Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany is the common English name for Germany between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party controlled the country through a dictatorship. Under Hitler's rule, Germany was transformed into a totalitarian state that controlled nearly all aspects of life via the Gleichschaltung legal process; the official name of the state was Deutsches Reich until 1943 and Großdeutsches Reich from 1943 to 1945. Nazi Germany is known as the Third Reich, meaning "Third Realm" or "Third Empire", the first two being the Holy Roman Empire and the German Empire; the Nazi regime ended. Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany by the President of the Weimar Republic, Paul von Hindenburg, on 30 January 1933; the NSDAP began to eliminate all political opposition and consolidate its power. Hindenburg died on 2 August 1934 and Hitler became dictator of Germany by merging the offices and powers of the Chancellery and Presidency. A national referendum held 19 August 1934 confirmed Hitler as sole Führer of Germany.
All power was centralised in Hitler's person and his word became the highest law. The government was not a coordinated, co-operating body, but a collection of factions struggling for power and Hitler's favour. In the midst of the Great Depression, the Nazis restored economic stability and ended mass unemployment using heavy military spending and a mixed economy. Extensive public works were undertaken, including the construction of Autobahnen; the return to economic stability boosted the regime's popularity. Racism antisemitism, was a central feature of the regime; the Germanic peoples were considered by the Nazis to be the master race, the purest branch of the Aryan race. Discrimination and persecution against Jews and Romani people began in earnest after the seizure of power; the first concentration camps were established in March 1933. Jews and others deemed undesirable were imprisoned, liberals and communists were killed, imprisoned, or exiled. Christian churches and citizens that opposed Hitler's rule were oppressed, many leaders imprisoned.
Education focused on racial biology, population policy, fitness for military service. Career and educational opportunities for women were curtailed. Recreation and tourism were organised via the Strength Through Joy program, the 1936 Summer Olympics showcased Germany on the international stage. Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels made effective use of film, mass rallies, Hitler's hypnotic oratory to influence public opinion; the government controlled artistic expression, promoting specific art forms and banning or discouraging others. The Nazi regime dominated neighbours through military threats in the years leading up to war. Nazi Germany made aggressive territorial demands, threatening war if these were not met, it seized Austria and Czechoslovakia in 1938 and 1939. Germany signed a non-aggression pact with the USSR, invaded Poland on 1 September 1939, launching World War II in Europe. By early 1941, Germany controlled much of Europe. Reichskommissariats took control of conquered areas and a German administration was established in the remainder of Poland.
Germany exploited labour of both its occupied territories and its allies. In the Holocaust, millions of Jews and other peoples deemed undesirable by the state were imprisoned, murdered in Nazi concentration camps and extermination camps, or shot. While the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 was successful, the Soviet resurgence and entry of the US into the war meant the Wehrmacht lost the initiative on the Eastern Front in 1943 and by late 1944 had been pushed back to the pre-1939 border. Large-scale aerial bombing of Germany escalated in 1944 and the Axis powers were driven back in Eastern and Southern Europe. After the Allied invasion of France, Germany was conquered by the Soviet Union from the east and the other Allies from the west, capitulated in May 1945. Hitler's refusal to admit defeat led to massive destruction of German infrastructure and additional war-related deaths in the closing months of the war; the victorious Allies initiated a policy of denazification and put many of the surviving Nazi leadership on trial for war crimes at the Nuremberg trials.
The official name of the state was Deutsches Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Großdeutsches Reich from 1943 to 1945, while common English terms are "Nazi Germany" and "Third Reich". The latter, adopted by Nazi propaganda as Drittes Reich, was first used in Das Dritte Reich, a 1923 book by Arthur Moeller van den Bruck; the book counted the Holy Roman Empire as the German Empire as the second. Germany was known as the Weimar Republic during the years 1919 to 1933, it was a republic with a semi-presidential system. The Weimar Republic faced numerous problems, including hyperinflation, political extremism, contentious relationships with the Allied victors of World War I, a series of failed attempts at coalition government by divided political parties. Severe setbacks to the German economy began after World War I ended because of reparations payments required under the 1919 Treaty of Versailles; the government printed money to make the payments and to repay the country's war debt, but the resulting hyperinflation led to inflated prices for consumer goods, economic chaos, food riots.
