#which is volga german and caucasus german | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

today-in-wwi · 6 years

Text

State of the War: Mid-1918

The German offensives on the Western Front, March - July 1918.

The tumult and upheaval of 1917 continued into 1918 as the war approached its climax. The Russians and Romanians had been forced into humiliating peace treaties, and Germany moved all of its reserves to the West in an attempt to win a final military decision there. They had made spectacular gains of the sort not seen in the West since 1914, but the Allies were holding firm and more Americans were arriving every week.

The Eastern Front and the Russian Civil War:

Negotiations at Brest-Litovsk between the Bolsheviks and the Central Powers dragged on from December into February. In an attempt to further isolate the Bolsheviks, the Central Powers signed a treaty with the newly-formed Ukrainian Government in early February, making territorial concessions in Poland in exchange for food and economic concessions. The next day, Trotsky unilaterally declared an end to the war in the east and pulled out of negotiations. The Germans did not accept this, called off the armistice, and invaded Russia, meeting essentially zero resistance from the non-existent Russian Army. Thirteen days later, the Germans were in Narva, 85 miles of Petrograd, and the Russians signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, exiting the war and giving up their claims to all the land the Central Powers had occupied.

The Germans moved many of their troops that had been in Russia to the Western Front, but not all. Many were still needed to occupy the lands Russia had given up, and the Central Powers’ advance even continued in the Ukraine, ostensibly in support of their new allies in Kiev. The socialists there proved disagreeable to the Germans, however, and they helped install a more friendly government under the self-styled Hetman Skoropadskyi in late April. In May, the Germans took Sevastopol and Rostov. The Russian Black Sea Fleet, quickly running out of safe harbors, variously scuttled itself or surrendered to the Germans in mid-June.

Russia’s exit stranded a variety of volunteer forces in the country. Polish forces were convinced to halt and then, after a brief but determined resistance, surrendered to the Germans. The Czech Legion was determined to make its way out of the country to fight on the Western Front, preferably via Vladivostok, but distrust between the Czechs and the Bolsheviks spiraled into open warfare in May. By the end of June, the Czechs had seized most of the Trans-Siberian Railroad east of the Volga, and had even helped install an rump portion of the Constituent Assembly as an anti-Bolshevik government Samara (the original having been dissolved after less than 24 hours in January).

White resistance also emerged on the Don and in the Kuban early in the year. They quickly suffered many setbacks, as the Bolsheviks crushed the Don Cossacks and sent Alexeyev’s and Kornilov’s Volunteer Army to wander the snows of the steppe. The Bolsheviks thought resistance to their rule was over when Kornilov was killed in an ill-advised attack in April. However, the Bolsheviks were undermined by their own heavy-handedness (and the arrival of the Germans) and by June the Don Cossacks had re-emerged and the Volunteer Army was once again on the offensive.

Finland’s independence from Russia was universally recognized at the beginning of the year, but it was soon wracked by its own internal divisions. The Finnish socialists, who had narrowly lost last October’s elections, seized control of much of the populated heart of Finland in late January. The remaining Whites attempted to fight off the Reds and appeal for foreign aid; the Swedes refused to intervene beyond the Ålands, but the Germans were more than happy to gain a grateful ally just outside Petrograd. The Germans landed at Hanko in early April, and within a month the Reds were defeated, their leadership having fled to Russia.

Romania took advantage of the Russian collapse to seize Bessarabia (modern-day Moldova); however, shortly after Brest-Litovsk, they too were forced to sign a harsh peace, giving up the Dobruja and major economic concessions. Most of the country would remain under German occupation until the end of the war.

The Western Front:

Using the troops freed up by the effective end of the war in the East, Hindenburg & Ludendorff decided on a series of massive offensives in the West that they hoped would break the Allies. The first, Operation Michael, struck back into the ground fought over during the Battle of the Somme and then abandoned by the Germans in early 1917. Although it essentially broke the British Fifth Army and came very close to taking the key rail center of Amiens, it did not result in a great strategic victory for the Germans, instead extending their lines in an awkward direction.

Less than three weeks later, the Germans attacked again in Flanders, in Operation Georgette. Breaking through demoralized Portuguese forces, it took key positions to the south of Ypres and forced Plumer to abandon the ground gained at extremely high cost at Passchendaele the previous fall. However, Ypres remained in Allied hands, as did the approaches to the Channel ports.

