|
Schnez-Truppe
The Schnez-Truppe or Schnez Organisation was an illegal clandestine paramilitary organisation formed in West Germany in 1949 by veterans of the ''Wehrmacht'' and ''Waffen-SS'' under the leadership of Albert Schnez, that intended to fight against the Soviet Union in the event of an invasion. It has been reported as having been founded with a membership of some 2,000 former officers; later obtaining a total strength of up to 40,000 members. The organisation was active in the US occupation zone in southern Germany, and aimed to field up to four armoured divisions in case of war. It was to become active in case of an attack by East Germany in a domestic German conflict similar to the Korean War, but without outside interference. History The organisation was formed in secret in 1949 by Albert Schnez, who had risen to the rank of colonel in the ''Wehrmacht'' during World War II. The aim of the secret army formed by Schnez was to liberate Germany if an invasion by the Soviet Union occurr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hans Speidel
Hans Speidel (28 October 1897 – 28 November 1984) was a German general, who was one of the major military leaders of West Germany during the early Cold War. The first full General in West Germany, he was a principal founder of the ''Bundeswehr'' and a major figure in German rearmament, integration into NATO and international negotiations on European and Western defence cooperation in the 1950s. He served as Commander of the Allied Land Forces Central Europe (COMLANDCENT) from 1957 to 1963 and then as President of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs from 1964. Speidel joined the German Army in 1914, fought in the First World War, and stayed with the Army as a career soldier after the war. He served as chief of staff to Field Marshal Erwin Rommel during the Second World War and was promoted to lieutenant general in 1944. Speidel participated in the 20 July Plot to assassinate Hitler, and he was tasked with recruiting Rommel for the resistance. After the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Albert Schnez
Albert Schnez (30 August 1911 – 26 April 2007) was an officer in three successive German armies: the ''Reichswehr'', the ''Wehrmacht'', and finally the ''Bundeswehr'', the armed forces of the modern Federal Republic of Germany. He was involved in the debate on the internal leadership of the newly formed ''Bundeswehr'' and was close to the German defense minister, Franz Josef Strauss. Schnez served from 1968 to 1971 with the rank of lieutenant-general (''Generalleutnant'') as the Inspector of the Army. From 1949, Schnez, together with other veterans of the ''Wehrmacht'' and ''Waffen-SS'', built a clandestine shadow army, the " Schnez-Truppe", that intended to fight against the Soviet Union. By 1951, Chancellor Konrad Adenauer Konrad Hermann Joseph Adenauer (; 5 January 1876 – 19 April 1967) was a German statesman who served as the first chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany from 1949 to 1963. From 1946 to 1966, he was the first leader of the Christian Dem ... ha ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wehrmacht
The ''Wehrmacht'' (, ) were the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945. It consisted of the ''Heer'' (army), the '' Kriegsmarine'' (navy) and the ''Luftwaffe'' (air force). The designation "''Wehrmacht''" replaced the previously used term and was the manifestation of the Nazi regime's efforts to rearm Germany to a greater extent than the Treaty of Versailles permitted. After the Nazi rise to power in 1933, one of Adolf Hitler's most overt and audacious moves was to establish the ''Wehrmacht'', a modern offensively-capable armed force, fulfilling the Nazi régime's long-term goals of regaining lost territory as well as gaining new territory and dominating its neighbours. This required the reinstatement of conscription and massive investment and defense spending on the arms industry. The ''Wehrmacht'' formed the heart of Germany's politico-military power. In the early part of the Second World War, the ''Wehrmacht'' employed combined arms tactics (close- ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Anton Grasser
__NOTOC__ Anton Grasser (3 November 1891 – 3 November 1976) was a German general during World War II who commanded several corps. He was a recipient of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves. Grasser joined the Bundesgrenzschutz (Federal Border Guards) in 1951, retiring in 1953. In the 1950s, Grasser was involved in organizing an illegal underground army set up by Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS veterans in the event of a Soviet invasion of West Germany. Grasser's role, as inspector general of the police and border police, was to provide this secret army with weapons from the police force in case of war. Grasser was connected to it through Albert Schnez, its leader, who had been Grasser's employer in the first post-war years. Awards and decorations * Iron Cross (1914) 2nd Class (18 June 1915) & 1st Class (6 June 1916)Thomas 1997, p. 215. * Clasp to the Iron Cross (1939) 2nd Class (21 May 1940) & 1st Class (8 June 1940) * German Cross in Gold on 11 March 1943 as ''Gener ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Adolf Heusinger
Adolf Bruno Heinrich Ernst Heusinger (4 August 1897 – 30 November 1982) was a German military officer whose career spanned the German Empire, the Weimar Republic, Nazi Germany and West Germany. He joined the German Army as a volunteer in 1915 and later became a professional soldier. He served as the Operations Chief within the general staff of the High Command of the German Army in the Wehrmacht from 1938 to 1944. He was then appointed acting Chief of the General Staff for two weeks in 1944 following Kurt Zeitzler's resignation. Heusinger was later appointed head of the military cartography office when the war ended. He later became a general for West Germany and served as head of the West German military from 1957 to 1961 as well as Chairman of the NATO Military Committee from 1961 to 1964. Early life and career Heusinger was born in Holzminden, in the Duchy of Brunswick, German Empire. He entered the Prussian Army in 1915 and became an officer in 1917. After the First Worl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
West Germany
West Germany is the colloquial term used to indicate the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG; german: Bundesrepublik Deutschland , BRD) between its formation on 23 May 1949 and the German reunification through the accession of East Germany on 3 October 1990. During the Cold War, the western portion of Germany and the associated territory of West Berlin were parts of the Western Bloc. West Germany was formed as a political entity during the Allied occupation of Germany after World War II, established from eleven states of Germany, states formed in the three Allied zones of occupation held by the United States, the United Kingdom, and France. The FRG's provisional capital was the city of Bonn, and the Cold War era country is retrospectively designated as the Bonn Republic. At the onset of the Cold War, Europe was divided between the Western and Eastern Bloc, Eastern blocs. Germany was divided into the two countries. Initially, West Germany claimed an exclusive mandate for all of Ger ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Konrad Adenauer
