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German Occupation Of Estonia During World War II
During World War II, in the course of Operation Barbarossa, Nazi Germany invaded Estonia in July–December 1941, and occupied the country until 1944. Estonia had gained independence in 1918 from the then warring German and Russian Empires. However, in the wake of the August 1939 Nazi-Soviet Pact, the Stalinist Soviet Union had invaded and occupied Estonia in June 1940, and the country was formally annexed into the USSR in August 1940. Initially, in the summer of 1941, the German invaders were perceived by most Estonians as liberators from the Soviet terror, having arrived only a week after the mass deportation of tens of thousands of people from Estonia and other territories that had been occupied by USSR in 1939–1941: eastern Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina. Although hopes were raised for the restoration of Estonia's independence, it was soon realized that Germans were but another occupying power. The Nazi German authorities exploited occu ... [...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] |
Romani People
The Romani (also spelled Romany or Rromani , ), colloquially known as the Roma, are an Indo-Aryan ethnic group, traditionally nomadic itinerants. They live in Europe and Anatolia, and have diaspora populations located worldwide, with significant concentrations in the Americas. In the English language, the Romani people are widely known by the exonym Gypsies (or Gipsies), which is considered pejorative by many Romani people due to its connotations of illegality and irregularity as well as its historical use as a racial slur. For versions (some of which are cognates) of the word in many other languages (e.g., , , it, zingaro, , and ) this perception is either very small or non-existent. At the first World Romani Congress in 1971, its attendees unanimously voted to reject the use of all exonyms for the Romani people, including ''Gypsy'', due to their aforementioned negative and stereotypical connotations. Linguistic and genetic evidence suggests that the Roma originated ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army (Russian: Рабо́че-крестья́нская Кра́сная армия),) often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and, after 1922, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The army was established in January 1918. The Bolsheviks raised an army to oppose the military confederations (especially the various groups collectively known as the White Army) of their adversaries during the Russian Civil War. Starting in February 1946, the Red Army, along with the Soviet Navy, embodied the main component of the Soviet Armed Forces; taking the official name of "Soviet Army", until its dissolution in 1991. The Red Army provided the largest land force in the Allied victory in the European theatre of World War II, and its invasion of Manchuria assisted the unconditional surrender of Imperial Japan. During operations on the Eastern Front, it accounted for 75–80% of casual ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Guerrilla War In The Baltic States
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] |
Soviet Destruction Battalion 1941
Destruction battalions,, uk, Винищувальні батальйони, be, Zniszczalnyja batalëny, , et, hävituspataljonid, lt, Naikintojų batalionai, lv, Iznīcinātāju bataljoni, group=nb colloquially istrebitels (истребители, "destroyers", "exterminators") abbreviated: istrebki (Russian), strybki (Ukrainian), lt, stribai, link=no, were paramilitary units under the control of NKVD in the western Soviet Union, which performed tasks of internal security on the Eastern Front and after it. After the Fall of the Soviet Union the battalions were deemed by the Riigikogu (Parliament of Estonia) to be a criminal organisation. Background As Germany attacked the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941, a state of war was declared in the western regions of the country. Vladimir Tributs the Commander-in-Chief of the Baltic Fleet of the Soviet Union issued an order on 24 June 1941 warning of the paralysing actions of enemy paratrooper squads aided by the "capitalist-kulak" ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Scorched Earth
A scorched-earth policy is a military strategy that aims to destroy anything that might be useful to the enemy. Any assets that could be used by the enemy may be targeted, which usually includes obvious weapons, transport vehicles, communication sites, and industrial resources. However, anything useful to the advancing enemy may be targeted, including food stores and agricultural areas, water sources, and even the local people themselves, though the last has been banned under the 1977 Geneva Conventions. The practice can be carried out by the military in enemy territory or in its own home territory while it is being invaded. It may overlap with, but is not the same as, punitive destruction of the enemy's resources, which is usually done as part of political strategy, rather than operational strategy. Notable historic examples of scorched-earth tactics include William Tecumseh Sherman's March to the Sea in the American Civil War, Kit Carson's subjugation of the America ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili; – 5 March 1953) was a Georgian revolutionary and Soviet political leader who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. He held power as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (1922–1952) and Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union (1941–1953). Initially governing the country as part of a collective leadership, he consolidated power to become a dictator by the 1930s. Ideologically adhering to the Leninist interpretation of Marxism, he formalised these ideas as Marxism–Leninism, while his own policies are called Stalinism. Born to a poor family in Gori in the Russian Empire (now Georgia), Stalin attended the Tbilisi Spiritual Seminary before joining the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. He edited the party's newspaper, ''Pravda'', and raised funds for Vladimir Lenin's Bolshevik faction via robberies, kidnappings and protection ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Continuation War
