|
Rudolf Christoph Freiherr Von Gersdorff
Rudolf Christoph Freiherr von Gersdorff (27 March 1905 – 27 January 1980) was an officer in the German Army. He attempted to assassinate Adolf Hitler by suicide bombing on 21 March 1943; the plan failed when Hitler left early, but Gersdorff was undetected. That same month, soldiers from his unit discovered the mass graves of the Soviet-perpetrated Katyn massacre. Early years Rudolf Christoph von Gersdorff was born into a military family of Silesian nobility. He was the second son of Baron Ernst von Gersdorff and his spouse Christine (née Countess zu Dohna-Schlodien). In 1934, Gersdorff married Renata Kracker von Schwartzenfeldt (1913–1942), co-heiress to the rich Silesian industrialist family of von Kramsta, with whom he had one daughter, Eleonore. Gersdorff later married Eva-Maria von Waldenburg, who was a direct descendant of Prince Augustus of Prussia, although through an illegitimate line. She was previously married to Kurt von Wallenberg-Pachaly. His third and final ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lubin
Lubin (; german: Lüben, szl, Lubin) is a city in Lower Silesian Voivodeship in south-western Poland. It is the administrative seat of Lubin County, and also of the rural district called Gmina Lubin, although it is not part of the territory of the latter, as the town forms a separate urban gmina. As of 2021, the city had a total population of 70,815. Geography Lubin is situated on the Zimnica river in the Lower Silesian historical region, about northwest of Wrocław and north of Legnica. The city is one of the major industrial locations in Lower Silesia, with the headquarters of the third-largest Polish corporation, the KGHM Polska Miedź mining company. History The area of Lubin lies midway between the main settlements of two West Slavic Ślężanie tribes, the Dziadoszanie and the Trzebowianie, whose lands were both subdued by King Mieszko I of Poland about 990. It is unclear which of the two tribes, if either, founded the town. One legend states that the town de ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Knight's Cross Of The Iron Cross
The Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross (german: Ritterkreuz des Eisernen Kreuzes), or simply the Knight's Cross (), and its variants, were the highest awards in the military and paramilitary forces of Nazi Germany during World War II. The Knight's Cross was awarded for a wide range of reasons and across all ranks, from a senior commander for skilled leadership of his troops in battle to a low-ranking soldier for a single act of military valour. Presentations were made to members of the three military branches of the : the (army), the (navy) and the (air force), as well as the , the Reich Labour Service and the (German People storm militia), along with personnel from other Axis powers. The award was instituted on 1 September 1939, at the onset of the German invasion of Poland. The award was created to replace the many older merit and bravery neck awards of the German Empire. A higher grade, the Oak Leaves to the Knight's Cross, was instituted in 1940. In 1941, two higher grades ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Officer Cadet
Officer Cadet is a rank held by military cadets during their training to become commissioned officers. In the United Kingdom, the rank is also used by members of University Royal Naval Units, University Officer Training Corps and University Air Squadron; however, these are not trainee officers with many not choosing a career in the armed forces. The term officer trainee is used interchangeably in some countries. Australia The Australian Defence Force follows the same usage as the British military system, using the rank of officer cadet (for the Australian Army (OCDT) and the Royal Australian Air Force (OFFCDT)), for personnel undergoing initial officer training. Unlike midshipmen in the Royal Australian Navy who hold a commission, officer cadets in the Australian Army and Royal Australian Air Force do not yet hold a permanent commission, and are not saluted or referred to as "sir" or "ma'am". They do however hold probationary commissions. Officer cadets in the Australia ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Prince Augustus Of Prussia
Prince Frederick William Henry Augustus of Prussia (german: Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich August; 19 September 1779 – 19 July 1843) was a Prussian royal and general. Born on Friedrichsfelde Palace, he was the youngest son of Prince Augustus Ferdinand of Prussia, the brother of King Frederick the Great, and Margravine Elisabeth Louise of Brandenburg-Schwedt. Military career August joined the Prussian army as a young man, earning the rank of captain by eighteen years old. In 1803, he became a major and was granted an infantry battalion of his own. Three years later, now a lieutenant colonel, he and his battalion took part in the Battle of Auerstedt. His brother, Prince Louis Ferdinand, had been killed by the French army under Napoleon I four days earlier. August himself was captured and held by the French until 1807. In March 1808, his cousin, King Frederick William III of Prussia, made him brigadier general. The Prince spent the next five years reorganizing the Prussian artill ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dohna Castle
Dohna Castle (german: Burg Dohna, cz, hrad Donín) on the once important medieval trade route from Saxony to Bohemia was the ancestral castle seat of the . Of the old, once imposing double castle only a few remnants of the walls remain. The ruins of the old castle are located on the hill of ''Schlossberg'' near the subsequent suburb of the town of the same name, Dohna, in the district of Sächsische Schweiz-Osterzgebirge in Saxony, Germany. History Dohna Castle was probably founded around A.D. 950 by Emperor Otto I (936–973) on the Schlossberg hill on the site of a Sorbian hillfort fortification. This region around the Schlossberg had been a Sorbian settlement from prehistoric times. The name of the associated settlement was Donin, from which the castle received its name. The castle was the centre of the imperially immediate lordship of the burgraves of Dohna. They had the task of guarding the important trade route between Saxony and Bohemia, hold the conquered and s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Baron
