Vogelsang, Zehdenick

Last updated April 15, 2019

Vogelsang Railway Station BfVogelsangBstg.jpg — Vogelsang Railway Station

Vogelsang is a village, one of the thirteen districts of the city of Zehdenick in the Oberhavel district, in Brandenburg, Germany.

Village Small clustered human settlement smaller than a town

A village is a clustered human settlement or community, larger than a hamlet but smaller than a town, with a population ranging from a few hundred to a few thousand. Though villages are often located in rural areas, the term urban village is also applied to certain urban neighborhoods. Villages are normally permanent, with fixed dwellings; however, transient villages can occur. Further, the dwellings of a village are fairly close to one another, not scattered broadly over the landscape, as a dispersed settlement.

Zehdenick is a town in the Oberhavel district, in Brandenburg, Germany. It is situated on the river Havel, 26 kilometres southeast of Fürstenberg/Havel, and 51 kilometres north of Berlin (centre).

Oberhavel is a Kreis (district) in the northern part of Brandenburg, Germany. Its neighbouring districts are : Mecklenburg-Strelitz in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, the districts of Uckermark and Barnim, the Bundesland of Berlin, and the districts of Havelland and Ostprignitz-Ruppin.

Geography

Vogelsang is located in the northeast of Zehdenick. To the south lies the district of Wesendorf, west Zehdenick and hillfort. In the East Vogelsang borders Templin in Uckermark.

Templin is a small town in the Uckermark district of Brandenburg, Germany. Though it has a population of only 17,127 (2006), it is with 377.01 km2 the second largest town in Brandenburg and the seventh largest town in Germany by area. The town is located in the south of the rural Uckermark region and its capital Prenzlau, north of the Schorfheide-Chorin Biosphere Reserve. The municipality comprises the villages of Ahrensdorf, Bebersee, Beutel, Densow, Gandenitz, Gollin, Gross Dölln, Gross Väter, Grunewald, Hammelspring, Herzfelde, Hindenburg, Klosterwalde, Petznick, Röddelin, Storkow and Vietmannsdorf.

The Uckermark, a historical region in northeastern Germany, currently straddles the Uckermark District of Brandenburg and the Vorpommern-Greifswald District of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. Its traditional capital is Prenzlau.

History

Founded in the 18th century, in 1882 Vogelsang was added to the state forest Gutsbezirk Zehdenick. The local people have always lived from the forest, and felled timber products. Forestry work continues today, while the former mill has been converted into a factory.

In 1888 a railway station was built at the Löwenberg-Prenzlau Railway. In December 2001, the village was annexed as part of Zehdenick.

Soviet military base

After the end of World War II, a site north of the village became important within the Western forces of the Soviet Union. From 1952, a barracks town was constructed within the woods, that eventually was capable of housing 15,000 people, including military personnel and their families. The town was self-contained and off-limits to non-essential personnel, and contained a theatre, shops, offices, a gym, school and medical facilities. During the Cold War, it was the third largest Soviet base inside East Germany,^[1] after the base at Wünsdorf.

World War II, also known as the Second World War, was a global war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. The vast majority of the world's countries—including all the great powers—eventually formed two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis. A state of total war emerged, directly involving more than 100 million people from over 30 countries. The major participants threw their entire economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities behind the war effort, blurring the distinction between civilian and military resources. World War II was the deadliest conflict in human history, marked by 50 to 85 million fatalities, most of whom were civilians in the Soviet Union and China. It included massacres, the genocide of the Holocaust, strategic bombing, premeditated death from starvation and disease, and the only use of nuclear weapons in war.

The Soviet Union, officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), was a socialist state in Eurasia that existed from 1922 to 1991. Nominally a union of multiple national Soviet republics, its government and economy were highly centralized. The country was a one-party state, governed by the Communist Party with Moscow as its capital in its largest republic, the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. Other major urban centres were Leningrad, Kiev, Minsk, Alma-Ata, and Novosibirsk. It spanned over 10,000 kilometres east to west across 11 time zones, and over 7,200 kilometres north to south. It had five climate zones: tundra, taiga, steppes, desert and mountains.