The German attacks forced the Allies to finally agree to a unified command; French General Foch was made the generalissimo of the Allied armies, with overall control of the dispensation of their reserves. The Germans hoped these would be moved south and away from Flanders by an attack on the Aisne, which they launched in late May. The attack broke through French lines much more easily than expected, due to a lack of defense-in-depth, and the Germans were on the Marne within days. Paris was once again under threat, and had for several months been under shell from German long-range guns as well. The Germans shifted their attack yet again, striking near Noyon in early June with Operation Gneisenau, but this time the French were prepared and were able to halt the German advance within a few days.

The Americans had begun to arrive in force, and launched their first attack of the war in late May, taking the town of Cantigny in an attack planned by Lt. Col. George C. Marshall. This was soon overshadowed by events on the Marne, where American troops were quickly thrown into action to stop the German advance. In June, the US Marines fought a three-week battle to retake Belleau Wood, at the cost of over half of their men in casualties. Also entering action in the spring of 1918 was the 369th US Infantry Regiment, now commonly known as the Harlem Hellfighters; due to American racism, they were placed under French command.

Italy and the Balkans:

To support the Germans’ large-scale efforts on the Western Front, the Austrians launched their own offensive against Italy in mid-June. Divided between attacks on the Asiago plateau and across the Piave, the Austrians quickly ran into determined resistance from an Italian foe that had had months to prepare, had been reinforced by the French and British, and under the command of a new general, Diaz, who was determined not to make the same mistakes Cadorna had made. The Austrians gained a few bridgeheads at great cost, but had immense difficulties in supplying them under attack from Allied airplanes and artillery. After little over a week, the Austrians called off the offensive and retreated behind the Piave, having lost over 100,000 men for no gain.

The front around Salonika remained relatively quiet in 1918, as both sides turned their attention to the Western Front. The Greeks gained their first notable victory of the war in late May, capturing the Skra di Legen. French general Franchet d’Esperey assumed overall command here in early June, having been forced to take the fall for the French defeat on the Aisne.

The Middle East:

The British attempted two forays across the Jordan towards Amman, while their Hashemite allies attempted attacks further south; all were defeated. The crisis on the Western Front and the start of summer forced the Allies to call off major operations in Palestine.

In the Caucasus, in February the Turks began to reoccupy the territory they had lost to the Russians, followed by the lands they were awarded in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. The newly-independent Transcaucasian Federation, however, did not recognize the treaty, and after a miscommunication regarding the terms of a Turkish ultimatum, went to war with Turkey in April. The Turkish advance into Armenia was stopped at Sardarabad in late May, but Georgia remained under threat. Transcaucasia was also wracked by internal divisions; ethnic violence between Azeris and Armenians broke out in Baku in late March (with some help from the Bolsheviks). In late May, Georgia declared independence and accepted protection from the Germans; this led to an embarrassing episode where the Turks attacked a German unit in Georgia. The Turks were thus forced to halt their advance, but they still had their aim set to the east, occupying Tabriz and aiming for Baku.

It was precisely this outcome that the British hoped to prevent; an attack north from Baghdad to Kirkuk briefly occupied the city, but failed to divert the Turks from the Caucasus. They also created the so-called “Dunsterforce” to help organize resistance to the Turkish advance, but by the end of June it had yet to make an appearance beyond northern Persia.

Africa:

Lettow-Vorbeck’s forces continued to pillage though Portuguese Mozambique, splitting up to cover more ground. On one occasion in late May one of his columns was nearly trapped by the British, but they managed to escape despite losing their whole baggage train. At the end of June, his forces were approaching the major port city of Quelimane.

The War at Sea:

The High Seas Fleet sortied one final time in April an attempt to attack a Norway-bound convoy (that was not actually sailing that day). The British missed the signs that the Germans had sortied, and left their ports too late to catch them, although a British submarine was able to inflict serious damage on a German battlecruiser.

German unrestricted submarine warfare continued, although convoys had diminished its effectiveness. They had managed to sink two American troop transports: one, the Tuscania, bound for France, and the other, the President Lincoln, on its return voyage. This author’s great-great-uncle was killed in the latter sinking. The British attempted to stop the submarines at their source by attacking the German-occupied ports at Zeebrugge and Ostend in April; although highly celebrated, the attacks ultimately failed to block the passage of U-boats for more than a few days.

