S.S. Sturmbrigade R.O.N.A
Kaminski Brigade, also known as Waffen-Sturm-Brigade der SS RONA, was a collaborationist formation composed of Russian nationals from the territory of the Lokot Autonomy in Axis-occupied areas of the RSFSR, Soviet Union on the Eastern Front.Rolf-Dieter Mueller, The Unknown Eastern Front, (Palgrave Macmillan, New York 2012), p. 222. It was founded in late 1941 as auxiliary police with 200 personnel. By mid-1943 it had grown to 10,000-12,000 men, equipped with captured Soviet tanks and artillery. Bronislav Kaminski, the unit's leader, named it the Russian National Liberation Army ( ru , Русская освободительная народная армия (РОНА) , translit = Russkaya Osvoboditelnaya Narodnaya Armiya, (RONA)). After the Wehrmacht lost the Battle of Kursk in August 1943, RONA personnel retreated to the territory of Byelorussia, especially to the Lepel area of Vitebsk, where they participated in German security operations, committing numerous atrociti ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Warsaw Uprising
The Warsaw Uprising ( pl, powstanie warszawskie; german: Warschauer Aufstand) was a major World War II operation by the Polish resistance movement in World War II, Polish underground resistance to liberate Warsaw from German occupation. It occurred in the summer of 1944, and it was led by the Polish resistance Home Army ( pl, Armia Krajowa). The uprising was timed to coincide with the retreat of the German forces from Poland ahead of the Soviet advance. While approaching the eastern suburbs of the city, the Red Army temporarily halted combat operations, enabling the Germans to regroup and defeat the Polish resistance and to Planned destruction of Warsaw, destroy the city in retaliation. The Uprising was fought for 63 days with little outside support. It was the single largest military effort taken by any European Resistance during World War II, resistance movement during World War II. The Uprising began on 1 August 1944 as part of a nationwide Operation Tempest, launched at the ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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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]   |
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Russian Liberation Army
The Russian Liberation Army; russian: Русская освободительная армия, ', abbreviated as (), also known as the Vlasov army after its commander Andrey Vlasov, was a collaborationist formation, primarily composed of Russians, that fought under German command during World War II. Vlasov, a Soviet general, agreed to collaborate with Nazi Germany after having been captured on the Eastern Front. The soldiers under his command were mostly former Soviet prisoners of war but also included White Russian émigrés, some of whom were veterans of the anti-communist White Army from the Russian Civil War (1917–23). On 14 November 1944, it was officially renamed the Armed Forces of the Committee for the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia, with the KONR being formed as a political body to which the army pledged loyalty. On 28 January 1945, it was officially declared that the Russian divisions no longer form part of the German Army, but would directly be under th ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Andrey Vlasov
Andrey Andreyevich Vlasov (russian: Андрéй Андрéевич Влáсов, – August 1, 1946) was a Soviet Red Army general and Nazi collaborator. During World War II, he fought in the Battle of Moscow and later was captured attempting to lift the siege of Leningrad. After being captured, he defected to Nazi Germany and headed the Russian Liberation Army (''Russkaya osvoboditel'naya armiya'', ROA). Initially this army only existed on paper and was used by Germans to goad the Red Army troops to surrender; only in 1944 did Heinrich Himmler, knowing that Germany was running out of manpower, arrange Vlasov to form a real Russian pro-Nazi army. At the war's end, Vlasov changed sides again and ordered the ROA to aid the Prague uprising against the Germans. He and the ROA then tried to escape to the Western Front, but were captured by Soviet forces. Vlasov was tortured, tried for treason and hanged. Early career Born in Lomakino, Nizhny Novgorod Governorate, Russia ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Slovak Partisans
Slovak partisans were fighters in irregular military groups participating in the Slovak resistance movement, including against Nazi Germany and collaborationism during World War II. Beginning Slovak partisans were an anti-fascist militia formed immediately the creation of the First Slovak Republic in 1939, to fight against Nazis and their collaborators. Men and women both fought in the ranks of partisan units, as well as Jews and Christians alike. Slovak partisans had mixed loyalties as many were deeply nationalistic and wanted a to maintain an independent Slovak Republic free of fascism, while many others were socialists who forged strong links with the Soviet Union and Soviet partisans. Slovak partisans mainly carried out acts of sabotage. Their largest anti-Nazi military engagement was the Slovak National Uprising in 1944, in which Slovak partisans were aided by the Slovak Army and Soviet partisans. Jan Golian and Rudolf Viest, generals in the Slovak Army, led the uprising, ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Slovak Republic (1939–1945)
