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The Continuation War, also known as the Second Soviet-Finnish War, was a conflict fought by Finland and Nazi Germany against the Soviet Union during World War II. It began with a Finnish declaration of war and invasion on 25 June 1941 and ended on 19 September 1944 with the Moscow Armistice. The Soviet Union and Finland had previously fought the Winter War from 1939 to 1940, which ended with the Soviet failure to conquer Finland and the Moscow Peace Treaty. Numerous reasons have been proposed for the Finnish decision to invade, with regaining territory lost during the Winter War regarded as the most common. Other justifications for the conflict include Finnish President Risto Ryti's vision of a Greater Finland and Commander-in-Chief Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim's desire to annex East Karelia.
Operation Barbarossa was the invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany and many of its Axis allies, starting on Sunday, 22 June 1941, during the Second World War. It was the largest land offensive in human history, with around 10 million combatants taking part. The operation, code-named after Frederick Barbarossa, a 12th-century Holy Roman Emperor and Crusader, put into action Nazi Germany's ideological goals of eradicating communism, and conquering the western Soviet Union to repopulate it with Germans. The German Generalplan Ost aimed to use some of the conquered people as forced labour for the Axis war effort while acquiring the oil reserves of the Caucasus as well as the agricultural resources of various Soviet territories, including Ukraine and Byelorussia. Their ultimate goal was to create more Lebensraum for Germany, and the eventual extermination of the native Slavic peoples by mass deportation to Siberia, Germanisation, enslavement, and genocide.
The Communist Party of Germany was a major far-left political party in the Weimar Republic during the interwar period, an underground resistance movement in Nazi Germany, and a minor party in West Germany during the postwar period until it was banned by the Federal Constitutional Court in 1956.
Ernst Johannes Fritz Thälmann was a German communist politician, and leader of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) from 1925 to 1933.
Soldatensender Calais (G.9) was a British black propaganda broadcaster during the Second World War operated by the Political Warfare Executive. It pretended to be a station of the German military broadcasting network. The station was in operation between 14 November 1943 and 30 April 1945, when it ceased operations.
The European theatre of World War II was one of the two main theatres of combat during World War II. It saw heavy fighting across Europe for almost six years, starting with Germany's invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939 and ending with the Western Allies conquering most of Western Europe, the Soviet Union conquering most of Eastern Europe including the German capital Berlin, and Germany's unconditional surrender on 8 May 1945 although fighting continued elsewhere in Europe until 25 May. On 5 June 1945, the Berlin Declaration proclaiming the unconditional surrender of Germany to the four victorious powers was signed. The Allied powers fought the Axis powers on two major fronts, but there were other fronts varying in scale from the Italian campaign, to the Polish Campaign, as well as in a strategic bombing offensive and in the adjoining Mediterranean and Middle East theatre.
The Warsaw Uprising, shortly after the war also known as the August Uprising, was a major World War II operation by the Polish underground resistance to liberate Warsaw from German occupation. It occurred in the summer of 1944, and it was led by the Polish resistance Home Army. The uprising was timed to coincide with the retreat of the German forces from Poland ahead of the Soviet advance. While approaching the eastern suburbs of the city, the Red Army halted combat operations, enabling the Germans to regroup and defeat the Polish resistance and to destroy the city in retaliation. The Uprising was fought for 63 days with little outside support. It was the single largest military effort taken by any European resistance movement during World War II.
The Red Orchestra, as it was known in Germany, was the name given by the Abwehr Section III.F to anti-Nazi resistance workers in August 1941. It primarily referred to a loose network of resistance groups, connected through personal contacts, uniting hundreds of opponents of the Nazi regime. These included groups of friends who held discussions that were centred on Harro Schulze-Boysen, Adam Kuckhoff and Arvid Harnack in Berlin, alongside many others. They printed and distributed prohibited leaflets, posters, and stickers, hoping to incite civil disobedience. They aided Jews and resistance to escape the regime, documented the atrocities of the Nazis, and transmitted military intelligence to the Allies. Contrary to legend, the Red Orchestra was neither directed by Soviet communists nor under a single leadership. It was a network of groups and individuals, often operating independently. To date, about 400 members are known by name.
The Eastern Front was a theatre of World War II fought between the European Axis powers and Allies, including the Soviet Union (USSR) and Poland. It encompassed Central Europe, Eastern Europe, Northeast Europe (Baltics), and Southeast Europe (Balkans), and lasted from 22 June 1941 to 9 May 1945. Of the estimated 70–85 million deaths attributed to World War II, around 30 million occurred on the Eastern Front, including 9 million children. The Eastern Front was decisive in determining the outcome in the European theatre of operations in World War II, eventually serving as the main reason for the defeat of Nazi Germany and the Axis nations. It is noted by historian Geoffrey Roberts that "More than 80 per cent of all combat during the Second World War took place on the Eastern Front".
Radio Moscow, also known as Radio Moscow World Service, was the official international broadcasting station of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics until 1993, when it was reorganized into Voice of Russia, which was subsequently reorganized and renamed into Radio Sputnik in 2014. At its peak, Radio Moscow broadcast in over 70 languages using transmitters in the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, and Cuba.
