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Otto Pünter
Otto Pünter (4 April 1900 – 13 October 1988) was a Swiss journalist and anti-Nazi resistance fighter. During the Second World War, his codename was Pakbo, and he was a member of the Red Orchestra. Personal life Pünter was born in Bern, Switzerland. His father was a merchant. He gained an apprenticeship from the University of Neuchâtel. Afterwards, he lived in France, Spain and the United Kingdom. Career In 1928, Pünter was a founding member of the socialist news agency INSA. INSA aimed to spread anti-fascist news and worked with anti-fascist groups in Italy. Through this role, Pünter met many Italian informants. Pünter was also suspected to be a secret member of the Communist Party of Switzerland, and he saw Stalinism as less evil than fascism, Nazism, and Francoism. During the Spanish Civil War, it was claimed that Pünter built his own intelligence network, in order to sell secrets to the French and British. He also met many Soviet GRU agents, and decid ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bern
Bern () or Berne; in other Swiss languages, gsw, Bärn ; frp, Bèrna ; it, Berna ; rm, Berna is the ''de facto'' capital of Switzerland, referred to as the " federal city" (in german: Bundesstadt, link=no, french: ville fédérale, link=no, it, città federale, link=no, and rm, citad federala, link=no). According to the Swiss constitution, the Swiss Confederation intentionally has no "capital", but Bern has governmental institutions such as the Federal Assembly and Federal Council. However, the Federal Supreme Court is in Lausanne, the Federal Criminal Court is in Bellinzona and the Federal Administrative Court and the Federal Patent Court are in St. Gallen, exemplifying the federal nature of the Confederation. With a population of about 133,000 (as of 2022), Bern is the fifth-most populous city in Switzerland, behind Zurich, Geneva, Basel and Lausanne. The Bern agglomeration, which includes 36 municipalities, had a population of 406,900 in 2014. The metropolitan ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Francoism
Francoist Spain ( es, España franquista), or the Francoist dictatorship (), was the period of Spanish history between 1939 and 1975, when Francisco Franco ruled Spain after the Spanish Civil War with the title . After his death in 1975, Spain transitioned into a democracy. During this time period, Spain was officially known as the Spanish State (). The nature of the regime evolved and changed during its existence. Months after the start of the Spanish Civil War in July 1936, Franco emerged as the dominant rebel military leader and was proclaimed head of state on 1 October 1936, ruling a dictatorship over the territory controlled by the Nationalist faction. The 1937 Unification Decree, which merged all parties supporting the rebel side, led to Nationalist Spain becoming a single-party regime under the FET y de las JONS. The end of the war in 1939 brought the extension of the Franco rule to the whole country and the exile of Republican institutions. The Francoist dictatorshi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Oxford University Press
Oxford University Press (OUP) is the university press of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world, and its printing history dates back to the 1480s. Having been officially granted the legal right to print books by decree in 1586, it is the second oldest university press after Cambridge University Press. It is a department of the University of Oxford and is governed by a group of 15 academics known as the Delegates of the Press, who are appointed by the vice-chancellor of the University of Oxford. The Delegates of the Press are led by the Secretary to the Delegates, who serves as OUP's chief executive and as its major representative on other university bodies. Oxford University Press has had a similar governance structure since the 17th century. The press is located on Walton Street, Oxford, opposite Somerville College, in the inner suburb of Jericho. For the last 500 years, OUP has primarily focused on the publication of pedagogical texts a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
WorldCat
WorldCat is a union catalog that itemizes the collections of tens of thousands of institutions (mostly libraries), in many countries, that are current or past members of the OCLC global cooperative. It is operated by OCLC, Inc. Many of the OCLC member libraries collectively maintain WorldCat's database, the world's largest bibliographic database. The database includes other information sources in addition to member library collections. OCLC makes WorldCat itself available free to libraries, but the catalog is the foundation for other subscription OCLC services (such as resource sharing and collection management). WorldCat is used by librarians for cataloging and research and by the general public. , WorldCat contained over 540 million bibliographic records in 483 languages, representing over 3 billion physical and digital library assets, and the WorldCat persons dataset (mined from WorldCat) included over 100 million people. History OCLC was founded in 1967 under the leade ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Presidio Press
Ballantine Books is a major book publisher located in the United States, founded in 1952 by Ian Ballantine with his wife, Betty Ballantine. It was acquired by Random House in 1973, which in turn was acquired by Bertelsmann in 1998 and remains part of that company today. Ballantine's original logo was a pair of mirrored letter Bs back to back, while its current logo is two Bs stacked to form an elaborate gate. The firm's early editors were Stanley Kauffmann and Bernard Shir-Cliff. History Following Fawcett Publications' controversial 1950 introduction of Gold Medal paperback originals rather than reprints, Lion Books, Avon and Ace also decided to publish originals. In 1952, Ian Ballantine, a founder of Bantam Books, announced that he would "offer trade publishers a plan for simultaneous publishing of original titles in two editions, a hardcover 'regular' edition for bookstore sale, and a paper-cover, 'newsstand' size, low-priced edition for mass market sale." When the firs ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rachel Dübendorfer
