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Evacuation Of East Prussia
German civilian population and military personnel were evacuated from East Prussia between 20 January and March 1945. The evacuation was initially organized and carried out by Nazi Germany, state authorities but quickly turned into a chaotic flight from the Red Army. A part of the German evacuation from Central and Eastern Europe, evacuation of German civilians towards the end of World War II, these events are not to be confused with the 1944–50 flight and expulsion of Germans, expulsion from East Prussia that followed after the war had ended. The area that was evacuated was not the Gau East Prussia, but the inter-war East Prussia where most people already held German citizenship. German citizens in Klaipėda, Memel and other regions with proximity to East Prussia also took part in the evacuation, wishing to escape by sea, even though in their regions there was no official evacuation announced. The evacuation, which had been delayed for months, was initiated due to fear of the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
German Evacuation From Central And Eastern Europe
The evacuation of German people from Central and Eastern Europe ahead of the Soviet Union, Soviet Red Army advance during the Second World War was delayed until the last moment. Plans to evacuate people to present-day Germany from the territories controlled by Nazi Germany, including from the former eastern territories of Germany as well as occupied territories, were prepared by the Government of Nazi Germany, German authorities only when the defeat was inevitable, which resulted in utter chaos. The evacuation in most of the Nazi-occupied areas began in January 1945, when the Red Army was already rapidly advancing westward. Until March 1945, the Nazi authorities had evacuated from the eastern territories (prewar Germany, Poland, Hungary, Romania and Yugoslavia) an estimated 10 to 15 million persons, Germans as well as citizens of other nations. In the territory of Germany, which Stalin gave to Poland after the war, there were 10 million residents in 1944–1945, including 7.3 milli ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gau East Prussia
Gau East Prussia (German: ''Ostpreußen'') was an administrative division of Nazi Germany encompassing the province of East Prussia in the Free State of Prussia from 1933 to 1945. Before that, from 1925 to 1933, it was the regional subdivision of the Nazi Party in that area, having been established at a conference in Königsberg on 6 December 1925. In 1939, Gau East Prussia expanded following the annexation of the Klaipėda Region from Lithuania and the occupation of Poland, while a sliver of territory from the gau was transferred to Reichsgau Danzig-West Prussia. After Germany's attack on the USSR, the Belarusian city of Hrodna () also became part of the Gau. After the war, the territory of the former Gau became part of the Russian SFSR exclave of Kaliningrad in the Soviet Union, major sections were given to Poland, and the area of the Klaipėda Region was returned to the Lithuanian SSR and Hrodna - to the Belarusian SSR within the Soviet Union. History The Nazi Gau (plural Gaue) ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gulag
The Gulag was a system of Labor camp, forced labor camps in the Soviet Union. The word ''Gulag'' originally referred only to the division of the Chronology of Soviet secret police agencies, Soviet secret police that was in charge of running the forced labor camps from the 1930s to the early 1950s during Joseph Stalin's rule, but in English literature the term is popularly used for the system of forced labor throughout the Soviet era. The abbreviation GULAG (ГУЛАГ) stands for "Гла́вное управле́ние исправи́тельно-трудовы́х лагере́й" (Main Directorate of Correctional Labour Camps), but the full official name of the agency #Etymology, changed several times. The Gulag is recognized as a major instrument of political repression in the Soviet Union. The camps housed both ordinary criminals and political prisoners, a large number of whom were convicted by simplified procedures, such as NKVD troikas or other instruments of extra ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lev Kopelev
Lev Zalmanovich (Zinovyevich) Kopelev (, German: Lew Sinowjewitsch Kopelew, 9 April 1912 – 18 June 1997) was a Soviet author and dissident. Early life Kopelev was born in Kyiv, then Russian Empire, to a middle-class Jewish family. In 1926, his family moved to Kharkiv. While a student at Kharkiv State University's philosophy faculty, Kopelev began writing in Russian and Ukrainian languages; some of his articles were published in the '' Komsomolskaya Pravda'' newspaper. An idealist communist and active party member, he was first arrested in March 1929 for "consorting with the Bukharinist and Trotskyist opposition," and spent ten days in prison. Career Later, he worked as an editor of radio news broadcasts at a locomotive factory. In 1932, as a correspondent, Kopelev witnessed the NKVD's forced grain requisitioning and the dekulakization. Later, he described the Holodomor in his memoir ''The Education of a True Believer''. Robert Conquest's '' The Harvest of Sorrow'' later ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ostarbeiter
' (, "Eastern worker") was a Nazi German designation for foreign slave workers gathered from occupied Central and Eastern Europe to perform forced labor in Germany during World War II. The Germans started deporting civilians at the beginning of the war and began doing so at unprecedented levels following Operation Barbarossa in 1941. They apprehended from the newly-formed German districts of Reichskommissariat Ukraine, District of Galicia (itself attached to the General Government), and Reichskommissariat Ostland. These areas comprised German-occupied Poland and the conquered territories of the Soviet Union. According to Pavel Polian, although the from most occupied territories were predominantly men, of the "eastern workers" taken from occupied Soviet territories over 50% were women, and of those from Poland nearly 30% were women. Eastern workers included ethnic Ukrainians, Poles, Belarusians, Russians, Armenians, Tatars, and others. Estimates of the number of range be ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Prisoner 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 Repatriation, 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 offeri ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mayakovskoye
