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• EHRI Corporate Bodies
• Corporate Body
• Updated 1 decade ago

In 1943-10 the Germans reorganized radically their infantry divisions in reducing the infantry regiments from three to two battalions, and the other divisional components were revised accordingly. In the remaining six infantry battalions the number of squads per rifle platoon was reduced from four to three, but without having much effect on the fire power of the division since the caliber of the mortars and antitank guns has been increased, and the number of machine guns kept unchanged.

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• Updated 1 decade ago

Founded in 1940-10

The Belgian Government-in-Exile fled initially to France, hoping to continue the military struggle against the Germans. The French collapse in 1940-06 initially caused the ministers to lose heart and to seek to return to Belgium. When this, however, proved not possible, Hubert Pierlot and three other senior ministers traveled to London, where in 1940-10 they established a Government-in-Exile formally committed to the Allied cause.

• Jewish Military Union
• ŻZW

• EHRI Corporate Bodies
• Corporate Body
• Updated 1 decade ago

Founded in 1939-10

Żydowski Związek Wojskowy was set up in 1939-10 by officers and noncommissioned officers in the Polish army of Jewish background. ŻZW worked with the Security Corps and numbered about 250 people. Units of the ŻZW took part in the uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto.

• Polish Military Organisation
• POW

• EHRI Corporate Bodies
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• Updated 1 decade ago

The Polska Organizacja Wojskowa was founded by Marshal Józef Piłsudski, the future chief of independent Poland. Its main function had been intelligence-gathering and sabotage.

• Legion of Volunteers against Bolshevism
• LVF

• EHRI Corporate Bodies
• Corporate Body
• Updated 1 decade ago

Founded in 1941

The Légion des Volontaires Français Contra le Bolchevisme, led by Jacques Doriot, Eugène Deloncle and Marcel Déat, was set up as collaborationist groups in mid-1941. Initially, about 10,000 volunteered to fight in Nazi uniforms against the Soviet Union. About 3,600 did actually fight, though poorly because of insufficient training, in 1942 on the eastern front. A reorganized LVF unit served in operations against partisans in eastern Europe. Because of its fear that Doriot and the LVF would become to powerful, Vichy took it over in 1942-07, renaming it the Légion Tricolore. The military su...

• Military districts

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• Updated 1 decade ago

One of the principle reasons for the continued cohesion of the German Army was the very method by which units were raised, refitted, and rotated. Central to the raising and refitting of divisions stood the Wehrkreis system. The goal of the Wehrkreis system was to relieve field commanders from as much administrative work as possible while providing a regular flow of trained recruits and supplies to the field army. In this it succeeded to a great extent despite the system’s apparent complexity. By 1943 there were a total of 19 Wehrkreise in Germany and the occupied territories. Each army divi...

• Union for Active Resistance
• ZWC

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• Updated 1 decade ago

Founded in 1908

Związek Walki Czynnej was a Polish secret military organization founded in 1908.

• Military Commandor of Belgium and Northern France

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• Updated 1 decade ago

1940/1944

In Belgium, the territories of Eupen, Malmedy, and Moresnet, which had belonged to Germany prior to 1918, were annexed. From 1940 to 1944, the rest of the country was under a German military administration led by a Militärbefehlshaber in Belgien und Nordfrankreich, General Alexander von Falkenhausen.

• Polish Peasant Battalions
• BCh

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• Updated 1 decade ago

Stronnictwo Ludowe (Peasant Party), the largest political grouping in the Polish underground, maintained military units known as Bataliony Chłopskie and insisted on retaining operation control over them. In principle the BCh supported the Związek Walki Zbrojnej, though they mistrusted the professional military establishment and suspected it of planning to restore the prewar regime. It partly integrated in the Armia Krajowa.

• Secret military police
• GFP

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• Updated 1 decade ago

The main tasks of the Geheime Feldpolizei were counterintelligence and security. Members of the Geheime Feldpolizei were actually the executives of the Abwehr.

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• Updated 1 decade ago

In examining the decision-making process in the Turkish government during the Second World War years two factors must be kept in mind; the government during this period was authoritarian, and power was very centralized. The Grand National Assembly, the Parliamentary Group of the CHP, the Cabinet and Inönü. This power structure included practically all the politically active elements in Turkish society. Yet despite Italy’s entry into the war in 1940-06 and the subsequent Axis campaign in the Balkans, which culminated in Germany’s invasion and defeat of Yugoslavia and Greece in spring 1941, T...

