1.
Tractor unit
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A tractor unit is a characteristically heavy-duty towing engine that provides motive power for hauling a towed or trailered load. Tractor units typically have large displacement diesel engines for power, durability, and economy, several axles, the tractor-trailer combination distributes a load across multiple axles while being more maneuverable than an equivalently sized rigid truck. The most common trailer attachment system is a fifth wheel coupling, allowing rapid shift between trailers performing different functions, such as a bulk tipper and box trailer, trailers containing differing cargos can be rapidly swapped between tractors, eliminating downtime while a trailer is unloaded or loaded. Drawbar couplings are found, particularly in dedicated exceptionally heavy-duty ballast tractors. There have been three common cab configurations used in tractors, two are widely used. The conventional has an engine and hood over the front axle in front of the cab and this style is almost universal in North America. The cab over engine or cab forward has a flat nose cab with the sitting in front of the front axle. Widely used in the EU and Japan, this style has the advantages of good vision, maneuverability, in the North America this type of cab can be useful in straight trucks, but now has little advantage in tractors and is rarely used. A North American style cab over engine, now obsolete, had a flat nose cab located higher over the engine. This allowed a sleeper compartment in a tractor, and maximum wheelbase relative overall length. With the loosening of restrictions in 1982 this style had limited applications. In Australia both styles of cab over engine truck as well as conventionals are in common use, a tractor unit can have many axles depending on axle load legislation. The most common varieties are those of 4×2, 6×2 and 6×4 types, however, some manufacturers offer 6×6, 8×6, 8×8, 10×8, and 10×10 axle configurations. A 6×4 has three axles, normally an undriven front steer axle and the two axles driven. 6×4 units are common in long distance haulage in larger countries such as the United States. In Europe, the 4×2 and 6×2 variants are more commonplace, tractors with three axles or more can have more than one steering axle, which can also be driven. Most 6×2 units allow the rear axle to be raised when lightly loaded, or running without a trailer, to save tire wear, save toll road fees. The 8×8 units also have four axles, but with all of them driven, and 10×8 units have five axles with the rear four usually driven, all five axles of 10×10 units are driven
2.
Nazi Germany
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Nazi Germany is the common English name for the period in German history from 1933 to 1945, when Germany was governed by a dictatorship under the control of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. Under Hitlers rule, Germany was transformed into a fascist state in which the Nazi Party took totalitarian control over all aspects of life. The official name of the state was Deutsches Reich from 1933 to 1943, the period is also known under the names the Third Reich and the National Socialist Period. The Nazi regime came to an end after the Allied Powers defeated Germany in May 1945, Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany by the President of the Weimar Republic Paul von Hindenburg on 30 January 1933. The Nazi Party then began to eliminate all opposition and consolidate its power. Hindenburg died on 2 August 1934, and Hitler became dictator of Germany by merging the powers and offices of the Chancellery, a national referendum held 19 August 1934 confirmed Hitler as sole Führer of Germany. All power was centralised in Hitlers person, and his word became above all laws, the government was not a coordinated, co-operating body, but a collection of factions struggling for power and Hitlers favour. In the midst of the Great Depression, the Nazis restored economic stability and ended mass unemployment using heavy military spending, extensive public works were undertaken, including the construction of Autobahnen. The return to economic stability boosted the regimes popularity, racism, especially antisemitism, was a central feature of the regime. The Germanic peoples were considered by the Nazis to be the purest branch of the Aryan race, millions of Jews and other peoples deemed undesirable by the state were murdered in the Holocaust. Opposition to Hitlers rule was ruthlessly suppressed, members of the liberal, socialist, and communist opposition were killed, imprisoned, or exiled. The Christian churches were also oppressed, with many leaders imprisoned, education focused on racial biology, population policy, and fitness for military service. Career and educational opportunities for women were curtailed, recreation and tourism were organised via the Strength Through Joy program, and the 1936 Summer Olympics showcased the Third Reich on the international stage. Propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels made effective use of film, mass rallies, the government controlled artistic expression, promoting specific art forms and banning or discouraging others. Beginning in the late 1930s, Nazi Germany made increasingly aggressive territorial demands and it seized Austria and Czechoslovakia in 1938 and 1939. Hitler made a pact with Joseph Stalin and invaded Poland in September 1939. In alliance with Italy and smaller Axis powers, Germany conquered most of Europe by 1940, reichskommissariats took control of conquered areas, and a German administration was established in what was left of Poland. Jews and others deemed undesirable were imprisoned, murdered in Nazi concentration camps and extermination camps, following the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, the tide gradually turned against the Nazis, who suffered major military defeats in 1943
3.