Konrad Hermann Joseph Adenauer (; 5 January 1876 – 19 April 1967) was a German statesman who served as the first chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany from 1949 to 1963. From 1946 to 1966, he was the first leader of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), a Christian-democratic party he co-founded, which became the dominant force in the country under his leadership. A devout Roman Catholic and member of the Catholic Centre Party, Adenauer was a leading politician in the Weimar Republic, serving as Mayor of Cologne (1917–1933) and as president of the Prussian State Council (1922–1933). In the early years of the Federal Republic, he switched focus from denazification to recovery, and led his country from the ruins of World War II to becoming a productive and prosperous nation that forged close relations with France, the United Kingdom and the United States. During his years in power, West Germany achieved democracy, stability, international respect and economic pros ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bundeswehr
The ''Bundeswehr'' (, meaning literally: ''Federal Defence'') is the armed forces of the Federal Republic of Germany. The ''Bundeswehr'' is divided into a military part (armed forces or ''Streitkräfte'') and a civil part, the military part consisting of the German Army, the German Navy, the German Air Force, the Joint Support Service, the Joint Medical Service, and the Cyber and Information Domain Service. , the ''Bundeswehr'' had a strength of 183,638 active-duty military personnel and 81,318 civilians, placing it among the 30 largest military forces in the world, and making it the second largest in the European Union behind France. In addition, the ''Bundeswehr'' has approximately 30,050 reserve personnel (2020). With German military expenditures at $56.0 billion, the ''Bundeswehr'' is the seventh highest-funded military in the world, though military expenditures remain relatively average at 1.3% of national GDP, well below the (non-binding) NATO target of 2%. Germany ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Inspector General Of The Bundeswehr
Inspector, also police inspector or inspector of police, is a police rank. The rank or position varies in seniority depending on the organization that uses it. Australia In Australian police forces, the rank of inspector is generally the next senior rank from senior sergeant and is less senior than a superintendent (in the cases of the Queensland Police and Western Australia Police) in the other Australian police forces. Members holding the rank usually wear an epaulette featuring three silver pips, the same rank badge as a captain in the army. In addition to the general rank of inspector, some police forces use other ranks such as detective inspector and district inspector. Austria In Austria a similar scheme was used as in Germany. At some point the police inspector was completely removed from the list of service ranks. The current police service has an inspectors service track with ''Inspektor'' being the entry level – it is followed by ''Revierinspektor'' (precin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Die Zeit
''Die Zeit'' (, "The Time") is a German national weekly newspaper published in Hamburg in Germany. The newspaper is generally considered to be among the German newspapers of record and is known for its long and extensive articles. History The first edition of ''Die Zeit'' was first published in Hamburg on 21 February 1946. The founding publishers were Gerd Bucerius, Lovis H. Lorenz, Richard Tüngel and Ewald Schmidt di Simoni. Another important founder was Marion Gräfin Dönhoff, who joined as an editor in 1946. She became publisher of ''Die Zeit'' from 1972 until her death in 2002, together from 1983 onwards with former German chancellor Helmut Schmidt, later joined by Josef Joffe and former German federal secretary of culture Michael Naumann. The paper's publishing house, Zeitverlag Gerd Bucerius in Hamburg, is owned by the Georg von Holtzbrinck Publishing Group and Dieter von Holtzbrinck Media. The paper is published weekly on Thursdays. As of 2018, ''Die Zeit'' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chairman Of The NATO Military Committee
The Chair of the NATO Military Committee (CMC) is the head of the NATO Military Committee, which advises the North Atlantic Council (NAC) on military policy and strategy. The CMC is the senior military spokesperson of the 30-nation alliance and principal advisor to the Secretary General. The Chair is one of the foremost officials of NATO, next to the Secretary General and the Supreme Allied Commander Europe. The CMC is assisted by the Deputy Chair, who advises the Deputy Secretary General and serves as the principal agent for coordination of nuclear, biological, and chemical matters for the Military Committee. Originally titled the Chairman, the post was redesignated in 2021 to reflect the gender-neutrality of the post. The current Chair of the NATO Military Committee is lieutenant admiral Rob Bauer, former Chief of Defence of the Netherlands, who took office on 25 June 2021. Origins In accordance with Article 9 of the North Atlantic Treaty and the guidance given by the Workin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Federal Intelligence Service (Germany)
The Federal Intelligence Service (German: ; , BND) is the foreign intelligence agency of Germany, directly subordinate to the Chancellor's Office. The BND headquarters is located in central Berlin and is the world's largest intelligence headquarters. The BND has 300 locations in Germany and foreign countries. In 2016, it employed around 6,500 people; 10% of them are military personnel who are formally employed by the Office for Military Sciences. The BND is the largest agency of the German Intelligence Community. The BND was founded during the Cold War in 1956 as the official foreign intelligence agency of West Germany, which had recently joined NATO, and in close cooperation with the CIA. It was the successor to the earlier Gehlen Organization, often known simply as "The Organization" or "The Org", a West German intelligence organization affiliated with the CIA whose existence had not been officially acknowledged. The most central figure in the BND's history was former Weh ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