• Committee of National Liberation of Upper Italy
• CLNAI

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• Updated 1 decade ago

Founded in 1944-01

In 1944-01 a supreme politico-military authority, the Comitato di Liberazione Nazionale Alta Italia, was formed to coordinate the activities of the Comitato di Liberazione Nazionale and partisans. This body soon asserted its claims to power, not only against Germans and Fascists in the North but also against the official government and against the Allies. Eventually the Allies agreed to recognize the CLNAI as the legitimate political representative of the Resistance forces, and to entrust it with maintaining public order in liberated zones until an Allied Military Government could be set up.

• Union for Armed Struggle
• ZWZ

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• Updated 1 decade ago

In German controlled Poland the Polish underground in 1940 gradually became more tightly organized. General Sikorski in France took steps to bring all resistance forces in the homeland under the control of his government in exile. Since the beginning of the war, dozens of independent resistance groups had sprung up, mistrustful of any central control. Sikorski ordered the Służba Zwycięstwu Polski (Service for the Victory of Poland), by far the largest of the underground organizations, to transform itself into the central organ of military resistance under the name of Związek Walki Zbrojnej....

• Special Staff F

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• Updated 1 decade ago

A special military mission called Sonderstab F, after its commander General Felmy, was sent to Iraq in 1941-05.

• Polish People’s Action for Independence
• PLAN

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• Updated 1 decade ago

Polska Ludowa Akcja Niepodległościowa was a Polish underground group.

• Ancestral heritage

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• Updated 3 months ago

Founded in 1935-07-01

Ahnenerbe was the name given to the Society for Research into the Spiritual Roots of Germany’s Ancestral Heritage. Founded by Heinrich Himmler, this pseudoscientific organization was politically motivated and rife with chicanery. The Society sponsored archeological research into early German history and forums on Himmler’s vision of Aryan origins. During the war, Ahnenerbe was involved by unethical ‘medical experiments’ on altitude, freezing and skull collections. Dr. Sigmund Rascher and dr. August Hirt were practitioners at Ahnenerbe’s Institute of Military-Scientific Applied Research.

• German Supreme Command
• OHL

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• Updated 1 decade ago

Colonel General Helmuth von Moltke became chief of the General Staff of the Generalstab des Feldheeres. Although the German emperor was the official commander-in-chief, the actual conduct of operations and strategic planning lay in the hands of Moltke from the very beginning. His staff formed the Oberste Heeresleitung. The OHL's Central Section was responsible for the staff's office management and personnel matters.

• Greek People's Liberation Army
• ELAS

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• Updated 1 decade ago

1942/1945-02

The military branch of the communist-dominated Ethniko Apelefterotiko Metopo in Greece. Ellinikós Laïkós Apeleftherotikós Stratós was launched in the summer of 1942 and gradually spread from the central regions of the country into Thessaly and Aegean Macedonia. By 1944, it controlled most of the mountainous areas in Greece. At its peak, it had about 70,000 fighters, including several thousand Slavic Macedonians who formed the so-called Slavo-Macedonian People's Liberation Front. ELAS was disbanded in 1945-02, following the Varkiza agreements. After 1946, it reappeared as the Democratic Army...

• Army Resistance Organisation
• ORA

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• Updated 1 decade ago

Founded in 1942-12-01

On 1942-12-01 the Organisation de Résistance de l'Armée was formed by General Aubert Frere. ORA became active after Germany occupied the Free (Vichy) Zone in 1942-11. Organized by career officers and run on a professional military basis, ORA initially backed General Giraud rather than de Gaulle as the head of the Resistance: it's mission was military, not political.

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• Updated 1 decade ago

In 1938/1939 the army of the United States was ill prepared even to defend the nation against attack; the public and Congress were determined to avoid war and ignorant of military requirements. The foreign policy of the United States was in debate, and the policies that the President followed in this period of doubt soon raised a conflict between the request for aid and the demands of national rearmament. Amid this confusion the services had to prepare for the worst. From 1938-09 to 1941-12-07 it became increasingly probable that the United States would have to fight in the Second World War.