Oberkommando der Wehrmacht
The Oberkommando der Wehrmacht was the High Command of the Wehrmacht of Nazi Germany during World War II. Created in 1938, the OKW had nominal oversight over the Heer, the Kriegsmarine, the Luftwaffe. Rivalry with the armed services branch commands with the Oberkommando des Heeres, prevented the OKW from becoming a unified German General Staff in an effective chain of command, it did help 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. However, Hitler manipulated the system in order to prevent any one command from taking a dominant role in decision making; this "divide and conquer" method helped put most military decisions in Hitler's own hands, which at times included those affecting engagements at the battalion level. The OKW was established by decree of 4 February 1938 on the occasion of the Blomberg-Fritsch Affair, which had led to the dismissal of Reich War Minister and Commander-in-chief of the Wehrmacht, Generalfeldmarschall Werner von Blomberg.
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. All Supreme Commanders of the armed service branches, like OKH Chief General Walther von Brauchitsch, had direct access to Hitler and were able to circumvent Keitel's command; the appointments made to the OKW and the motive behind the reorganization are thought to be Hitler's desire to consolidate power and authority around his position as Führer and Reich Chancellor, to the detriment of the military leadership of the Wehrmacht. Furthermore, did Hitler not want to create a tri-service joint command, or appointment of a single joint Chief of Staff, as he feared it would go break his image of having the "Midas touch" concerning military strategy. By June 1938, the OKW comprised four departments: Wehrmacht-Führungsamt – operational orders.
Chief: Colonel-General Alfred Jodl, 1 September 1939 – 8 May 1945 Abteilung Landesverteidigungsführungsamt a subdepartment through which all details of operational planning were worked out, from which all operational orders were communicated to the OKW. Chief: Major General Walter Warlimont, 1 September 1939 – 6 September 1944. 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, Wehrmacht signal corps Amt Ausland/Abwehr – foreign intelligence. Chief of Staff Zentralabteilung – central department. Chief: Major General Hans Oster, 1 September 1939 – January 1944 Abteilung Ausland – foreign. Chief: Admiral Leopold Bürkner, 15 June 1938 - Abteilung I, Nachrichtenbeschaffung – intelligence. Chief: Colonel Hans Piepenbrock, 1 September 1939 – March 1943. Chief: Colonel Erwin von Lahousen, 1 September 1939 – July 1943. Wehrmachtauskunftstelle für Kriegerverluste und Kriegsgefangene – information centre for war casualties and prisoners of warThe WFA replaced the Wehrmachtsamt which had existed between 1935 and 1938 within the Reich War Ministry, headed by General Wilhelm Keitel.
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, 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 losing its role as a subordinate organization; these changes were 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 always represented at daily situation conferences by Jodl and the officer serving as Hitler's adjutant. During these conferences situation reports prepared by the head of WFA/L would be delivered to Hitler and discussed. Following these discussions, Hitler would issue further operational orders.
These orders were relayed back to WFA/L by Jodl along with the minutes of the meeting. These would be converted into orders for issuance to the appropriate commanders; the OKW served as the military general staff for the Third Reich, coordinating the efforts of the Army and Air Force. In practice, the OKW acted as Hitler's personal military staff, translating his ideas into military orders, issuing them to the three services while having little control over them. However, as the war progressed the OKW found itself exe
Pine
A pine is any conifer in the genus Pinus of the family Pinaceae. Pinus is the sole genus in the subfamily Pinoideae; the Plant List compiled by the Royal Botanic Gardens and Missouri Botanical Garden accepts 126 species names of pines as current, together with 35 unresolved species and many more synonyms. The modern English name "pine" derives from Latin pinus, which some have traced to the Indo-European base *pīt- ‘resin’. Before the 19th century, pines were referred to as firs. In some European languages, Germanic cognates of the Old Norse name are still in use for pines—in Danish fyr, in Norwegian fura/fure/furu, Swedish fura/furu, Dutch vuren, German Föhre—but in modern English, fir is now restricted to fir and Douglas fir. Pine trees are evergreen, coniferous resinous trees growing 3–80 m tall, with the majority of species reaching 15–45 m tall; the smallest are Siberian dwarf pine and Potosi pinyon, the tallest is an 81.79 m tall ponderosa pine located in southern Oregon's Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest.