The (First) Slovak Republic ( sk, rváSlovenská republika), otherwise known as the Slovak State (), was a partially-recognized client state of Nazi Germany which existed between 14 March 1939 and 4 April 1945. The Slovak part of Czechoslovakia declared independence with German support one day before the German occupation of Bohemia and Moravia. The Slovak Republic controlled the majority of the territory of present-day Slovakia but without its current southern parts, which were ceded by Czechoslovakia to Hungary in 1938. It was the first time in history that Slovakia had been a formally independent state. A one-party state governed by the far-right Hlinka's Slovak People's Party, the Slovak Republic is primarily known for its collaboration with Nazi Germany, which included sending troops to the invasion of Poland in September 1939 and the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. In 1942, the country deported 58,000 Jews (two-thirds of the Slovak Jewish population) to German-o ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Luitpold Himmler (; 7 October 1900 – 23 May 1945) was of the (Protection Squadron; SS), and a leading member of the Nazi Party of Germany. Himmler was one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany and a main architect of the Holocaust. As a member of a reserve battalion during World War I, Himmler did not see active service, and did not fight. He studied agriculture in university, and joined the Nazi Party in 1923 and the SS in 1925. In 1929, he was appointed by Adolf Hitler. Over the next 16 years, he developed the SS from a 290-man battalion into a million-strong paramilitary group, and set up and controlled the Nazi concentration camps. He was known for good organisational skills and for selecting highly competent subordinates, such as Reinhard Heydrich in 1931. From 1943 onwards, he was both Chief of German Police and Minister of the Interior, overseeing all internal and external police and security forces, including the Gestapo (Secret State Police). H ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Świętoszów
Świętoszów (; german: Neuhammer am Queis) is a village in the administrative district of Gmina Osiecznica, within Bolesławiec County, Lower Silesian Voivodeship, in south-western Poland in the Lower Silesian Wilderness, on the river Kwisa. It lies approximately north of Osiecznica, north-west of Bolesławiec, and west of the regional capital - Wrocław. History In the Early Middle Ages the region was inhabited by the Bobrzanie tribe, one of the Slavic Lechitic tribes, and it became part of the emerging Polish state under its first historic ruler Mieszko I in the 10th century. Probably in the 14th century a forge was established at the site of the village, however the village itself was founded after 1550. In the 1898 the German Army created a very large training ground here. In World War I it was the site of a large prisoner-of-war camp for Russian soldiers. After 1919, Polish Silesian insurgents were held in the camp. In 1941 the Bergmann Battalion and Nachtigall Batt ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Schutzstaffel
The ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS; also stylized as ''ᛋᛋ'' with Armanen runes; ; "Protection Squadron") was a major paramilitary organization under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in Nazi Germany, and later throughout German-occupied Europe during World War II. It began with a small guard unit known as the ''Saal-Schutz'' ("Hall Security") made up of party volunteers to provide security for party meetings in Munich. In 1925, Heinrich Himmler joined the unit, which had by then been reformed and given its final name. Under his direction (1929–1945) it grew from a small paramilitary formation during the Weimar Republic to one of the most powerful organizations in Nazi Germany. From the time of the Nazi Party's rise to power until the regime's collapse in 1945, the SS was the foremost agency of security, surveillance, and terror within Germany and German-occupied Europe. The two main constituent groups were the '' Allgemeine SS'' (General SS) and ''Waffen-SS'' (Armed SS). The ' ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Operation Bagration
Operation Bagration (; russian: Операция Багратио́н, Operatsiya Bagration) was the codename for the 1944 Soviet Byelorussian strategic offensive operation (russian: Белорусская наступательная операция «Багратион», Belorusskaya nastupatelnaya Operatsiya ''Bagration''), a military campaign fought between 22 June and 19 August 1944 in Soviet Byelorussia in the Eastern Front of World War II, just over two weeks after the start of Operation Overlord in the west, causing the Germans to have to fight on two major fronts at the same time. The Soviet Union destroyed 28 of 34 divisions of Army Group Centre and completely shattered the German front line. It was the biggest defeat in German military history, with around 450,000 German casualties, while 300,000 other German soldiers were cut off in the Courland Pocket. On 22 June 1944, the Red Army attacked Army Group Centre in Byelorussia, with the objective of encirclin ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Vitebsk
Vitebsk or Viciebsk (russian: Витебск, ; be, Ві́цебск, ; , ''Vitebsk'', lt, Vitebskas, pl, Witebsk), is a city in Belarus. The capital of the Vitebsk Region, it has 366,299 inhabitants, making it the country's fourth-largest city. It is served by Vitebsk Vostochny Airport and Vitebsk Air Base. History Before 1945 Vitebsk developed from a river harbor where the Vićba River (Віцьба, from which it derives its name) flows into the larger Daugava River, Western Dvina, which is spanned in the city by the Kirov Bridge. Archaeological research indicates that Baltic tribes had settlements at the mouth of Vitba. In the 9th century, Slavic settlements of the tribal union of the Krivichs replaced them. According to the ''Chronicle of Michael Brigandine'' (1760), Princess Olga of Kiev founded Vitebsk (also recorded as Dbesk, Vidbesk, Videbsk, Vitepesk, or Vicibesk) in 974. Other versions give 947 or 914. Academician Boris Rybakov and historian Leonid Alekseyev ha ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Lepel
Lyepyel ( be, Ле́пель, Liepieĺ; pl, Lepel; russian: Ле́пель, Lepel, ; yi, ליעפּליע, Li'epli'e) is a town located in the center of the Lyepyel Raion (district) in the Vitebsk Province of Belarus near Lyepyel Lake. Lyepyel is situated at about and its population in the 1998 census was 19,400. The coat of arms of Lyepyel incorporates the Pahonia symbol. Name There are three theories about the origin of the name ''Lepel''. The first is that the name 'Lepel' come from the word "lepene" which means "lake between the lime-groves". The second is that the name comes from the Belarusian word "лепей" meaning "the best place to live in". The third theory for the name ''Lepel'' is that it derives from the Belarusian word "ляпiць" meaning "well-developed pottery". History The first known mention of Lepel dates back to 1439. In the 15th century, the town belonged to the Lithuanian Grand Duchy. In 1439, thanks to efforts of a Roman Catholic priest, ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |