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Alfons Rebane
Alfons Vilhelm Robert Rebane, known simply as Alfons Rebane (24 June 1908 – 8 March 1976) was an Estonian military commander. He was the most highly decorated Estonian military officer during World War II, serving in various Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS units of Nazi Germany. After World War II Rebane joined the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) where he played a key role in assisting the armed resistance to Soviet rule in Estonia and other Baltic countries. He led the Estonian portion of MI6's Operation Jungle well into the 1950s. In 1961, Rebane retired from the British intelligence services and moved to Germany, where he stayed until his death in Augsburg in 1976. The 1999 reburial of Rebane in Estonia with state honors triggered a number of controversies. Early life Rebane was born in Valga in southern Estonia, then part of the Governorate of Livonia of the Russian Empire. In 1920 Rebane, son of a railway official, attended the Russian secondary school in Narva. Fro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Valga, Estonia
Valga (german: Walk) is a town in southern Estonia and the capital of Valga County and Valga Parish. Until their separation in 1920, Valga and the town of Valka in northern Latvia were one town. They are now twin-towns. The area of Valga is and that of Valka is . Their populations are respectively 12,261 and 6,164. On 21 December 2007 all border-crossing points were removed and roads and fences opened between the two countries with both countries joining the Schengen Agreement. Location and transport The distance to Tartu is , Pärnu , Tallinn , Riga and Pskov . Valga is situated at the junction of roads and railways. The Hummuli–Tartu–Riga railway is connected via Tapa with the Tallinn–Narva–St Petersburg main line. After closing April 2008 for extensive repair work Edelaraudtee railway services from other parts of Estonia to Valga re-opened in January 2010. From 2014 all domestic train services in Estonia are operated by Elron who runs three services a day from V ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Latvia
Latvia ( or ; lv, Latvija ; ltg, Latveja; liv, Leţmō), officially the Republic of Latvia ( lv, Latvijas Republika, links=no, ltg, Latvejas Republika, links=no, liv, Leţmō Vabāmō, links=no), is a country in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is one of the Baltic states; and is bordered by Estonia to the north, Lithuania to the south, Russia to the east, Belarus to the southeast, and shares a maritime border with Sweden to the west. Latvia covers an area of , with a population of 1.9 million. The country has a temperate seasonal climate. Its capital and largest city is Riga. Latvians belong to the ethno-linguistic group of the Balts; and speak Latvian, one of the only two surviving Baltic languages. Russians are the most prominent minority in the country, at almost a quarter of the population. After centuries of Teutonic, Swedish, Polish-Lithuanian and Russian rule, which was mainly executed by the local Baltic German aristocracy, the independent R ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Narva
Narva, russian: Нарва is a municipality and city in Estonia. It is located in Ida-Viru County, Ida-Viru county, at the Extreme points of Estonia, eastern extreme point of Estonia, on the west bank of the Narva (river), Narva river which forms the Estonia–Russia border, Estonia–Russia international border. With 54,409 inhabitants (as of 2020) Narva is Estonia's third largest city after capital Tallinn and Tartu. In 1944, Narva was nearly completely destroyed during the battles of World War II. During the period of Soviet occupation of Estonia, Soviet occupation (1944–1991), the city’s original native inhabitants were not permitted to return after the war, and immigrant workers from Russia and other parts of the Soviet Union, former USSR were brought in to populate the city. The city whose population had been, as of 1934 census, 65% ethnic Estonian, became overwhelmingly non-Estonian in the second half of the 20th century. According to more recent data, 46.7% of th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Germany
Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated between the Baltic and North seas to the north, and the Alps to the south; it covers an area of , with a population of almost 84 million within its 16 constituent states. Germany borders Denmark to the north, Poland and the Czech Republic to the east, Austria and Switzerland to the south, and France, Luxembourg, Belgium, and the Netherlands to the west. The nation's capital and most populous city is Berlin and its financial centre is Frankfurt; the largest urban area is the Ruhr. Various Germanic tribes have inhabited the northern parts of modern Germany since classical antiquity. A region named Germania was documented before AD 100. In 962, the Kingdom of Germany formed the bulk of the Holy Roman Empire. During the 16th ce ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Operation Jungle
Operation Jungle was a programme by the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) early in the Cold War from 1949 to 1955 for the clandestine insertion of intelligence and resistance agents into Poland and the Baltic states. The agents were mostly Polish, Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian exiles who had been trained in the United Kingdom and Sweden and were to link up with the anti-Soviet resistance against the communist governments (the cursed soldiers, the Forest Brothers). The naval operations of the programme were carried out by German crew-members of the German Mine Sweeping Administration under the control of the Royal Navy. The American-sponsored Gehlen Organization also got involved in the draft of agents from Eastern Europe. However, the MGB penetrated the network and captured or turned most of the agents. History In the late 1940s MI6 established a special center in Chelsea, London, to train agents to be sent to the Baltic states. The operation was codenamed "Jungle ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Baltic Countries
