement, an account of his fifteen months there. Squadron Leader Phil Lamason of the RNZAF was the ranking officer and they were also transferred to Buchenwald concentration camp just days before Paris was liberated. Like any major prison, Fresnes has had its share of famous and notorious inmates, agnès Humbert, with other members of the French Resistance Groupe du musée de lHomme were imprisoned, tried, and sentenced there in 1941-1942. Edmond Debeaumarché was imprisoned there and was transported by train to Buchenwald, as one of the group of 77,000. The automobile industrialist Louis Renault, arrested for collaborating with the Nazis, paul Touvier died of prostate cancer in 1996 at the Fresnes prison hospital during his incarceration for war crimes. Throughout Fresnes prisons history, there have also been several memorable escapes, arrested again four months later, Ferrara is now imprisoned in Fleury-Mérogis. One member of Operation Aquatint, Captain Graham Hayes, MC, longmans 1967 Fresnes - Etablissement pénitentiaire - maison darrêt - Ministry of France
Fresnes Prison
–
view of the prison
39.
Waldheim, Saxony
–
Waldheim is a town in Mittelsachsen district, in Saxony, Germany. It is situated in the valley of the Zschopau River,9 km southwest of Döbeln, Waldheim station is a stop on the Riesa–Chemnitz railway, served by Regionalbahn trains of Deutsche Bahn and the private Vogtlandbahn railway company. Waldheim in the Margraviate of Meissen was first mentioned in 1198, Waldheim Castle first appeared in a 1271 deed, the surrounding settlement received town privileges in 1286. The castle was turned into a Augustinian monastery in 1404, the population turned Protestant in 1537. In 1588 Waldheim Castle was again rebuilt as a lodge by Elector Christian I of Saxony. In 1716 Augustus II the Strong inaugurated a penitentiary, almshouse and orphanage in the castle, the later author Karl May served a sentence here from 1870 to 1874. Among the inmates were several resistance fighters like Eva Schulze-Knabe, who was convicted by the Peoples Court in 1942 and freed at the end of World War II
Waldheim, Saxony
–
Town center
Waldheim, Saxony
–
Zschopau River
Waldheim, Saxony
–
Waldheim Prison
Waldheim, Saxony
–
Town hall
40.
Dresden
–
Dresden is the capital city and, after Leipzig, the second-largest city of the Free State of Saxony in Germany. It is situated in a valley on the River Elbe, near the border with the Czech Republic, Dresden has a long history as the capital and royal residence for the Electors and Kings of Saxony, who for centuries furnished the city with cultural and artistic splendour. The city was known as the Jewel Box, because of its baroque, the controversial American and British bombing of Dresden in World War II towards the end of the war killed approximately 25,000, many of whom were civilians, and destroyed the entire city centre. After the war restoration work has helped to reconstruct parts of the inner city, including the Katholische Hofkirche, the Zwinger. Since German reunification in 1990 Dresden is again a cultural, educational and political centre of Germany, the Dresden University of Technology is one of the 10 largest universities in Germany and part of the German Universities Excellence Initiative. The economy of Dresden and its agglomeration is one of the most dynamic in Germany and it is dominated by high-tech branches, often called as “Silicon Saxony”. The city is one of the most visited in Germany with 4,3 million overnight stays per year. The royal buildings are among the most impressive buildings in Europe, main sights are also the nearby National Park of Saxon Switzerland, the Ore Mountains and the countryside around Elbe Valley and Moritzburg Castle. The most prominent building in the city of Dresden is the Frauenkirche, built in the 18th century, the church was destroyed during World War II. The remaining ruins were left for 50 years as a war memorial, the church was rebuilt from 1994 to 2005. Although Dresden is a relatively recent city of Germanic origin followed by settlement of Slavic people, Dresdens founding and early growth is associated with the eastward expansion of Germanic peoples, mining in the nearby Ore Mountains, and the establishment of the Margraviate of Meissen. Its name etymologically derives from Old Sorbian Drežďany, meaning people of the forest, Dresden later evolved into the capital of Saxony. Around the late 12th century, a Slavic settlement called Drežďany had developed on the southern bank, another settlement existed on the northern bank, but its Slavic name is unknown. It was known as Antiqua Dresdin by 1350, and later as Altendresden, dietrich, Margrave of Meissen, chose Dresden as his interim residence in 1206, as documented in a record calling the place Civitas Dresdene. After 1270, Dresden became the capital of the margraviate and it was given to Friedrich Clem after death of Henry the Illustrious in 1288. It was taken by the Margraviate of Brandenburg in 1316 and was restored to the Wettin dynasty after the death of Valdemar the Great in 1319, from 1485, it was the seat of the dukes of Saxony, and from 1547 the electors as well. The Elector and ruler of Saxony Frederick Augustus I became King Augustus II the Strong of Poland in personal union and he gathered many of the best musicians, architects and painters from all over Europe to the newly named Royal-Polish Residential City of Dresden. His reign marked the beginning of Dresdens emergence as a leading European city for technology, during the reign of Kings Augustus II the Strong and Augustus III of Poland the Zwinger Royal Palace, the Hofkirche and the Frauenkirche were built
Dresden
–
Clockwise: Dresden at night,
Dresden Frauenkirche,
Schloss Pillnitz,
Dresden Castle and
Zwinger.
