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Maurice Southgate
Maurice Southgate (20 June 1913 – 17 March 1990), code named Hector, was an officer in the Royal Air Force and an agent of the United Kingdom's clandestine Special Operations Executive (SOE) organization during World War II. The purpose of SOE was to conduct espionage, sabotage, and reconnaissance in occupied Europe against the Axis powers, especially Nazi Germany. SOE agents allied themselves with resistance groups and supplied them with weapons and equipment parachuted in from England. Southgate was the organiser (leader) of the SOE's STATIONER network (or circuit) operating in a large area centered on Châteauroux in central France and Tarbes in southern France from 1942 to 1944. He was captured by the SS in Montluçon in 1944 and deported to Buchenwald concentration camp where he survived until its liberation by American forces in 1945. Southgate was regarded by Maurice Buckmaster, head of SOE's French Section, as one of his best agents. Early life Southgate was born i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Royal Air Force
The Royal Air Force (RAF) is the United Kingdom's air and space force. It was formed towards the end of the First World War on 1 April 1918, becoming the first independent air force in the world, by regrouping the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) and the Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS). Following the Allied victory over the Central Powers in 1918, the RAF emerged as the largest air force in the world at the time. Since its formation, the RAF has taken a significant role in British military history. In particular, it played a large part in the Second World War where it fought its most famous campaign, the Battle of Britain. The RAF's mission is to support the objectives of the British Ministry of Defence (MOD), which are to "provide the capabilities needed to ensure the security and defence of the United Kingdom and overseas territories, including against terrorism; to support the Government's foreign policy objectives particularly in promoting international peace and security". The R ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Renshaw Starr
John Ashford Renshaw Starr (6 August 1908 – 1996), code names Emile and Bob, was a British artist and an agent in France of the United Kingdom's clandestine Special Operations Executive (SOE) organization during World War II. He was the organiser (leader) of the Acrobat network (or circuit) which operated in Dijon. The purpose of SOE in occupied France was to conduct espionage, sabotage and reconnaissance. SOE agents allied themselves with French Resistance groups and supplied them with weapons and equipment parachuted in from England. Starr was wounded and captured by the German SS on 18 July 1943 and imprisoned for the remainder of the war. After World War II, Starr was accused by several other SOE agents of collaboration with the Germans while he was a captive. John Starr's brother George Starr was also an SOE agent. Early life Starr was born in Heaton Moor, Lancashire,''1911 England Census'' the son of an American father, Alfred Demarest Starr, a bookkeeper who became a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Allies Of World War II
The Allies, formally referred to as the United Nations from 1942, were an international military coalition formed during the Second World War (1939–1945) to oppose the Axis powers, led by Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, and Fascist Italy. Its principal members by 1941 were the United Kingdom, United States, Soviet Union, and China. Membership in the Allies varied during the course of the war. When the conflict broke out on 1 September 1939, the Allied coalition consisted of the United Kingdom, France, and Poland, as well as their respective dependencies, such as British India. They were soon joined by the independent dominions of the British Commonwealth: Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. Consequently, the initial alliance resembled that of the First World War. As Axis forces began invading northern Europe and the Balkans, the Allies added the Netherlands, Belgium, Norway, Greece, and Yugoslavia. The Soviet Union, which initially had a nonaggression pa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Toulouse
Toulouse ( , ; oc, Tolosa ) is the prefecture of the French department of Haute-Garonne and of the larger region of Occitania. The city is on the banks of the River Garonne, from the Mediterranean Sea, from the Atlantic Ocean and from Paris. It is the fourth-largest city in France after Paris, Marseille and Lyon, with 493,465 inhabitants within its municipal boundaries (2019 census); its metropolitan area has a population of 1,454,158 inhabitants (2019 census). Toulouse is the central city of one of the 20 French Métropoles, with one of the three strongest demographic growth (2013-2019). Toulouse is the centre of the European aerospace industry, with the headquarters of Airbus, the SPOT satellite system, ATR and the Aerospace Valley. It hosts the CNES's Toulouse Space Centre (CST) which is the largest national space centre in Europe, but also, on the military side, the newly created NATO space centre of excellence and the French Space Command and Space Academy. Thales ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Maquis (World War II)