When the government defaulted on their reparations payments in January 1923, French troops occupied German industrial areas along the Ruhr and widespread civil unrest followed. The National Socialist German Workers' Party (National
Defensive wall
A defensive wall is a fortification used to protect a city, town or other settlement from potential aggressors. In ancient to modern times, they were used to enclose settlements; these are referred to as city walls or town walls, although there were walls, such as the Great Wall of China, Walls of Benin, Hadrian's Wall, Anastasian Wall, the Cyclopean Wall Rajgir and the metaphorical Atlantic Wall, which extended far beyond the borders of a city and were used to enclose regions or mark territorial boundaries. In mountainous terrain, defensive walls such as letzis were used in combination with castles to seal valleys from potential attack. Beyond their defensive utility, many walls had important symbolic functions – representing the status and independence of the communities they embraced. Existing ancient walls are always masonry structures, although brick and timber-built variants are known. Depending on the topography of the area surrounding the city or the settlement the wall is intended to protect, elements of the terrain such as rivers or coastlines may be incorporated in order to make the wall more effective.
Walls may only be crossed by entering the appropriate city gate and are supplemented with towers. The practice of building these massive walls, though having its origins in prehistory, was refined during the rise of city-states, energetic wall-building continued into the medieval period and beyond in certain parts of Europe. Simpler defensive walls of earth or stone, thrown up around hillforts, early castles and the like, tend to be referred to as ramparts or banks. From early history to modern times, walls have been a near necessity for every city. Uruk in ancient Sumer is one of the world's oldest known walled cities. Before that, the proto-city of Jericho in the West Bank in Palestine had a wall surrounding it as early as the 8th millennium BC; the Assyrians deployed large labour forces to build new palaces and defensive walls. Some settlements in the Indus Valley Civilization were fortified. By about 3500 BC, hundreds of small farming villages dotted the Indus floodplain. Many of these settlements had planned streets.
The stone and mud brick houses of Kot Diji were clustered behind massive stone flood dykes and defensive walls, for neighboring communities quarreled about the control of prime agricultural land. Mundigak in present-day south-east Afghanistan has defensive walls and square bastions of sun dried bricks. Babylon was one of the most famous cities of the ancient world as a result of the building program of Nebuchadnezzar, who expanded the walls and built the Ishtar Gate. Exceptions were few, but neither ancient Sparta nor ancient Rome had walls for a long time, choosing to rely on their militaries for defense instead; these fortifications were simple constructions of wood and earth, which were replaced by mixed constructions of stones piled on top of each other without mortar. In Central Europe, the Celts built large fortified settlements which the Romans called oppida, whose walls seem influenced by those built in the Mediterranean; the fortifications were continuously improved. In ancient Greece, large stone walls had been built in Mycenaean Greece, such as the ancient site of Mycenae.
In classical era Greece, the city of Athens built a long set of parallel stone walls called the Long Walls that reached their guarded seaport at Piraeus. Large rammed earth walls were built in ancient China since the Shang Dynasty, as the capital at ancient Ao had enormous walls built in this fashion. Although stone walls were built in China during the Warring States, mass conversion to stone architecture did not begin in earnest until the Tang Dynasty. Sections of the Great Wall had been built prior to the Qin Dynasty and subsequently connected and fortified during the Qin dynasty, although its present form was an engineering feat and remodeling of the Ming Dynasty; the large walls of Pingyao serve as one example. The walls of the Forbidden City in Beijing were established in the early 15th century by the Yongle Emperor; the Romans fortified their cities with mortar-bound stone walls. Among these are the extant Aurelian Walls of Rome and the Theodosian Walls of Constantinople, together with partial remains elsewhere.
These are city gates, like the Porta Nigra in Trier or Newport Arch in Lincoln. Apart from these, the early Middle Ages saw the creation of some towns built around castles; these cities were only protected by simple stone walls and more by a combination of both walls and ditches. From the 12th century AD hundreds of settlements of all sizes were founded all across Europe, which often obtained the right of fortification soon afterwards; the founding of urban centers was an important means of territorial expansion and many cities in central and eastern Europe, were founded for this purpose during the period of Eastern settlement. These cities are easy to recognise due to their regular layout and large market spaces; the fortifications of these settlements were continuously improved to reflect the current level of military development. During the Renaissance era, the Venetians raised great walls around cities threatened by the Ottoman Empire. Examples include the walled cities of Nicosia and Famagusta in Cyprus and the fortifications of Candia and Chania in Crete, which still stand.
