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Strafbattalion
''Strafbataillon'' (English: "penal battalion") is the generic term for penal units that were created from prisoners during the Second World War in all branches of the ''Wehrmacht''. Soldiers, criminals and civilians sentenced to those units were generally poorly armed and required to undertake dangerous high-casualty missions. The ''Strafbataillon'' were operated and administered by the '' Feldgendarmerie'', the German military police. By 1943, the course of the war had turned against Nazi Germany. Military losses and the need to maintain discipline by example made the German High Command order that further punishment units should be formed from the thousands of ''Wehrmacht'' military prisoners that were held in its military prisons. The ''Strafbataillon'', which were under the control of the ''Feldgendarmerie'', were then used to conduct dangerous operations (sometimes akin to suicide missions) for the '' Heer'', such as clearing minefields, assaulting difficult objectives and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Penal Military Unit
Penal military units, including penal battalions, penal companies, etc., are military formations consisting of convicts mobilized for military service. Such formations may contain soldiers convicted of offenses under military law, persons enrolled in the unit after being convicted in civilian courts, or some combination of the two. Service in such units is typically considered a form of punishment or discipline in lieu of imprisonment or capital punishment. History One of the earliest examples of penal military units was recorded in the Chinese annals ''Records of the Grand Historian'' and ''Book of Han''. During the Han–Dayuan War, unhappy with the failure of General Li Guangli in an earlier expedition in 104 BC, Emperor Wu of Han promised amnesty and rewards to criminals, prisoners and bandits (赦囚徒捍寇盜) and dispatched a 60,000-strong army consisting of "bad boys" (惡少年) to attack the Greco-Bactrian kingdom of Dayuan in 102 BC. Dedicated penal units were first e ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Penal Unit
Penal military units, including penal battalions, penal companies, etc., are military formations consisting of convicts mobilized for military service. Such formations may contain soldiers convicted of offenses under military law, persons enrolled in the unit after being convicted in civilian courts, or some combination of the two. Service in such units is typically considered a form of punishment or discipline in lieu of imprisonment or capital punishment. History One of the earliest examples of penal military units was recorded in the Chinese annals ''Records of the Grand Historian'' and ''Book of Han''. During the Han–Dayuan War, unhappy with the failure of General Li Guangli in an earlier expedition in 104 BC, Emperor Wu of Han promised amnesty and rewards to criminals, prisoners and bandits (赦囚徒捍寇盜) and dispatched a 60,000-strong army consisting of "bad boys" (惡少年) to attack the Greco-Bactrian kingdom of Dayuan in 102 BC. Dedicated penal units were first e ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
German Army (Wehrmacht)
The German Army (, "army") is the land component of the armed forces of Federal Republic of Germany, Germany. The present-day German Army was founded in 1955 as part of the newly formed West German ''Bundeswehr'' together with the German Navy, ''Marine'' (German Navy) and the German Air Force, ''Luftwaffe'' (German Air Force). , the German Army had a strength of 62,766 soldiers. History Overview A German army equipped, organized, and trained following a single doctrine and permanently unified under one command in 1871 during the unification of Germany under the leadership of Prussia. From 1871 to 1919, the title ''German Army (German Empire), Deutsches Heer'' (German Army) was the official name of the German land forces. Following the German defeat in World War I and the end of the German Empire, the main army was dissolved. From 1921 to 1935 the name of the German land forces was the ''Reichswehr, Reichsheer'' (Army of the Empire) and from 1935 to 1945 the name ''German Army (We ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gruzino Estate
The Gruzino estate near Chudovo, Russia, was constructed by a team of Neoclassical architects under Vasily Petrovich Stasov for Count Alexey Arakcheyev in the 1810s. Count Arakcheyev chose Gruzino as an imperial gift from Emperor Paul when Arakcheyev was appointed Commandant of St. Petersburg, though the area was in disrepair. He was given the land despite prior claim to it by the governor of the Novgorod and Tver provinces. Using serf labor, Arakcheyev built Gruzino to one of the most up-to-date estates in Russia at the time. The celebrated sculptor Ivan Martos contributed a statue of Emperor Paul. Two months after Arakcheyev's death, Emperor Nicholas gave the estate to the Novgorod Cadet Corps. Although it is stated officially that the manor was destroyed by the Nazi German troops during the World War IIother sourcesmaintain that the estate was wiped out in the 1930s, during Joseph Stalin's industrialisation process. The statues of lions formerly adorning the porch are all ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ukraine
Ukraine ( uk, Україна, Ukraïna, ) is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the second-largest European country after Russia, which it borders to the east and northeast. Ukraine covers approximately . Prior to the ongoing Russian invasion, it was the eighth-most populous country in Europe, with a population of around 41 million people. It is also bordered by Belarus to the north; by Poland, Slovakia, and Hungary to the west; and by Romania and Moldova to the southwest; with a coastline along the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov to the south and southeast. Kyiv is the nation's capital and largest city. Ukraine's state language is Ukrainian; Russian is also widely spoken, especially in the east and south. During the Middle Ages, Ukraine was the site of early Slavic expansion and the area later became a key centre of East Slavic culture under the state of Kievan Rus', which emerged in the 9th century. The state eventually disintegrated into rival regional po ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kamianka, Cherkasy Oblast