The main Allied success in the first half of 1918 came in the Adriatic, where Italian fast torpedo boats managed to sink an Austrian dreadnought, the Szent István, in early June. Another creative Italian endeavor, an attempt to crawl into the Austrian harbor at Pola with a “naval tank,” failed.

#wwi #ww1 #ww1 history #ww1 centenary #world war 1 #world war i #world war one #the first world war #the great war #1918

50 notes · View notes

electricthink · 3 years

Video

Stalingrad: The Commissar's House (Historical Doc

[Narrator] The campaign began with a German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 known as Operation Barbarossa. After initial successes, the Soviets halted the German advance at the gates of Moscow. The next year the German high command developed a new command called Case Blue, which focused on seizing the valuable Russian oil fields in the Caucasus region.

Once again, the German campaign began with great advances, however the Caucasus offenses soon ground to a halt, and by mid-September, Stalingrad became a new major objective for the attacking German forces in southern Russia. On 13th September, 1942, the German's sixth army under General Friedrich Paulus began it's assault on the city. Lieutenant General Vasily Chuikov and his Soviet 62nd Army defended Stalingrad.

Within two weeks, the Germans cleared much of the south and central portions of the city although the Soviets stubbornly clung to a few small enclaves. Nonetheless, Paulus considered the center and south fighting to be over and began the fight to take the northern factory district. After a surprisingly rapid and successful assault on the tractor factory on 14 and 15 October, the Germans open the attack on the Barrikady factory on the following day. The Barrikady factory was a sprawling complex.

The factory grounds were roughly 2,500 meters long, by 1,500 meters wide. The major factory halls were massive structures and many made excellent defensive positions with good fields of fire even from within. By the time the German army launched its assault on the factory, it's structures and grounds had already experienced a tremendous amount of destruction. German bombardments and artillery barrages inflicted heavy damage to most of the buildings and rubble was everywhere.

The remnants of damaged and destroyed factory products, shell holes and Soviet fighting positions littered the grounds. The area was an ideal location for defenders and therefore very difficult terrain for attacking forces. This apocalyptic scene typifies the urban battlefield and illustrates U.S. army doctrine which further explains that the three dimensional urban terrain makes identifying, reporting and targeting of enemy locations difficult. This is the environment faced by the German attacking force which consisted of several divisions and well over 10,000 solidiers who attack from the north. For more than two weeks, this force pushed deep into the complex with the Volga River as its objective.

The Red Army fiercely defended each building and ultimately stopped the German onslaught just 400 meters from the Volga on the outskirts of the factory's lower settlement and the complex's administrative area, which the Red Army heavily fortified. The lower settlement was the last bastion of the Soviet defense in the Barrikady factory. Current joint and army doctrine can trace it's origins in lessons learned in previous wars and military actions executed throughout history. The eastern front in World War II, and specifically the battles within the city limits of Stalingrad, highlight the complexities of urban warfare. Understanding current doctrine is key to successful integration of forces, synchronization of assets and execution of complex orders.

In peacetime, the lower settlement served as the Barrikady factory administrative area and one of the residential districts for factory workers. About 400 meters beyond the settlement were the cliffs of the Volga River, the German 305th Infantry Division's final objective. Within the lower settlement, a number of port locations held significance to either the Germans, the Soviets or both. Key locations included Theater Park, the cinema booth, the Barrikady factory fuel depot, the Index Finger Ravine, the transformer hut, and the Volga River.

Key German locations were Hall 6E, which served as the headquarters for the 576th Grenadier Regiment. Hall four served as the headquarters for the 577th Grenadier Regiment. House 53 served as the headquarters for the 578th Grenadier Regiment. Key Soviet locations were Colonel Ivan Lyudnikov's command post bunker for the 138th Rifle Division. The red house wish functioned as Colonel Lyudnikov's personal observation post.

The apothecary, also referred as the pharmacy, a Soviet strong point. And the Commissar's house, which originally served as the main administration building for the Barrikady factory and was now a Soviet strong point as well. The defense of the lower settlement was primarily the responsibility of Colonel Lyudnikov's 138th Rifle Division. Though the 241st Regiment of the 95th Rifle Division was responsible for the defense of the area between the apothecary and the fuel depot. By this time, the 138th Rifle Division consisted of three diminished regiments with a total combat strength of about 1,000 soldiers. Attached to the division was the sole remaining element of the 37th Guards Division, the 250 men of the 118th Guards Rifle Regiment. The 768th Rifle Regiment of the 138 Rifle Division in the north, helped positions largely within an apartment complex. The 344th Rifle Regiment held another apartment complex near the massive Hall Four, which stretched south to the vicinity of Theater Park. The 650th Rifle Regiment also held part of the apartment complex near Theater Park, several other buildings east of there and the Commissar's house itself. (threatening music) The Commissar's house was a massive brick structure within the lower settlement. The house, completed in 1916, and solidly constructed with red bricks from the nearby brick factory possessed an appropriately castle-like appearance. It's construction consisted of massive, three-foot thick walls, a reinforced concrete cellar, and was two stories in height.

It was relatively clear fields of fire around the building in all directions and the Germans considered this structure key terrain, a crucial defensive position within the 138th Rifle Division's defensive zone. The United States Army doctoral manual, ADP 3-90, defines key terrain as an identifiable characteristic whose seizure or retention affords a marked advantage to either combatant. Due to its obvious strength, the building earlier served as Lyudnikov's headquarters until the German advance forced him to move his command post to a bunker below the bluffs of the Volga River. The Barrikady workers officially recognized the building as the factory administration building. The Germans would refer to this building as the Commissar's house.