At its simplest, a defensive wall consists of its gates. For the most part, the top of the walls were accessible, with the outside of the walls ha
Joachim Ludwig Schultheiss von Unfriedt
Joachim Ludwig Schultheiss von Unfriedt was a German Baroque architect and councillor most active in Königsberg and throughout East Prussia. Born in Altruppin, Schultheiss was the son of Joachim Scultetus von Unfried, a privy councilor of Frederick William I, Elector of Brandenburg, he began studying at the University of Frankfurt on 23 August 1689 and continued his studies in Italy and France. He became Royal Prussian Engineer and Building Master in Königsberg on 9 January 1702. Schultheiss oversaw the transfer of material from the declining castle in Fischhausen to the fortifications of Pillau until 1705, he was named Building Director on 11 June 1705. From 1705-13 Schultheiss focused on renovating Königsberg Castle an east wing, alternately referred to as the Friedrichsbau, the Unfriedbau, the Unfriedflügel. From 1705-10 he worked on the galleries, royal lodge, pulpit-altar of the Schlosskirche, the church connected to the castle. Schultheiss designed the Royal Orphanage in Sackheim, Tragheim Church, the Brauerhaus in Löbenicht.
From 1704-05, along with Jean Baptiste Broebes and Johann Caspar Hindersin, he aided in the transition of the manor house in Schlobitten into a palace of the Dohna family. In 1708 he renovated the church of Kaukehmen. After the coronation of King Frederick William I of Prussia in 1713, Schultheiss took the position of building director in Berlin, he returned to Königsberg after taking the position of building director for the Oberland district on 18 January 1721. The king, focused on the recovery of East Prussia after the great plague of 1708-11, tasked Schultheiss with designing the new towns built in the province, he became the most important architectural official in East Prussia and a member of the Kriegs- und Domänenkammer after the king's reorganization of government in 1723. Schultheiss altered the layouts of numerous East Prussian towns, including Stallupönen. Ca. 1730 he worked on the family grave of Friedrich von der Groeben at the church of Groß Schwansfeld. From 1731-32 he oversaw the rebuilding of the church in Drygallen.
Schultheiss designed the Neustädter Reformierte Kirche in Gumbinnen from 1736-39. In his second period in Königsberg, Schultheiss designed the incomplete Garnisonkirche of the Königsgarten and the French Reformed Church on Königstraße, he died in Königsberg. Albinus, Robert. Lexikon der Stadt Königsberg Pr. und Umgebung. Leer: Verlag Gerhard Rautenberg. P. 371. ISBN 3-7921-0320-6. Antoni, Michael, ed.. Dehio-Handbuch der Kunstdenkmäler: West- und Ostpreußen. München: Deutscher Kunstverlag. P. 718. ISBN 3-422-03025-5. Kreisgemeinschaft Gumbinnen. "Personen". Retrieved 14 November 2010. Mühlpfordt, Herbert Meinhard. Königsberg von A bis Z. München: Aufstieg-Verlag. P. 168. ISBN 3-7612-0092-7. Mühlpfordt, Herbert Meinhard. Königsberger Skulptoren und ihre Meister 1255-1945. Würzburg: Holzner Verlag. P. 299. Weise, Erich, ed.. Handbuch der historischen Stätten Deutschlands, Ost- und Westpreussen. Stuttgart: Alfred Kröner Verlag. P. 284. ISBN 3-520-31701-X
Prussia
Prussia was a prominent German state that originated in 1525 with a duchy centred on the region of Prussia on the southeast coast of the Baltic Sea. It was de facto dissolved by an emergency decree transferring powers of the Prussian government to German Chancellor Franz von Papen in 1932 and de jure by an Allied decree in 1947. For centuries, the House of Hohenzollern ruled Prussia expanding its size by way of an unusually well-organised and effective army. Prussia, with its capital in Königsberg and from 1701 in Berlin, decisively shaped the history of Germany. In 1871, German states united to create the German Empire under Prussian leadership. In November 1918, the monarchies were abolished and the nobility lost its political power during the German Revolution of 1918–19; the Kingdom of Prussia was thus abolished in favour of a republic—the Free State of Prussia, a state of Germany from 1918 until 1933. From 1933, Prussia lost its independence as a result of the Prussian coup, when the Nazi regime was establishing its Gleichschaltung laws in pursuit of a unitary state.
With the end of the Nazi regime, in 1945, the division of Germany into allied-occupation zones and the separation of its territories east of the Oder–Neisse line, which were incorporated into Poland and the Soviet Union, the State of Prussia ceased to exist de facto. Prussia existed de jure until its formal abolition by the Allied Control Council Enactment No. 46 of 25 February 1947. The name Prussia derives from the Old Prussians. In 1308, the Teutonic Knights conquered the region of Pomerelia with Gdańsk, their monastic state was Germanised through immigration from central and western Germany, and, in the south, it was Polonised by settlers from Masovia. The Second Peace of Thorn split Prussia into the western Royal Prussia, a province of Poland, the eastern part, from 1525 called the Duchy of Prussia, a fief of the Crown of Poland up to 1657; the union of Brandenburg and the Duchy of Prussia in 1618 led to the proclamation of the Kingdom of Prussia in 1701. Prussia entered the ranks of the great powers shortly after becoming a kingdom, exercised most influence in the 18th and 19th centuries.
