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Toplitzsee
Lake Toplitz (German: ''Toplitzsee'') is a lake situated in a dense mountain forest high up in the Austrian Alps, from Salzburg in western Austria. It is surrounded by cliffs and forests in the Salzkammergut lake district, within the Totes Gebirge (dead mountains). The Toplitzsee water contains no oxygen below a depth of 20 m. Fish can survive only in the top 18 m, as the water below 20 m is salty, although bacteria and worms that can live without oxygen have been found below 20 m. In 1943 and 1944, the shore of Lake Toplitz served as a Nazi naval testing station. Using copper diaphragms, scientists experimented with different explosives, detonating up to 4,000 kg charges at various depths. Over £100 million of counterfeit pound sterling notes were claimed to have been dumped in the lake after Operation Bernhard, which was never fully put into action. In 1959, investigators recovered £700 million of counterfeit notes from the lake, that Hitler had planne ...
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Operation Bernhard
Operation Bernhard was an exercise by Nazi Germany to forge British bank notes. The initial plan was to drop the notes over Britain to bring about a collapse of the British economy The economy of the United Kingdom is a highly developed social market and market-orientated economy. It is the sixth-largest national economy in the world measured by nominal gross domestic product (GDP), ninth-largest by purchasing power pa ... during the Second World War. The first phase was run from early 1940 by the (SD) under the title (Operation Andreas). The unit successfully duplicated the cotton paper, rag paper used by the British, produced near-identical engraving blocks and deduced the algorithm used to create the alpha-numeric serial code on each note. The unit closed in early 1942 after its head, Alfred Naujocks, fell out of favour with his superior officer, Reinhard Heydrich. The operation was revived later in the year; the aim was changed to forging money to finance German inte ...
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Gert Fröbe
Karl Gerhart "Gert" Fröbe (; 25 February 1913 – 5 September 1988) was a German actor. He was best known in English-speaking countries for his work as Auric Goldfinger in the James Bond film '' Goldfinger'', as Peachum in ''The Threepenny Opera'', as Baron Bomburst in '' Chitty Chitty Bang Bang'', as Hotzenplotz in '' Der Räuber Hotzenplotz'', General Dietrich von Choltitz in '' Is Paris Burning?'' and Colonel Manfred von Holstein in ''Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines''. Early life and education Fröbe was born in Oberplanitz, today part of Zwickau. He was initially a violinist, but he abandoned it for Kabarett and theatre work. He joined the Nazi Party in 1929 at the age of 16 and left in 1937. In September 1944, theatres in Germany were closed down and Fröbe was drafted into the German Army, where he served until the end of the war. After his party membership became known after World War II, Israel banned Fröbe's films until Mario Blumenau, a Jewish s ...
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Salzkammergut
The Salzkammergut (; ; bar, Soizkaumaguad, label=Central Austro-Bavarian) is a resort area in Austria, stretching from the city of Salzburg eastwards along the Alpine Foreland and the Northern Limestone Alps to the peaks of the Dachstein Mountains. The main river of the region is the Traun, a right tributary of the Danube. The name translates to "salt demesne" (or "salt domain"), being a German word for territories held by princes of the Holy Roman Empire, in early modern Austria specifically territories of the Habsburg monarchy. The salt mines of Salzkammergut were administered by the Imperial in Gmunden from 1745 to 1850. Parts of the region were designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1997. Geography The lands on the shore of the Traun River comprise numerous glacial lakes and raised bogs, the Salzkammergut Mountains and the adjacent Dachstein Mountains, the Totes Gebirge and the Upper Austrian Prealps with prominent Mt. Traunstein in the east. The towering mountain ...
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Goldfinger (film)
''Goldfinger'' is a 1964 spy film and the third instalment in the ''James Bond'' series produced by Eon Productions, starring Sean Connery as the fictional MI6 agent James Bond. It is based on the 1959 novel of the same name by Ian Fleming. The film also stars Honor Blackman as Pussy Galore and Gert Fröbe as the title character Auric Goldfinger, along with Shirley Eaton as the ill-fated Jill Masterson. ''Goldfinger'' was produced by Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman and was the first of four Bond films directed by Guy Hamilton. The film's plot has Bond investigating gold smuggling by gold magnate Auric Goldfinger and eventually uncovering Goldfinger's plans to contaminate the United States Bullion Depository at Fort Knox. ''Goldfinger'' was the first Bond blockbuster, with a budget equal to that of the two preceding films combined. Principal photography took place from January to July 1964 in the United Kingdom, Switzerland and the United States. ''Goldfinger'' w ...
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Austria In World War II
Austria, , bar, Östareich officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous city and state. A landlocked country, Austria is bordered by Germany to the northwest, the Czech Republic to the north, Slovakia to the northeast, Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the west. The country occupies an area of and has Austrians, a population of 9 million. Austria emerged from the remnants of the March of Pannonia, Eastern and Hungarian March at the end of the 1st millennium, first millennium. Originally Margraviate of Austria, a margraviate of Duchy of Bavaria, Bavaria, it developed into Duchy of Austria, a duchy of the Holy Roman Empire in 1156 and was later made Archduchy of Austria, an archduchy in 1453. In the 16th century, Vienna began serving as the empire's adminis ...
