Hermann Priess
Hermann August Fredrich Priess (24 May 1901 – 2 February 1985) was a German general in the Waffen-SS and a war criminal during World War II. He commanded the SS Division Totenkopf ("Death's Head") following the death of Theodor Eicke in February 1943. On 30 October 1944 he was appointed commander of the I SS Panzer Corps and led it during the Battle of the Bulge. After the war, Priess was convicted of war crimes for his involvement in the Malmedy massacre, and was sentenced to 20 years imprisonment. He was released from the Landsberg Prison in 1954. Career Born in 1901, Priess volunteered for military service in the army of the German Empire in January 1919, which was transformed to the Reichsheer in the Weimar Republic. Due to the limitations imposed by the Treaty of Versailles, his regiment was disbanded. He then joined the paramilitary group ''Freikorps'' and fought in the Estonian War of Independence. In 1920, he returned to the army and was discharged in June 19 ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Marnitz
Marnitz is a village and a former municipality in the Ludwigslust-Parchim district, in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany. Since January 2019, it is part of the new municipality Ruhner Berge. Hermann Prieß Hermann August Fredrich Priess (24 May 1901 – 2 February 1985) was a German general in the Waffen-SS and a war criminal during World War II. He commanded the SS Division Totenkopf ("Death's Head") following the death of Theodor Eicke in Februa ... was born there in 1901. References Ludwigslust-Parchim Former municipalities in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania {{LudwigslustParchim-geo-stub ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Operation Southwind
Operation Southwind (german: Unternehmen Südwind) was a German offensive operation on the Eastern Front in Hungary, from 17–24 February 1945. The Germans succeeded in eliminating the Soviet bridgehead on the west bank of the river Hron in preparation for Operation Spring Awakening. This was one of the last successful German offensives in the Second World War. Prelude The Budapest Offensive was the general attack by Red Army against Hungary. This offensive lasted from 29 October 1944 until the fall of Budapest on 13 February 1945. By that time, in Hitler’s estimation, the Nagykanizsa oilfields in Hungary were the most strategically valuable oil reserves on the Eastern Front. Hitler ordered Sepp Dietrich's 6th SS Panzer Army to move to Hungary in order to protect the oilfields and refineries there. The 6th SS Panzer Army was to be the spearhead of Operation Spring Awakening. The units of the 6th SS Panzer Army were to be smuggled into Hungary with utmost care and secrecy ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Freikorps In The Baltic
After 1918, the term Freikorps was used for the anti-communist paramilitary organizations that sprang up around the German Empire and the Baltics, as soldiers returned in defeat from World War I. It was one of the many Weimar paramilitary groups active during that time. 1917: Russia cedes the Baltics to Germany In 1918, the Russian Bolsheviks ceded the Baltic areas to Germany under the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. The Imperial German government established occupation governments in Estonia and Latvia and granted independence to a puppet government in Lithuania on March 25, 1918. The German Ober Ost occupation authorities under command of Prince Leopold of Bavaria favored the Baltic Germans, who had been the most dominant local ethnic group socially, economically, and politically in Courland, Livonia, and Estonia. On March 8 and April 12, 1918, the local Baltic German-dominated Land Council of Courland and the United Land Council of Livonia, Estonia, Riga and Ösel had decl ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Treaty Of Versailles
The Treaty of Versailles (french: Traité de Versailles; german: Versailler Vertrag, ) was the most important of the peace treaties of World War I. It ended the state of war between Germany and the Allied Powers. It was signed on 28 June 1919 in the Palace of Versailles, exactly five years after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, which led to the war. The other Central Powers on the German side signed separate treaties. Although the armistice of 11 November 1918 ended the actual fighting, it took six months of Allied negotiations at the Paris Peace Conference to conclude the peace treaty. The treaty was registered by the Secretariat of the League of Nations on 21 October 1919. Of the many provisions in the treaty, one of the most important and controversial was: "The Allied and Associated Governments affirm and Germany accepts the responsibility of Germany and her allies for causing all the loss and damage to which the Allied and Associated Governments and t ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Weimar Republic
The German Reich, commonly referred to as the Weimar Republic,, was a historical period of Germany from 9 November 1918 to 23 March 1933, during which it was a constitutional federal republic for the first time in history; hence it is also referred to, and unofficially proclaimed itself, as the German Republic. The period's informal name is derived from the city of Weimar, which hosted the constituent assembly that established its government. In English, the republic was usually simply called "Germany", with "Weimar Republic" (a term introduced by Adolf Hitler in 1929) not commonly used until the 1930s. After the end of the First World War (1914–1918), Germany was exhausted and sued for peace in desperate circumstances. Awareness of imminent defeat sparked a revolution, the abdication of Kaiser Wilhelm II, formal surrender to the Allies, and the proclamation of the Weimar Republic on 9 November 1918. In its initial years, grave problems beset the Republic, such as h ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Reichsheer