Dresden
–
The
Fürstenzug —the Saxon sovereigns depicted in
Meissen porcelain
Dresden
–
Dresden in 1521
Dresden
–
Image of Dresden during the 1890s, before extensive World War II destruction. Landmarks include
Dresden Frauenkirche,
Augustus Bridge, and
Katholische Hofkirche.
41.
Leipzig
–
Leipzig is the largest city in the federal state of Saxony, Germany. With a population of 570,087 inhabitants it is Germanys tenth most populous city, Leipzig is located about 160 kilometres southwest of Berlin at the confluence of the White Elster, Pleisse, and Parthe rivers at the southern end of the North German Plain. Leipzig has been a city since at least the time of the Holy Roman Empire. The city sits at the intersection of the Via Regia and Via Imperii, Leipzig was once one of the major European centers of learning and culture in fields such as music and publishing. Leipzig became an urban center within the German Democratic Republic after the Second World War. Leipzig later played a significant role in instigating the fall of communism in Eastern Europe, through events which took place in, Leipzig today is an economic center and the most livable city in Germany, according to the GfK marketing research institution. Since the opening of the Leipzig City Tunnel in 2013, Leipzig forms the centerpiece of the S-Bahn Mitteldeutschland public transit system, Leipzig is currently listed as Gamma World City and Germanys Boomtown. Outside of Leipzig the Neuseenland district forms a lake area of approximately 300 square kilometres. Leipzig is derived from the Slavic word Lipsk, which means settlement where the linden trees stand, an older spelling of the name in English is Leipsic. The Latin name Lipsia was also used, the name is cognate with Lipetsk in Russia and Liepāja in Latvia. In 1937 the Nazi government officially renamed the city Reichsmessestadt Leipzig, the common usage of this nickname for Leipzig up until the present is reflected, for example, in the name of a popular blog for local arts and culture, Heldenstadt. de. Leipzig was first documented in 1015 in the chronicles of Bishop Thietmar of Merseburg as urbs Libzi and endowed with city, Leipzig Trade Fair, started in the Middle Ages, became an event of international importance and is the oldest remaining trade fair in the world. During the Thirty Years War, two battles took place in Breitenfeld, about 8 kilometres outside Leipzig city walls, the first Battle of Breitenfeld took place in 1631 and the second in 1642. Both battles resulted in victories for the Swedish-led side, on 24 December 1701, an oil-fueled street lighting system was introduced. The city employed light guards who had to follow a schedule to ensure the punctual lighting of the 700 lanterns. The Leipzig region was the arena of the 1813 Battle of Leipzig between Napoleonic France and a coalition of Prussia, Russia, Austria and Sweden. It was the largest battle in Europe prior to the First World War, in 1913 the Monument to the Battle of the Nations celebrating the centenary of this event was completed. The railway station has two entrance halls, the eastern one for the Royal Saxon State Railways and the western one for the Prussian state railways
Leipzig
Leipzig
Leipzig
Leipzig
42.