Pines are long lived and reach ages of 100–1,000 years, some more. The longest-lived is Pinus longaeva. One individual of this species, dubbed "Methuselah", is one of the world's oldest living organisms at around 4,600 years old; this tree can be found in the White Mountains of California. An older tree, now cut down, was dated at 4,900 years old, it was discovered in a grove beneath Wheeler Peak and it is now known as "Prometheus" after the Greek immortal. The bark of most pines is thick and scaly; the branches are produced in regular "pseudo whorls" a tight spiral but appearing like a ring of branches arising from the same point. Many pines are uninodal, producing just one such whorl of branches each year, from buds at the tip of the year's new shoot, but others are multinodal, producing two or more whorls of branches per year; the spiral growth of branches and cone scales may be arranged in Fibonacci number ratios. The new spring shoots are sometimes called "candles"; these "candles" offer foresters a means to evaluate fertility of the vigour of the trees.
Pines have four types of leaf: Seed leaves on seedlings are borne in a whorl of 4–24. Juvenile leaves, which follow on seedlings and young plants, are 2–6 cm long, green or blue-green, arranged spirally on the shoot; these are produced for six months to five years longer. Scale leaves, similar to bud scales, are small and not photosynthetic, arranged spirally like the juvenile leaves. Needles, the adult leaves, are green and bundled in clusters called fascicles; the needles can number from one to seven per fascicle, but number from two to five. Each fascicle is produced from a small bud on a dwarf shoot in the axil of a scale leaf; these bud scales remain on the fascicle as a basal sheath. The needles persist depending on species. If a shoot is damaged, the needle fascicles just below the damage will generate a bud which can replace the lost leaves. Pines are monoecious, having the male and female cones on the same tree, though a few species are sub-dioecious, with individuals predominantly, but not wholly, single-sex.
The male cones are small 1–5 cm long, only present for a short period, falling as soon as they have shed their pollen. The female cones take 1.5–3 years to mature after pollination, with actual fertilization delayed one year. At maturity the female cones are 3–60 cm long; each cone has numerous spirally. The seeds are small and winged, are anemophilous, but some are larger and have only a vestigial wing, are bird-dispersed. At maturity, the cones open to release the seeds, but in some of the bird-dispersed species, the seeds are only released by the bird breaking the cones open. In others, the seeds are stored in closed cones for many years until an environmental cue triggers the cones to open, releasing the seeds; the most common form of serotiny is pyriscence, in which a resin binds the cones shut until melted by a forest fire. Pines are gymnosperms; the genus is divided into two subgenera, which can be distinguished by cone and leaf characters: Pinus subg. Pinus, the yellow, or hard pine group with harder wood and two or three needles per fascicle Pinus subg.
Strobus, the white, or soft pine group with softer wood and five needles per fascicle Pines are native to the Northern Hemisphere, in a few parts of the tropics in the Southern Hemisphere. Most regions of the Northern Hemisphere host some native species of pines. One species crosses the equator in Sumatra to 2°S. In North America, various species occur in regions at latitudes from as far north as 66°N to as far south as 12°N. Pines may be found in a large variety of environments, ranging from semi-arid desert to rainforests, from sea level up to 5,200 metres, from the coldest to the hottest environments on Earth, they occur in mountainous areas with favorable soils and at least some water. Various species have been introduced to temperate and subtropical regions of both hemisp
Luckenwalde
Luckenwalde is the capital of the Teltow-Fläming district in the German state of Brandenburg. It is situated on the Nuthe river north of the Fläming Heath, at the eastern rim of the Nuthe-Nieplitz Nature Park, about 50 km south of Berlin; the town area includes the villages of Kolzenburg. The former Slavic settlement of Lugkin was conquered by Margrave Conrad Wettin of Meissen in the course of the 1147 Wendish Crusade. Lukenwalde Castle was first mentioned in a 1216 deed as a burgward of the Bishopric of Brandenburg, it was acquired by Zinna Abbey in 1285. Together with Zinna it remained under the rule of the Archbishopric of Magdeburg and its successor, the Prussian Duchy of Magdeburg until it was attached to the Margraviate of Brandenburg in 1773. Originating in the 17th century, Luckenwalde's cloth and wool factories did not spring up till the reign of King Frederick II of Prussia and soon were among the most extensive in Germany. Other traditional industries were cotton printing and a dye works and the making of metal and bronze goods.
