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Heinz Schweizer
Heinz Schweizer (18 July 1908 – 5 June 1946) was a German bomb disposal officer in the ''Luftwaffe'' of the ''Wehrmacht'', holding the rank of Captain (''Hauptmann''). Beginning in 1940, he served in a house demolition and bomb disposal unit (''Sprengkommando'') based in Düsseldorf-Kalkum during World War II. Renowned for his expertise in defusing unexploded ordnance and saving lives, Schweizer was celebrated by Nazi propaganda as a hero, described as a "man with nerves of steel". However, toward the end of war, he took extraordinary action to rescue approximately 100 to 150 political prisoners held by the Nazis and subjected to forced labour, saving their lives from near-certain death in a detention subcamp near Düsseldorf. Background Little is known about Schweizer's early life in Berlin. In the 1930s, he became an officer in the ''Reichswehr'' before transferring to the ''Luftwaffe'', which was newly established in 1935. In 1936, he volunteered for service in the Spanis ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Berlin
Berlin ( ; ) is the Capital of Germany, capital and largest city of Germany, by both area and List of cities in Germany by population, population. With 3.7 million inhabitants, it has the List of cities in the European Union by population within city limits, highest population within its city limits of any city in the European Union. The city is also one of the states of Germany, being the List of German states by area, third smallest state in the country by area. Berlin is surrounded by the state of Brandenburg, and Brandenburg's capital Potsdam is nearby. The urban area of Berlin has a population of over 4.6 million and is therefore the most populous urban area in Germany. The Berlin/Brandenburg Metropolitan Region, Berlin-Brandenburg capital region has around 6.2 million inhabitants and is Germany's second-largest metropolitan region after the Rhine-Ruhr region, as well as the List of EU metropolitan areas by GDP, fifth-biggest metropolitan region by GDP in the European Union. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nazi
Nazism (), formally named National Socialism (NS; , ), is the far-right politics, far-right Totalitarianism, totalitarian socio-political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Germany. During Hitler's rise to power, it was frequently referred to as Hitler Fascism () and Hitlerism (). The term "neo-Nazism" is applied to other far-right groups with similar ideology, which formed after World War II, and after Nazi Germany collapsed. Nazism is a form of fascism, with disdain for liberal democracy and the parliamentary system. Its beliefs include support for dictatorship, fervent antisemitism, anti-communism, anti-Slavism, anti-Romani sentiment, scientific racism, white supremacy, Nordicism, social Darwinism, homophobia, ableism, and the use of eugenics. The ultranationalism of the Nazis originated in pan-Germanism and the ethno-nationalist ''Völkisch movement, Völkisch'' movement which had been a prominent aspect of German nationa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bouncing Bomb
A bouncing bomb is a bomb designed to bounce to a target across water in a calculated manner to avoid obstacles such as torpedo nets, and to allow both the bomb's speed on arrival at the target and the timing of its detonation to be predetermined, in a similar fashion to a regular naval depth charge. The inventor of the first such bomb was the British engineer Barnes Wallis, whose "Upkeep" bouncing bomb was used in the Royal Air Force, RAF's Operation Chastise of May 1943 to bounce into German dams and explode underwater, with an effect similar to the underground detonation of the later Grand Slam bomb, Grand Slam and Tallboy bomb, Tallboy earthquake bombs, both of which he also invented. British bouncing bombs After the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, Wallis saw strategic bombing as the means to destroy the enemy's ability to wage war and he wrote a paper entitled "A Note on a Method of Attacking the Axis powers, Axis Powers". Referring to the enemy's power suppli ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
German-occupied Europe
German-occupied Europe, or Nazi-occupied Europe, refers to the sovereign countries of Europe which were wholly or partly military occupation, militarily occupied and civil-occupied, including puppet states, by the (armed forces) and the government of Nazi Germany, government of Nazi Germany at various times between 1939 and 1945, during World War II, administered by the Nazi regime under the dictatorship of Adolf Hitler.Encyclopædia Britannica German occupied Europe.World War II. Retrieved 1 September 2015 from the Internet Archive. The occupied European territory: * as far east as Franz Joseph Land in Arkhangelsk Oblast, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union (1943–1944) * as far north as Franz Joseph Land in Arkhangelsk Oblast, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union (1943–1944) * as far south as the island of Gavdos in the Kingdom of Greece * as far west as the island of Ushant in the French Third Republic, French Republic In 1941, around 280 million people in Europe, more than half the popul ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Prisoners Of War
A prisoner of war (POW) is a person held captive by a belligerent power during or immediately after an armed conflict. The earliest recorded usage of the phrase "prisoner of war" dates back to 1610. Belligerents hold prisoners of war for a range of legitimate and illegitimate reasons. These may include isolating them from enemy combatants still in the field (releasing and repatriating them in an orderly manner after hostilities), demonstrating military victory, punishment, prosecution of war crimes, labour exploitation, recruiting or even conscripting them as combatants, extracting collecting military and political intelligence, and political or religious indoctrination. Ancient times For much of history, prisoners of war would often be slaughtered or enslaved. Early Roman gladiators could be prisoners of war, categorised according to their ethnic roots as Samnites, Thracians, and Gauls (''Galli''). Homer's ''Iliad'' describes Trojan and Greek soldiers offering rewards o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Non-commissioned Officer