Potsdam
–
Potsdam is the capital and largest city of the German federal state of Brandenburg. It directly borders the German capital Berlin and is part of the Berlin/Brandenburg Metropolitan Region and it is situated on the River Havel,24 kilometres southwest of Berlins city centre. Potsdam was a residence of the Prussian kings and the German Kaiser, around the city there are a series of interconnected lakes and cultural landmarks, in particular the parks and palaces of Sanssouci, the largest World Heritage Site in Germany. The Potsdam Conference in 1945 was held at the palace Cecilienhof, the Filmstudio Babelsberg is the oldest large-scale film studio in the world. Potsdam developed into a centre of science in Germany in the 19th century, today, there are three public colleges, the University of Potsdam, and more than 30 research institutes in the city. The area was formed from a series of large moraines left after the last glacial period, today, the city is three-quarters green space, with just a quarter as urban area. There are about 20 lakes and rivers in and around Potsdam, such as the Havel, the Griebnitzsee, Templiner See, Tiefer See, Jungfernsee, Teltowkanal, Heiliger See, the highest point is the 114-metre high Kleiner Ravensberg. Potsdam is divided into seven city districts and nine new Ortsteile. The appearances of the city districts are quite different, the districts in the north and in the centre consist mainly of historical buildings, the south of the city is dominated by larger areas of newer buildings. Potsdam has an Oceanic climate, with cool, snowy winters, the average winter high temperature is 3.5 °C, with a low of −1.7 °C. Snow is common in the winter, summers are mild, with a high of 23.6 °C and a low of 12.7 °C. The name Potsdam originally seems to have been Poztupimi, a common theory is that it derives from an old West Slavonic term meaning beneath the oaks, i. e. the corrupted pod dubmi/dubimi. The area around Potsdam shows occupancy since the Bronze Age and was part of Magna Germania as described by Tacitus. After the great migrations of the Germanic peoples, Slavs moved in and it was first mentioned in a document in 993 AD as Poztupimi, when Emperor Otto III gifted the territory to the Quedlinburg Abbey, then led by his aunt Matilda. By 1317, it was mentioned as a small town and it gained its town charter in 1345. In 1573, it was still a market town of 2,000 inhabitants. Potsdam lost nearly half of its due to the Thirty Years War. After the Edict of Potsdam in 1685, Potsdam became a centre of European immigration and its religious freedom attracted people from France, Russia, the Netherlands and Bohemia
Potsdam
–
View of the rebuilt
Potsdam City Palace and
St. Nicholas' Church at night
Potsdam
–
Sanssouci
Potsdam
–
Templiner See south of Potsdam
Potsdam
–
Development of Population since 1875 within the Current Boundaries (Blue Line: Population; Dotted Line: Comparison to Population Development of Brandenburg state; Grey Background: Time of Nazi rule; Red Background: Time of Communist rule)
43.
Stettin
–
Szczecin is the capital city of the West Pomeranian Voivodeship in Poland. Located near the Baltic Sea, it is a major seaport, as of June 2011, the population was 407,811. Szczecin is located on the Oder, south of the Szczecin Lagoon, the city is situated along the southwestern shore of Dąbie Lake, on both sides of the Oder and on several large islands between the western and eastern branches of the river. The citys recorded history began in the 8th century as a Slavic Pomeranian stronghold, in the 12th century, when Szczecin had become one of Pomeranias main urban centres, it lost its independence to Piast Poland, the Duchy of Saxony, the Holy Roman Empire and Denmark. At the same time, the House of Griffins established themselves as rulers, the population was Christianized. The native Slavic population was subjected to discrimination and Germanization in the following centuries, between 1237 and 1243, the town was rebuilt, granted extensive autonomy rights and eventually joined the Hanseatic League. After the Treaty of Stettin in 1630, the town came under the control of the Swedish Empire, in the late-19th century Stettin became an industrial town, vastly increasing in size and population, and served as a major port for Berlin. During the Nazi era, opposition groups and minorities were persecuted and treated as enemies, by the end of World War II Stettins status was in doubt, and the Soviet occupation authorities at first appointed officials from the citys almost entirely German pre-war population. In July 1945, however, Polish authorities were permitted to take power, Stettin was renamed Szczecin and became part of the newly established the Polish Peoples Republic, and from 1989 the Republic of Poland. From 1999 onwards, Szczecin has served as the site of the headquarters of NATOs Multinational Corps Northeast, the names Szczecin and Stettin are of Slavic origin, though the exact etymology is the subject of ongoing research. Other medieval names for the town are Burstaborg and Burstenburgh and these names, which literally mean brush burgh, are likely derived from the translation of the citys Slavic name. The recorded history of Szczecin began in the century, when West Slavs settled Pomerania. Since the 9th century, the