Cold War State of geopolitical tension after World War II between powers in the Eastern Bloc and the Western Bloc

The Cold War was a period of geopolitical tension between the Soviet Union with its satellite states, and the United States with its allies after World War II. A common historiography of the conflict begins between 1946, the year U.S. diplomat George F. Kennan's "Long Telegram" from Moscow cemented a U.S. foreign policy of containment of Soviet expansionism threatening strategically vital regions, and the Truman Doctrine of 1947, and ending between the Revolutions of 1989, which ended communism in Eastern Europe, and the 1991 collapse of the USSR, when nations of the Soviet Union abolished communism and restored their independence. The term "cold" is used because there was no large-scale fighting directly between the two sides, but they each supported major regional conflicts known as proxy wars. The conflict split the temporary wartime alliance against Nazi Germany and its allies, leaving the USSR and the US as two superpowers with profound economic and political differences.

Forces stationed at the base included the 25th Tank Division and its 162nd Tank and 803rd Motor Rifle Regiments. But the most important were the 1702nd Anti-aircraft missile regiment. In early 1959, three years before the Cuban Missile Crisis, they were equipped with twelve of the R-5 Pobeda nuclear missiles, capable of being launched from a mobile launcher placed in one of the four tennis-court sized sites already outfitted to handle the larger R-12 Dvina. Other similar sites were set up at Fürstenberg/Havel (four pads), and Lychen (one pad).

The Cuban Missile Crisis, also known as the October Crisis of 1962, the Caribbean Crisis, or the Missile Scare, was a 13-day confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union initiated by the American discovery of Soviet ballistic missile deployment in Cuba. The confrontation is often considered the closest the Cold War came to escalating into a full-scale nuclear war.

The R-5 Pobeda was a theatre ballistic missile developed by the Soviet Union during the Cold War. The R-5M version was assigned the NATO reporting name SS-3 Shyster and carried the GRAU index 8K51.

The R-12 was a theatre ballistic missile developed and deployed by the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Its GRAU designation was 8K63, and it was given the NATO reporting name of SS-4 Sandal. The R-12 rocket provided the Soviet Union with the capability to attack targets at medium ranges with a megaton-class thermonuclear warhead and constituted the bulk of the Soviet offensive missile threat to Western Europe. Deployments of the R-12 missile in Cuba caused the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. A total of 2335 missiles were produced; all were destroyed in 1993 under the Soviet and US Arms Control Treaty.

Soviet military records state that the R-5 were withdrawn in August 1959. But records obtained after the fall of East Germany, and the release of records from the CIA, British Military Intelligence and French Military Intelligence, suggest that they could have been in residence until a period after the Cuban Missile crisis ended, probably until the R-5 was retired in 1967. These records show that much as though the site itself remained largely covered and unknown thanks to the forestry cover, Western military intelligence authorities had become aware of the movement by rail of large boxes capable of holding an R-5 missile in early 1959.^[1]

From the early 1960s, the site became the headquarters of the 25th Tank Division.^[1]

With the withdrawal of Russian Army troops in 1994, the military town was partly demolished, with the remainder allowed to decay back into the woods. Due to the many ammunition residues in the soil, access to parts of the site is restricted, as the cordoned areas can be life-threatening.^{[ citation needed ]}

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References

1 2 3 "A Soviet missile base in Germany that spy planes never saw". BBC News. 26 October 2012. Retrieved 26 October 2012.

External links

Coordinates: 53°02′01″N13°23′27″E / 53.0336°N 13.3908°E / 53.0336; 13.3908

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[BBC20079147-1] 1 2 3 "A Soviet missile base in Germany that spy planes never saw". BBC News. 26 October 2012. Retrieved 26 October 2012.