Topic: Military history/World War II (Page 4)

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πŸ”— Katyn Massacre (1940)

πŸ”— Human rights πŸ”— Soviet Union πŸ”— Russia πŸ”— Military history πŸ”— Crime πŸ”— Death πŸ”— Socialism πŸ”— Poland πŸ”— Military history/World War II πŸ”— Military history/Russian, Soviet and CIS military history πŸ”— Russia/history of Russia πŸ”— Military history/Polish military history πŸ”— Military history/European military history

The Katyn massacre (Polish: zbrodnia katyΕ„ska, "KatyΕ„ crime"; Russian: ΠšΠ°Ρ‚Ρ‹Π½ΡΠΊΠ°Ρ рСзня Katynskaya reznya, "Katyn massacre", or Russian: ΠšΠ°Ρ‚Ρ‹Π½ΡΠΊΠΈΠΉ расстрСл, "Katyn execution by shooting") was a series of mass executions of about 22,000 Polish military officers and intelligentsia carried out by the Soviet Union, specifically the NKVD ("People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs", the Soviet secret police) in April and May 1940. Though the killings also occurred in the Kalinin and Kharkiv prisons and elsewhere, the massacre is named after the Katyn Forest, where some of the mass graves were first discovered.

The massacre was initiated in NKVD chief Lavrentiy Beria's proposal of 5 March 1940 to execute all captive members of the Polish officer corps, approved by the Soviet Politburo led by Joseph Stalin. Of the total killed, about 8,000 were officers imprisoned during the 1939 Soviet invasion of Poland, another 6,000 were police officers, and the remaining 8,000 were Polish intelligentsia the Soviets deemed to be "intelligence agents, gendarmes, landowners, saboteurs, factory owners, lawyers, officials, and priests". The Polish Army officer class was representative of the multi-ethnic Polish state; the murdered included ethnic Poles, Polish Ukrainians, Belarusians, and Polish Jews including the Chief Rabbi of the Polish Army, Baruch Steinberg.

The government of Nazi Germany announced the discovery of mass graves in the Katyn Forest in April 1943. Stalin severed diplomatic relations with the London-based Polish government-in-exile when it asked for an investigation by the International Committee of the Red Cross. The USSR claimed the Nazis had killed the victims, and it continued to deny responsibility for the massacres until 1990, when it officially acknowledged and condemned the killings by the NKVD, as well as the subsequent cover-up by the Soviet government.

An investigation conducted by the office of the Prosecutors General of the Soviet Union (1990–1991) and the Russian Federation (1991–2004) confirmed Soviet responsibility for the massacres, but refused to classify this action as a war crime or as an act of mass murder. The investigation was closed on the grounds the perpetrators were dead, and since the Russian government would not classify the dead as victims of the Great Purge, formal posthumous rehabilitation was deemed inapplicable.

In November 2010, the Russian State Duma approved a declaration blaming Stalin and other Soviet officials for ordering the massacre.

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πŸ”— Canal Defence Light

πŸ”— Military history πŸ”— Military history/Military science, technology, and theory πŸ”— Military history/Weaponry πŸ”— Military history/World War II πŸ”— Military history/Military land vehicles πŸ”— Military history/European military history πŸ”— Military history/British military history

The Canal Defence Light (CDL) was a British "secret weapon" of the Second World War.

It was based upon the use of a powerful carbon-arc searchlight mounted on a tank. It was intended to be used during night-time attacks, when the light would allow enemy positions to be targeted. A secondary use of the light would be to dazzle and disorient enemy troops, making it harder for them to return fire accurately. The name Canal Defence Light was used to conceal the device's true purpose. For the same reason, in US service they were designated T10 Shop Tractor.

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πŸ”— Deep Operation

πŸ”— Soviet Union πŸ”— Military history πŸ”— Military history/Military science, technology, and theory πŸ”— Military history/World War II πŸ”— Military history/Russian, Soviet and CIS military history

Deep operation (Russian: Глубокая опСрация, glubokaya operatsiya), also known as Soviet Deep Battle, was a military theory developed by the Soviet Union for its armed forces during the 1920s and 1930s. It was a tenet that emphasized destroying, suppressing or disorganizing enemy forces not only at the line of contact, but throughout the depth of the battlefield.

