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German Surrender At Lüneburg Heath
On 4 May 1945, at 18:30 British Double Summer Time, at Lüneburg Heath, south of Hamburg, British Field Marshal Sir Bernard Montgomery accepted the unconditional surrender of the German forces in the Netherlands, northwest Germany including all islands, in Denmark and all naval ships in those areas. The surrender preceded the end of World War II in Europe and was signed in a carpeted tent at Montgomery's headquarters on the Timeloberg hill at Wendisch Evern. The surrender negotiations and signing ceremony Lüneburg had been captured by the British forces on 18 April 1945 with Montgomery establishing his headquarters at a villa in the village of Häcklingen. A German delegation arrived at his tactical headquarters on the Timeloberg hill by car on 3 May, having been sent by ''Großadmiral'' Karl Dönitz who had been nominated President and Supreme Commander of the German armed forces by Adolf Hitler in his last will and testament on 29 April. Dönitz was aware of the alli ...
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Capitulation (surrender)
Capitulation (, a little head or division; ''capitulare'', to treat upon terms) is an agreement in time of war for the surrender (military), surrender to a hostile armed force of a particular body of troops, a town or a territory. It is an ordinary incident of war, and therefore no previous instructions from the captors' government are required before finally settling the conditions of capitulation. The most usual of such conditions are freedom of religion and security of private property on one hand, and a promise not to bear arms within a certain period on the other. Such agreements may be rashly concluded with an inferior officer, on whose authority the enemy are not, in the actual position of the war, entitled to place reliance. When an agreement is made by an officer who has not the proper authority or who has exceeded the limits of his authority, it is termed a "sponsion", and, to be binding, must be confirmed by express or tacit ratification. Article 35 of the Hague ...
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Timeloberg 08
Wendisch Evern is a municipality in the district of Lüneburg, in Lower Saxony, Germany. Recent history (Second World War) On 4 May 1945 on the ''Timeloberg'' hill at the edge of Deutsch Evern a German delegation under the command of Hans-Georg von Friedeburg signed a document in the presence of British Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery for the unconditional surrender of the three German armies operating in Northwest Germany. This went into force on 5 May at 7 a.m. With the signing of the surrender agreement the Second World War in Northwest Germany came to an end. After the war a monument was erected by the British on what they now called ''Victory Hill''. The monument was dismantled in 1958 and rebuilt at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. Today the spot lies in a military out-of-bounds area and is not accessible. In 1995 another monument was erected on the edge of the Timeloberg, outside the out-of-bounds area. After Heinrich Himmler Heinrich Luitpold H ...
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Oberkommando Der Wehrmacht
The (; abbreviated OKW [oː kaːˈve] Armed Forces High Command) was the Command (military formation), supreme military command and control Staff (military), staff of Nazi Germany during World War II, that was directly subordinated to Adolf Hitler. Created in 1938, the OKW replaced the Ministry of the Reichswehr, Reich Ministry of War and had nominal oversight over the individual high commands of the Wehrmacht, country's armed forces: the army (), navy () and air force (). With the start of World War II, tactical control of the Waffen-SS was also exercised by it. There was no direct chain of command between the OKW and the other High Commands. Rivalry with the different services' commands, mainly with the Oberkommando des Heeres, Army High Command (OKH), prevented the OKW from becoming a unified German General Staff in an effective command hierarchy, chain of command, though it did help coordinate operations among the three services. During the war, the OKW acquired more and ...
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Army Group Vistula
Army Group Vistula () was an Army Group of the ''Wehrmacht'', formed on 24 January 1945. It lasted for 105 days, having been put together from elements of Army Group A (shattered in the Soviet Vistula-Oder Offensive), Army Group Centre (similarly largely destroyed in the East Prussian Offensive), and a variety of new or ad hoc formations. It was formed to protect Berlin from the Soviet armies advancing from the Vistula River. Establishment and history Heinz Guderian had originally urged the creation of a new army group as an essentially defensive measure to fill the gap opening in German defences between the lower Vistula and the lower Oder. The new Army Group Vistula was duly formed from an assortment of rebuilt, new and existing units. Guderian intended to propose Field-Marshal Maximilian von Weichs as commander. However, in a reflection of Hitler's desire to transfer control of the conflict from the ''Wehrmacht'' to the SS, Heinrich Himmler was appointed. Himmler, who l ...
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Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler (20 April 1889 – 30 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was the dictator of Nazi Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his suicide in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the leader of the Nazi Party, becoming Chancellor of Germany#Nazi Germany (1933–1945), the chancellor in 1933 and then taking the title of in 1934. His invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939 marked the start of the Second World War. He was closely involved in military operations throughout the war and was central to the perpetration of the Holocaust: the genocide of Holocaust victims, about six million Jews and millions of other victims. Hitler was born in Braunau am Inn in Austria-Hungary and moved to German Empire, Germany in 1913. He was decorated during his service in the German Army in the First World War, receiving the Iron Cross. In 1919 he joined the German Workers' Party (DAP), the precursor of the Nazi Party, and in 1921 was app ...