#WWII #documentary #history #Stalingrad #Soviet Union #Nazi Germany

0 notes

alexsmitposts · 4 years

Photo

Who won the Second world war? 80% of all Soviet men born in 1923 died during world war II. The question may seem ridiculous, especially for older people, at least those who live in Russia, but not only in Russia. 70 years have passed since the German-fascist Armada invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, which marked the beginning of the Second world war. Almost 21 months later, Germany and its allies invaded the USSR. The great Patriotic war of the Soviet people began, which became the main and main part of the Second world war. These events are deeply etched in the memory of those people who lived then, and can not be forgotten by them. They remember all the main vicissitudes of the war years and the joyous Victory day in may 1945. And for them there is no doubt about the victory of the USSR and other countries of the anti-fascist coalition over fascist Germany, militaristic Japan and their allies.But not everything is so simple with historical memory. In the course of the war and especially the post-war years abroad, primarily in the United States, began to distort, to falsify the main events of the war, its progress, the value of the major battles, the contribution of the participants of the antifascist coalition in the victory. This was done primarily in order to belittle the decisive role of the USSR in world war II and to present, mainly, the United States as the main force that ensured victory over the common enemy. Those who are familiar with the works of most American and other Western historians will find in them a whole set of shameless lies about the causes of the war, its course and the forces that ensured its Victory. We will note only some of the common distortions of military operations. Thus, the myth is being hammered into people's minds that the main theater of military operations was the war in the Pacific, which was waged by the United States against Japan, and not the Grand battles in Russia that overthrew the fascist enemy. The outstanding battle of Stalingrad of the Soviet troops is mentioned only in passing. Exaggerated importance is attached to the battles of Anglo-American troops in Africa against Rommel's German units. The landing of the Western allies in the Ardennes (France), which opened the so-called second front in Europe in June 1944, when the USSR had already largely defeated Nazi Germany and could have won without their participation, is highly praised. Recently, a book was published in Germany that reproduces the far-from-new, false claim that the USSR was responsible for the outbreak of world war II, and that in June 1941, Germany allegedly launched a "pre-emptive" strike on the Soviet Union to save Europe from Soviet aggression. So modern forgers are trying to whitewash Nazi Germany and lay the blame for the Second world war on the USSR. By the way, often the head of the LDPR Vladimir Zhirinovsky criticizes Stalin precisely for the fact that he did not dare in a day or two to launch a pre-emptive strike on the German troops concentrated on the Western borders of our country with the purpose of invading the USSR. It should be said that the falsifiers of the history of war have succeeded in many ways. Many ordinary people in the West are convinced that the United States provided the victory in the war. About the war in Europe, about the role of the USSR in the defeat of the main fascist States, the Western layman knows almost nothing and is very surprised when he is told about the actual events of the Second world war. Western researchers are increasingly immersed in the false myths they have created. Moreover, they impose them both in Russia and throughout the former Soviet Union. The post-Soviet generation of our country's residents will learn a lot about long-ago military events, and about many other things from the history of Russia, from books written by anti-Russian followers of Western forgers. For various reasons, including self-interest (Western grants, the opportunity to go abroad with Western money, etc.), a number of Russian historians began to actively preach the falsified history of the Second world war and the great Patriotic war. All this forces us to recall the truth at least about the main events of the war years. The war, as evidenced by authentic and not falsified facts, was prepared by two competing groupings of powers: on the one hand, Germany, Japan and Italy, on the other, England, France and the United States, which sided with them. Both groups had one of their goals to seriously weaken, if not completely eliminate, Russia (the USSR). The Soviet people did not need the war. They were engaged in large-scale creative work, developed industrial and agricultural production, and tried in every possible way to prevent the country's involvement in the war. The non-aggression Treaty signed by the Soviet Union with Germany in August 1939 delayed the beginning of German aggression against the USSR by two years. The Hitlerite leadership expected to defeat England and France, and then attack the USSR. Therefore, the Second world war began as a war between England and France, on the one hand, and Germany, on the other. At the same time, neither Britain nor France provided a noticeable rebuff to German aggression ("strange war"), hoping to push Germany to war with the USSR. This policy of the Anglo-French bloc allowed the German-fascist troops to quickly and effortlessly occupy Denmark, Norway, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg, then easily force France to surrender by occupying part of its territory, and capture Greece and Yugoslavia. In June 1940, Italy joined Germany, with Spain and Portugal acting in solidarity with it. In September 1940, Germany, Italy,and Japan entered into a Triple Alliance that was primarily anti-Soviet. Almost all of Western Europe was under the control of Nazi Germany. The threat of defeat and occupation of England became obvious. The invasion of German troops to the Islands was a matter of a few weeks. And then Hitler made the most fatal mistake, believing that the days of England are numbered, he decided to start