In 1808 Luckenwalde received town privileges. By the turn of the 20th Century Luckenwalde became renowned as a key manufacturer of hats. In 1921 the two biggest hat ateliers and Steinberg, merged and set up their factory on an industrial estate in Luckenwalde; the factory was designed by German architect Erich Mendelsohn in 1923, the factory is considered a milestone of Expressionist architecture. The hat factory fell into disrepair during and after the war period and was restored in 2001, but as of 2013 the building remains empty. During World War II, there was a Stalag for prisoners of war. There was a work camp for civilians; the Nazis forced people to work for their war effort or else the families of people who worked there would perish. Lack of food and hard work killed thousands. Among them were Poles, Italians and many more. There were several places in surrounding areas where they worked. Luckenwalde was taken by the Red Army on 22 April 1945. Seats in the municipal assembly as of 2014 elections: The Left: 10 Social Democratic Party of Germany: 9 Christian Democratic Union: 6 Bauernverband: 1 Free Democratic Party: 1 National Democratic Party of Germany: 1 Luckenwalde station is located on the Berlin–Halle railway.
Hans Freudenthal, mathematician Bernhard Kadenbach, biochemist Katherina Reiche, Ilka Bessin, Rudi Dutschke, spokesman of the German 1968 student movement, was raised in Luckenwalde Luckenwalde is twinned with: Dieppe, Seine-Maritime, France Bad Salzuflen, Germany This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed.. "Luckenwalde". Encyclopædia Britannica. 17. Cambridge University Press. P. 106. Media related to Luckenwalde at Wikimedia Commons Notgeld depicting the industries Luckenwalde was known for in the early 20th century. Http://webgerman.com/Notgeld/Directory/L/Luckenwalde.htm
Slavs
Slavs are an Indo-European ethno-linguistic group who speak the various Slavic languages of the larger Balto-Slavic linguistic group. They are native to Eurasia, stretching from Central and Southeastern Europe all the way north and eastwards to Northeast Europe, Northern Asia, Central Asia, as well as in Western Europe and Western Asia. From the early 6th century they spread to inhabit the majority of Central and Southeastern Europe. Today, there is a large Slavic diaspora throughout North America in the United States and Canada as a result of immigration. Slavs are the largest ethno-linguistic group in Europe. Present-day Slavic people are classified into East Slavs, West Slavs, South Slavs. Slavs can be further grouped by religion. Orthodox Christianity is practiced by the majority of Slavs; the Orthodox Slavs include the Belarusians, Macedonians, Russians, Rusyns and Ukrainians and are defined by Orthodox customs and Cyrillic script, as well as their cultural connection to the Byzantine Empire.
Their second most common religion is Roman Catholicism. The Catholic Slavs include Croats, Kashubs, Poles, Slovaks and Sorbs and are defined by their Latinate influence and heritage and connection to Western Europe. There are substantial Protestant and Lutheran minorities among the West Slavs, such as the historical Bohemian Hussites; the second-largest religion among the Slavs after Christianity is Islam. Muslim Slavs include the Bosniaks, Gorani, Torbeši, other Muslims of the former Yugoslavia. Modern Slavic nations and ethnic groups are diverse both genetically and culturally, relations between them – within the individual groups – range from ethnic solidarity to mutual hostility; the oldest mention of the Slavic ethnonym is the 6th century AD Procopius, writing in Byzantine Greek, using various forms such as Sklaboi, Sklabēnoi, Sthlabenoi, or Sklabinoi, while his contemporary Jordanes refers to the Sclaveni in Latin. The oldest documents written in Old Church Slavonic, dating from the 9th century, attest the autonym as Slověne.
These forms point back to a Slavic autonym which can be reconstructed in Proto-Slavic as *Slověninъ, plural Slověne. The reconstructed autonym *Slověninъ is considered a derivation from slovo denoting "people who speak", i. e. people who understand each other, in contrast to the Slavic word denoting German people, namely *němьcь, meaning "silent, mute people". The word slovo and the related slava and slukh originate from the Proto-Indo-European root *ḱlew-, cognate with Ancient Greek κλέος, as in the name Pericles, Latin clueo, English loud. Ancient Roman sources refer to the Early Slavic peoples as Veneti, who dwelled in a region of central Europe east of the Germanic tribe of Suebi, west of the Iranian Sarmatians in the 1st and 2nd centuries AD; the Slavs under name of the Antes and the Sclaveni first appear in Byzantine records in the early 6th century. Byzantine historiographers under emperor Justinian I, such as Procopius of Caesarea and Theophylact Simocatta describe tribes of these names emerging from the area of the Carpathian Mountains, the lower Danube and the Black Sea, invading the Danubian provinces of the Eastern Empire.