The Baltic states, et, Balti riigid or the Baltic countries is a geopolitical term, which currently is used to group three countries: Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. All three countries are members of NATO, the European Union, the Eurozone, and the OECD. The three sovereign states on the eastern coast of the Baltic Sea are sometimes referred to as the "Baltic nations", less often and in historical circumstances also as the "Baltic republics", the "Baltic lands", or simply the Baltics. All three Baltic countries are classified as high-income economies by the World Bank and maintain a very high Human Development Index. The three governments engage in intergovernmental and parliamentary cooperation. There is also frequent cooperation in foreign and security policy, defence, energy, and transportation. The term "Baltic states" ("countries", "nations", or similar) cannot be used unambiguously in the context of cultural areas, national identity, or language. While the majority ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Estonia
Estonia, formally the Republic of Estonia, is a country by the Baltic Sea in Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland across from Finland, to the west by the sea across from Sweden, to the south by Latvia, and to the east by Lake Peipus and Russia. The territory of Estonia consists of the mainland, the larger islands of Saaremaa and Hiiumaa, and over 2,200 other islands and islets on the eastern coast of the Baltic Sea, covering a total area of . The capital city Tallinn and Tartu are the two largest urban areas of the country. The Estonian language is the autochthonous and the official language of Estonia; it is the first language of the majority of its population, as well as the world's second most spoken Finnic language. The land of what is now modern Estonia has been inhabited by '' Homo sapiens'' since at least 9,000 BC. The medieval indigenous population of Estonia was one of the last " pagan" civilisations in Europe to adopt Ch ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Forest Brothers
The Guerrilla war in the Baltic states was an armed struggle which was waged by the Latvian, Lithuanian, and Estonian partisans, called the Forest Brothers (also: the "Brothers of the Wood" and the "Forest Friars"; et, metsavennad, lv, mežabrāļi, lt, žaliukai), against the Soviet Union during the Soviet invasion and occupation of the three Baltic states both during and after World War II. Similar anti-Soviet Central and Eastern European resistance groups fought against Soviet and communist rule in Bulgaria, Poland, Romania, and western Ukraine. The Red Army occupied the independent Baltic states in 1940–1941 and, after a period of German occupation, it re-occupied them in 1944–1945. As Stalinist repression intensified over the following years, some 50,000 residents of these countries used the heavily forested countryside as a natural refuge and base for armed anti-Soviet insurgency. According to some estimates, 10,000 partisans in Estonia, 10,000 partisans in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was the German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a dictatorship. Under Hitler's rule, Germany quickly became a totalitarian state where nearly all aspects of life were controlled by the government. The Third Reich, meaning "Third Realm" or "Third Empire", alluded to the Nazi claim that Nazi Germany was the successor to the earlier Holy Roman Empire (800–1806) and German Empire (1871–1918). The Third Reich, which Hitler and the Nazis referred to as the Thousand-Year Reich, ended in May 1945 after just 12 years when the Allies defeated Germany, ending World War II in Europe. On 30 January 1933, Hitler was appointed chancellor of Germany, the head of gove ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis powers. World War II was a total war that directly involved more than 100 million personnel from more than 30 countries. The major participants in the war threw their entire economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities behind the war effort, blurring the distinction between civilian and military resources. Aircraft played a major role in the conflict, enabling the strategic bombing of population centres and deploying the only two nuclear weapons ever used in war. World War II was by far the deadliest conflict in human history; it resulted in 70 to 85 million fatalities, mostly among civilians. Tens of millions died due to genocides (including the Holocaust), starvation, ma ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eastern Front Medal
The Eastern Medal (german: Ostmedaille), officially the Winter Battle in the East 1941–42 Medal (german: Medaille Winterschlacht im Osten 1941/42, links=no), was a military award of the ''Wehrmacht'' which was created by ordinance of Adolf Hitler on 26 May 1942. The Eastern Medal was awarded to any member of the ''Wehrmacht'' and ''Waffen-SS'' "in recognition of experience in the struggle against the Bolshevik enemy and the Russian winter within the period from to ." It was also awarded posthumously to any service member who died in the line of duty within the Soviet Union. It was wryly called the ''Frozen Meat Medal'' or the "Order of the Frozen Flesh" (german: Gefrierfleischorden). Criteria ''Wehrmacht'' personnel qualified for the Eastern Medal after a minimum of 14 days in active combat; 30 air combat sorties; 60 days continuous of service in a combat zone; being wounded or suffering a "frozen limb", severe enough to warrant the issue of a Wound Badge, and it could be ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Close Combat Clasp
The Close Combat Clasp (german: Nahkampfspange) was a World War II German military award instituted on 25 November 1942 for participation in hand-to-hand fighting at close quarters. Intended primarily for infantry, other Wehrmacht, Waffen-SS, ground Luftwaffe units and paratroopers were also eligible. Eligibility The award was bestowed in three classes: *Bronze for 15 close combat actions; *Silver for 25 close combat actions; *Gold for 50 close combat actions. Close combat actions were counted from 1 December 1942, with earlier long service on the Eastern Front counting towards the award, with 15 continuous months counting as 15 combat days; 12 months as 10 days; and 8 months as 5 days. For those who had received disabling wounds, there was discretion to make the award after 10, 20 and 40 actions. As the war continued, a number of amendments were made to the award criteria: *From 4 August 1944, only front-line actions could count towards the clasp, with rear actions against ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