a war against the USSR. And indeed, the attack of Nazi Germany on the USSR, which had resisted Hitler's aggression most fiercely, saved England from defeat. In a word, British diplomacy outplayed Hitler's and accelerated Germany's attack on the Soviet Union.This is what Hitler wrote in his Political will on April 29, 1945: "Just three days before the outbreak of the German-Polish war, I proposed to the British Ambassador in Berlin a solution to the German-Polish problem - a solution similar to that applied to the Saarland when it was put under international control. It is impossible to forget this offer. It was rejected only because the leading circles of England wanted war." These were the events that preceded the German attack on the USSR. Since 1941, the main and main front of the Second world war was the Soviet-German war. The lack of combat experience of the red Army, the incompleteness of its rearmament, as well as the mistakes of the political and military leadership of the country allowed the fascist troops to capture a significant part of the territory of the USSR and approach Moscow in six months. But, retreating under the onslaught of superior enemy forces, the Red army exhausted it. The defeat of the fascist troops near Moscow in 1941-42 led to the failure of Hitler's plan for a "lightning war". The battle of Moscow, not the United States and its allies, marked the beginning of the defeat of the bloc of fascist States in the war. The anti-fascist powers at that time were limited mainly to expressions of sympathy for the Soviet people. And Harry Truman, who became an American Vice President in 1944, generally believed that the USSR and Germany should wear themselves out and weaken as much as possible. Meanwhile, Germany and its allies tried for two more years to take the initiative in the war with the USSR. During the summer offensive in 1942, the fascist troops reached the Caucasus and the Volga. In 1942-43, the great battle of Stalingrad took place, which made a decisive contribution to achieving a radical change in the course of the entire Second world war. Although Germany attempted to take revenge during the fierce battle of Kursk in 1943, it also suffered a crushing defeat and finally lost its strategic initiative. The outcome of the war was almost decided in favor of the anti-fascist coalition. The victorious battles of the red Army largely determined the allied military successes in Africa and the Pacific. By may 1943, Anglo-American forces had liberated North Africa from Italian-German forces. In July 1943, the allies landed in Sicily, and on September 3, 1943, Italy capitulated and withdrew from the war. In 1944, the Red Army liberated almost the entire territory of the USSR. Decisive victories on the Soviet-German front allowed the allied forces to land in France on June 6, 1944, when the war was nearing its end, and finally open the 2nd front in Europe. In September 1944, they, with the support of the French Resistance forces, cleared almost the entire territory of France from the Nazi occupiers. Soviet forces from mid-1944 to the spring of 1945 liberated the countries of Central and South-Eastern Europe, and the allies advanced into Northern Italy and parts of West Germany. On may 2, 1945, the red Army took Berlin. At midnight on may 8, representatives of the German high command signed an act of unconditional surrender. Thus, with the decisive role of the Soviet Union, the main and main part of the Second world war ended victoriously. Without denying the contribution of the allied forces to the Victory, every objective researcher on the basis of these facts can not but recognize the main role of the USSR in the victory over Hitlerite Germany and its allies. This was the case in Europe. And what was the situation on the fronts in Asia and the Pacific? Let's turn to the facts. Three and a half years after the beginning of the Second world war, the United States did not actively participate in events on the European continent, increasing the production of military equipment and weapons, from the sale of which the warring countries made huge profits. They did not dare to stop Japan in its aggressive policy in China and other countries of the Asian continent. This prompted self-confident Japanese militarists to take a military adventure against the United States, subjecting its naval base at pearl Harbor to a devastating attack on December 7, 1941. The American-Japanese war began. At the same time, Japan attacked the British colony of Hong Kong, the Philippines, Thailand and Malaysia seized American bases on the Islands of GUAM and Wake, invaded Burma, the Dutch East Indies, New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, and Singapore.Having entered the war on the side of the anti-fascist powers, the United States mainly participated in naval battles in the Pacific. For a long time the naval forces of the United States and its allies had suffered one defeat after another, many of their military units surrendered. The turn in military operations in the Pacific theater of war came only after the outstanding victories of the red Army over Germany. Soon after the victory of the Soviet troops on the Kursk bulge (and this summer of 1943), the offensive operations of the United States and Britain on the Pacific front began. But as early as 1944, Japanese troops continued active military operations in Burma, in China, and launched an offensive on the Indian state of Assam. It was only when Russia drove the fascist troops from its territory with a victorious March that the United States and its allies were able to begin liberating the territories captured by the Japanese in the far East and Asia (the Philippines, Okinawa, Burma). But it was not easy for the allies to cope with Japan. Having achieved success in naval battles, they experienced great difficulties in land operations. In this regard, the United States and Britain at the Yalta conference (1945) asked the Soviet government to join the war against Japan. On August 8, 1945, the USSR declared war on it, which facilitated the efforts of the United States and Britain in the Pacific theater of operations and brought the defeat of Japan closer. However, August 