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Battle For Castle Itter
The Battle of Castle Itter was fought on 5 May 1945, in the Austrian village of Itter in the North Tyrol region of the country, during the last days of the European Theater of World War II. Troops of the 23rd Tank Battalion of the 12th Armored Division of the US XXI Corps led by Captain John C. "Jack" Lee, Jr., a number of Wehrmacht soldiers led by Major Josef "Sepp" Gangl, SS-Hauptsturmführer Kurt-Siegfried Schrader, and recently freed French prisoners of war defended Castle Itter against an attacking force from the 17th SS Panzergrenadier Division until relief from the American 142nd Infantry Regiment of the 36th Division of XXI Corps arrived. The French prisoners included former prime ministers, generals, tennis star Jean Borotra, and Charles de Gaulle's sister. It is one of two known times during the war in which Americans and Germans fought side by side, the other being Operation Cowboy. Popular accounts of the battle have called it the strangest battle of World War ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Western Front (World War II)
The Western Front was a European theatre of World War II, military theatre of World War II encompassing Denmark, Norway, Luxembourg, Belgium, Netherlands, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, France, and Germany. The Italian campaign (World War II), Italian front is considered a separate but related theater. The Western Front's 1944-1945 phase was officially deemed the European Theater of Operations, United States Army, European Theater by the United States, whereas Italy fell under the Mediterranean Theater of Operations, United States Army, Mediterranean Theater along with North Africa. The Western Front was marked by two phases of large-scale combat operations. The first phase saw the capitulation of Luxembourg, Netherlands, Belgium, and France during May and June 1940 after their defeat in the Low Countries and the northern half of France, and continued into an air war between Germany and Britain that climaxed with the Battle of Britain. The second phase consisted of large- ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
XXI Corps (United States)
The XXI Corps was a corps of the U.S. Army during World War II. It was constituted on 2 December 1943, and activated on 6 December 1943 at Camp Polk, Louisiana. XXI Corps fought for 116 days in the European Theater of Operations, starting in the Alsace, crossing into southern Germany, and swarming into Austria, with individual elements reaching into northern Italy.Wallace, Linnel, Lt. Col., Commanding Officer, ''Summary History of the 289th Engineer Combat Battalion - WW II'', 1990, U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center, Carlisle, PA, pp. 27–28 Company B (with Wallace) cleared up into Brenner pass for an element of 12th Armored Division; Wallace describes being photographed in Italy, likely 4 May 1945. The corps was commanded in combat by Major General Frank W. Milburn as a subordinate unit of the Seventh U.S. Army. Eastern France The corps commenced combat operations 17 January 1945, during pitched battle by the U.S. Seventh Army to regain ground lost to Germany's Operati ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Édouard Daladier
Édouard Daladier (; 18 June 1884 – 10 October 1970) was a French Radical-Socialist (centre-left) politician, and the Prime Minister of France who signed the Munich Agreement before the outbreak of World War II. Daladier was born in Carpentras and began his political career before World War I. During the war, he fought on the Western Front and was decorated for his service. After the war, he became a leading figure in the Radical Party and Prime Minister in 1933 and 1934. Daladier was Minister of Defence from 1936 to 1940 and Prime Minister again in 1938. As head of government, he expanded the French welfare state in 1939. Along with Neville Chamberlain, Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler, Daladier signed the Munich Agreement in 1938, which gave Nazi Germany control over the Sudetenland. After Hitler's invasion of Poland in 1939, Britain and France declared war on Germany. During the Phoney War, France's failure to aid Finland against the Soviet Union's invasion during the W ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dachau Concentration Camp
, , commandant = List of commandants , known for = , location = Upper Bavaria, Southern Germany , built by = Germany , operated by = ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS) , original use = Political prison , construction = , in operation = March 1933 – April 1945 , gas chambers = , prisoner type = Political prisoners, Poles, Romani, Jews, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, Catholic priests, Communists , inmates = Over 188,000 (estimated) , killed = 41,500 (per Dachau website) , liberated by = U.S. Army , notable inmates = , notable books = , website = Dachau () was the first concentration camp built by Nazi Germany, opening on 22 March 1933. The camp was initially intended to intern Hitler's political opponents which consisted of: communists, social democrats, and other dissidents. It is located on the grounds of an abandoned munitions factory northeast of the medieval town of Dachau, about northwest o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Luitpold Himmler (; 7 October 1900 – 23 May 1945) was of the (Protection Squadron; SS), and a leading member of the Nazi Party of Germany. Himmler was one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany and a main architect of the Holocaust. As a member of a reserve battalion during World War I, Himmler did not see active service, and did not fight. He studied agriculture in university, and joined the Nazi Party in 1923 and the SS in 1925. In 1929, he was appointed by Adolf Hitler. Over the next 16 years, he developed the SS from a 290-man battalion into a million-strong paramilitary group, and set up and controlled the Nazi concentration camps. He was known for good organisational skills and for selecting highly competent subordinates, such as Reinhard Heydrich in 1931. From 1943 onwards, he was both Chief of German Police and Minister of the Interior, overseeing all internal and external police and security forces, including the Gestapo (Secret State Police). H ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Oswald Pohl