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Field Marshal
Field marshal (or field-marshal, abbreviated as FM) is the most senior military rank, senior to the general officer ranks. Usually, it is the highest rank in an army (in countries without the rank of Generalissimo), and as such, few persons are ever appointed to it. It is considered as a five-star rank (OF-10) in modern-day armed forces in many countries. Promotion to the rank of field marshal in many countries historically required extraordinary military achievement by a general (a wartime victory). However, the rank has also been used as a Division (military), divisional command rank and as a brigade command rank. Examples of the different uses of the rank include Afghanistan, Austria-Hungary, India, Pakistan, Prussia/Germany and Sri Lanka for an extraordinary achievement; Spain and Mexico for a divisional command (); and France, Portugal and Brazil for a brigade command (, ). Origins The origin of the term dates to the early Middle Ages, originally meaning the keeper of t ...
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Purnell's History Of The Second World War
''Purnell's History of the Second World War'' was a hugely successful weekly anthology or 'partwork' publication covering all aspects of the Second World War that was distributed throughout the English-speaking world. Produced shortly before the similarly accomplished 8-volume series on the First World War, it was first published in 1966, being reprinted several times during the 1970s. The magazine was notable for its use of many writers – often well-known military figures – of many nationalities to present a rounded view of the subject. This was combined with high-quality original artwork of the military hardware used, maps and numerous unseen photographs, some of them quite gruesome. Background Despite the name, ''Purnell's History of the Second World War'' was published by Phoebus Publishing Ltd in co-operation with the Imperial War Museum, which provided its research facilities, expert advice, official statistics and photographs. The defunct Purnell & Sons, later British P ...
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John Keegan
Sir John Desmond Patrick Keegan (15 May 1934 – 2 August 2012) was an English military historian, lecturer, author and journalist. He wrote many published works on the nature of combat between prehistory and the 21st century, covering land, air, maritime, intelligence warfare and the psychology of battle. Life and career Keegan was born in Clapham to an Irish World War I veteran and was evacuated to Somerset when World War II broke out. At the age of 13, Keegan contracted orthopaedic tuberculosis, which subsequently affected his gait. The long-term effects of this rendered him unfit for military service, and the timing of his birth made him too young for service in the Second World War, facts he mentioned in his works as an ironic observation on his profession and interests. The illness also interrupted his education in his teenage years, although it included a period at King's College, Taunton and two years at Wimbledon College, which led to entry to Balliol College, Oxford ...
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River Elbe
The Elbe ( ; ; or ''Elv''; Upper Sorbian, Upper and , ) is one of the major rivers of Central Europe. It rises in the Giant Mountains of the northern Czech Republic before traversing much of Bohemia (western half of the Czech Republic), then Germany and flowing into the North Sea at Cuxhaven, northwest of Hamburg. Its total length is . The Elbe's major Tributary, tributaries include the rivers Vltava, Ohře, Saale, Havel, Mulde, and Schwarze Elster. The Elbe river basin, comprising the Elbe and its tributaries, has a catchment area of , the twelfth largest in Europe. The basin spans four countries; however, it lies almost entirely just in two of them, Germany (65.5%) and the Czech Republic (33.7%, covering about two thirds of the nation's territory). On its southeastern edges, the Elbe river basin also comprises small parts of Austria (0.6%) and Poland (0.2%). The Elbe catchment area is inhabited by 24.4 million people; its biggest cities are Berlin, Hamburg, Prague, Dresden a ...
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Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army, often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Republic and, from 1922, the Soviet Union. The army was established in January 1918 by a decree of the Council of People's Commissars to oppose the military forces of the new nation's adversaries during the Russian Civil War, especially the various groups collectively known as the White Army. In February 1946, the Red Army (which embodied the main component of the Soviet Armed Forces alongside the Soviet Navy) was renamed the "Soviet Army". Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union it was split between the post-Soviet states, with its bulk becoming the Russian Ground Forces, commonly considered to be the successor of the Soviet Army. The Red Army provided the largest land warfare, ground force in the Allies of World War II, Allied victory in the European theatre of World War II, and its Soviet invasion of Manchuria, invasion of Manchuria assisted the un ...
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Last Will And Testament Of Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler, chancellor and dictator of Germany from 1933 to 1945, signed his political testament and his private will in the ''Führerbunker'' on 29 April 1945, the day before he committed suicide with his wife, Eva Braun. The political testament consisted of two parts. In the first, ''Mein politisches Testament'', Hitler denied charges of warmongering, expressed his thanks to Germany's loyal citizens, and appealed to them to continue the struggle. In the second, he declared Heinrich Himmler and Hermann Göring to be traitors, and set out his plan for a new government under Karl Dönitz. Hitler's secretary Traudl Junge recalled that he was reading from notes as he dictated the testament, and it is believed that Joseph Goebbels helped him write it. Both the Political Testament and the Private Will and Personal Testament of Adolf Hitler were dictated to Junge during the last days of Hitler's life and signed on 29 April 1945. These artifacts are not to be confused with an ent ...
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President Of Germany (1919–1945)
The president of Germany (, ) was the head of state under the Weimar Constitution, which was officially in force from 1919 to 1945, encompassing the periods of the Weimar Republic and Nazi Germany. The Weimar constitution created a semi-presidential system in which power was divided between president, Cabinet (government), cabinet and Reichstag (Weimar Republic), parliament. The president was directly elected under universal adult suffrage for a seven-year term, although Germany's first president, Friedrich Ebert, was elected by the Weimar National Assembly rather than the people. The intention of the framers of the constitution was that the president would rule in conjunction with the Reichstag (Weimar Republic), Reichstag (legislature) and that his extensive emergency powers would be exercised only in extraordinary circumstances. The political instability of the Weimar period and an increasingly severe factionalism in the legislature, however, led to the president occupying a p ...
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