The Maquis () were rural guerrilla bands of French and Belgian Resistance fighters, called ''maquisards'', during the Nazi occupation of France in World War II. Initially, they were composed of young, mostly working-class, men who had escaped into the mountains and woods to avoid conscription into Vichy France's ''Service du travail obligatoire'' ("Compulsory Work Service" or ''STO'') to provide forced labor for Germany. To avoid capture and deportation to Germany, they became increasingly organized into active resistance groups. They had an estimated to members in autumn of 1943 and approximately members in June 1944. Meaning Originally the word came from the kind of terrain in which the armed resistance groups hid, high ground in southeastern France covered with scrub growth called ''maquis'' (scrubland). from Dictionary.com Although strictly speaking it means thicket, ''maquis'' could be roughly translated as "the bush"; in Corsica, the saying ''prendre le maquis' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Prisoner-of-war Camp
A prisoner-of-war camp (often abbreviated as POW camp) is a site for the containment of enemy fighters captured by a belligerent power in time of war. There are significant differences among POW camps, internment camps, and military prisons. Purpose-built prisoner-of-war camps appeared at Norman Cross in England in 1797 during the French Revolutionary Wars and HM Prison Dartmoor, constructed during the Napoleonic Wars, and they have been in use in all the main conflicts of the last 200 years. The main camps are used for marines, sailors, soldiers, and more recently, airmen of an enemy power who have been captured by a belligerent power during or immediately after an armed conflict. Civilians, such as Merchant navy, merchant mariners and war correspondents, have also been imprisoned in some conflicts. With the adoption of the Geneva Convention on Prisoners of War (1929), Geneva Convention on the Prisoners of War in 1929, later superseded by the Third Geneva Convention, prisoner-o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Francs-Tireurs Et Partisans
The ''Francs-tireurs et partisans français'' (FTPF), or commonly the ''Francs-tireurs et partisans'' (FTP), was an armed resistance organization created by leaders of the French Communist Party during World War II (1939–45). The communist party was neutral at first, following the Soviet Union's official view that the war was a struggle between imperialists, but changed to a policy of armed resistance against the German occupation of France after Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941. Three groups were formed, consisting of party members, young communists and foreign workers. Early in 1942 they were merged to form the FTP, which undertook sabotage and assassinations of the occupation. The FTP became the best organized and most effective of the French Resistance groups. In March 1944, before the Allied forces returned to Normandy, the FTP was theoretically merged with the other Resistance groups. In practice, it retained its independence until the end of the war. Backg ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Amédée Maingard
Sir Louis Pierre Rene "Amédée" Maingard de la Ville-ès-Offrans, CBE (21 October 1918 - 1981) was born in Mauritius, then a British colony. During the Second World War, he served with distinction with the British clandestine organization, the Special Operations Executive, supporting the French resistance, and was awarded medals by the British and French governments. After the war he returned to Mauritius and became a successful businessman. Wartime career Maingard was studying in London in 1939 at the outbreak of the Second World War and volunteered for the British Army. After an unrewarding period in the infantry, Maingard joined the Special Operations Executive F section in 1942. He was parachuted into occupied France in April 1943 to join the 'Stationer' circuit run by Squadron Leader Maurice Southgate, initially as radio operator but soon was second-in-command in the circuit, arranging the delivery of weapons, supplies and personnel to the maquisards of the French Resistanc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tendu, Indre
Tendu () is a commune in the Indre department in central France. Geography The commune is traversed by the river Bouzanne. Population See also *Communes of the Indre department The following is a list of the 241 communes of the Indre department of France. The communes cooperate in the following intercommunalities (as of 2020):Communes of Indre {{Indre-geo-stub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