stronghold was fortified and expanded toward the Oder bank, Mieszko I of Poland took control of Pomerania between 960 and 967, and the region with the city of Szczecin became part of Poland in 967. Subsequent Polish rulers, the Holy Roman Empire, and the Liutician federation all aimed to control the territory, after the decline of the neighbouring regional centre Wolin in the 12th century, the city became one of the more important and powerful seaports of the Baltic Sea. In a campaign in the winter of 1121–1122, Bolesław III Wrymouth, the inhabitants were Christianized by two missions of Bishop Otto of Bamberg in 1124 and 1128. At this time, the first Christian church of Saints Peter, Polish minted coins were commonly used in trade in this period. The population of the city at that time is estimated to be at around 5, Polish rule ended with Boleslaws death in 1138. There, a Polish contingent supplied by Mieszko III the Old joined the crusaders, however, the citizens had placed crosses around the fortifications, indicating they already had been Christianised
Stettin
–
Top: Market;
Old Town Hall, The
Oder River Middle:
National Sea Museum,
PAZIM building Bottom:
Ducal Castle,
St James' Cathedral, Virgin Tower
Stettin
–
The city's fortifications, as seen in 1642
Stettin
–
Stettin in the late 19th century.
Stettin
–
Sedina Monument (1899–1913). Sedina was a personification of Stettin. The statue was scrapped for copper in 1942, and after the war it was replaced with an anchor. In 2012 the authorities approved plans for a reconstruction of the statue.
44.
Cattle truck
–
In railroad terminology, a stock car, cattle car or cattle wagon is a type of rolling stock used for carrying livestock to market. Specialized types of cars have been built to haul live fish and shellfish and circus animals such as camels. Until the 1880s, when the Mather Stock Car Company and others introduced more humane stock cars, improved technology and faster shipping times have greatly reduced losses. Rail cars have used to transport livestock since the 1830s. The first shipments in the United States were made via the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad in general purpose, thereafter, and until 1860, the majority of shipments were made in conventional boxcars that had been fitted with open-structured iron-barred doors for ventilation. Some railroads constructed combination cars that could be utilized for carrying both live animals as well as conventional freight loads, driving cattle across the plains led to tremendous weight loss, and a number of animals were typically lost along the way. The suffering of animals in transit as a result of hunger, thirst, increased train speeds reduced overall transit times, though not enough to offset the deleterious conditions the animals were forced to endure. Some of the railroad companies attempted to alleviate the problems by adding passenger cars to the trains that hauled early stock cars. The New Jersey Railroad and Transportation Company followed this practice as early as 1839, and these early passenger accommodations were the predecessors of the later drovers caboose designs that were used until the mid-20th century. Railroad operating rules for livestock and handlers that rode the trains were limited, as the handlers were private contractors or employees of the shippers. A1948 rulebook for the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway, for example, wishes of attendants regarding care of livestock should be ascertained and assistance rendered in caring for such shipments. In absence of instructions, hog shipments should be watered as necessary. Particular attention must be given to stock unaccompanied by attendants, most railroads resisted the call for as long as possible from shippers for improvements to cars specifically designed to carry livestock. The railroads generally preferred to use standard boxcars because that type of car proved more versatile in the number of different types of loads it could carry. When the railroads and cattle industry failed to act quickly enough to correct these perceived deficiencies, claims were made that the meat of neglected animals was unfit for human consumption. In 1869, Illinois passed the first laws to limit the time on board. However, double-deck stock cars had been experimented with as early as the 1830s on the Liverpool, other states such as Ohio and Massachusetts soon followed with similar legislation, though effective federal laws were not enacted until the passing of the Federal Meat Inspection Act of 1906. The first patented stock car designs that actually saw use on American railroads were created by Zadok Street, streets designs were first used in 1870 on shipments between Chicago and New York City
Cattle truck
–
An early
Pullman Palace Car Company livestock car design from the late 19th century
Cattle truck
–
Stock cars make up part of an eastbound
Santa Fe freight train in March, 1943
Cattle truck
–
Sheep are unloaded from the upper level of a
Wisconsin Central stock car in
Chicago, Illinois in 1904
Cattle truck
–
The 30-
short-ton (27.22
t; 26.79-
long-ton) capacity "Stillwell Oyster Car," built by Pullman in 1897, was a wooden
tank car designed by Arthur E. Stilwell for transporting live oysters from
Port Arthur, Texas to
Kansas City, Missouri by rail.