A non-commissioned officer (NCO) is an enlisted rank, enlisted leader, petty officer, or in some cases warrant officer, who does not hold a Commission (document), commission. Non-commissioned officers usually earn their position of authority by promotion through the enlisted ranks. In contrast, Officer (armed forces), commissioned officers usually enter directly from a military academy, officer training corps (OTC) or Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC), or officer candidate school (OCS) or officer training school (OTS), after receiving a post-secondary degree. The NCO corps usually includes many grades of enlisted, corporal and sergeant; in some countries, warrant officers also carry out the duties of NCOs. The naval equivalent includes some or all grades of petty officer. There are different classes of non-commissioned officers, including junior (lower ranked) non-commissioned officers (JNCO) and senior/staff (higher ranked) non-commissioned officers (SNCO). Functio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Buchenwald Concentration Camp
Buchenwald (; 'beech forest') was a German Nazi concentration camp established on Ettersberg hill near Weimar, Nazi Germany, Germany, in July 1937. It was one of the first and the largest of the concentration camps within the Altreich (pre-1938 Nazi Germany), Altreich (Old Reich) territories. Many actual or suspected communists were among the first internees. Prisoners came from all over Europe and the Soviet Union, and included Jews, Polish people, Poles, and other Slavs, the mentally ill, and physically disabled, political prisoners, Romani people, Roma, Freemasonry, Freemasons, and prisoners of war. There were also ordinary criminals and those perceived as sexual deviants by the Nazi regime. All prisoners worked primarily as forced labor in local armaments factories. The insufficient food and poor conditions, as well as deliberate executions, led to 56,545 deaths at Buchenwald of the 280,000 prisoners who passed through the camp and its List of subcamps of Buchenwald, 139 sub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Political Prisoners
A political prisoner is someone imprisoned for their political activity. The political offense is not always the official reason for the prisoner's detention. There is no internationally recognized legal definition of the concept, although numerous similar definitions have been proposed by various organizations and scholars, and there is a general consensus among scholars that "individuals have been sanctioned by legal systems and imprisoned by political regimes not for their violation of codified laws but for their thoughts and ideas that have fundamentally challenged existing power relations". The status of a political prisoner is generally awarded to individuals based on the declarations of non-governmental organizations like Amnesty International, on a case-by-case basis. While such statuses are often widely recognized by the international public, they are often rejected by individual governments accused of holding political prisoners, which tend to deny any bias in thei ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Düsseldorf
Düsseldorf is the capital city of North Rhine-Westphalia, the most populous state of Germany. It is the second-largest city in the state after Cologne and the List of cities in Germany with more than 100,000 inhabitants, seventh-largest city in Germany, with a 2022 population of 629,047. The Düssel, from which the city and the borough of Düsseltal take their name, divides into four separate branches within the city, each with its own mouth into the Rhine (Lower Rhine). Most of Düsseldorf lies on the right bank of the Rhine, and the city has grown together with Neuss, Ratingen, Meerbusch, Erkrath and Monheim am Rhein. Düsseldorf is the central city of the metropolitan region Rhine-Ruhr, the List of EU metropolitan regions by GDP#2021 ranking of top four German metropolitan regions, second biggest metropolitan region by GDP in the European Union, that stretches from Bonn via Cologne and Düsseldorf to the Ruhr (from Duisburg via Essen to Dortmund). The ''-dorf'' suffix mea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Airstrike
An airstrike, air strike, or air raid is an offensive operation carried out by aircraft. Air strikes are delivered from aircraft such as blimps, balloons, fighter aircraft, attack aircraft, bombers, attack helicopters, and drones. The official definition includes all sorts of targets, including enemy air targets, but in popular usage the term is usually narrowed to a tactical (small-scale) attack on a ground or naval objective as opposed to a larger, more general attack such as carpet bombing. Weapons used in an airstrike can range from direct-fire aircraft-mounted cannons and machine guns, rockets and air-to-surface missiles, to various types of aerial bombs, glide bombs, cruise missiles, ballistic missiles, and even directed-energy weapons such as laser weapons. In close air support, air strikes are usually controlled by trained observers on the ground for coordination with ground troops and intelligence in a manner derived from artillery tactics. History Beginnings Th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Preparation For Destruction Of Royal Castle In Warsaw
Preparation may refer to: * Preparation (dental), the method by which a tooth is prepared when removing decay and designing a form that will provide adequate retention for a dental restoration * Preparation (music), treatment of dissonance in tonal music * Preparation, Iowa, a ghost town * Preparation time, time to prepare speeches in policy debate * ''The Preparation'', a 2017 South Korean film * ''Preparations'' (album), a 2007 album by Prefuse 73 * Prepared dosage form * Prepared drug * Prepared food * Prepared supplement * Special modifications to instruments, see **Prepared piano **Prepared guitar *Fossil preparation See also * Preparation H, popular hemorrhoids medicine * Preparation for the Gospel, early Christian book * * Prep (other) * Preparationism * Prepare (other) Prepare or ''variation'', may refer to: * PREPARE (Preparedness Against (Re-)emerging Epidemics) of the European Union (EU) * CONTEST#Prepare, Prepare strategy, part of the CONTEST an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Subcamp
Subcamps were outlying detention centres (''Haftstätten'') that came under the command of a main Nazi concentration camps, concentration camp run by the SS in Nazi Germany and German-occupied Europe. The Nazis distinguished between the List of Nazi concentration camps, main camps (or ''Stammlager'') and the subcamps (''Außenlager'' or ''Außenkommandos'') subordinated to them. Survival conditions in the subcamps were, in many cases, poorer for the prisoners than those in the main camps. Emergence of the concept Within a concentration camp, prisoners were forced to carry out various tasks. The work could even be pointless and vexatious, without any useful output. Based on military language the SS designated such prisoner task forces as "details" or ''Kommandos''; the generic term being the "works details" (''Arbeitskommandos'') of a camp. For example, in Dachau concentration camp there was a "Crematorium Works Detail" (''Arbeitskommando Krematorium''), which was put together ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
