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Oignies And Courrières Massacre
The Oignies and Courrières massacre was a mass killing of 124 French civilians perpetrated by German forces in the mining village of Oignies and nearby town of Courrières, both in Nord-Pas de Calais, on 28 May 1940 amid the Battle of France. The unit responsible for the atrocity was the 487th Infantry Regiment of the 267th Infantry Division. Altoghether, it is thought a total of 500 French civilians were murdered by German forces in Nord-Pas de Calas in May 1940. Elements of the British Expeditionary Force and French colonial forces had resisted the German advance at Oignies with some success but were overcome during the night of 27 to 28 May 1940. The historian Fabrice Virgili writes that "as soon as the German soldiers surrounded the area, executions, pillaging, and destruction followed. Eighty inhabitants, including ten women, were killed, shot for the most part, and the village was practically destroyed." A number of women were raped. Altogether, 400 buildings were burnt ...
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Oignies — Hôtel De Ville
Oignies (; pcd, Ongnies) is a commune in the Pas-de-Calais department in the Hauts-de-France region of France. Geography Oignies is a former coalmining town, nowadays a light industrial town, northeast of Lens, at the junction of the D46 and the D160 roads. The A1 autoroute passes through the commune, alongside a wooded and lake-filled parkland area. History Ancient times The town of Oignies seems to have been inhabited since early Christian times. Then it was known as Ongniacume. Coal is discovered In the grounds of the Château of Mme De Clercq on 7 June 1842 an Engineer, Monsieur Mulot, discovered the presence of coal, an economic godsend for the region which then developed a huge mining industry. This was the first discovery of coal in the region. The two world wars During the First World War, the town was occupied by the Germans. Shortly before their retreat from the territory in October 1918 they destroyed the town and coal mines. Between 28 May 1940 and 2 September 1 ...
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Le Paradis Massacre
The Le Paradis massacre was a World War II war crime committed by members of the 14th Company, SS Division Totenkopf, under the command of ''Hauptsturmführer'' Fritz Knöchlein. It took place on 27 May 1940, during the Battle of France, at a time when troops of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) were attempting to retreat through the Pas-de-Calais region during the Battle of Dunkirk. Soldiers of the 2nd Battalion, the Royal Norfolk Regiment, had become isolated from their unit. They occupied and defended a farmhouse against an attack by Waffen-SS forces in the village of Le Paradis. After running out of ammunition, the defenders surrendered to the German troops. The Germans led them across the road to a wall where they were murdered by machine guns. Ninety-seven British troops were killed. Two survived with injuries and hid until they were captured by German forces several days later. After the war, Knöchlein was convicted of his role in the massacre by a British milit ...
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May 1940 Events
May is the fifth month of the year in the Julian and Gregorian calendars and is the third of seven months to have a length of 31 days. May is a month of spring in the Northern Hemisphere, and autumn in the Southern Hemisphere. Therefore, May in the Southern Hemisphere is the seasonal equivalent of November in the Northern Hemisphere and vice versa. Late May typically marks the start of the summer vacation season in the United States (Memorial Day) and Canada (Victoria Day) that ends on Labor Day, the first Monday of September. May (in Latin, ''Maius'') was named for the Greek goddess Maia, who was identified with the Roman era goddess of fertility, Bona Dea, whose festival was held in May. Conversely, the Roman poet Ovid provides a second etymology, in which he says that the month of May is named for the ''maiores,'' Latin for "elders," and that the following month (June) is named for the ''iuniores,'' or "young people" (''Fasti VI.88''). Eta Aquariids meteor shower app ...
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Massacres Committed By Nazi Germany
A massacre is the killing of a large number of people or animals, especially those who are not involved in any fighting or have no way of defending themselves. A massacre is generally considered to be morally unacceptable, especially when perpetrated by a group of political actors against defenseless victims. The word is a loan of a French term for "butchery" or "carnage". A "massacre" is not necessarily a "crime against humanity". Other terms with overlapping scope include war crime, pogrom, mass killing, mass murder, and extrajudicial killing. Etymology The modern definition of ''massacre'' as "indiscriminate slaughter, carnage", and the subsequent verb of this form, derive from late 16th century Middle French, evolved from Middle French ''"macacre, macecle"'' meaning "slaughterhouse, butchery". Further origins are dubious, though may be related to Latin ''macellum'' "provisions store, butcher shop". The Middle French word ''macecr'' "butchery, carnage" is first record ...
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World War II Massacres
In its most general sense, the term "world" refers to the totality of entities, to the whole of reality or to everything that is. The nature of the world has been conceptualized differently in different fields. Some conceptions see the world as unique while others talk of a "plurality of worlds". Some treat the world as one simple object while others analyze the world as a complex made up of many parts. In '' scientific cosmology'' the world or universe is commonly defined as " e totality of all space and time; all that is, has been, and will be". '' Theories of modality'', on the other hand, talk of possible worlds as complete and consistent ways how things could have been. ''Phenomenology'', starting from the horizon of co-given objects present in the periphery of every experience, defines the world as the biggest horizon or the "horizon of all horizons". In ''philosophy of mind'', the world is commonly contrasted with the mind as that which is represented by the mind. ''T ...