Azad Hind Radio was a radio service that was started under the leadership of Subhas Chandra Bose 1942 to encourage Indians to fight against the British. Though initially based in Nazi Germany, its headquarters were shifted to Japanese occupied Singapore following the course of the war in Southeast Asia. After Netaji's departure to Southeast Asia, the German operations were continued by A.C.N. Nambiar, the head of the Indian Legion in Nazi Germany and later ambassador of the Arzi Hukumate Azad Hind in Germany.
Radio 1212 or Sender 11212 or Nachtsender 1212 was a black propaganda radio station operated from 1944 to 1945 by the Psychological Warfare Branch of the US Office of War Information (OWI) under the direction of CBS radio chief William S. Paley, who was based in London. Nachtsender 1212 broadcast from the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg using the former commercial radio facilities known as Radio Luxembourg, which had been occupied and then liberated from German control during World War II.
During World War II, the Spanish State under Francisco Franco espoused neutrality as its official wartime policy. This neutrality wavered at times, and "strict neutrality" gave way to "non-belligerence" after the Fall of France in June 1940. Franco wrote to Adolf Hitler offering to join the war on 19 June 1940 in exchange for help building Spain's colonial empire. Later in the same year Franco met with Hitler in Hendaye to discuss Spain's possible accession to the Axis Powers. The meeting went nowhere, but Franco did help the Axis—whose members Italy and Germany had supported him during the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939)—in various ways.
Antifaschistische Aktion was a militant anti-fascist organisation in the Weimar Republic started by members of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) that existed from 1932 to 1933. It was primarily active as a KPD campaign during the July 1932 German federal election and the November 1932 German federal election and was described by the KPD as a "red united front under the leadership of the only anti-fascist party, the KPD."
Many individuals and groups in Germany that were opposed to the Nazi regime engaged in resistance, including assassination attempts on Adolf Hitler or by overthrowing his regime.
The Ulbricht Group was a group of exiled members of the Communist Party of Germany and the National Committee for a Free Germany, led by Walter Ulbricht, who flew from the Soviet Union back to Germany on April 30, 1945. Composed of functionaries from the KPD and ten anti-fascist prisoners of war, their job was to seek out anti-fascist individuals and prepare the groundwork for the re-establishment of communist organizations and unions in postwar Berlin. There were two additional regional groups, the Ackermann Group in Saxony and the Sobottka Group in Mecklenburg. Many of the group's members later became high-level officials in the government of the German Democratic Republic (GDR).
Johannes Baptist "Hans" Beimler was a trade unionist, Communist Party official, deputy in the 1933 Reichstag, an outspoken opponent of the Nazis and a volunteer in the international brigades fighting for the Spanish Republic.
The Wehrmacht were the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945. It consisted of the Heer (army), the Kriegsmarine (navy) and the Luftwaffe. The designation "Wehrmacht" replaced the previously used term Reichswehr and was the manifestation of the Nazi regime's efforts to rearm Germany to a greater extent than the Treaty of Versailles permitted.
After the Munich Agreement, the Soviet Union pursued a rapprochement with Nazi Germany. On 23 August 1939 the Soviet Union signed a non-aggression pact with Germany which included a secret protocol that divided Eastern Europe into German and Soviet "spheres of influence", anticipating potential "territorial and political rearrangements" of these countries. Germany invaded Poland on 1 September 1939, starting World War II. The Soviets invaded eastern Poland on 17 September. Following the Winter War with Finland, the Soviets were ceded territories by Finland. This was followed by annexations of the Baltic states and parts of Romania.
Daniël "Daan" Goulooze was a Dutch Jewish construction worker who was a committed communist and resistance fighter. In 1925, he became a member of the Communist Party of the Netherlands (CPN) and by 1930 had become an executive member of the organisation. In 1934, he formed Pegasus, a publisher of many left-wing writers and intellectuals in the Netherlands, some for the first time. In 1935–1936, Goulooze formed the Dutch Information Service (DIS), an organisation that supplied information to the Soviet Union. Goulooze become the liaison between the organisation and the CPN. In 1937, he went to the Soviet Union, where he received intelligence training at the Marx–Engels–Lenin Institute in Moscow. Upon returning, he became the liaison officer of Communist International (Comintern) in the Netherlands, his main duty being to maintain on-going radio contact with Soviet intelligence.
References
- 1 2 3 4 5 Stern, Guy (2006). A Woman at War: Marlene Dietrich Remembered. Wayne State University Press. ISBN 0814332498.
- 1 2 Green, John (2017). A Political Family: The Kuczynskis, Fascism, Espionage and The Cold War. Routledge. ISBN 978-1315304410.
- 1 2 Lacey, Kate (1996). Feminine Frequencies: Gender, German Radio, and the Public Sphere, 1923–1945. University of Michigan Press. p. 138. ISBN 0472066161.
- 1 2 Adams, Jefferson (2009). Historical Dictionary of German Intelligence. Scarecrow Press. p. 425. ISBN 9780810863200.
- ↑ "Blood Baths of Hitler's Enemies is Continuing". Courier-Gazette. Associated Press. July 27, 1944. Retrieved September 29, 2017.
- ↑ "World News in Brief". Petaluma Argus-Courier. Associated Press. September 18, 1944.
- ↑ Moulson, Geir (November 9, 2006). "Former East German Spymaster Dies". Washington Post . Retrieved September 29, 2017.
- ↑ Pütter, Conrad (1986). Dritte Reich". Deutsch-sprachige Rundfunkaktivitäten im Exil 1933–1945. Munich: K. G. Saur-Verlag. ISBN 3-598-10470-7.