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Maquis Du Vercors
The Battle of Vercors in July and August 1944 was between a rural group of the French Forces of the Interior (FFI) maquis''] and the armed forces of Nazi Germany which had occupied France since 1940 in the Second World War. The maquis used the prominent scenic plateau known as the (Vercors Plateau) as a refuge. Initially, the maquis carried out only sabotage and partisan operations against the Germans. However, after the Normandy Invasion of 6 June 1944, the leadership of an army of about 4,000 maquis declared the Free Republic of Vercors and attempted to create a conventional army to oppose the German occupation. The allies supported the maquis with parachute drops of weapons and by supplying teams of advisors and trainers but the uprising was premature. In July 1944, as many as 10,000 German soldiers invaded the massif and killed more than 600 of the maquisards and 200 civilians. It was Germany's largest anti-partisan operation in Western Europe of the war. In August 1944, short ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vercors Plateau
The Vercors Massif is a range in France consisting of rugged plateaus and mountains straddling the ''départements'' of Isère and Drôme in the French Prealps. It lies west of the Dauphiné Alps, from which it is separated by the rivers Drac and Isère. The cliffs at the massif's eastern limit face the city of Grenoble. Background Over time, various features of the complex geography have been recognised including, the Quatre Montagnes (four mountains), the Coulmes (gorges), the Vercors Drômois (Drome Vercors), the Hauts-Plateaux (high plateaus) and, in the foothills, Royans, Gervanne, Diois, and Trièves. The massif is sometimes called the "fortress." The movement of people tends to be between the massif and the surrounding plains rather than between the various parts of the massif itself. Until the mid twentieth century, the name ''Vercors'' was used to describe only the township of La Chapelle-en-Vercors (with Royans), and the northern area around Lans-en-Vercors, Vill ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mesa
A mesa is an isolated, flat-topped elevation, ridge or hill, which is bounded from all sides by steep escarpments and stands distinctly above a surrounding plain. Mesas characteristically consist of flat-lying soft sedimentary rocks capped by a more resistant layer or layers of harder rock, e.g. shales overlain by sandstones. The resistant layer acts as a caprock that forms the flat summit of a mesa. The caprock can consist of either sedimentary rocks such as sandstone and limestone; dissected lava flows; or a deeply eroded duricrust. Unlike ''plateau'', whose usage does not imply horizontal layers of bedrock, e.g. Tibetan Plateau, the term ''mesa'' applies exclusively to the landforms built of flat-lying strata. Instead, flat-topped plateaus are specifically known as '' tablelands''.Duszyński, F., Migoń, P. and Strzelecki, M.C., 2019. ''Escarpment retreat in sedimentary tablelands and cuesta landscapes–Landforms, mechanisms and patterns.'' ''Earth-Science Reviews, no. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Zone Libre
The ''zone libre'' (, ''free zone'') was a partition of the French metropolitan territory during World War II, established at the Second Armistice at Compiègne on 22 June 1940. It lay to the south of the demarcation line and was administered by the French government of Marshal Philippe Pétain based in Vichy, in a relatively unrestricted fashion. To the north lay the ''zone occupée'' (" occupied zone") in which the powers of Vichy France were severely limited. In November 1942, the ''zone libre'' was invaded by the German and Italian armies in ''Case Anton'', as a response to Operation Torch, the Allied landings in North Africa. Thenceforth, the ''zone libre'' and ''zone occupée'' were renamed the ''zone sud'' (southern zone) and ''zone nord'' (northern zone) respectively. From then on both were under German military administration. Origins of the ''zone libre'' On 22 June 1940, after the Battle of France, Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, representing Nazi Germany, and General Char ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Operation Anton
Case Anton (german: link=no, Fall Anton) was the military occupation of France carried out by Germany and Italy in November 1942. It marked the end of the Vichy regime as a nominally-independent state and the disbanding of its army (the severely-limited ''Armistice Army''), but it continued its existence as a puppet government in Occupied France. One of the last actions of the Vichy armed forces before their dissolution was the scuttling of the French fleet in Toulon to prevent it from falling into Axis hands. Background A German plan to occupy Vichy France had been drawn up in December 1940 under the codename of Operation Attila and soon came to be considered with Operation Camellia, the plan to occupy Corsica. Operation Anton updated the original Operation Attila, including different German units and adding Italian involvement. For Adolf Hitler, the main rationale for permitting a nominally-independent France to exist was that it was, in the absence of German naval superio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Forced Labour