Mayakovskoye (; ; ) is a types of inhabited localities in Russia, rural locality (a settlement) in Gusevsky District of Kaliningrad Oblast, Russia, located on the banks of the Angrapa River. It lies approximately south-west of Gusev, Kaliningrad Oblast, Gusev. The village became known during World War II on October 22, 1944 as the site of the first Soviet war crimes, Soviet war crime on German territory against German women, French and Belgian POWs—the Nemmersdorf massacre. History The first documented mention of Nemmersdorf was in 1515 in a decree of the Chernyakhovsk, Insterburg Central Office. At that time, it was part of the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland, Kingdom of Poland as a fief held by the Teutonic Order, and from 1525 held by Ducal Prussia. A prehistoric cemetery was located near the village. Lithuanian church services were held at the local church. From the 18th century it was part of the Kingdom of Prussia, and from 1871 to 1945 it was also part of Germany. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
War Crime
A war crime is a violation of the laws of war that gives rise to individual criminal responsibility for actions by combatants in action, such as intentionally killing civilians or intentionally killing prisoners of war, torture, taking hostages, unnecessarily destroying civilian property, deception by perfidy, wartime sexual violence, pillaging, and for any individual that is part of the command structure who orders any attempt to committing mass killings (including genocide or ethnic cleansing), the granting of no quarter despite surrender, the conscription of children in the military, and flouting the legal Indiscriminate attack, distinctions of Proportionality (law), proportionality and military necessity. The formal concept of war crimes emerged from the codification of the customary international law that applied to warfare between sovereign states, such as the Lieber Code (1863) of the Union Army in the American Civil War and the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 for int ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Propagandaministerium
The Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda (, RMVP), also known simply as the Ministry of Propaganda (), controlled the content of the press, literature, visual arts, film, theater, music and radio in Nazi Germany. The ministry was created as the central institution of Nazi propaganda shortly after the party's national seizure of power in January 1933. In the Hitler cabinet, it was headed by Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels, who exercised control over all German mass media and creative artists through his ministry and the Reich Chamber of Culture (), which was established in the fall of 1933. It was abolished by the Flensburg Government on the 5 May 1945. Establishment and functions Shortly after the March 1933 Reichstag elections, Adolf Hitler presented his cabinet with a draft resolution to establish the ministry. Despite the skepticism of some non-National Socialist ministers, Hitler pushed the resolution through. On 13 March 1933, Reich President ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Schieder Commission
''Documents on the Expulsion of the Germans from Eastern-Central Europe'' is the abridged English translation of a multi-volume publication that was created by a commission of West German historians between 1951 and 1961 to document the population transfer of Germans from East-Central Europe that had occurred after World War II. Created by the Federal Ministry for Displaced Persons, Refugees and War Victims, the commission headed by Theodor Schieder (thus known as the Schieder commission) consisted primarily of well-known historians, however with a Nazi past. Therefore, while in the immediate post war period the commission was regarded as composed of very accomplished historians, the later assessment of its members changed. The later historians are debating how reliable are the findings of the commission, and to what degree they were influenced by Nazi and nationalist point of view. Motivated by the Lebensraum ideology, some of the historians themselves had played an active r ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nazi Party
The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party ( or NSDAP), was a far-right politics, far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that created and supported the ideology of Nazism. Its precursor, the German Workers' Party (; DAP), existed from 1919 to 1920. The Nazi Party emerged from the Extremism, extremist German nationalism, German nationalist ("Völkisch nationalism, ''Völkisch'' nationalist"), racism, racist, and populism, populist paramilitary culture, which fought against communism, communist uprisings in post–World War I Germany. The party was created to draw workers away from communism and into nationalism. Initially, Nazi political strategy focused on anti-big business, anti-bourgeoisie, and anti-capitalism, disingenuously using socialist rhetoric to gain the support of the lower middle class; it was later downplayed to gain the support of business leaders. By the 1930s, the party's main focus shifted to Antisemit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nazi Propaganda
Propaganda was a tool of the Nazi Party in Germany from its earliest days to the end of the regime in May 1945 at the end of World War II. As the party gained power, the scope and efficacy of its propaganda grew and permeated an increasing amount of space in Germany and, eventually, beyond. Adolf Hitler’s ''Mein Kampf'' (1925) provided the groundwork for the party’s later methodology while the newspapers, the ''Völkischer Beobachter'' and later ''Der Angriff'', served as the early practical foundations for later propaganda during the party’s formative years. These were later followed by many media types including books, posters, magazines, photos, art, films, and radio broadcasts which took increasingly prominent roles as the party gained more power. These efforts promulgated Nazi ideology throughout German society. Such ideology included promotion of Nazism, Nazi policies and values at home, worldview beyond their borders, antisemitism, vilification of non-German people ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