Baron is a rank of nobility or title of honour, often hereditary, in various European countries, either current or historical. The female equivalent is baroness. Typically, the title denotes an aristocrat who ranks higher than a lord or knight, but lower than a viscount or count. Often, barons hold their fief – their lands and income – directly from the monarch. Barons are less often the vassals of other nobles. In many kingdoms, they were entitled to wear a smaller form of a crown called a '' coronet''. The term originates from the Latin term , via Old French. The use of the title ''baron'' came to England via the Norman Conquest of 1066, then the Normans brought the title to Scotland and Italy. It later spread to Scandinavia and Slavic lands. Etymology The word '' baron'' comes from the Old French , from a Late Latin "man; servant, soldier, mercenary" (so used in Salic law; Alemannic law has in the same sense). The scholar Isidore of Seville in the 7th cent ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Province Of Silesia
The Province of Silesia (german: Provinz Schlesien; pl, Prowincja Śląska; szl, Prowincyjŏ Ślōnskŏ) was a province of Prussia from 1815 to 1919. The Silesia region was part of the Prussian realm since 1740 and established as an official province in 1815, then became part of the German Empire in 1871. In 1919, as part of the Free State of Prussia within Weimar Germany, Silesia was divided into the provinces of Upper Silesia and Lower Silesia. Silesia was reunified briefly from 1 April 1938 to 27 January 1941 as a province of Nazi Germany before being divided back into Upper Silesia and Lower Silesia. Breslau (present-day Wrocław, Poland) was the provincial capital. Geography The territory on both sides of the Oder river formed the southeastern part of the Prussian kingdom. It comprised the bulk of the former Bohemian crown land of Upper and Lower Silesia as well as the adjacent County of Kladsko, which the Prussian King Frederick the Great had all conquered fro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Katyn Massacre
The Katyn massacre, "Katyń crime"; russian: link=yes, Катынская резня ''Katynskaya reznya'', "Katyn massacre", or russian: link=no, Катынский расстрел, ''Katynsky rasstrel'', "Katyn execution" was a series of mass executions of nearly 22,000 Polish military officers and intelligentsia prisoners of war carried out by the Soviet Union, specifically the NKVD ("People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs", the Soviet secret police) in April and May 1940. Though the killings also occurred in the Kalinin and Kharkiv prisons and elsewhere, the massacre is named after the Katyn Forest, where some of the mass graves were first discovered by German forces. The massacre was initiated in NKVD chief Lavrentiy Beria's proposal to Joseph Stalin to execute all captive members of the Polish officer corps, which was secretly approved by the Soviet Politburo led by Stalin. Of the total killed, about 8,000 were officers imprisoned during the 1939 Soviet invasi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national republics; in practice, both its government and its economy were highly centralized until its final years. It was a one-party state governed by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, with the city of Moscow serving as its capital as well as that of its largest and most populous republic: the Russian SFSR. Other major cities included Leningrad (Russian SFSR), Kiev (Ukrainian SSR), Minsk (Byelorussian SSR), Tashkent ( Uzbek SSR), Alma-Ata (Kazakh SSR), and Novosibirsk (Russian SFSR). It was the largest country in the world, covering over and spanning eleven time zones. The country's roots lay in the October Revolution of 1917, when the Bolsheviks, under the leadership of Vladimir Lenin, overthrew the Russian Provisional Govern ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mass Grave
A mass grave is a grave containing multiple human corpses, which may or may not be identified prior to burial. The United Nations has defined a criminal mass grave as a burial site containing three or more victims of execution, although an exact definition is not unanimously agreed upon. Mass graves are usually created after many people die or are killed, and there is a desire to bury the corpses quickly for sanitation concerns. Although mass graves can be used during major conflicts such as war and crime, in modern times they may be used after a famine, epidemic, or natural disaster. In disasters, mass graves are used for infection and disease control. In such cases, there is often a breakdown of the social infrastructure that would enable proper identification and disposal of individual bodies. History Mass or communal burial was a common practice before the development of a dependable crematory chamber by Ludovico Brunetti in 1873. In ancient Rome waste and dead bodies of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Suicide Attack
A suicide attack is any violent attack, usually entailing the attacker detonating an explosive, where the attacker has accepted their own death as a direct result of the attacking method used. Suicide attacks have occurred throughout history, often as part of a military campaign (as with the Japanese '' kamikaze'' pilots of 1944–1945 during World War II), and more recently as part of terrorist campaigns (such as the September 11 attacks in 2001). While few, if any, successful suicide attacks took place anywhere in the world from 1945 until 1980, between 1981 and September 2015 a total of 4,814 suicide attacks occurred in over 40 countries, killing over 45,000 people. During this time the global rate of such attacks grew from an average of three a year in the 1980s to about one a month in the 1990s to almost one a week from 2001 to 2003 to approximately one a day from 2003 to 2015. Suicide attacks tend to be more deadly and destructive than other terror attacks because ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler (; 20 April 188930 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Germany from 1933 until his death in 1945. He rose to power as the leader of the Nazi Party, becoming the chancellor in 1933 and then taking the title of in 1934. During his dictatorship, he initiated World War II in Europe by invading Poland on 1 September 1939. He was closely involved in military operations throughout the war and was central to the perpetration of the Holocaust: the genocide of about six million Jews and millions of other victims. Hitler was born in Braunau am Inn in Austria-Hungary and was raised near Linz. He lived in Vienna later in the first decade of the 1900s and moved to Germany in 1913. He was decorated during his service in the German Army in World War I. In 1919, he joined the German Workers' Party (DAP), the precursor of the Nazi Party, and was appointed leader of the Nazi Party in 1921. In 1923, he attempted to seize governme ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