Rachel Dübendorfer ( Hepner; 18 July 1900 – 3 March 1973) was an anti-Nazi resistance fighter. During the Second World War, her codename was Sissy, and she was in a section of the Red Three Swiss resistance movement. Personal life Dübendorfer was born in Warsaw, Poland in 1900. She was the daughter of Adolf Hepner, and was Jewish. She moved to Germany in the 1920s and moved to Nürensdorf, Switzerland in 1933. She was married twice: first to German lawyer Kurt Caspary around 1921, then to Swissman Henri Dübendorfer, which allowed her to gain Swiss citizenship, in 1934. This marriage ended in divorce in 1946. She became the lover of Paul Böttcher. She died in 1973 in East Berlin, East Germany. Career In 1918, Dübendorfer joined the Communist Party of Germany. In 1927, she joined the Soviet Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU), where she worked alongside Paul Böttcher. At the start of the Second World War, she worked as a secretary at the League of Nations International L ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Georges Blun
Georges Blun (1 June 1893 – 1999) was a French journalist and intelligence agent who was the Berlin correspondent of the ''Journal de Paris''. Early life, World War I and the interwar years Georges Blun was born to a French family on 1 June 1893 in the then German-held region of Alsace-Lorraine. He was married to a fellow journalist. He worked for the British MI5, as well as French intelligence during World War I. In 1920 he was expelled from Switzerland for conducting "clandestine activities" and communist agitation. By 1925, he had grown close to the leadership of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. From 1925 to 1930 he worked in the Weimar Republic as a correspondent for various newspapers, such as ''Journal des débats''. In 1928, it was reported that following publication of a controversial ('distorted') article on the Silvesternacht (New Year's Eve) in Berlin in a Paris paper, he resigned his chairmanship of the Association of Foreign Press and made an apolog ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Invisible Ink
Invisible ink, also known as security ink or sympathetic ink, is a substance used for writing, which is invisible either on application or soon thereafter, and can later be made visible by some means, such as heat or ultraviolet light. Invisible ink is one form of steganography. History One of the earliest writers to mention an invisible ink is Aeneas Tacticus, in the 4th century BC. He mentions it in discussing how to survive under siege but does not indicate the type of ink to be used. This was part of his list of the 20 different methods of secret communications in a book called ''On the Defense of Fortifications''. One of the techniques that involved steganography involved puncturing a tiny hole above or below letters in a document to spell out a secret message. This did not include an invisible ink but the Germans improved on the method during World War I and World War II. They used invisible ink and microdots instead of pinpricks. Philo of Byzantium may be the first write ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Crosswords
A crossword is a word puzzle that usually takes the form of a square or a rectangular grid of white- and black-shaded squares. The goal is to fill the white squares with letters, forming words or phrases, by solving clues which lead to the answers. In languages that are written left-to-right, the answer words and phrases are placed in the grid from left to right ("across") and from top to bottom ("down"). The shaded squares are used to separate the words or phrases. Types Crossword grids such as those appearing in most North American newspapers and magazines feature solid areas of white squares. Every letter is checked (i.e. is part of both an "across" word and a "down" word) and usually each answer must contain at least three letters. In such puzzles shaded squares are typically limited to about one-sixth of the total. Crossword grids elsewhere, such as in Britain, South Africa, India and Australia, have a lattice-like structure, with a higher percentage of shaded squar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The National Archives (United Kingdom)
The National Archives (TNA, cy, Yr Archifau Cenedlaethol) is a non-ministerial government department, non-ministerial department of the Government of the United Kingdom. Its parent department is the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. It is the official archive of the UK Government and for England and Wales; and "guardian of some of the nation's most iconic documents, dating back more than 1,000 years." There are separate national archives for Scotland (the National Records of Scotland) and Northern Ireland (the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland). TNA was formerly four separate organisations: the Public Record Office (PRO), the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts, Historical Manuscripts Commission, the Office of Public Sector Information (OPSI) and Office of Public Sector Information, His Majesty's Stationery Office (HMSO). The Public Record Office still exists as a legal entity, as the enabl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Red Three
The Red Three (german: Rote Drei) was the Switzerland section of the so-called Red Orchestra. It was established and maintained by Soviet Military Intelligence Staff Division 4. Name history, and activities The terms ''Red Three'', and ''Red Orchestra'' respectively, were invented by the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (RSHA), the counter-espionage arm of the SS. As an essential part of the ''Red Orchestra'', the ''Red Three ( radio stations)'' (de: die ''Roten Drei (Funkstellen)'') were outside the reach of German security forces, located in Switzerland. It was headed by Alexander Radó (code name: DORA), a Hungarian émigré, Communist, and geographer. The ''Red Three'' was founded in 1936, when ''Radó'' arrived in Geneva. By April 1942, the organization had been established with ''Radó'' as group leader, and also had three subgroup leaders: Rachel Dübendorfer (code name: SISSY), Georges Blun (code name: LONG), and Otto Pünter (code name: PAKBO). After the imprisonment o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU)
Main Intelligence Directorate ( rus, Главное разведывательное управление, Glavnoye razvedyvatel'noye upravleniye, ˈglavnəjə rɐzˈvʲɛdɨvətʲɪlʲnəjə ʊprɐˈvlʲenʲɪjə), abbreviated GRU ( rus, ГРУ, p=geeˈru), was the foreign military intelligence agency of the Soviet Army General Staff of the Soviet Union until 1991. For a few months it was also the foreign military intelligence agency of the newly established Russian Federation until 7 May 1992 when it was dissolved and the Russian GRU took over its activities. History The GRU's first predecessor in Russia formed on October 21, 1918 by secret order under the sponsorship of Leon Trotsky (then the civilian leader of the Red Army), signed by Jukums Vācietis, the first commander-in-chief of the Red Army (RKKA), and by Ephraim Sklyansky, deputy to Trotsky; it was originally known as the Registration Directorate (''Registrupravlenie'', or RU). Semyon Aralov was its first head ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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