6 and 9, 1945 the American air force dropped atomic bombs on two Japanese cities-Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as a result of which about 450 thousand people were killed and seriously injured. The use of atomic weapons was not caused by any military necessity in those conditions and was an act of barbarity and cruelty against the peaceful, civilian population of Japan. However, it was not the atomic bomb, but the entry of the USSR into the war that had a decisive influence on the rapid and final defeat of Japan. This was recognized in a statement made by Japanese Prime Minister Suzuki on the day of the beginning of the Soviet-Japanese war. "The entry of the Soviet Union into the war this morning,"he said," puts us completely in a hopeless position and makes it impossible to continue the war." Parts of the red Army in a short time broke the resistance of Japanese troops (Kwantung army) in Manchuria, defeated Japanese troops in Korea, southern Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands. As a result, Japan could no longer continue military operations and capitulated on September 2, 1945. This day is considered the last day of the Second world war. The second world war, which lasted 6 years, ended with the victory of the anti-fascist coalition. It involved 72 States and 80% of the world's population. Direct military operations were conducted on the territory of 40 States. In the countries that participated in the war, up to 110 million people were mobilized. More than 3 million civilians participated in the armed anti-fascist struggle. On the Soviet-German front, which was the main and longest of the war fronts, participated from 190 to 270 divisions, or 62 to 70 percent of the active divisions of Nazi Germany and its allies, while the Anglo-American forces in North Africa were opposed by 9 to 20 divisions, in Italy-from 7 to 26 divisions, in Western Europe after the opening of the second front-from 56 to 75 divisions. It was on the Soviet-German front that the main military forces of the fascist coalition were destroyed. In General, during the war, human losses ranged from 50 to 70 million people, including 27 million killed at the front. Over 12 million destroyed in Nazi concentration camps. According to the General staff of the Russian Armed forces (1998), approximately 34.5 million Soviet servicemen participated in combat operations during the war. Irretrievable losses of the red (Soviet) Army amounted to 12 million people, including about 7 million people killed, missing, captured St. 4.5 million. In total, the Soviet Union lost 26.6 million citizens. (Other figures are given in various sources). Huge damage was caused to the national economy of the USSR. The amount spent on military expenditures, the cost of destruction and destroyed wealth, and the loss of income from industry and agriculture amounted to about 2.6 trillion rubles. The German armed forces lost about 10 million people on the Eastern front (about 77% of all their losses in world war II), 62 thousand aircraft (62%), about 56 thousand tanks and assault guns (about 75%), about 180 thousand guns and mortars (about 74%). On other fronts, in battles with Anglo-American troops, Germany lost only 150 divisions and about 1.9 million soldiers and officers. The losses of other powers in the war were much less. So, the United States lost 405 thousand people killed during the entire war, England — 375 thousand. The military expenditures of the States that participated in the war reached $ 1117 billion. The cost of destruction was 260 billion dollars, of which in the USSR - 128 billion, in Germany-48 billion, in France-21 billion, in Poland-20 billion, in England-6.8 billion. Foreign authors and our home-grown forgers claim that the war was won allegedly due to the economic potential of the United States and England, their supplies to the Soviet Union. Indeed, the production of weapons has reached huge proportions in the United States and England. But most of it was not used in military operations, and the share of deliveries to the Soviet Union was relatively small. So, for all the years of the war, the allies supplied the Soviet Union 9 thousand artillery pieces, 18 thousand aircraft, 10 thousand tanks, and in the Soviet Union during this time, 489 thousand were produced. artillery pieces, 112 thousand aircraft, more than 102 thousand tanks. The Soviet people do not forget about this help from the allies, but we should not exaggerate its significance for victory. The war was won by the Soviet Union mainly with the help of locally produced weapons. We do not deny the positive value of food supplies to the USSR from the United States and Canada, but the supply of food to the red Army and the entire country was carried out mainly by the forces of the Soviet people themselves. At the same time, the military and labor efforts of the population of the USSR allowed the United States and England to win those not the most important battles that they waged in the war, to avoid all the horrors, disasters, destruction and loss of life that the fascist aggression brought with it. The USSR (Russia) and its army not only defended their freedom and independence of their homeland, but also provided decisive assistance to Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Austria, Denmark, and Norway in liberating themselves from the German-fascist invaders and restoring the independence of these countries. As a result of the victory of the USSR and its allies, 25 countries in Europe, Asia and Africa were freed from full or partial occupation by the fascist aggressors. Victory in the war contributed to the elimination of the fascist order established in Europe. Germany, Italy, and Japan were also freed from fascist and militaristic tyranny. Thanks to the defeat of the block of fascist States, conditions were created for the victory of national forces in China, Korea, Vietnam, and for the independence of India, Indonesia, Burma, and other colonial countries. As can be seen from the above facts, it was the USSR (Russia), and not the United States and its allies, that bore the brunt of the war and played a decisive role in the defeat of the fascist aggressors