Kamianka ( uk, Кам'янка; ; russian: Камeнка) is a town in the Cherkasy Raion of Cherkasy Oblast of Ukraine. It hosts the administration of Kamianka urban hromada, one of the hromadas of Ukraine. It had a population of It is a countryside town approximately southeast from Kyiv, located on the bank of the Tiasmyn River. Government Until 18 July, 2020, Kamianka served as an administrative center of Kamianka Raion. The raion was abolished in July 2020 as part of the administrative reform of Ukraine, which reduced the number of raions of Cherkasy Oblast to four. The area of the Kamianka Raion was merged into the Cherkasy Raion. History Kamianka is known as an artist's colony, in which Prince Grigory Potemkin, the Russian national poet Alexander Pushkin, the composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, and other freethinkers and war heroes during the Napoleonic Wars era worked. Kamianka was also one of the chief centres of the Southern Society of the Decembrists. Culture ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lower Saxony
Lower Saxony (german: Niedersachsen ; nds, Neddersassen; stq, Läichsaksen) is a German state (') in northwestern Germany. It is the second-largest state by land area, with , and fourth-largest in population (8 million in 2021) among the 16 ' federated as the Federal Republic of Germany. In rural areas, Northern Low Saxon and Saterland Frisian are still spoken, albeit in declining numbers. Lower Saxony borders on (from north and clockwise) the North Sea, the states of Schleswig-Holstein, Hamburg, , Brandenburg, Saxony-Anhalt, Thuringia, Hesse and North Rhine-Westphalia, and the Netherlands. Furthermore, the state of Bremen forms two enclaves within Lower Saxony, one being the city of Bremen, the other its seaport, Bremerhaven (which is a semi-enclave, as it has a coastline). Lower Saxony thus borders more neighbours than any other single '. The state's largest cities are state capital Hanover, Braunschweig (Brunswick), Lüneburg, Osnabrück, Oldenburg, Hildesheim, Salzgitt ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Emsland
Landkreis Emsland () is a district in Lower Saxony, Germany named after the river Ems. It is bounded by (from the north and clockwise) the districts of Leer, Cloppenburg and Osnabrück, the state of North Rhine-Westphalia (district of Steinfurt), the district of Bentheim in Lower Saxony, and the Netherlands (provinces of Drenthe and Groningen). History For a long time the region of the Emsland was extremely sparsely populated, due to the fens on both sides of the river. Small villages were established in medieval times along the river and on the Hümmling. In the 13th century the bishops of Münster gained control over the region; the Emsland remained property of the bishop until 1803, when the clerical states were dissolved. It came under rule of Prussia and Arenberg, but after the Napoleonic Wars the Congress of Vienna decided to hand the territory over to the Kingdom of Hanover. The Duchy of Arenberg continued to exist as a fief of the Hanoverian kings. When Hanover was a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Emslandlager
Emslandlager ("Emsland camps") were a series of 15 moorland labor, punitive and POWs-camps, active from 1933 to 1945 and located in the districts of Emsland and Bentheim, Lower Saxony, Germany. The central administration was set in Papenburg where now a memorial of these camps, the ''Dokumentations- und Informationszentrum (DIZ) Emslandlager'', is located. In Emslandlager VII camp, seven Belgian Freemasons and resistance fighters founded '' Liberté chérie'' in 1943, one of the very few Masonic lodges established within a Nazi concentration camp. Börgermoor concentration camp The first and one of the most important of these camps was the Börgermoor concentration camp, situated near the current municipality of Surwold, in Lower Saxony. In June 1933 the first 1000 German political opponents to be held in protective custody (''Schutzhaft'') arrived at the site of the camp, which they built from scratch, as well as the Esterwegen concentration camp. In 1934 the camp became a p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Invasion Of Poland
The invasion of Poland (1 September – 6 October 1939) was a joint attack on the Republic of Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union which marked the beginning of World War II. The German invasion began on 1 September 1939, one week after the signing of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact between Germany and the Soviet Union, and one day after the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union had approved the pact. The Soviets invaded Poland on 17 September. The campaign ended on 6 October with Germany and the Soviet Union dividing and annexing the whole of Poland under the terms of the German–Soviet Frontier Treaty. The invasion is also known in Poland as the September campaign ( pl, kampania wrześniowa) or 1939 defensive war ( pl, wojna obronna 1939 roku, links=no) and known in Germany as the Poland campaign (german: Überfall auf Polen, Polenfeldzug). German forces invaded Poland from the north, south, and west the morning after the Gleiwitz incident. Slovak military forces ad ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp
Sachsenhausen () or Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg was a German Nazi concentration camp in Oranienburg, Germany, used from 1936 until April 1945, shortly before the defeat of Nazi Germany in May later that year. It mainly held political prisoners throughout World War II. Prominent prisoners included Joseph Stalin's oldest son, Yakov Dzhugashvili; assassin Herschel Grynszpan; Paul Reynaud, the penultimate Prime Minister of France; Francisco Largo Caballero, Prime Minister of the Second Spanish Republic during the Spanish Civil War; the wife and children of the Crown Prince of Bavaria; Ukrainian nationalist leader Stepan Bandera; and several enemy soldiers and political dissidents. Sachsenhausen was a labor camp, outfitted with several subcamps, a gas chamber, and a medical experimentation area. Prisoners were treated inhumanely, fed inadequately, and killed openly. After World War II, when Oranienburg was in the Soviet Occupation Zone, the structure was used by the NKVD as NKVD ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Conscript
Conscription (also called the draft in the United States) is the state-mandated enlistment of people in a national service, mainly a military service. Conscription dates back to antiquity and it continues in some countries to the present day under various names. The modern system of near-universal national conscription for young men dates to the French Revolution in the 1790s, where it became the basis of a very large and powerful military. Most European nations later copied the system in peacetime, so that men at a certain age would serve 1–8 years on active duty and then transfer to the reserve force. Conscription is controversial for a range of reasons, including conscientious objection to military engagements on religious or philosophical grounds; political objection, for example to service for a disliked government or unpopular war; sexism, in that historically men have been subject to the draft in the most cases; and ideological objection, for example, to a perceived vio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