45.
Gas chamber
–
A gas chamber is an apparatus for killing humans or other animals with gas, consisting of a sealed chamber into which a poisonous or asphyxiant gas is introduced. The most commonly used poisonous agent is hydrogen cyanide, carbon dioxide, gas chambers were used as a method of execution for condemned prisoners in the United States beginning in the 1920s and continue to be a legal execution method in three states. During the Holocaust, large-scale gas chambers designed for killing were used by Nazi Germany as part of their genocide program. The use of gas chambers in North Korea has also been reported, in June 1942 many hundreds of prisoners of the Neuengamme concentration camp, including 45 Dutch communists, were gassed in Bernburg Euthanasia Centre. The Nazi concentration and extermination camps, including Auschwitz and Majdanek, the gas chosen by the command of Operation Reinhard was exhaust gas from internal combustion engines. In the eastern territories, the executions by exhaust gas were performed by the Einsatzgruppen in modified vans. Some stationary gas chambers could kill 2,000 people at once, the use of gas chambers during the Holocaust was attested to by camp survivors as well as staff members, drawn almost exclusively from the ranks of the SS. Most gas chambers were dismantled or destroyed as the Soviet troops approached, except for those at Dachau, Sachsenhausen, the gas chamber at Auschwitz I was amongst those blown up. It was reconstructed after the war to stand as a memorial, albeit with the entry door, the door that had been added when the gas chamber was converted into an air raid shelter was left intact. In 1937–1940, Lithuania operated a gas chamber in Aleksotas within the First Fort of the Kaunas Fortress, before, the executions were carried out by hanging or by shooting. However, these methods were viewed as brutal and in January 1937, Lithuania considered and rejected execution by poison. The first execution was carried on July 27,1937, Bronius Pogužinskas, age 37, historian Sigita Černevičiūtė counted at least nine executions in the gas chamber, though records are incomplete and fragmentary. Of the nine, eight were convicted of murder, one, Aleksandras Maurušaitis, was in addition convicted of anti-government actions during the 1935 Suvalkija strike. The last known execution took place on May 19,1940 for robbery, the fate of the gas chamber after the occupation by the Soviet Union in June 1940 is unclear. After undergoing medical checks, the chambers are sealed and poison is injected through a tube, kwons testimony was supported by documents from Camp 22 describing the transfer of prisoners designated for the experiments. The documents were identified as genuine by Kim Sang Hun, a London-based expert on Korea, a press conference in Pyongyang, organized by North Korean authorities, denounced this. The original invention of gas chambers based on adapted vans with the storage compartment sealed. These vans were used by NKVD from 1936 under disguise of bread vans, gas chambers have been used for capital punishment in the United States to execute death row inmates
Gas chamber
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The former gas chamber at
New Mexico State Penitentiary, used only once in 1960 and later replaced by
lethal injection.
Gas chamber
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Secondary method only
Gas chamber
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Executions in California were carried out in the gas chamber at
San Quentin State Prison. It was modified for the use of
lethal injection, but has been returned to its original designated purpose, with the creation of a new chamber specifically for lethal injection.
Gas chamber
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Interior of Majdanek gas chamber, showing
Prussian blue residue
46.