Forced labour, or unfree labour, is any work relation, especially in modern or early modern history, in which people are employed against their will with the threat of destitution, detention, violence including death, or other forms of extreme hardship to either themselves or members of their families. Unfree labour includes all forms of slavery, penal labour and the corresponding institutions, such as debt slavery, serfdom, corvée and labour camps. Definition Many forms of unfree labour are also covered by the term forced labour, which is defined by the International Labour Organization (ILO) as all involuntary work or service exacted under the menace of a penalty. However, under the ILO Forced Labour Convention of 1930, the term forced or compulsory labour does not include: *"any work or service exacted in virtue of compulsory military service laws for work of a purely military character;" *"any work or service which forms part of the normal civic obligations of the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Service Du Travail Obligatoire
The ' ( en, Compulsory Work Service; STO) was the forced enlistment and deportation of hundreds of thousands of French workers to Nazi Germany to work as forced labour for the German war effort during World War II. The STO was created under laws and regulations of Vichy France, but it was used by Nazi Germany to compensate for its loss of manpower as it enlisted more and more soldiers for the Eastern Front. The German government promised that for every three French workers sent it would release one French prisoner of war. Those requisitioned under the STO were accommodated in work camps on German soil. French forced laborers were the only nationality to have been required to serve by the laws of their own state rather than by German orders. This was an indirect consequence of the autonomy negotiated from the German administration by the Vichy government. A total of 600,000 to 650,000 French workers were sent to Germany between June 1942 and July 1944. France was the third larg ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Paddy Ashdown
Jeremy John Durham Ashdown, Baron Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon, (27 February 194122 December 2018), better known as Paddy Ashdown, was a British politician and diplomat who served as Leader of the Liberal Democrats from 1988 to 1999. Internationally, he is recognised for his role as High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina from 2002 to 2006, following his vigorous lobbying for military action against Yugoslavia in the 1990s. After serving as a Royal Marine and Special Boat Service officer and as an intelligence officer in the UK security services, Ashdown was elected Member of Parliament (MP) for Yeovil in 1983 before retiring in 2001. Ashdown received national recognition for his services by appointment as Knight Grand Cross of the Order of St Michael and St George (GCMG) in the 2006 New Year Honours and Member of the Order of the Companions of Honour (CH) in the 2015 New Year Honours. In 2017, Ashdown was appointed an Officer of the Legion of Honour by the French g ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chabeuil
Chabeuil (; oc, Chabuelh) is a commune of the Drôme department in southeastern France. Population Notable people * Lauriane Doumbouya, French-born First Lady of Guinea (2021 - present) See also *Communes of the Drôme department The following is a list of the 363 communes of the Drôme department of France. The communes cooperate in the following intercommunalities (as of 2020):Communes of Drôme {{Drôme-geo-stub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Luftwaffe
The ''Luftwaffe'' () was the aerial-warfare branch of the German ''Wehrmacht'' before and during World War II. Germany's military air arms during World War I, the ''Luftstreitkräfte'' of the Imperial Army and the '' Marine-Fliegerabteilung'' of the Imperial Navy, had been disbanded in May 1920 in accordance with the terms of the 1919 Treaty of Versailles which banned Germany from having any air force. During the interwar period, German pilots were trained secretly in violation of the treaty at Lipetsk Air Base in the Soviet Union. With the rise of the Nazi Party and the repudiation of the Versailles Treaty, the ''Luftwaffe''s existence was publicly acknowledged on 26 February 1935, just over two weeks before open defiance of the Versailles Treaty through German rearmament and conscription would be announced on 16 March. The Condor Legion, a ''Luftwaffe'' detachment sent to aid Nationalist forces in the Spanish Civil War, provided the force with a valuable testing grou ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