Oswald Ludwig Pohl (; 30 June 1892 – 7 June 1951) was a German SS functionary during the Nazi era. As the head of the SS Main Economic and Administrative Office and the head administrator of the Nazi concentration camps, he was a key figure in the Final Solution, the genocide of the European Jews. After the war, Pohl went into hiding; he was apprehended in 1946. Pohl stood trial in 1947, was convicted of crimes against humanity, and sentenced to death. After repeatedly appealing his case, he was executed by hanging in 1951. Early life and career Oswald Pohl was born in Duisburg-Ruhrort on 30 June 1892 to blacksmith, Hermann Otto Emil Pohl, and his wife Auguste Pohl (née Seifert); he was the fifth of eight children. His parents were financially secure, and he attended a ''Realgymnasium'' where he studied classical Greek and Latin texts. From what Pohl claimed, he always wanted to study science but his father did not have the means to send him straight to university. In 1912, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Anschluss
The (, or , ), also known as the (, en, Annexation of Austria), was the annexation of the Federal State of Austria into the German Reich on 13 March 1938. The idea of an (a united Austria and Germany that would form a " Greater Germany") began after the unification of Germany excluded Austria and the German Austrians from the Prussian-dominated German Empire in 1871. Following the end of World War I with the fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, in 1918, the newly formed Republic of German-Austria attempted to form a union with Germany, but the Treaty of Saint Germain (10 September 1919) and the Treaty of Versailles (28 June 1919) forbade both the union and the continued use of the name "German-Austria" (); and stripped Austria of some of its territories, such as the Sudetenland. Prior to the , there had been strong support in both Austria and Germany for unification of the two countries. In the immediate aftermath of the dissolution of the Habsburg monarchy—with ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Operation Cowboy
Operation Cowboy was fought in the Czechoslovakian village of Hostau (now Hostouň, Czech Republic), on 28 April 1945, in the last days of fighting in the European Theater of World War II. It is one of two known incidents during the war in which Americans and Germans of the Wehrmacht fought side by side against the Waffen-SS, the other being the Battle of Castle Itter. Background After the annexation of Austria to Nazi Germany in 1938, the Lipizzaner Breeding Mares of the Spanish Riding School in Vienna were transferred to an experimental farm in the village of Hostau, in Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia. The goal was to create a race of "Aryan horses". The head of the Spanish Riding School, Alois Podhajsky, was a famed German horseman and dressage expert, and had been a bronze medallist at the 1936 Olympics. He had also been an Austrian Army officer, and by 1938 had been enrolled in the Wehrmacht with the rank of Major. In the final phases of World War II, Hostau was on the ad ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charles De Gaulle
Charles André Joseph Marie de Gaulle (; ; (commonly abbreviated as CDG) 22 November 18909 November 1970) was a French army officer and statesman who led Free France against Nazi Germany in World War II and chaired the Provisional Government of the French Republic from 1944 to 1946 in order to restore democracy in France. In 1958, he came out of retirement when appointed President of the Council of Ministers (Prime Minister) by President René Coty. He rewrote the Constitution of France and founded the Fifth Republic after approval by referendum. He was elected President of France later that year, a position to which he was reelected in 1965 and held until his resignation in 1969. Born in Lille, he graduated from Saint-Cyr in 1912. He was a decorated officer of the First World War, wounded several times and later taken prisoner at Verdun. During the interwar period, he advocated mobile armoured divisions. During the German invasion of May 1940, he led an armoured divisio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jean Borotra
Jean Laurent Robert Borotra (, ; 13 August 1898 – 17 July 1994) was a French tennis champion. He was one of the "The Four Musketeers (tennis), Four Musketeers" from his country who dominated tennis in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Borotra was imprisoned in Itter Castle during the latter years of World War II and subsequently fought in the Battle for Castle Itter. Career Borotra was born in Domaine du Pouy, Biarritz, Aquitaine, the oldest of four children. Known as "the Bounding Basque people, Basque", he won four Grand Slam in tennis, Grand Slam singles titles in the French Open, French, Australian Open, Australian, and The Championships, Wimbledon, All England championships. The 1924 French Championship does not count towards his grand slam total as the French was only open to French nationals and members of French clubs. He only failed to win the US Open (tennis), U.S. Championships, as he was defeated in the final by his countryman René Lacoste in straight sets, thus mis ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
36th Infantry Division (United States)
The 36th Infantry Division ("Arrowhead"), also known as the "Panther Division", "Lone Star Division", history.army.mil, last updated 20 May 2011, last accessed 23 January 2017 "The Texas Army", or the "T-patchers", is an of the and part of the Texas Army National Guard. It was organized during |
17th SS Panzergrenadier Division Götz Von Berlichingen
The 17th SS Panzergrenadier Division "Götz von Berlichingen" (german: 17. SS-Panzergrenadier-Division "Götz von Berlichingen") was a German Waffen-SS division that saw action on the Western Front during World War II. Formation and training The division was raised near Poitiers, France, as the ''Panzer-Grenadier-Division "Götz von Berlichingen"'' in October 1943. It was formed from scratch, with the majority of its original cadre coming from replacement units and conscripts, many of whom were Romanian Germans and French volunteers. After September 8, 1943, around five hundred Italian volunteers, coming from units deployed in France were enlisted in "Götz von Berlichingen". The division was granted the honour-title ''Götz von Berlichingen''. Obersturmbannführer Otto Binge oversaw the formation of the division, with the newly promoted Brigadeführer Werner Ostendorff taking command in January 1944. The ''Götz von Berlichingen'' was placed under the LXXX Army Corps, a p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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