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Hans Massaquoi
Hans-Jürgen Massaquoi (January 19, 1926 – January 19, 2013) was a German-American journalist and author. He was born in Hamburg, Germany, to a German mother and a Liberian father of Vai ethnicity, the grandson of Momulu Massaquoi, the consul general of Liberia in Germany at the time. He wrote his autobiography ''Destined to Witness. Growing up Black in Nazi Germany'', published in 1999. The German translation of it was published the same year, as ''Neger, Neger, Schornsteinfeger. Meine Kindheit in Deutschland.'' The German version was adapted as a film ' and released in 2006. He later published a second autobiography, only in German: ''Hänschen klein, ging allein … Mein Weg in die Neue Welt'' (2004). Childhood in Germany In his autobiography, '' Destined to Witness'', Massaquoi describes his childhood and youth in Hamburg during the Nazis' rise to power. His autobiography provides a unique point of view: he was one of the very few German-born children of German an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Weimar Republic
The Weimar Republic (german: link=no, Weimarer Republik ), officially named the German Reich, was the government of Germany from 1918 to 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 (german: Deutsche Republik, link=no, label=none). The state'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. Following the devastation 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 i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vai People
The Vai are a Mande-speaking ethnic group that live mostly in Liberia, with a small minority living in south-eastern Sierra Leone. The Vai are known for their indigenous Syllabary, syllabic writing system known as Vai syllabary, developed in the 1820s by Momolu Duwalu Bukele and other Vai elders. Over the course of the 19th century, literacy in the writing system became widespread. Its use declined over the 20th century, but modern computer technology may enable a revival. The Vai people speak the Vai language, which is of the Mande languages. The Sierra Leonean Vai are predominantly found in Pujehun District (around the Liberian border). Many Sierra Leonean villages that border Liberia are populated by the Vai. In total only about 1200 Vai live in Sierra Leone. History The earliest written documentation of the Vai is by Dutch merchants sometime in the first half of the 17th century, denoting a political group near Cape Mount. The Vai likely settled there as part of the M ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
82nd Airborne Division
The 82nd Airborne Division is an Airborne forces, airborne infantry division (military), division of the United States Army specializing in Paratrooper, parachute assault operations into denied areasSof, Eric"82nd Airborne Division" ''Spec Ops Magazine'', 25 November 2012. Archived from thoriginalon 1 September 2017. with a United States Department of Defense, U.S. Department of Defense requirement to "respond to crisis contingencies anywhere in the world within 18 hours".82nd Airborne Division Army.mil, dated 16 May 2018, last accessed 11 September 2018 Based at Fort Bragg, Fort Bragg, North Carolina, the 82nd Airborne Division is part of the XVIII Airborne Corps. The 82nd Airborne Division is the U.S. Army's most strategically mobile division. The division was constituted, originally as the 82nd Division, in the National Ar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Swing Kids
The Swing Youth (german: Swingjugend) were a group of jazz and swing lovers in Germany formed in Hamburg in 1939. Primarily active in Hamburg and Berlin, they were composed of 14- to 21-year-old Germans, mostly middle or upper-class students, but also including some in the working class. They admired the "American way of life", defining themselves in swing music and opposing the National-Socialist ideology, especially the Hitler Youth (german: Hitlerjugend, links=no). They loosely structured themselves into “clubs” with names such as the Harlem Club, the OK Gang, and the Hot Club. This underground subculture, distinctly nonconformist with a focus on African-American music was active in the German youth scene. Despite being largely apolitical and unstructured, the Swing Youth were targeted and, in some cases repressed by the Nazi Government. Name The name ' was a parody of the numerous youth groups that were organised by the Nazis, such as the '. The youth also referred t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ralph Giordano (writer)
Ralph Giordano (23 March 1923 – 10 December 2014) was a German writer and publicist. Life and career Giordano was born to a Sicilian father and a German Jewish mother in Hamburg. He attended the Gelehrtenschule des Johanneums from 1933 to 1940. Because his mother, a piano teacher, was Jewish, the family was persecuted repeatedly after the Nazis seized power in January 1933. Ultimately, they survived the Holocaust by hiding in a friend's cellar. After his wartime experiences, Giordano temporarily became a communist. In 1955, he settled in the German Democratic Republic, but soon grew disillusioned because of his dislike of Stalinism and returned to Hamburg (in West Germany). Giordano left the German Communist Party in 1957. In 1961, he published ''The Party Is Always Right!'', a book about his break with communism and the crimes of Josef Stalin. In 1958, Giordano reported on West German trials of Nazi war criminals for the Central Council of Jews in Germany (''Zentralrat der ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eastern Front (World War II)
The Eastern Front of World War II was a Theater (warfare), theatre of conflict between the European Axis powers against the Soviet Union (USSR), Polish Armed Forces in the East, Poland and other Allies of World War II, Allies, which encompassed Central Europe, Eastern Europe, Northern Europe, Northeast Europe (Baltic states, Baltics), and Southeast Europe (Balkans) from 22 June 1941 to 9 May 1945. It was known as the Great Patriotic War (term), Great Patriotic War in the Soviet Union – and still is in some of its successor states, while almost everywhere else it has been called the ''Eastern Front''. In present-day German and Ukrainian historiography the name German-Soviet War is typically used. The battles on the Eastern Front of the Second World War constituted the largest military confrontation in history. They were characterised by unprecedented ferocity and brutality, wholesale destruction, mass deportations, and immense loss of life due to combat, starvation, expos ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