Jordanes, in his work Getica, describes the Veneti as a "populous nation" whose dwellings begin at the sources of the Vistula and occupy "a great expanse of land". He describes the Veneti as the ancestors of Antes and Slaveni, two early Slavic tribes, who appeared on the Byzantine frontier in the early 6th century. Procopius wrote in 545 that "the Sclaveni and the Antae had a single name in the remote past; the name Sporoi derives from Greek σπείρω. He described them as barbarians, who lived under democracy, believe in one god, "the maker of lightning", to whom they made sacrifice, they lived in scattered housing, changed settlement. In war, they were foot soldiers with small shields and battle axes clothed, some entering battle naked with only genitals covered, their language is "barbarous", the two tribes are alike in appearance, being tall and robust, "while their bodies and hair are neither fair or blond, nor indeed do they incline to the dark type, but they are all ruddy in color. And they live a hard life, giving no heed to bodily comforts..."
Jordanes described the Sclaveni having forests for their cities. Another 6th-century source refers to them living among nearly impenetrable forests, rivers and marshes. Menander Protector mentions a Daurentius who slew an Avar envoy of Khagan Bayan I for asking the Slavs to accept the suzerainty of the Avars. According to eastern homeland theory, prior to becoming known to the Roman world, Slavic-speaking tribes were part of the many multi-ethnic confederacies
Maybach I and II
Maybach I and II were a series of above and underground bunkers built 20 kilometres south of Berlin in Wünsdorf near Zossen, Brandenburg to house the High Command of the Army and the Supreme Command of the Armed Forces during the Second World War. Along with the military fortress complex Zossen, Maybach I and II were instrumental locations from which central planning for field operations of the Wehrmacht took place, they provided a key connection between Berlin’s military and civilian leadership to the front lines of battle; the complex was named after the Maybach automobile engine. The Zeppelin bunker was erected by the Reichspost on the orders of the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht at the end of the 1930s; the bunker was built between 1937 and 1939 in the area of the so-called Stalag as a signal Intelligence centre. The code name for the bunker was Amt 500, i.e. Office 500; the structure consisted of a two-lane longitudinal building with measurements of 117m × 22m with an associated three-storey annex measuring 57m × 40m.
After several project changes, a third entrance was added in 1938. Called the Reich Post Building, it could be accessed by light trucks, directly above the extension with a stairwell and an elevator. A south tunnel connected the bunker with Maybach II to the southwest. Maybach I was built starting in 1937. In December 1939, it was operational; the complex consisted of twelve three-storey buildings above ground designed to look from the air like local housing, two floors of interlinked bunkers with two-foot thick walls below. Deeper in the subterranean levels of Maybach I, there were wells for drinking water and plumbing, air-filter systems for protection against gas attacks, diesel engines to keep the system operational; the site was further camouflaged by the use of netting. Maybach II was of the same design with eleven surface buildings. Incriminating evidence left by the conspirators of the 20 July plot against Hitler was discovered at Maybach II in a safe at Zossen. Among the documents uncovered were excerpts from the diary of Wilhelm Canaris, conspiratorial correspondence between Abwehr agents, information on the secret negotiations between the Vatican and members of the planned coup d’état, data on the resistance activities of Lutheran minister Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
Between 15 and 17 January 1945, Oberkommando des Heeres moved into Maybach I. The army general staff moved their quarters into Maybach II. During 1945 the site was bombed by both the British and Americans, including a raid on 15 March that injured Chief of the Army General Staff Hans Krebs. On 20 April the Soviet 3rd Armoured Guard Army threatened the HQ near Zossen. Gen. Krebs asked Hitler for permission to destroy the important items. By the time Krebs received permission, it was too late to destroy anything. Midday 20 April the OKH evacuated to Eiche near Potsdam and OKW to Krampnitz, the Russians arrived in the afternoon, finding the site empty apart from four German soldiers; the two Maybach bunkers were destroyed by the Soviet Armed Forces in late 1946, according to the stipulations of the four-power agreement on the occupation of Germany and an Allied Control Council order, although some buildings survived, including the entirely intact separate communications bunker Zeppelin. The Zeppelin bunker formed part of the Soviet Cold war era installations in Wünsdorf under the name Ranet.