''Reichswehr'' () was the official name of the German armed forces during the Weimar Republic and the first years of the Third Reich. After Germany was defeated in World War I, the Imperial German Army () was dissolved in order to be reshaped into a peacetime army. From it a provisional Reichswehr was formed in March 1919. Under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, the rebuilt German army was subject to severe limitations in size and armament. The official formation of the Reichswehr took place on 1 January 1921 after the limitations had been met. The German armed forces kept the name 'Reichswehr' until Adolf Hitler's 1935 proclamation of the "restoration of military sovereignty", at which point it became part of the new . Although ostensibly apolitical, the Reichswehr acted as a state within a state, and its leadership was an important political power factor in the Weimar Republic. The Reichswehr sometimes supported the democratic government, as it did in the Ebert-Gro ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Landsberg Prison
Landsberg Prison is a penal facility in the town of Landsberg am Lech in the southwest of the German state of Bavaria, about west-southwest of Munich and south of Augsburg. It is best known as the prison where Adolf Hitler was held in 1924, after the failed Beer Hall Putsch in Munich, and where he dictated his memoirs ''Mein Kampf'' to Rudolf Hess. The prison was used by the Allied powers during the Occupation of Germany for holding Nazi War Criminals. In 1946, General Joseph T. McNarney, commander in chief of U.S. Forces of Occupation in Germany, renamed Landsberg War Criminal Prison Nr. 1. The Americans closed the war crimes facility in 1958. Full control of the prison was then handed over to the Federal Republic of Germany. Landsberg is now maintained by the Prison Service of the Bavarian Ministry of Justice. Early years Landsberg Prison, which is in the town's western outskirts, was completed in 1910. The facility was designed with an ''Art Nouveau'' frontage by Hug ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Malmedy Massacre
The Malmedy massacre was a German war crime committed by soldiers of the on 17 December 1944, at the Baugnez crossroads near the city of Malmedy, Belgium, during the Battle of the Bulge (16 December 1944 – 25 January 1945). Soldiers of summarily killed eighty-four U.S. Army prisoners of war (POWs) who had surrendered after a brief battle. The soldiers had grouped the U.S. POWs in a farmer's field, where they used machine guns to shoot and kill the grouped POWs; the prisoners of war who survived the gunfire of the massacre then were killed with a ''coup de grâce'' gun-shot to the head. Besides the summary execution of the eighty-four U.S. POWs at the farmer’s field, the term "Malmedy massacre" also includes other massacres of civilians and POWs in Belgian villages and towns in the time after their first massacre of U.S. POWs at Malmedy; these war crimes were the subjects of the Malmedy massacre trial (May–July 1946), which was a part of the Dachau trials (1945–1 ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Theodor Eicke
Theodor Eicke (17 October 1892 – 26 February 1943) was a senior SS functionary and Waffen SS divisional commander during the Nazi era. He was one of the key figures in the development of Nazi concentration camps. Eicke served as the second commandant of the Dachau concentration camp from June 1933 to July 1934, and together with his adjutant Michael Lippert, was one of the executioners of SA Chief Ernst Röhm during the Night of the Long Knives purge of 1934. He continued to expand and develop the concentration camp system and was the first Concentration Camps Inspector. In 1939, Eicke became commander of the SS Division Totenkopf of the Waffen-SS, leading the division during the Second World War on the Western and Eastern fronts. Eicke was killed on 26 February 1943, when his plane was shot down during the Third Battle of Kharkov. Early life and World War I Theodor Eicke was born on 17 October 1892, in Hampont (renamed ''Hudingen'' in 1915) near Château-Salins, t ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Deceased
Death is the irreversible cessation of all biological functions that sustain an organism. For organisms with a brain, death can also be defined as the irreversible cessation of functioning of the whole brain, including brainstem, and brain death is sometimes used as a legal definition of death. The remains of a former organism normally begin to decompose shortly after death. Death is an inevitable process that eventually occurs in almost all organisms. Death is generally applied to whole organisms; the similar process seen in individual components of an organism, such as cells or tissues, is necrosis. Something that is not considered an organism, such as a virus, can be physically destroyed but is not said to die. As of the early 21st century, over 150,000 humans die each day, with ageing being by far the most common cause of death. Many cultures and religions have the idea of an afterlife, and also may hold the idea of judgement of good and bad deeds in one's life (heave ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |