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Operation Silbertanne
Operation Silbertanne ( silver fir) was the codename of a series of executions that were committed between September 1943 and September 1944 during the German occupation of the Netherlands. The executions were carried out by a death squad composed of Dutch members of the SS and Dutch veterans of the Eastern Front. Background After Adolf Hitler approved Anton Mussert as "Leider van het Nederlandse Volk" (Leader of the Dutch People) in December 1942, he was allowed to form a national government institute, a Dutch shadow cabinet called ''"''Gemachtigden van den Leider''"'', which advised Reichskommissar Arthur Seyss-Inquart from 1 February 1943. The institute consisted of a number of deputies in charge of defined functions or departments within the administration. On 4 February 1943, Retired General and Rijkscommissaris Hendrik Seyffardt, already head of the Dutch SS volunteer group , was announced through the press as “Deputy for Special Services”. As a result, the Communis ...
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Abies Alba
Firs are evergreen coniferous trees belonging to the genus ''Abies'' () in the family Pinaceae. There are approximately 48–65 extant species, found on mountains throughout much of North and Central America, Eurasia, and North Africa. The genus is most closely related to '' Keteleeria'', a small genus confined to eastern Asia. The genus name is derived from the Latin "to rise" in reference to the height of its species. The common English name originates with the Old Norse ''fyri'' or the Old Danish ''fyr''. They are large trees, reaching heights of tall with trunk diameters of when mature. Firs can be distinguished from other members of the pine family by the way in which their needle-like leaves are attached singly to the branches with a base resembling a suction cup, and by their cones, which, like those of cedars, stand upright on the branches like candles and disintegrate at maturity. Identification of the different species is based on the size and arrangeme ...
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Sicherheitsdienst
' (, "Security Service"), full title ' ("Security Service of the ''Reichsführer-SS''"), or SD, was the intelligence agency of the Schutzstaffel, SS and the Nazi Party in Nazi Germany. Established in 1931, the SD was the first Nazi intelligence organization and the Gestapo (formed in 1933) was considered its sister organization through the integration of SS members and operational procedures. The SD was administered as an independent SS office between 1933 and 1939. That year, the SD was transferred over to the Reich Security Main Office (''Reichssicherheitshauptamt''; RSHA), as one of its seven departments. Its first director, Reinhard Heydrich, intended for the SD to bring every single individual within the Third Reich's reach under "continuous supervision". Following Germany's defeat in World War II, the tribunal at the Nuremberg trials officially declared that the SD was a criminal organisation, along with the rest of Heydrich's RSHA (including the Gestapo) both individually ...
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Putten
Putten () is a List of municipalities of the Netherlands, municipality and Dorp (town), town in the Provinces of the Netherlands, province of Gelderland, Netherlands. It had a population of in . It is located in the coastal area of the old Zuiderzee (Southern Sea). To the east of Putten lies the Veluwe, the biggest national park of the Netherlands. To the north, east and west, Putten is surrounded by farmlands. Population centres History Until World War II The oldest official paper in which Putten is mentioned dates back to 855. Small settlements, however, were already in existence during the Roman era. After the founding of the present main church in the 10th century, the community became the center of several smaller settlements. Parts of Nijkerk and Voorthuizen also became part of the Putten area, until in 1530 Nijkerk, and later also Voorthuizen, became independent communities. Until 1356, when a dyke was built, the coastline changed frequently, overflowing agricultur ...
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Staphorst
Staphorst () is a municipality and a town in the eastern Netherlands. History The villages of Staphorst and its southern neighbour Rouveen came into existence as in the 13th century monks started to bring the bogs and swamps into culture. All the farms were built along the long road through the bog area. Thus a lengthy row of farms was built, becoming the long village of Staphorst-Rouveen. This phenomenon is called in Dutch: ''lintbebouwing'' (Ribbon development, ribbon urbanization). In many parts of the Netherlands this type of village is quite common, e.g. Vriezenveen, the villages along river Dike (construction), dykes in the Netherlands, the so-called moor-colonies in the provinces Drenthe and Groningen (province), Groningen, as well as the German regions opposite the border. Staphorst was a Dutch municipality, created through a decree by French emperor Napoleon who merged four smaller entities into a much larger one. The 1811 decree merged the villages of Rouveen, Stap ...
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Meppel
Meppel (; Drents: ''Möppelt'') is a city and municipality in the Northeastern Netherlands. It constitutes the southwestern part of the province of Drenthe. Meppel is the smallest municipality in Drenthe, with a total area of about . As of 1 July 2021, it had a population of 34,506 with over 30,000 inhabitants within city limits. People born in Meppel are occasionally referred to as ''Meppeler Muggen'' in Dutch; this translates as 'mosquitoes from Meppel'. The nickname comes from a traditional folk tale. The people of Meppel thought the church tower was on fire, but after closer inspection, they realised it was only a swarm of mosquitoes. History Meppel developed in the 16th century as an inland harbour for peat transport and distribution. There used to be a lot of waterways in the town, but now only one remains. Meppel received city rights in 1644. On 1 October 1867, Meppel railway station opened to service, drastically improving connectivity in the region. On 1 January 199 ...
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Gestapo
The (, ), Syllabic abbreviation, abbreviated Gestapo (), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe. The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of Free State of Prussia, Prussia into one organisation. On 20 April 1934, oversight of the Gestapo passed to the head of the ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS), Heinrich Himmler, who was also appointed Chief of German Police by Hitler in 1936. Instead of being exclusively a Prussian state agency, the Gestapo became a national one as a sub-office of the (SiPo; Security Police). From 27 September 1939, it was administered by the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA). It became known as (Dept) 4 of the RSHA and was considered a sister organisation to the (SD; Security Service). The Gestapo committed widespread atrocities during its existence. The power of the Gestapo was used to focus upon political opponents, ideological dissenters (clergy and religious org ...
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Woeste Hoeve
De Woeste Hoeve is a hamlet in the Netherlands between Apeldoorn and Arnhem, which is remembered for an incident in the Second World War when, during the night of 6 March 1945, Dutch resistance fighters shot the Nazi Chief of Police, SS General Hanns Rauter. The shooting occurred accidentally when a group of six resistance fighters were on an assignment to capture a German truck so that they could steal food intended for the Germans. They chose Woeste Hoeve because of its remote location.Rauter's Retaliation
Wildbillguarnere.com, 23 December 2002. Retrieved 29 April 2013. Dressed in German uniforms, the resistance group thought they could hear the truck approaching and went out on the road to halt the vehicle. However, it turned out not to be a truck but Rauter's car. When they realised their mistake, they sho ...
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Der Spiegel
(, , stylized in all caps) is a German weekly news magazine published in Hamburg. With a weekly circulation of about 724,000 copies in 2022, it is one of the largest such publications in Europe. It was founded in 1947 by John Seymour Chaloner, a British army officer, and Rudolf Augstein, a former ''Wehrmacht'' radio operator who was recognized in 2000 by the International Press Institute as one of the fifty World Press Freedom Heroes. is known in German-speaking countries mostly for its investigative journalism. It has played a key role in uncovering many political scandals such as the ''Spiegel'' affair in 1962 and the Flick affair in the 1980s. The news website by the same name was launched in 1994 under the name '' Spiegel Online'' with an independent editorial staff. Today, the content is created by a shared editorial team and the website uses the same media brand as the printed magazine. History The first edition of was published in Hanover on Saturday, 4 Januar ...
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Dutch Monarchy
The monarchy of the Netherlands is governed by the country's charter and constitution, roughly a third of which explains the mechanics of succession, accession, and abdication; the roles and duties of the monarch; the formalities of communication between the States General of the Netherlands; and the monarch's role in creating laws. The monarch is head of state and ''de jure'' head of government of the Netherlands. The once-sovereign provinces of the Spanish Netherlands were intermittently ruled by members of the House of Orange-Nassau from 1559, when Philip II of Spain appointed William the Silent (William of Orange) as a stadtholder, until 1795, when the last stadtholder, William V, Prince of Orange, fled the country. William the Silent became the leader of the Dutch Revolt and of the independent Dutch Republic. Some of his descendants were later appointed as stadtholders by the provinces and, in 1747, the role of stadtholder became a hereditary position in all provinces of ...
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Hanns Albin Rauter
Johann Baptist Albin Rauter (4 February 1895 – 24 March 1949) was a high-ranking Austrian-born SS functionary and war criminal during the Nazi era. He was the Higher SS and Police Leader in the occupied Netherlands and therefore the leading security and police officer there during the period of 1940–1945. Rauter reported directly to the Nazi SS chief, Heinrich Himmler, and also to the Nazi '' Reichskommissar'' of the Netherlands, Arthur Seyss-Inquart. After World War II, Rauter was convicted in the Netherlands of crimes against humanity and executed by firing squad. Early life and career Born in Klagenfurt, Rauter graduated from high school in 1912 and started training as an engineer at the Graz University of Technology. At the outbreak of World War I Rauter volunteered for service in the Austro-Hungarian Army. He served with a ''Gebirgsschützenregiment'' and was discharged in 1919, having reached the rank of ''Oberleutnant''. Rauter took part in the Austro-Slovene ...
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Schutzstaffel
The ''Schutzstaffel'' (; ; SS; also stylised with SS runes as ''ᛋᛋ'') was a major paramilitary organisation under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in Nazi Germany, and later throughout German-occupied Europe during World War II. It began with a small guard unit known as the ''Saal-Schutz'' ("Hall Security") made up of party volunteers to provide security for party meetings in Munich. In 1925, Heinrich Himmler joined the unit, which had by then been reformed and given its final name. Under his direction (1929–1945) it grew from a small paramilitary formation during the Weimar Republic to one of the most powerful organisations in Nazi Germany. From the time of the Nazi Party's rise to power until the regime's collapse in 1945, the SS was the foremost agency of security, mass surveillance, and state terrorism within Germany and German-occupied Europe. The two main constituent groups were the '' Allgemeine SS'' (General SS) and ''Waffen-SS'' (Armed SS). The ''Allgemeine ...
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Wehrmacht
The ''Wehrmacht'' (, ) were the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945. It consisted of the German Army (1935–1945), ''Heer'' (army), the ''Kriegsmarine'' (navy) and the ''Luftwaffe'' (air force). The designation "''Wehrmacht''" replaced the previously used term (''Reich Defence'') and was the manifestation of the Nazi regime's efforts to German rearmament, rearm Germany to a greater extent than the Treaty of Versailles permitted. After the Adolf Hitler's rise to power, Nazi rise to power in 1933, one of Adolf Hitler's most overt and bellicose moves was to establish the ''Wehrmacht'', a modern offensively-capable armed force, fulfilling the Nazi regime's long-term goals of regaining lost territory as well as gaining new territory and dominating its neighbours. This required the reinstatement of conscription and massive investment and Military budget, defence spending on the arms industry. The ''Wehrmacht'' formed the heart of Germany's politico-military po ...
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