German Casualties In World War II
Statistics for German World War II military casualties are divergent. The wartime military casualty figures compiled by German High Command, up until January 31, 1945, are often cited by military historians when covering individual campaigns in the war. A recent study by German historian Rüdiger Overmans found that the German military casualties were 5.3 million, including 900,000 men conscripted from outside of Germany's 1937 borders, in Austria and in east-central Europe, higher than those originally reported by the German high command. The German government reported that its records list 4.3 million dead and missing military personnel. According to the German government ''Suchdienste'' (Search Service) there were 300,000 German victims (including Jews) of Nazi racial, political and religious persecution. This statistic does not include 200,000 German people with disabilities who were murdered in the Action T4 and Action 14f13 euthanasia programs. German sources for military ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nuremberg Laws
The Nuremberg Laws (german: link=no, Nürnberger Gesetze, ) were antisemitic and racist laws that were enacted in Nazi Germany on 15 September 1935, at a special meeting of the Reichstag convened during the annual Nuremberg Rally of the Nazi Party. The two laws were the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour, which forbade marriages and extramarital intercourse between Jews and Germans and the employment of German females under 45 in Jewish households; and the Reich Citizenship Law, which declared that only those of German or related blood were eligible to be Reich citizens. The remainder were classed as state subjects without any citizenship rights. A supplementary decree outlining the definition of who was Jewish was passed on 14 November, and the Reich Citizenship Law officially came into force on that date. The laws were expanded on 26 November 1935 to include Romani and Black people. This supplementary decree defined Romanis as "enemies of the rac ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nazi Salute
The Nazi salute, also known as the Hitler salute (german: link=no, Hitlergruß, , Hitler greeting, ; also called by the Nazi Party , 'German greeting', ), or the ''Sieg Heil'' salute, is a gesture that was used as a greeting in Nazi Germany. The salute is performed by extending the right arm from the shoulder into the air with a straightened hand. Usually, the person offering the salute would say "''Heil Hitler!''" (lit. 'Hail Hitler!', ), ''"Heil, mein Führer!"'' ('Hail, my leader!'), or ''"Sieg Heil!"'' ('Hail victory!'). It was adopted in the 1930s by the Nazi Party to signal obedience to the party's leader, Adolf Hitler, and to glorify the German nation (and later the German war effort). The salute was mandatory for civiliansKershaw (2001), p. 60 but mostly optional for military personnel, who retained a traditional military salute until the failed assassination attempt on Hitler on 20 July 1944. Use of this salute is illegal in modern-day Germany (Strafgesetzbuch se ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sicherheitsdienst
' (, ''Security Service''), full title ' (Security Service of the ''Reichsführer-SS''), or SD, was the intelligence agency of the SS and the Nazi Party in Nazi Germany. Established in 1931, the SD was the first Nazi intelligence organization and the Gestapo (formed in 1933) was considered its sister organization through the integration of SS members and operational procedures. The SD was administered as an independent SS office between 1933 and 1939. That year, the SD was transferred over to the Reich Security Main Office (''Reichssicherheitshauptamt''; RSHA), as one of its seven departments. Its first director, Reinhard Heydrich, intended for the SD to bring every single individual within the Third Reich's reach under "continuous supervision". Following Germany's defeat in World War II, the tribunal at the Nuremberg trials officially declared that the SD was a criminal organisation, along with the rest of Heydrich's RSHA (including the Gestapo) both individually and as branch ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rassenschande
''Rassenschande'' (, "racial shame") or ''Blutschande'' ( "blood disgrace") was an anti-miscegenation concept in Nazi German racial policy, pertaining to sexual relations between Aryans and non-Aryans. It was put into practice by policies like the Aryan certificate requirement, Leila J. Rupp, ''Mobilizing Women for War'', p 125, and later by anti-miscegenation laws such as the Nuremberg Laws, adopted unanimously by the Reichstag on 15 September 1935. Initially, these laws referred predominantly to relations between ethnic Germans (classified, together with most other western Europeans, as "Aryans") and non-Aryans, regardless of citizenship. In the early stages the culprits were targeted informally; later, they were punished systematically and legally. In the course of the ensuing war years, sexual relations between ''Reichsdeutschen'' (ethnic Germans, regardless of place of birth) and millions of foreign '' Ostarbeitern'' ("workers from the East") forcibly brought to Germa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
German Colonization Of Africa
Germany colonized Africa during two distinct periods. In the 1680s, the Margraviate of Brandenburg, then leading the broader realm of Brandenburg-Prussia, pursued limited imperial efforts in West Africa. The Brandenburg African Company was chartered in 1682 and established two small settlements on the Gold Coast of what is today Ghana. Five years later, a treaty with the king of Arguin in Mauritania established a protectorate over that island, and Brandenburg occupied an abandoned fort originally constructed there by Portugal. Brandenburg — after 1701, the Kingdom of Prussia — pursued these colonial efforts until 1721, when Arguin was captured by the French and the Gold Coast settlements were sold to the Dutch Republic. Over a century and a half later, the unified German Empire had emerged as a major world power. In 1884, pursuant to the Berlin Conference, colonies were officially established on the African west coast, often in areas already inhabited by German missionaries and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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