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Hermann Foertsch
Hermann Foertsch (4 April 1895 – 27 December 1961) was a German general during World War II who held commands at the divisional, corps and army levels. He was a recipient of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross of Nazi Germany. Foertsch was tried at the Hostages Trial in 1947. The trial resulted in Foertsch's acquittal because he was a staff officer at the time that the criminal orders were transmitted. Hostages trial As a chief of staff for several generals commanding Wehrmacht forces in occupied Greece and Yugoslavia, Foertsch passed on orders to subordinate units to take hostages or conduct reprisals. These orders were deemed criminal by the Tribunal, but staff officers were not considered culpable unless they drafted such criminal orders or made a special effort to distribute them to the troops that carried them out. Citing a lack of evidence of a commission of an unlawful act, the Tribunal acquitted Foertsch of war crimes. Later life After his acquittal, Foertsch collabo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hostages Trial
The Hostages Trial (or, officially, ''The United States of America v. Wilhelm List, et al.'') was held from 8 July 1947 until 19 February 1948 and was the seventh of the twelve trials for war crimes that United States authorities held in their occupation zone in Germany in Nuremberg after the end of World War II. These twelve trials were all held before US military courts, not before the International Military Tribunal, but took place in the same rooms at the Palace of Justice. The twelve US trials are collectively known as the "Subsequent Nuremberg Trials" or, more formally, as the "Trials of War Criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals" (NMT). This case is also known as the "Southeast Case" because all of the defendants had once been German generals leading the troops in Southeastern Europe during the Balkans Campaign, i.e. in Greece, Albania and Yugoslavia; and they were charged with ordering the hostage-taking of civilians and wanton shootings of these hostages, the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1st Army (Wehrmacht)
The 1st Army (german: 1. Armee) was a World War II field army. Combat chronicle 1939 The 1st Army was activated on 26 August 1939, in Wehrkreis XII with General Erwin von Witzleben in command. Its primary mission was to take defensive positions and guard the western defences (West Wall) of Germany against Allied forces along the Maginot Line during the attack on Poland, making it the principal German combatant during the short-lived French Saar Offensive. 1940 During the Western campaign it belonged to the Army Group C and initially remained passive towards the Maginot Line. the 1st Army continued its defensive assignment on the French border until June 1940, when the Battle of France had turned decisively to Germany's favor. Starting on 14 June 1940, the 1st Army began the penetration of the Maginot Line, breaking through French defenses, it began concentrating its forces in the frontier sector south of Saarbrücken. Another penetration was conducted north of Wörth am M ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Drzonowo Wałeckie
Drzonowo Wałeckie (formerly german: Drahnow) is a village in the administrative district of Gmina Człopa, within Wałcz County, West Pomeranian Voivodeship, in north-western Poland. It lies approximately south-east of Człopa, south-west of Wałcz, and east of the regional capital Szczecin. Before 1772 the area was part of Kingdom of Poland, and from 1772–1945 part of Prussia and then Germany. For more on its history, see Wałcz County. Notable residents * Friedrich Foertsch (1900–1976), Inspector General of the Bundeswehr * Hermann Foertsch Hermann Foertsch (4 April 1895 – 27 December 1961) was a German general during World War II who held commands at the divisional, corps and army levels. He was a recipient of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross of Nazi Germany. Foertsch was tr ... (1895–1961), general References Villages in Wałcz County {{Wałcz-geo-stub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Operation Undertone
Operation Undertone, also known as the Saar-Palatinate Offensive, was a large assault by the U.S. Seventh, Third, and French First Armies of the Sixth and Twelfth Army Groups as part of the Allied invasion of Germany in March 1945 during World War II. A force of three corps was to attack abreast from Saarbrücken, Germany, along a sector to a point southeast of Hagenau, France. A narrow strip along the Rhine leading to the extreme northeastern corner of Alsace at Lauterbourg was to be cleared by a division of the French First Army under operational control of the Seventh Army. The Seventh Army's main effort was to be made in the center up the Kaiserslautern corridor. In approving the plan, Supreme Allied Commander General Dwight D. Eisenhower asserted that the objective was not only to clear the Saar-Palatinate but to establish bridgeheads with forces of the Sixth Army Group over the Rhine between Mainz and Mannheim. The U.S. Third Army of the 12th Army Group was to be ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Clean Wehrmacht
The myth of the clean ''Wehrmacht'' is the negationist notion that the regular German armed forces (the ''Wehrmacht'') were not involved in the Holocaust or other war crimes during World War II. The myth, heavily promoted by German authors and military personnel after World War II, completely denies the culpability of the German military command in the planning and perpetration of war crimes. Even where the perpetration of war crimes and the waging of an extermination campaign, particularly in the Soviet Unionwhere the Nazis viewed the population as " sub-humans" ruled by " Jewish Bolshevik" conspiratorshas been acknowledged, they are ascribed to the "Party soldiers corps", the ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS), but not the regular German military. The myth began at the Nuremberg trials held between 20 November 1945 and 1 October 1946. Franz Halder and other ''Wehrmacht'' leaders signed the Generals' memorandum entitled "The German Army from 1920 to 1945", which laid out its key elemen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Himmerod Memorandum