Further bunker installations were subsequently added to house the central command and communications functions of the Soviet Army in the GDR. The area was demilitarised in 1994; the ruins of the above-ground bunker entrance houses remain. The area can be accessed by guided tours, a museum in the Wünsdorf Book Town houses exhibits on the military history of the town and the bunker complexes; some parts of the underground complex of Maybach I remain accessible through the ruins of the entrance buildings, together with the neighbouring communications bunker Zeppelin, while Maybach II has been nearly obliterated. Beevor, Antony. Berlin: The Downfall 1945. New York: Penguin Books, 2003. Joachimsthaler, Anton; the Last Days of Hitler: The Legends, The Evidence, The Truth. London: Brockhampton Press, 1999. Kaiser, Gerhard. Vom Sperrgebiet zur Waldstadt: die Geschichte der geheimen Kommandozentralen in Wünsdorf und Umgebung. Berlin: Links Verlag, 2007. Kaufmann, E. H. W. Kaufmann, Robert M. Jurga. Fortress Third Reich: German Fortifications and Defense Systems in World War II.
Cambridge, MA: De Capo Press, 2003. Le Tissier, Tony. Zhukov at the Oder: The Decisive Battle for Berlin. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1996. Von Hassell, Sigrid von Hoyningen-Huene MacRae, & Simone Ameskamp. Alliance of Enemies: The Untold Story of the Secret American and German Collaboration to End World War II. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2006. Site website Bunkers on Third Reich in Ruins Pictures of Maybach ILocation of Maybach I: 52.1934°N 13.4733°E / 52.1934.
Trinity
The Christian doctrine of the Trinity holds that God is one God, but three coeternal consubstantial persons or hypostases—the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit—as "one God in three Divine Persons". The three Persons are distinct, yet are one "substance, essence or nature". In this context, a "nature" is. Sometimes differing views are referred to as nontrinitarian. Trinitarianism contrasts with positions such as Binitarianism and Monarchianism, of which Modalistic Monarchianism and Unitarianism are subsets. While the developed doctrine of the Trinity is not explicit in the books that constitute the New Testament, the New Testament possesses a "triadic" understanding of God and contains a number of Trinitarian formulas; the doctrine of the Trinity was first formulated among the early Christians and fathers of the Church as early Christians attempted to understand the relationship between Jesus and God in their scriptural documents and prior traditions. The word trinity is derived from Latin trinitas, meaning "the number three, a triad, tri".
This abstract noun is formed from the adjective trinus, as the word unitas is the abstract noun formed from unus. The corresponding word in Greek is τριάς, meaning "a set of three" or "the number three"; the first recorded use of this Greek word in Christian theology was by Theophilus of Antioch in about the year 170. He wrote: In like manner the three days which were before the luminaries, are types of the Trinity, of God, His Word, His wisdom, and the fourth is the type of man, who needs light, that so there may be God, the Word, man. While the developed doctrine of the Trinity is not explicit in the books that constitute the New Testament, it was first formulated as early Christians attempted to understand the relationship between Jesus and God in their scriptural documents and prior traditions; the New Testament possesses a "triadic" understanding of God and contains a number of Trinitarian formulas. The Ante-Nicene Fathers asserted Christ's deity and spoke of "Father and Holy Spirit" though their language is not that of the traditional doctrine as formalized in the fourth century.
Trinitarians view these as elements of the codified doctrine. An early Trinitarian formula appears towards the end of the first century, where Clement of Rome rhetorically asks in his epistle as to why corruption exists among some in the Christian community. Ignatius of Antioch provides early support for the Trinity around 110, exhorting obedience to "Christ, to the Father, to the Spirit"; the pseudonymous Ascension of Isaiah, written sometime between the end of the first century and the beginning of the third century, possesses a "proto-trinitarian" view, such as in its narrative of how the inhabitants of the sixth heaven sing praises to "the primal Father and his Beloved Christ, the Holy Spirit". Justin Martyr writes, "in the name of God, the Father and Lord of the universe, of our Saviour Jesus Christ, of the Holy Spirit"; the first of the early church fathers to be recorded using the word "Trinity" was Theophilus of Antioch writing in the late 2nd century. He defines the Trinity as God, His Word and His Wisdom in the context of a discussion of the first three days of creation, following the early Christian practice of identifying the Holy Spirit as the Wisdom of God.