Allies of World War II
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The Allies of World War II, called the United Nations from the 1 January 1942 declaration, were the countries that together opposed the Axis powers during the Second World War. The Allies promoted the alliance as seeking to stop German, Japanese, at the start of the war on 1 September 1939, the Allies consisted of France, Poland and the United Kingdom, and dependent states, such as the British India. Within days they were joined by the independent Dominions of the British Commonwealth, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Poland was a minor factor after its defeat in 1939, France was a minor factor after its defeat in 1940. China had already been into a war with Japan since the Marco Polo Bridge Incident of 1937. The alliance was formalised by the Declaration by United Nations, from 1 January 1942, however, the name United Nations was rarely used to describe the Allies during the war. The leaders of the Big Three – the UK, the Soviet Union, in 1945, the Allied nations became the basis of the United Nations. The origins of the Allied powers stem from the Allies of World War I, Germany resented signing Treaty of Versailles. The new Weimar republics legitimacy became shaken, by the early 1930s, the Nazi Party led by Adolf Hitler became the dominant revanchist movement in Germany and Hitler and the Nazis gained power in 1933. The Nazi regime demanded the cancellation of the Treaty of Versailles and made claims to German-populated Austria. The likelihood of war was high, and the question was whether it could be avoided through strategies such as appeasement, in Asia, when Japan seized Manchuria in 1931, the League of Nations condemned it for aggression against China. Japan responded by leaving the League of Nations in March 1933, after four quiet years, the Sino-Japanese War erupted in 1937 with Japanese forces invading China. The League of Nations condemned Japans actions and initiated sanctions on Japan, the United States, in particular, was angered at Japan and sought to support China. In March 1939, Germany took over Czechoslovakia, violating the Munich Agreement signed six months before, Britain and France decided that Hitler had no intention to uphold diplomatic agreements and responded by preparing for war. On 31 March 1939, Britain formed the Anglo-Polish military alliance in an effort to avert a German attack on the country, also, the French had a long-standing alliance with Poland since 1921. The Soviet Union sought an alliance with the powers. The agreement secretly divided the independent nations of eastern Europe between the two powers and assured adequate oil supplies for the German war machine, on 1 September 1939, Germany invaded Poland, two days later Britain and France declared war on Germany. Then, on 17 September 1939, the Soviet Union invaded Poland from the east, a Polish government-in-exile was set up and it continued to be one of the Allies, a model followed by other occupied countries. After a quiet winter, Germany in April 1940 invaded and quickly defeated Denmark, Norway, Belgium, Britain and its Empire stood alone against Hitler and Mussolini
Allies of World War II
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Poland first to fight — British wartime poster supporting
Poland after the German invasion, 1939
Allies of World War II
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Allied Powers (and their colonies)
Allies of World War II
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British
Supermarine Spitfire fighter aircraft (left) flying past a German
Heinkel He-111 bomber aircraft (right) during the
Battle of Britain
Allies of World War II
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British tanks during the
North African Campaign
47.
Paris
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Paris is the capital and most populous city of France. It has an area of 105 square kilometres and a population of 2,229,621 in 2013 within its administrative limits, the agglomeration has grown well beyond the citys administrative limits. By the 17th century, Paris was one of Europes major centres of finance, commerce, fashion, science, and the arts, and it retains that position still today. The aire urbaine de Paris, a measure of area, spans most of the Île-de-France region and has a population of 12,405,426. It is therefore the second largest metropolitan area in the European Union after London, the Metropole of Grand Paris was created in 2016, combining the commune and its nearest suburbs into a single area for economic and environmental co-operation. Grand Paris covers 814 square kilometres and has a population of 7 million persons, the Paris Region had a GDP of €624 billion in 2012, accounting for 30.0 percent of the GDP of France and ranking it as one of the wealthiest regions in Europe. The city is also a rail, highway, and air-transport hub served by two international airports, Paris-Charles de Gaulle and Paris-Orly. Opened in 1900, the subway system, the Paris Métro. It is the second busiest metro system in Europe after Moscow Metro, notably, Paris Gare du Nord is the busiest railway station in the world outside of Japan, with 262 millions passengers in 2015. In 2015, Paris received 22.2 million visitors, making it one of the top tourist destinations. The association football club Paris Saint-Germain and the rugby union club Stade Français are based in Paris, the 80, 000-seat Stade de France, built for the 1998 FIFA World Cup, is located just north of Paris in the neighbouring commune of Saint-Denis. Paris hosts the annual French Open Grand Slam tennis tournament on the red clay of Roland Garros, Paris hosted the 1900 and 1924 Summer Olympics and is bidding to host the 2024 Summer Olympics. The name Paris is derived from its inhabitants, the Celtic Parisii tribe. Thus, though written the same, the name is not related to the Paris of Greek mythology. In the 1860s, the boulevards and streets of Paris were illuminated by 56,000 gas lamps, since the late 19th century, Paris has also been known as Panam in French slang. Inhabitants are known in English as Parisians and in French as Parisiens and they are also pejoratively called Parigots. The Parisii, a sub-tribe of the Celtic Senones, inhabited the Paris area from around the middle of the 3rd century BC. One of the areas major north-south trade routes crossed the Seine on the île de la Cité, this place of land and water trade routes gradually became a town
Paris
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In the 1860s Paris streets and monuments were illuminated by 56,000 gas lamps, making it literally "The City of Light."