The Himmerod memorandum () was a 40-page document produced in 1950 after a secret meeting of former Wehrmacht high-ranking officers invited by Chancellor Konrad Adenauer to the Himmerod Abbey to discuss West Germany's ''Wiederbewaffnung'' (rearmament). The resulting document laid the foundation for the establishment of the new military force (Bundeswehr) of the Federal Republic. The memorandum, along with the public declaration of Wehrmacht's "honour" by the Allied military commanders and West Germany's politicians, contributed to the creation of the myth of the clean Wehrmacht. Background The Potsdam Conference held by the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom and the United States from 17 July to 2 August 1945, largely determined the occupation policies that the occupied country was to face after its defeat, including demilitarization, denazification, democratization and decentralization. The Allies' often crude and ineffective implementation caused the local population to dismiss ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wiederbewaffnung
West German rearmament (german: Wiederbewaffnung) began in the decades after the World War II. Fears of another rise of German militarism caused the new military to operate within an alliance framework, under NATO command. The events led to the establishment of the ''Bundeswehr'', the West German military, in 1955. The name ''Bundeswehr'' was a compromise choice suggested by former general Hasso von Manteuffel to distinguish the new forces from the ''Wehrmacht'' term for the combined German forces of Nazi Germany. Background The 1945 Morgenthau Plan had called to reduce Allied-occupied Germany to a pre-industrial state by eliminating its arms industry and other key industries essential to military strength, thus removing its ability to wage war. However, because of the cost of food imports to Germany, and the fear that poverty and hunger would drive desperate Germans toward communism, the US government signalled a moderation of this plan in September 1946 with Secretary of S ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
West Germany
West Germany is the colloquial term used to indicate the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG; german: Bundesrepublik Deutschland , BRD) between its formation on 23 May 1949 and the German reunification through the accession of East Germany on 3 October 1990. During the Cold War, the western portion of Germany and the associated territory of West Berlin were parts of the Western Bloc. West Germany was formed as a political entity during the Allied occupation of Germany after World War II, established from eleven states formed in the three Allied zones of occupation held by the United States, the United Kingdom, and France. The FRG's provisional capital was the city of Bonn, and the Cold War era country is retrospectively designated as the Bonn Republic. At the onset of the Cold War, Europe was divided between the Western and Eastern blocs. Germany was divided into the two countries. Initially, West Germany claimed an exclusive mandate for all of Germany, representing itself ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Konrad Adenauer
Konrad Hermann Joseph Adenauer (; 5 January 1876 – 19 April 1967) was a Germany, German statesman who served as the first Chancellor of Germany, chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany from 1949 to 1963. From 1946 to 1966, he was the first leader of the Christian Democratic Union (Germany), Christian Democratic Union (CDU), a Christian democratic, Christian-democratic party he co-founded, which became the dominant force in the country under his leadership. A devout Roman Catholic and member of the Catholic Centre Party (Germany), Centre Party, Adenauer was a leading politician in the Weimar Republic, serving as Mayor of Cologne (1917–1933) and as president of the Prussian State Council (1922–1933). In the early years of the Federal Republic, he switched focus from denazification to recovery, and led his country from the ruins of World War II to becoming a productive and prosperous nation that forged close relations with France, the United Kingdom and the United States ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bundeswehr
The ''Bundeswehr'' (, meaning literally: ''Federal Defence'') is the armed forces of the Federal Republic of Germany. The ''Bundeswehr'' is divided into a military part (armed forces or ''Streitkräfte'') and a civil part, the military part consisting of the German Army, the German Navy, the German Air Force, the Joint Support Service, the Joint Medical Service, and the Cyber and Information Domain Service. , the ''Bundeswehr'' had a strength of 183,638 active-duty military personnel and 81,318 civilians, placing it among the 30 largest military forces in the world, and making it the second largest in the European Union behind France. In addition, the ''Bundeswehr'' has approximately 30,050 reserve personnel (2020). With German military expenditures at $56.0 billion, the ''Bundeswehr'' is the seventh highest-funded military in the world, though military expenditures remain relatively average at 1.3% of national GDP, well below the (non-binding) NATO target of 2%. Germa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hans Speidel
Hans Speidel (28 October 1897 – 28 November 1984) was a German general, who was one of the major military leaders of West Germany during the early Cold War. The first full General in West Germany, he was a principal founder of the ''Bundeswehr'' and a major figure in German rearmament, integration into NATO and international negotiations on European and Western defence cooperation in the 1950s. He served as Commander of the Allied Land Forces Central Europe (COMLANDCENT) from 1957 to 1963 and then as President of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs from 1964. Speidel joined the German Army in 1914, fought in the First World War, and stayed with the Army as a career soldier after the war. He served as chief of staff to Field Marshal Erwin Rommel during the Second World War and was promoted to lieutenant general in 1944. Speidel participated in the 20 July Plot to assassinate Hitler, and he was tasked with recruiting Rommel for the resistance. After the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Axis Occupation Of Yugoslavia
World War II in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia began on 6 April 1941, when the country was swiftly conquered by Axis forces and partitioned between Germany, Italy, Hungary, Bulgaria and their client regimes. Shortly after Germany attacked the USSR on 22 June 1941, the communist-led republican Yugoslav Partisans, on orders from Moscow, launched a guerrilla liberation war fighting against the Axis forces and their locally established puppet regimes, including the Axis-allied Independent State of Croatia (NDH) and the Government of National Salvation in the German-occupied territory of Serbia. This was dubbed the National Liberation War and Socialist Revolution in post-war Yugoslav communist historiography. Simultaneously, a multi-side civil war was waged between the Yugoslav communist Partisans, the Serbian royalist Chetniks, the Axis-allied Croatian Ustaše and Home Guard, Serbian Volunteer Corps and State Guard, Slovene Home Guard, as well as Nazi-allied Russian Protective ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