The term comes from Vladimir Triandafillov, an influential military writer, who worked with others to create a military strategy with its own specialized operational art and tactics. The concept of deep operations was a national strategy, tailored to the economic, cultural and geopolitical position of the Soviet Union. In the aftermath of several failures or defeats in the Russo-Japanese War, First World War and Polish–Soviet War, the Soviet High Command (Stavka) focused on developing new methods for the conduct of war. This new approach considered military strategy and tactics, but also introduced a new intermediate level of military art: operations. The Soviet Union was the first country to officially distinguish the third level of military thinking which occupied the position between strategy and tactics.

Using these templates, the Soviets developed the concept of deep battle and by 1936 it had become part of the Red Army Field Regulations. Deep operations had two phases: the tactical deep battle, followed by the exploitation of tactical success, known as the conduct of deep battle operations. Deep battle envisaged the breaking of the enemy's forward defenses, or tactical zones, through combined arms assaults, which would be followed up by fresh uncommitted mobile operational reserves sent to exploit the strategic depth of an enemy front. The goal of a deep operation was to inflict a decisive strategic defeat on the enemy's logistical abilities and render the defence of their front more difficult, impossibleβ€”or, indeed, irrelevant. Unlike most other doctrines, deep battle stressed combined arms cooperation at all levels: strategic, operational, and tactical.

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πŸ”— Operation Vegetarian

πŸ”— Military history πŸ”— Military history/World War II πŸ”— Scottish Islands

Operation Vegetarian was a British military plan in 1942 to disseminate linseed cakes infected with anthrax spores onto the fields of Germany. These cakes would have been eaten by the cattle, which would then be consumed by the civilian population, causing the deaths of millions of German citizens. Furthermore, it would have wiped out the majority of Germany's cattle, creating a massive food shortage for the rest of the population that remained uninfected. Preparations were not complete until early 1944. Operation Vegetarian was only to be used in the event of a German anthrax attack on the United Kingdom.

The cakes themselves were tested on Gruinard Island, just off the coast of Scotland. Because of the widespread contamination from the anthrax spores, the land remained quarantined until 1990. The five million cakes made to be disseminated in Germany were eventually destroyed in an incinerator shortly after the end of World War II.

In his novel The Impossible Dead (2011), author Ian Rankin mentions the clandestine events surrounding the removal of contaminated soils from Guinard Island by a protest group, the Dark Harvest Commando, and the island's removal from maps by the British Government. The island also features as the principal setting for the 1985 novel El aΓ±o de gracia, by Cristina FernΓ‘ndez Cubas, in which the protagonist spends a winter shipwrecked on the island.

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πŸ”— British spy had governments on both sides of the war paying for his girlfriends

πŸ”— Biography πŸ”— Military history πŸ”— Military history/Military biography πŸ”— Biography/military biography πŸ”— Military history/World War II πŸ”— Military history/German military history πŸ”— Military history/European military history πŸ”— Military history/British military history πŸ”— Crime and Criminal Biography πŸ”— Jersey

Edward Arnold Chapman (16 November 1914 – 11 December 1997) was an English criminal and wartime spy. During the Second World War he offered his services to Nazi Germany as a spy and subsequently became a British double agent. His British Secret Service handlers codenamed him Agent Zigzag in acknowledgement of his erratic personal history.

He had a number of criminal aliases known by the British police, amongst them Edward Edwards, Arnold Thompson and Edward Simpson. His German codename was Fritz or, later, after endearing himself to his German contacts, its diminutive form of Fritzchen.

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πŸ”— Scramble for Africa

πŸ”— International relations πŸ”— History πŸ”— Military history πŸ”— Africa πŸ”— Europe πŸ”— Military history/African military history πŸ”— British Empire πŸ”— Military history/World War II πŸ”— Colonialism πŸ”— Countering systemic bias

The Scramble for Africa, also called the Partition of Africa or the Conquest of Africa, was the invasion, occupation, division, and colonisation of African territory by European powers during a short period known to historians as the New Imperialism (between 1881 and 1914). In 1870, only 10 percent of Africa was under formal European control; by 1914 this had increased to almost 90 percent of the continent, with only Ethiopia (Abyssinia), the Dervish state (a portion of present-day Somalia) and Liberia still being independent. There were multiple motivations for European colonizers, including desire for valuable resources available throughout the continent, the quest for national prestige, tensions between pairs of European powers, religious missionary zeal and internal African native politics.

The Berlin Conference of 1884, which regulated European colonisation and trade in Africa, is usually referred to as the ultimate point of the Scramble for Africa. Consequent to the political and economic rivalries among the European empires in the last quarter of the 19th century, the partitioning, or splitting up of Africa was how the Europeans avoided warring amongst themselves over Africa. The later years of the 19th century saw the transition from "informal imperialism" by military influence and economic dominance, to direct rule, bringing about colonial imperialism.