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War Crimes Of The Wehrmacht
During World War II, the German combined armed forces ( ''Heer'', ''Kriegsmarine'' and ''Luftwaffe'') committed systematic war crimes, including massacres, mass rape, looting, the exploitation of forced labor, the murder of three million Soviet prisoners of war, and participated in the extermination of Jews. While the Nazi Party's own SS forces (in particular the '' SS-Totenkopfverbände'', ''Einsatzgruppen'' and Waffen-SS) of Nazi Germany was the organization most responsible for the genocidal killing of the Holocaust, the regular armed forces of the ''Wehrmacht'' committed many war crimes of their own (as well as assisting the SS in theirs), particularly on the Eastern Front in the war against the Soviet Union. According to a study by Alex J. Kay and David Stahel, the majority of the Wehrmacht soldiers deployed to the Soviet Union participated in war crimes. Creation of the Wehrmacht When the Nazi Party came to power, it was welcomed by almost the entire officer corps ...
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German Occupation Of France During World War II
The Military Administration in France (german: Militärverwaltung in Frankreich; french: Occupation de la France par l'Allemagne) was an interim occupation authority established by Nazi Germany during World War II to administer the occupied zone in areas of northern and western France. This so-called ' was established in June 1940, and renamed ' ("north zone") in November 1942, when the previously unoccupied zone in the south known as ' ("free zone") was also occupied and renamed ' ("south zone"). Its role in France was partly governed by the conditions set by the Second Armistice at after the success of the leading to the Fall of France; at the time both French and Germans thought the occupation would be temporary and last only until Britain came to terms, which was believed to be imminent. For instance, France agreed that its soldiers would remain prisoners of war until the cessation of all hostilities. The "French State" (') replaced the French Third Republic that had ...
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History Of Hauts-de-France
History (derived ) is the systematic study and the documentation of the human activity. The time period of event before the History of writing#Inventions of writing, invention of writing systems is considered prehistory. "History" is an umbrella term comprising past events as well as the memory, discovery, collection, organization, presentation, and interpretation of these events. Historians seek knowledge of the past using historical sources such as written documents, oral accounts, art and material artifacts, and ecological markers. History is not complete and still has debatable mysteries. History is also an Discipline (academia), academic discipline which uses narrative to describe, examine, question, and analyze past events, and investigate their patterns of cause and effect. Historians often debate which narrative best explains an event, as well as the significance of different causes and effects. Historians also debate the historiography, nature of history as an end in ...
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Mass Murder In 1940
Mass is an intrinsic property of a body. It was traditionally believed to be related to the quantity of matter in a physical body, until the discovery of the atom and particle physics. It was found that different atoms and different elementary particles, theoretically with the same amount of matter, have nonetheless different masses. Mass in modern physics has multiple definitions which are conceptually distinct, but physically equivalent. Mass can be experimentally defined as a measure of the body's inertia, meaning the resistance to acceleration (change of velocity) when a net force is applied. The object's mass also determines the strength of its gravitational attraction to other bodies. The SI base unit of mass is the kilogram (kg). In physics, mass is not the same as weight, even though mass is often determined by measuring the object's weight using a spring scale, rather than balance scale comparing it directly with known masses. An object on the Moon would weigh less t ...
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Wormhoudt Massacre
The Wormhoudt massacre (or Wormhout massacre) was the mass murder of 81 British and French POWs by Waffen-SS soldiers from the 1st SS Division Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler during the Battle of France in May 1940. Fighting As part of the British Expeditionary Force's (BEF) retreat to Dunkirk, the 144th Infantry Brigade of the 48th (South Midland) Infantry Division was holding the road that runs southward from Bergues through Wormhoudt, Cassel and Hazebrouck to delay the German advance. British troops at Wormhoudt were overrun by advancing German forces. Having exhausted their ammunition supplies, the soldiers surrendered to the SS troops assuming that they would be taken prisoner according to the Geneva Convention. Massacre After their surrender, a large group of soldiers from the 2nd Battalion, Royal Warwickshire Regiment, 4th Battalion Cheshire Regiment, and gunners of the 210 Battery, 53rd (The Worcestershire Yeomanry) Anti-Tank Regiment, Royal Artillery as well as Fre ...
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Mass Killing
Mass killing is a concept which has been proposed by genocide scholars who wish to define incidents of non-combat killing which are perpetrated by a government or a state. A mass killing is commonly defined as the killing of group members without the intention to eliminate the whole group, or otherwise the killing of large numbers of people without a clear group membership. ''Mass killing'' is used by a number of genocide scholars because ''genocide'' (its strict definition) does not cover mass killing events in which no specific ethnic or religious groups are targeted, or events in which perpetrators do not intend to eliminate whole groups or significant parts of them. Genocide scholars use different models in order to explain and predict the onset of mass killing events. There has been little consensus and no generally-accepted terminology, prompting scholars, such as Anton Weiss-Wendt, to describe comparative attempts a failure. Genocide scholarship rarely appears in mainstream ...
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