During the 18th century it had a major say in many international affairs under the reign of Frederick the Great. During the 19th century, Chancellor Otto von Bismarck united the German principalities into a "Lesser Germany", which excluded the Austrian Empire. At the Congress of Vienna, which redrew the map of Europe following Napoleon's defeat, Prussia acquired rich new territories, including the coal-rich Ruhr; the country grew in influence economically and politically, became the core of the North German Confederation in 1867, of the German Empire in 1871. The Kingdom of Prussia was now so large and so dominant in the new Germany that Junkers and other Prussian élites identified more and more as Germans and less as Prussians; the Kingdom ended in 1918 along with other German monarchies that collapsed as a result of the German Revolution. In the Weimar Republic, the Free State of Prussia lost nearly all of its legal and political importance following the 1932 coup led by Franz von Papen. Subsequently, it was dismantled into Nazi German Gaue in 1935.
Some Prussian ministries were kept and Hermann Göring remained in his role as Minister President of Prussia until the end of World War II. Former eastern territories of Germany that made up a significant part of Prussia lost the majority of their German population after 1945 as the People's Republic of Poland and the Soviet Union both absorbed these territories and had most of its German inhabitants expelled by 1950. Prussia, deemed a bearer of militarism and reaction by the Allies, was abolished by an Allied declaration in 1947; the international status of the former eastern territories of Germany was disputed until the Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany in 1990, while its return to Germany remains a topic among far right politicians, the Federation of Expellees and various political revisionists. The term Prussian has been used outside Germany, to emphasise professionalism, aggressiveness and conservatism of the Junker class of landed aristocrats in the East who dominated first Prussia and the German Empire.
The main coat of arms of Prussia, as well as the flag of Prussia, depicted a black eagle on a white background. The black and white national colours were used by the Teutonic Knights and by the Hohenzollern dynasty; the Teutonic Order wore a white coat embroidered with a black cross with gold insert and black imperial eagle. The combination of the black and white colours with the white and red Hanseatic colours of the free cities Bremen, Hamburg and Lübeck, as well as of Brandenburg, resulted in the black-white-red commercial flag of the North German Confederation, which became the flag of the German Empire in 1871. Suum cuique, the motto of the Order of the Black Eagle created by King Frederick I in 1701, was associated with the whole of Prussia; the Iron Cross, a military decoration created by King Frederick William III in 1813, was commonly associated with the country. The region populated by Baltic Old Prussians who were Christianised, became a favoured location for immigration by Germans, as well as Poles and Lithuanians along the border regions.
Before its abolition, the territory of the Kingdom of Prussia included the provinces of West Prussia.
Garrison
Garrison is the collective term for any body of troops stationed in a particular location to guard it, but now simply using it as a home base. The garrison is in a city, fort, ship or similar. "Garrison town" is a common expression for any town. "Garrison towns" were used during the Arab Islamic conquests of Middle Eastern lands by Arab-Muslim armies to increase their dominance over indigenous populations. In order to occupy non-Arab, non-Islamic areas, nomadic Arab tribesmen were taken from the desert by the ruling Arab elite, conscripted into Islamic armies, settled into garrison towns as well as given a share in the spoils of war; the primary utility of the Arab-Islamic garrisons was to control the indigenous non-Arab peoples of these conquered and occupied territories, to serve as garrison bases to launch further Islamic military campaigns into yet-undominated lands. A secondary aspect of the Arab-Islamic garrisons was the uprooting of the aforementioned nomadic Arab tribesmen from their original home regions in the Arabian Peninsula in order to proactively avert these tribal peoples, their young men, from revolting against the Islamic state established in their midst.
In the United Kingdom, "Garrison" specifically refers to any of the major military stations such as Aldershot, Colchester, Tidworth and London, which have more than one barracks or camp and their own military headquarters commanded by a colonel, brigadier or major-general, assisted by a garrison sergeant major. In Ireland, Association football has been termed the "garrison game" or the "garrison sport" for its connections with British military serving in Irish cities and towns. In Israel, a "garrison unit" is a regular unit defending a specified Israeli zone in need of protection from attack from combatants. Israeli garrison units placed in the disputed territories of West Bank are recognized under UN Resolution 242 as occupied pending peaceful recognition by all regional combatants, it was an old custom in ancient Italy to send out colonies for the purpose of securing new conquests. The Romans, having no standing army, used to plant bodies of their own citizens in conquered towns as a kind of garrison.