Continuous track
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Continuous track, also called tank tread or caterpillar track, is a system of vehicle propulsion in which a continuous band of treads or track plates is driven by two or more wheels. The prominent treads of the plates are both hard-wearing and damage resistant, especially in comparison to rubber tyres. The aggressive treads of the tracks provide good traction in soft surfaces but can damage paved surfaces, in modern times, continuous track propulsion systems can be traced back to a crude continuous track system designed in the 1770s by Richard Lovell Edgeworth. Polish mathematician and inventor Józef Maria Hoene-Wroński conceived of the idea in the 1830s, the British polymath Sir George Cayley patented a continuous track, which he called a universal railway. Although not a track in the form encountered today, a dreadnaught wheel or endless railway wheel was patented by the British Engineer James Boydell in 1846. In Boydells design, a series of feet are attached to the periphery of the wheel. A letter of recommendation was signed by Sir William Codrington, the General commanding the troops at Sebastapol, a number of manufacturers including Richard Bach, Richard Garrett & Sons, Charles Burrell & Sons and Clayton & Shuttleworth applied the Boydell patent under licence. The British military were interested in Boydells invention from an early date, one of the objectives was to transport Mallets Mortar, a giant 36 weapon which was under development but, by the end of the Crimean war, the mortar was not ready for service. In those tests, a Garrett engine was put through its paces on Plumstead Common, the Garrett engine featured in the Lord Mayors show in London, and in the following month that engine was shipped to Australia. Nicholas works in 1856, again, after the close of the Crimean war, between late 1856 and 1862 Burrell manufactured not less than a score of engines fitted with dreadnaught wheels. Steam tractors fitted with wheels had a number of shortcomings and. In August 1858, more than two years after the end of the Crimean War, John Fowler filed British Patent No.1948 on another form of Endless Railway, comprising only eight sections, the track sections are essentially longitudinal, as in Boydells initial design. Further to Fowlers patent of 1858, in 1877, a Russian, Fyodor Blinov and it lacked self-propulsion and was pulled by horses. Blinov received a patent for his wagon in 1878, from 1881 to 1888 he developed a steam-powered caterpillar-tractor. This self-propelled crawler was successfully tested and featured at an exhibition in 1896. Steam traction engines were used at the end of the 19th Century in the Boer Wars, but neither dreadnaught wheels nor continuous tracks were used, rather roll-out wooden plank roads were thrown under the wheels as required. A little-known American inventor, Henery T. Stith, developed a continuous track prototype which was, in forms, patented in 1873,1880. The last was for the application of the track to a prototype off-road bicycle built for his son, the 1900 prototype is retained by his surviving family
4.
Wehrmacht
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The Wehrmacht was the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1946. It consisted of the Heer, the Kriegsmarine and the Luftwaffe, after the Nazi seizure of power in 1933, one of Adolf Hitler’s most overt and audacious moves was to establish the Wehrmacht, a modern armed forces fully capable of offensive use. In December 1941, Hitler designated himself as commander-in-chief of the Wehrmacht, the Wehrmacht formed the heart of Germany’s politico-military power. In the early part of World War II, Hitlers generals employed the Wehrmacht through innovative combined arms tactics to devastating effect in what was called a Blitzkrieg, the Wehrmachts new military structure, unique combat techniques, newly developed weapons, and unprecedented speed and brutality crushed their opponents. Closely cooperating with the SS, the German armed forces committed war crimes and atrocities. By the time the war ended in Europe in May 1945, only a few of the Wehrmacht’s upper leadership were tried for war crimes, despite evidence suggesting that more were involved in illegal actions. The German term Wehrmacht generically describes any nations armed forces, for example, the Frankfurt Constitution of 1848 designated all German military forces as the German Wehrmacht, consisting of the Seemacht and the Landmacht. In 1919, the term Wehrmacht also appears in Article 47 of the Weimar Constitution, establishing that, from 1919, Germanys national defense force was known as the Reichswehr, a name that was dropped in favor of Wehrmacht on 21 May 1935. In January 1919, after World War I ended with the signing of the armistice of 11 November 1918, in March 1919, the national assembly passed a law founding a 420, 000-strong preliminary army, the Vorläufige Reichswehr. The terms of the Treaty of Versailles were announced in May, the army was limited to one hundred thousand men with an additional fifteen thousand in the navy. The fleet was to consist of at most six battleships, six cruisers, submarines, tanks and heavy artillery were forbidden and the air-force was dissolved. A new post-war military, the Reichswehr, was established on 23 March 1921, General conscription was abolished under another mandate of the Versailles treaty. The Reichswehr was limited to 115,000 men, and thus the armed forces, under the leadership of Hans von Seeckt, though Seeckt retired in 1926, the army that went to war in 1939 was largely his creation. Germany was forbidden to have an air-force by the Versailles treaty, nonetheless and these officers saw the role of an air-force as winning air-superiority, tactical and strategic bombing and providing ground support. That the Luftwaffe did not develop a strategic bombing force in the 1930s was not due to a lack of interest, but because of economic limitations. The leadership of the Navy led by Grand Admiral Erich Raeder, officers who believed in submarine warfare led by Admiral Karl Dönitz were in a minority before 1939. By 1922, Germany had begun covertly circumventing the conditions of the Versailles Treaty, a secret collaboration with the Soviet Union began after the treaty of Rapallo. Major-General Otto Hasse traveled to Moscow in 1923 to further negotiate the terms, Germany helped the Soviet Union with industrialization and Soviet officers were to be trained in Germany
5.
Rasputitsa
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Rasputitsa is a season when travel on unpaved roads becomes difficult, owing to muddy conditions, either from autumnal rains or spring thaw. It also refers to the condition of the roads, during those seasons, the term is applied to muddy road conditions in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine, which are caused by the poor drainage of underlying clay-laden soils found in the region. Roads are subject to limitations and closures during the period in certain districts of the Russian Federation. The phenomenon was a hindrance in the part of the 20th Century in the Soviet Union. Rasputitsa seasons of Russia are well known as a defensive advantage in wartime. Common nicknames in such context are General Mud or Marshal Mud, during the French invasion of Russia in 1812, Napoleon found the mud to be a great hindrance. During the Second World War, the month-long muddy period slowed down the German advance during the Battle of Moscow, cold-weather warfare Russian Winter Mud season
6.
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
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