Paris
Paris
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Gold coins minted by the Parisii (1st century BC)
Paris
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The
Palais de la Cité and
Sainte-Chapelle, viewed from the Left Bank, from the
Très Riches Heures du duc de Berry (month of June) (1410)
48.
Brussels
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Brussels, officially the Brussels-Capital Region, is a region of Belgium comprising 19 municipalities, including the City of Brussels which is the capital of Belgium. The Brussels-Capital Region is a part of both the French Community of Belgium and the Flemish Community, but is separate from the region of Flanders or Wallonia. The region has a population of 1.2 million and an area with a population of over 1.8 million. Brussels is the de facto capital of the European Union as it hosts a number of principal EU institutions, the secretariat of the Benelux and the headquarters of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization are also located in Brussels. Today, it is considered an Alpha global city, historically a Dutch-speaking city, Brussels has seen a language shift to French from the late 19th century onwards. Today, the majority language is French, and the Brussels-Capital Region is a bilingual enclave within the Flemish Region. All road signs, street names, and many advertisements and services are shown in both languages, Brussels is increasingly becoming multilingual with increasing numbers of migrants, expatriates and minority groups speaking their own languages. The most common theory of the origin of Brussels name is that it derives from the Old Dutch Broekzele or Broeksel, meaning marsh, Saint Vindicianus, the bishop of Cambrai made the first recorded reference to the place Brosella in 695 when it was still a hamlet. The origin of the settlement that was to become Brussels lies in Saint Gaugericus construction of a chapel on an island in the river Senne around 580. The official founding of Brussels is usually situated around 979, when Duke Charles of Lower Lotharingia transferred the relics of Saint Gudula from Moorsel to the Saint Gaugericus chapel, Charles would construct the first permanent fortification in the city, doing so on that same island. Lambert I of Leuven, Count of Leuven gained the County of Brussels around 1000 by marrying Charles daughter, as it grew to a population of around 30,000, the surrounding marshes were drained to allow for further expansion. The Counts of Leuven became Dukes of Brabant at about this time, in the 13th century, the city got its first walls. After the construction of the city walls in the early 13th century, to let the city expand, a second set of walls was erected between 1356 and 1383. Today, traces of it can still be seen, mostly because the small ring, Brabant had lost its independence, but Brussels became the Princely Capital of the prosperous Low Countries, and flourished. In 1516 Charles V, who had been heir of the Low Countries since 1506, was declared King of Spain in St. Michael and St. Gudula Cathedral in Brussels. Upon the death of his grandfather, Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor in 1519 and it was in the Palace complex at Coudenberg that Charles V abdicated in 1555. This impressive palace, famous all over Europe, had expanded since it had first become the seat of the Dukes of Brabant. In 1695, during the Nine Years War, King Louis XIV of France sent troops to bombard Brussels with artillery, together with the resulting fire, it was the most destructive event in the entire history of Brussels
Brussels
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A
collage with several views of Brussels, Top: View of the
Northern Quarter business district, 2nd left: Floral carpet event in the
Grand Place, 2nd right:
Brussels City Hall and
Mont des Arts area, 3rd:
Cinquantenaire Park, 4th left:
Manneken Pis, 4th middle:
St. Michael and St. Gudula Cathedral, 4th right:
Congress Column, Bottom:
Royal Palace of Brussels
Brussels
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Charles of Lorraine founded what would become Brussels c. 979
Brussels
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Grand Place after
the 1695 bombardment by the French army
Brussels
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Episode of the
Belgian Revolution of 1830,
Wappers (1834)
49.