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Amber Room
The Amber Room ( rus, Янтарная комната, r=Yantarnaya Komnata, german: Bernsteinzimmer, pl, Bursztynowa komnata) was a chamber decorated in amber panels backed with gold leaf and mirrors, located in the Catherine Palace of Tsarskoye Selo near Saint Petersburg. Constructed in the 18th century in Prussia, the room was dismantled and eventually disappeared during World War II. Before its loss, it was considered an "Eighth Wonder of the World". A reconstruction was made, starting in 1979 and completed and installed in the Catherine Palace in 2003. The Amber Room was intended in 1701 for the Charlottenburg Palace, in Berlin, Prussia, but was eventually installed at the Berlin City Palace. It was designed by German baroque sculptor Andreas Schlüter and Danish amber craftsman Gottfried Wolfram. Schlüter and Wolfram worked on the room until 1707, when work was continued by amber masters Gottfried Turau and Ernst Schacht from Danzig (Gdańsk). It remained in Berlin ...
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The Salzburg Connection
''The Salzburg Connection'' is a 1972 American thriller film directed by Lee H. Katzin, starring Barry Newman and Anna Karina . It is based on the 1968 novel of the same title by Helen MacInnes. It was filmed in DeLuxe Color and Panavision. The sets were designed by the art director Hertha Hareiter. Extensive location shooting took place around Salzburg and at Lake Toplitz. The novel involves Nazi secret files found in a lake in similar circumstances to Lake Toplitz (Finstersee). Lake Toplitz is mentioned throughout the book also. Finstersee is the scene of action and is also shown on slides in the movie. Plot In 1971, the British photographer Richard Bryant (Patrick Jordan) dives into a deep mountain lake, the "Finstersee", and retrieves a heavy box. Soon afterwards two local men confront him, demanding to know where he has put the chest. When Bryant refuses to answer, the younger man strikes him, causing Bryant to fall and strike his head on a rock. The US lawyer William "Bil ...
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Helen MacInnes
Helen Clark MacInnes (October 7, 1907 – September 30, 1985) was a Scottish-American writer of espionage novels. Life She and her husband emigrated to the United States in 1937, when he took an academic position at Columbia University in New York, while retaining his role in the British MI6, for foreign espionage. MacInnes published her first novel during World War II, and her early novels are all based in that setting. Later she wrote more about characters within the context of the Cold War. Early life Helen Clark MacInnes was born on October 7, 1907 in Glasgow to Donald MacInnes and Jessica McDiarmid, and had a traditional Scots Presbyterian upbringing. MacInnes graduated from the University of Glasgow in Scotland in 1928 with an MA in French and German. MacInnes continued her studies at University College, London, where she received a diploma in librarianship in 1931.''Encyclopedia Mysteriosa'', by William L. DeAndrea; p. 221; published 1994 by Prentice-Hall While working as ...
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Private Schulz
''Private Schulz'' is a 1981 BBC television comedy drama serial set mostly in Germany, during and immediately after World War II. It stars Michael Elphick in the title role and Ian Richardson playing various parts. Other notable actors included Tony Caunter, Billie Whitelaw, Billy Murray and Mark Wingett. It was shown on ''Masterpiece Theatre'' in the US. Plot summary Over six one-hour episodes, it tells the story of Gerhard Schulz, a German fraudster and petty criminal who is forced against his will to serve in the SS. In a story based on the real, though unrealised, plot by the Germans known as Operation Bernhard, he persuades his superiors to authorise a project to print counterfeit British five pound notes for the purpose of destroying the British economy. Schulz has little interest in the defeat of Britain, and simply wants to steal the forged notes, although he is also strongly motivated to help a former criminal colleague, a Jewish master forger imprisoned in a concent ...
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Auric Goldfinger
Auric Goldfinger is a fictional character and the main antagonist in Ian Fleming's 1959 seventh ''James Bond'' novel, '' Goldfinger'', and the 1964 film it inspired (the third in the ''James Bond'' series). His first name, Auric, is an adjective meaning "of gold". Fleming chose the name to commemorate the architect Ernő Goldfinger, who had built his home in Hampstead, near Fleming's; it is possible, though unlikely, that he disliked Goldfinger's style of architecture and destruction of Victorian terraces and decided to name a memorable villain after him. According to a 1965 ''Forbes'' article and ''The New York Times'', the Goldfinger persona was based on gold mining magnate Charles W. Engelhard, Jr. In 2003, the American Film Institute declared Auric Goldfinger the 49th-greatest villain in the past 100 years of film. In a poll on IMDb, Auric Goldfinger was voted the most sinister James Bond villain, beating (in order) Ernst Stavro Blofeld, Dr. No, Max Zorin and Emilio Lar ...
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James Bond
The ''James Bond'' series focuses on a fictional British Secret Service agent created in 1953 by writer Ian Fleming, who featured him in twelve novels and two short-story collections. Since Fleming's death in 1964, eight other authors have written authorised Bond novels or novelisations: Kingsley Amis, Christopher Wood, John Gardner, Raymond Benson, Sebastian Faulks, Jeffery Deaver, William Boyd, and Anthony Horowitz. The latest novel is ''With a Mind to Kill'' by Anthony Horowitz, published in May 2022. Additionally Charlie Higson wrote a series on a young James Bond, and Kate Westbrook wrote three novels based on the diaries of a recurring series character, Moneypenny. The character—also known by the code number 007 (pronounced "double-oh-seven")—has also been adapted for television, radio, comic strip, video games and film. The films are one of the longest continually running film series and have grossed over US$7.04 billion in total at the box office ...
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