Nouveau petit Larousse illustré, 1952
Thirty Years' War
The Thirty Years' War was a war fought in Central Europe between 1618 and 1648. One of the most destructive conflicts in human history, it resulted in eight million fatalities not only from military engagements but from violence and plague. Casualties were overwhelmingly and disproportionately inhabitants of the Holy Roman Empire, most of the rest being battle deaths from various foreign armies. In terms of proportional German casualties and destruction, it was surpassed only by the period January to May 1945. A war between various Protestant and Catholic states in the fragmented Holy Roman Empire, it developed into a more general conflict involving most of the European great powers; these states employed large mercenary armies, the war became less about religion and more of a continuation of the France–Habsburg rivalry for European political pre-eminence. The war was preceded by the election of the new Holy Roman Emperor, Ferdinand II, who tried to impose religious uniformity on his domains, forcing Roman Catholicism on its peoples.
The northern Protestant states, angered by the violation of their rights to choose, granted in the Peace of Augsburg, banded together to form the Protestant Union. Ferdinand II was a devout Roman Catholic and much more intolerant than his predecessor, Rudolf II, who ruled from the Protestant city of Prague. Ferdinand's policies were considered pro-Catholic and anti-Protestant; these events caused widespread fears throughout northern and central Europe, triggered the Protestant Bohemians living in the relatively loose dominion of Habsburg Austria to revolt against their nominal ruler, Ferdinand II. After the so-called Defenestration of Prague deposed the Emperor's representatives in Prague, the Protestant estates and Catholic Habsburgs started gathering allies for war; the Protestant Bohemians ousted the Habsburgs and elected the Calvinist Frederick V, Elector of the Rhenish Palatinate as the new king of the Kingdom of Bohemia. Frederick took the offer without the support of the Protestant Union.
The southern states Roman Catholic, were angered by this. Led by Bavaria, these states formed the Catholic League to expel Frederick in support of the Emperor; the Empire soon crushed the perceived Protestant rebellion in the Battle of White Mountain, executing leading Bohemian aristocrats shortly after. Protestant rulers across Europe unanimously condemned the Emperor's action. After the atrocities committed in Bohemia, Saxony gave its support to the Protestant Union and decided to fight back. Sweden, at the time a rising military power, soon intervened in 1630 under its king Gustavus Adolphus, transforming what had been the Emperor's attempt to curb the Protestant states into a full-scale war in Europe. Habsburg Spain, wishing to crush the Dutch rebels in the Netherlands and the Dutch Republic, intervened under the pretext of helping its dynastic Habsburg ally, Austria. No longer able to tolerate the encirclement of two major Habsburg powers on its borders, Catholic France entered the coalition on the side of the Protestants in order to counter the Habsburgs.
The Thirty Years' War devastated entire regions, resulting in high mortality among the populations of the German and Italian states, the Crown of Bohemia, the Southern Netherlands. Both mercenaries and soldiers in fighting armies traditionally looted or extorted tribute to get operating funds, which imposed severe hardships on the inhabitants of occupied territories; the war bankrupted most of the combatant powers. The Dutch Republic enjoyed contrasting fortune; the Thirty Years' War ended with the Treaty of Osnabrück and the Treaties of Münster, part of the wider Peace of Westphalia. The war altered the previous political order of European powers; the rise of Bourbon France, the curtailing of Habsburg ambition, the ascendancy of Sweden as a great power created a new balance of power on the continent, with France emerging from the war strengthened and dominant in the latter part of the 17th century. The Peace of Augsburg, signed by Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, confirmed the result of the Diet of Speyer, ending the war between German Lutherans and Catholics, establishing that: Rulers of the 224 German states could choose the religion of their realms.
Subjects had to follow that emigrate. Prince-bishoprics and other states ruled by Catholic clergy were excluded and should remain Catholic. Prince-bishops who converted to Lutheranism were required to give up their territories. Lutherans could keep the territory they had taken from the Catholic Church since the Peace of Passau in 1552. Although the Peace of Augsburg created a temporary end to hostilities, it did not resolve the underlying religious conflict, made yet more complex by the spread of Calvinism throughout Germany in the years that followed; this added a third major faith to the region, but its position was not recognized in any way by the Augsburg terms, to which only Catholicism and Lutheranism were parties. The rulers of the nations neighboring the Holy Roman Empir
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