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πŸ”— Eric Roberts (Spy)

πŸ”— Biography πŸ”— Espionage πŸ”— Germany πŸ”— Military history πŸ”— Military history/Military biography πŸ”— Biography/military biography πŸ”— United Kingdom πŸ”— Military history/World War II

Eric Arthur Roberts (18 June 1907 – 17 or 18 December 1972) was an MI5 agent during the Second World War under the alias Jack King. By posing as a Gestapo agent and infiltrating fascist groups in the UK, Roberts was able to prevent secret information finding its way to Germany. Roberts continued to work for the security services after the war, particularly in Vienna, but it was a time of great anxiety in the services because of the suspicions surrounding double agents such as the Cambridge spy ring.

Roberts never felt completely accepted by MI5 because of his social background and a desk role did not suit him as well as his wartime role had. He is the subject of the biography Agent Jack (2018) by Robert Hutton, and his adventures were the inspiration for the novel Our Friends In Berlin by Anthony Quinn and for a major character in the novel Transcription by Kate Atkinson.

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πŸ”— Basil Zaharoff

πŸ”— Biography πŸ”— Military history πŸ”— Military history/Military biography πŸ”— Military history/World War II

Sir Basil Zaharoff, GCB, GBE, born Vasileios Zacharias (Greek: ΒασίλΡιος Zαχαρίας Ζαχάρωφ; October 6, 1849 – November 27, 1936), was a Greek arms dealer and industrialist. One of the richest men in the world during his lifetime, Zaharoff was described as a "merchant of death" and "mystery man of Europe". His success was forged through his cunning, often aggressive and sharp, business tactics. These included the sale of arms to opposing sides in conflicts, sometimes delivering fake or faulty machinery and skilfully using the press to attack business rivals.

Zaharoff maintained close contacts with many powerful political leaders, including British Prime Minister David Lloyd George, Greek Prime Minister Eleftherios Venizelos and Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid II; he served as a primary inspiration for Ian Fleming's fictional James Bond villain Ernst Stavro Blofeld.

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πŸ”— Jewel Voice Broadcast

πŸ”— Military history πŸ”— Military history/World War II πŸ”— Japan πŸ”— Japan/Japanese military history πŸ”— Military history/Asian military history πŸ”— Military history/Japanese military history πŸ”— Japan/History πŸ”— Japan/Royalty and nobility

The Jewel Voice Broadcast (ηŽ‰ιŸ³ζ”Ύι€, Gyokuon-hōsō) was the radio broadcast in which Japanese Emperor Hirohito (Emperor Shōwa ζ˜­ε’Œε€©ηš‡ Shōwa-tennō) read out the Imperial Rescript on the Termination of the Greater East Asia War (ε€§ζ±δΊœζˆ¦δΊ‰η΅‚η΅γƒŽθ©”ζ›Έ, Daitōa-sensō-shΕ«ketsu-no-shōsho), announcing to the Japanese people that the Japanese Government had accepted the Potsdam Declaration demanding the unconditional surrender of the Japanese military at the end of World WarΒ II. This speech was broadcast at noon Japan Standard Time on August 15, 1945.

The speech was probably the first time that an Emperor of Japan had spoken (albeit via a phonograph record) to the common people. It was delivered in the formal, Classical Japanese that few ordinary people could easily understand. It made no direct reference to a surrender of Japan, instead stating that the government had been instructed to accept the terms of the Potsdam Declaration fully. This created confusion in the minds of many listeners who were not sure whether Japan had surrendered. The poor audio quality of the radio broadcast, as well as the formal courtly language in which the speech was composed, worsened the confusion. A digitally remastered version of the broadcast was released on 30 June 2015.

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πŸ”— Blohm and Voss BV 141

πŸ”— Aviation πŸ”— Germany πŸ”— Military history πŸ”— Military history/Military aviation πŸ”— Aviation/aircraft project πŸ”— Military history/World War II πŸ”— Military history/German military history πŸ”— Military history/European military history

The Blohm & Voss BV 141 was a World War II German tactical reconnaissance aircraft. It is notable for its uncommon structural asymmetry. Although the Blohm & Voss BV 141 performed well, it was never ordered into full-scale production, for reasons that included the unavailability of the preferred engine and competition from another tactical reconnaissance aircraft, the Focke-Wulf Fw 189.

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