The first defense of the doctrine of the Trinity was in the early 3rd century by the early church father Tertullian. He explicitly defined the Trinity as Father and Holy Spirit and defended his theology against "Praxeas", though he noted that the majority of the believers in his day found issue with his doctrine. St. Justin and Clement of Alexandria used the Trinity in their doxologies and St. Basil in the evening lighting of lamps. Origen of Alexandria has been interpreted as Subordinationist, but some modern researchers have argued that Origen might have been anti-Subordinationist. Although there is much debate as to whether the beliefs of the Apostles were articulated and explained in the Trinitarian Creeds, or were corrupted and replaced with new beliefs, all scholars recognize that the Creeds themselves were created in reaction to disagreements over the nature of the Father and Holy Spirit; these controversies took some centuries to be resolved. Of these controversies, the most significant developments were articulated in the first four centuries by the Church Fathers in reaction to Adoptionism and Arianism.
Adoptionism was the belief that Jesus was an ordinary man, born of Joseph and Mary, who became the Christ and Son of God at his baptism. In 269, the Synods of Antioch condemned Paul of Samosata for his Adoptionist theology, condemned the term homoousios in the modalist sense in which he used it. Among the Non-Trinitarian beliefs, the Sabellianism taught that the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit are one and the same, the difference being verbal, describing different aspects or roles of a single being. For this view Sabellius was excommunicated for heresy in Rome c. 220. In the fourth century, Arianism, as traditionally understood, taught that the Father existed prior to the Son, not, by nature, God but rather a changeable creature, granted the dignity of becoming "Son of God". In 325, the First C
Halbmondlager
The Halbmondlager was a prisoner-of-war camp in Wünsdorf, during the First World War. The camp housed between 5,000 Muslim prisoners of war who had fought for the Allied side; the intended purpose of the camp was to convince detainees to wage jihad against the United Kingdom and France. To that end, "detainees lived in relative luxury and were given everything they needed to practise their faith", it was the site of the first mosque to be built in Germany, a large and ornate wooden structure finished in July 1915. The mosque, modelled on the Dome of the Rock, was demolished in 1925–26 owing to disrepair. There were about 80 Sikh prisoners and some Hindus from British India held in the camp, an Australian aborigine soldier named Douglas Grant and around 50 Irishmen. A subcamp, known as Inderlager, was established to house prisoners from India who were not pro-British; the leader of the "jihad experiment" was a German diplomat and aristocrat. He established an office nearby to lead a propaganda campaign with the "show camp", "self-consciously styled as a theatre for the wider world", at its centre.
Oppenheim was assisted by Shaykh Sâlih al-Sharîf, a Tunisian who had served in the Ottoman Empire's intelligence agency. He served as a spiritual leader for the detainees. Up to 3,000 of the detainees from the camp were recruited into the German Army to fight in North Africa and the Middle East. However, low morale and troop revolt plagued the resulting divisions, few believed in the jihadist cause. In 1917 the remaining prisoners were put to agricultural labour in Romania; the story of the camp was omitted from English-language texts until nearly a century after the war. It was discussed extensively in German history works. Gerhard Höpp: Die Wünsdorfer Moschee. Eine Episode islamischen Lebens in Deutschland, 1915-1930. In: Die Welt des Islams, 1996, pages 204–218. Gerhard Höpp: Muslime in der Mark. Als Kriegsgefangene und Internierte in Wünsdorf und Zossen, 1914–1924. Verlag Das Arabische Buch, Berlin 1997, ISBN 978-3-87997-590-7 Martin Gussone: Die Moschee im Wünsdorfer „Halbmondlager“ zwischen Gihad-Propaganda und Orientalismus.
In: Markus Ritter, Lorenz Korn: Beiträge zur Islamischen Kunst und Archäologie, Wiesbaden 2010, ISBN 978-3-89500-766-8, pages 204–232. Hanno Kabel: Gefangen unter der Moschee. In: Berliner Zeitung, 6 April 1996 Gefangene Bilder. Wissenschaft und Propaganda im Ersten Weltkrieg. Benedikt Burkard. Petersberg, Imhof Verlag, 2014. ISBN 9783731900696 Media related to Halbmondlager Wünsdorf at Wikimedia Commons