The Continuation War, also known as the Second Soviet-Finnish War, was a conflict fought by Finland and Nazi Germany against the Soviet Union from 1941 to 1944, as part of World War II.; sv, fortsättningskriget; german: Fortsetzungskrieg. According to Finnish historian Olli Vehviläinen, the term 'Continuation War' was created at the start of the conflict by the Finnish government, to justify the invasion to the population as a continuation of the defensive Winter War and separate from the German war effort. He titled the chapter addressing the issue in his book as "Finland's War of Retaliation". Vehviläinen asserted that the reality of that claim changed when the Finnish forces crossed the 1939 frontier and started annexation operations. The US Library of Congress catalogue also lists the variants War of Retribution and War of Continuation (see authority control)., group="Note" In Soviet historiography, the war was called the Finnish Front of the Great Patriotic War.. Alter ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Siege Of Leningrad Eastern Front 1941 06 To 1941 12
A siege is a military blockade of a city, or fortress, with the intent of conquering by attrition, or a well-prepared assault. This derives from la, sedere, lit=to sit. Siege warfare is a form of constant, low-intensity conflict characterized by one party holding a strong, static, defensive position. Consequently, an opportunity for negotiation between combatants is common, as proximity and fluctuating advantage can encourage diplomacy. The art of conducting and resisting sieges is called siege warfare, siegecraft, or poliorcetics. A siege occurs when an attacker encounters a city or fortress that cannot be easily taken by a quick assault, and which refuses to surrender. Sieges involve surrounding the target to block the provision of supplies and the reinforcement or escape of troops (a tactic known as "investment"). This is typically coupled with attempts to reduce the fortifications by means of siege engines, artillery bombardment, mining (also known as sapping), or the use ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Reichskommissariat Ostland
The Reichskommissariat Ostland (RKO) was established by Nazi Germany in 1941 during World War II. It became the civilian occupation regime in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and the western part of Byelorussian SSR. German planning documents initially referred to an equivalent ''Reichskommissariat Baltenland''. The political organization for this territory – after an initial period of military administration before its establishment – involved a German civilian administration, nominally under the authority of the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories led by Nazi ideologist Alfred Rosenberg, but actually controlled by the Nazi official Hinrich Lohse, its appointed ''Reichskommissar''. Germany's main political objectives for the ''Reichskommissariat'', as laid out by the Ministry within the framework of Nazism's policies for the east established by Adolf Hitler, included the genocide of the Jewish population, as well as the ''Lebensraum'' settlement of ethnic Germa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Generalbezirk Estland
Generalbezirk Estland (General District Estonia) was one of the four administrative subdivisions of '' Reichskommissariat Ostland'', the 1941-1945 civilian occupation regime established by Nazi Germany for the administration of the three Baltic countries (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) and the western part of the Byelorussian SSR. Organization and Structure ''Generalbezirk Estland'' was the last of the four districts to be formally established on 5 December 1941. It was organized on the territory of German-occupied Estonia, which had until then been under the military administration of the ''Wehrmacht's'' Army Group North. The capital of ''Generalbezirk Estland'' was Tallinn (Reval). Administrative divisions ''Generalbezirk Estland'' had the following seven subdivisions called ''Kreisgebiete'' (County Areas). The seat of administration is in parentheses. *Arensburg (Kuressaare) *Dorpat ( Tartu) *Narwa ( Rakvere) *Pernau (Pärnu) *Petschur (Pechory) *Reval-Stadt (Tallinn) *Re ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Estonian International Commission For Investigation Of Crimes Against Humanity
The Estonian International Commission for Investigation of Crimes Against Humanity (; also known as the History Commission or Max Jakobson Commission) was the commission established by President of Estonia Lennart Meri in October 1998 to investigate crimes against humanity committed in Estonia or against its citizens during the Soviet and German occupation, such as Soviet deportations from Estonia and the Holocaust in Estonia. It held its first session in Tallinn in January 1999. To promote independent inquiry and avoid conflict of interest, there were no Estonian citizens among its members. Finnish diplomat Max Jakobson was appointed chairman of the commission. Research of the Commission has been relied on by the European Court of Human Rights, for example in its decision to not grant certiorari to review a complaint by August Kolk and Pyotr Kislyy, who had been convicted of crimes against humanity due to their roles in the Soviet deportations from Estonia.Eesti Päevaleht 27 M ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