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
SS
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Adolf Hitler inspects the
Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler upon arrival at
Klagenfurt, April 1938.
Heinrich Himmler is standing slightly behind Hitler's right
SS
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SS insignia (
sig runes)
SS
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Nazi supporters and stormtroopers in Munich during the
Beer Hall Putsch, 1923
SS
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Heinrich Himmler, head of all SS organisations, stated, "Once the Führer himself has made a decision and given the order, it must be carried out, not only according to the word and the letter, but also in spirit."
50.
Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp
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The camp operated from the time of the Anschluss, when Austria was annexed into the German Third Reich in early 1938, to the beginning of May 1945, at the end of the Second World War. As at other Nazi concentration camps, the inmates at Mauthausen-Gusen were forced to work as slave labour, the subcamps of the Mauthausen complex included quarries, munitions factories, mines, arms factories and plants assembling Me 262 fighter aircraft. In January 1945, the camps contained roughly 85,000 inmates, the death toll remains unknown, although most sources place it between 122,766 and 320,000 for the entire complex. The Mauthausen-Gusen camp was one of the first massive concentration camp complexes in Nazi Germany, and the last to be liberated by the Allies. The two main camps, Mauthausen and Gusen I, were labelled as Grade III camps, which meant that they were intended to be the toughest camps for the Incorrigible political enemies of the Reich, Mauthausen never lost this Stufe III classification. In the offices of the Reich Main Security Office it was referred to by the nickname Knochenmühle – the bone-grinder, the main camp of the complex in Mauthausen is now a museum. On 9 August 1938, prisoners from Dachau concentration camp near Munich were sent to the town of Mauthausen in Austria, the site was chosen because of the nearby granite quarry, and its proximity to Linz. Although the camp was controlled by the German state from the beginning, the owner of the Wiener-Graben quarry was a DEST Company, an acronym for Deutsche Erd– und Steinwerke GmbH. The company was led by Oswald Pohl, who was an official of the Schutzstaffel. It rented the quarries from the City of Vienna in 1938, a year later, the company ordered the construction of the first camp at Gusen. Mauthausen initially served as a prison camp for common criminals, prostitutes. On 8 May 1939 it was converted to a camp which was mainly used for the incarceration of political prisoners. In March 1940 I was brought to Mauthausen to build the Gusen camp, the building tempo had to be accelerated, because the Aktion gegen die polnische Intelligenz was designated for the month of April. They called the camp under construction Gusen Vernichtungslager fur die polnische Intelligenz, — Stefan Józefowicz, bank headmaster, no.1129 in Mauthausen,43069 Gusen. DEST began purchasing land at Gusen in May 1938, after Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, the as-yet unfinished Mauthausen camp was already overcrowded with prisoners. The numbers of inmates rose from 1,080 in late 1938 to over 3,000 a year later, at about that time, the construction of a new camp for the Poles began in Gusen, about 4.5 kilometres away. The new camp became operational in May 1940, like nearby Mauthausen, the Gusen camp also rented inmates out to various local businesses as slave labour. In October 1941, several huts were separated from the Gusen subcamp by barbed wire and this camp had many prisoners of war, mostly Soviet officers
Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp
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Gate to the garage yard in the Mauthausen concentration camp
Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp
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Heinrich Himmler visiting Mauthausen in April 1941. Himmler is talking to
Franz Ziereis, camp commandant, with
Karl Wolff on the left and
August Eigruber on the right.
Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp
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Aerial view of the Gusen I and II camps
Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp
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Franz Ziereis, Commandant of Mauthausen, 1939–1945
.jpg)