0 notes

khalilhumam · 4 years

Text

‘Where is the center of the story?': Revisiting the traditional view of Russia's Muslim communities

New Post has been published on http://khalilhumam.com/where-is-the-center-of-the-story-revisiting-the-traditional-view-of-russias-muslim-communities/

‘Where is the center of the story?': Revisiting the traditional view of Russia's Muslim communities

“The decentering or provincializing of ethnic Russian history continues to be a slow process.”

Tatar family on a picnic (place unknown, first half of the 1910s). Photo from Renat Bekkin's archive, used with permission

Muslims account for 10 percent of Russia's population, making their religion the second largest behind the Russian Orthodox Church. They have been part of Russian history for centuries and inhabit the entire Russian Federation: from Siberia to the North Caucasus, in large cities such as Moscow and Saint-Petersburg. The largest ethnic group professing Islam are Tatars, who are also the first ethnic minority in Russia, with over 5 million members, their own Turkic language and their own administrative territory within the Russian Federation, the Republic of Tatarstan.

Tatar family. Photo from Renat Bekkin’s family archive (Saint-Petersburg, 1917). Used with permission

Tatars played a specific role in the colonial expansion of Tsarist Russia as intermediaries between ethnic Russians and colonized nations of Siberia and Central Asia, who often shared close religious and linguistic ties with them. They acted as missionaries, translators, and later as reformists of Islam in the late 19th and early 20th century. They are often described as the Jadids – intellectuals, writers, thinkers who proposed a new and modern brand of Islam inspired by political and social reforms seen in the Ottoman Empire and Western Europe. But this narrative of male Muslim intellectuals solely guiding modernization that has dominated academia until very recently is being increasingly challenged by researchers. Global Voices spoke to Danielle Ross, who taught at Nazarbayev University in Nur-Sultan, Kazakhstan, and is now an Assistant Professor of Asian and Islamic history at Utah State University. In her latest book Tatar Empire: Kazan's Muslims and the Making of Imperial Russia she openly challenges this myth and proposes another reading. The interview was edited for brevity. Filip Noubel: The dominant narrative in academia, both post-Soviet and Western, is that modernity happened in Muslim communities in the Tsarist Empire only with the arrival of the Jadids — male reformers of Islam and society. In your latest book, you challenge this narrative. Can you elaborate?

Danielle Ross: One of the main goals of my book is to bring the study of Islam and Islamic reform in Russia’s Volga-Ural region up to date with recent trends in historical research on other parts of the world. This means moving away from a model of modernity as something imported or introduced from one society into another, and, instead, viewing 1600s-1910s as a period in which a set of changes—globalization of commerce and politics, centralization of governmental power, rising literacy rates, democratization of religion—unfolded in societies across the world. The Volga-Ural region, linked into larger global networks through Russian imperial rule, Islam, and European and Asian trade, was as much shaped by these trends as were Britain and France, with the caveat that the Volga-Ural region was a colonized space rather than an imperial center. Within this framework, the Jadids can no longer be seen as the importers of modernity. Rather, Jadidism appears as one of many local responses to high colonialism, vertically integrated mass production, and religious revival across the world in the 1880s-1910s. The Jadids were in dialogue with their contemporaries outside of their ethnic communities but were also greatly indebted to previous generations of their own people, who had responded to globally driven changes in their own day. In my book, I wanted to convey an impression of the Volga-Ural region as a continually dynamic place rather than as a land and culture that froze in place in 1552 and suddenly awakened in the 1860s.

Tatar family. Photo Renat Bekkin’s family archive (Saint-Petersburg, mid 1910s). Used with permission

FN: You also make the point in your research that the building of the Tsarist, and later Soviet Empires was not the monopoly of ethnic Russians — it did include other groups such as the Tatars, Germans, Jews, Georgians and others. Why is this aspect seldom mentioned in the colonial history of those two empires?

DR: The academic study of history as we know it today arose within the context of nineteenth-century nationalism and colonialism. In this context, history-writing served two purposes: to articulate a coherent, unifying past for the modern nation-state and to justify political dominance of some peoples over others. Historians have worked since the 1960s to deconstruct these national and colonial narratives, but, in the Russian case, such work is difficult for a few reasons. First, there is the question of assembling a coherent narrative. Telling the history of Russia as a story of grand princes, tsars, and Communist Party leaders is relatively focused and linear. But how does one tell a coherent, compelling story of over one hundred ethno-confessional groups spread over thousands of square miles? Where is the center of the story? Second, Russia and the Soviet Union’s intellectual approach to its non-Russian, non-Orthodox peoples was to place them in designated spaces (nationalities, union republics, etc.) and to confine discussions of their cultures and histories to those spaces. Ethnographers, regional experts, and historians of the union and autonomous republics could choose to write about specific ethnic and confessional groups, but little of that writing was included in general histories of Russia and the USSR. This same structure of Soviet national spaces and categories was replicated and reinforced in Cold War-era western scholarship. In the 1990s, historians began to pursue research that dismantled or transcended the national and regional categories around which Cold War-era historical studies had been organized, but this is transformation is still in progress and it is still not well represented in the textbooks and other generalist literature that would appeal to non-specialists and students entering the field of Russian history. So, the integration non-Russian sources and histories into mainstream Russian history and the decentering or provincializing of ethnic Russian history continues to be a slow process.

Page from the Tatar-language chronicle “Fasl tarikh dastanninda (1740s), produced in the 1740s and held in the Department of Manuscripts and Rare Books at the Kazan Federal University Library in Kazan, Tatarstan. Photo provided by Danielle Ross, used with permission

FN: What is Moscow’s current discourse about the role and presence of Muslims — both indigenous and migrants — in Russia?

DR: Since Putin came to power, Moscow has turned increasingly to Russian ethnonationalism as a unifying ideology. In ethnically diverse Tatarstan, recent policies of consolidation and streamlining of cultural and educational institutions have amounted to the reduction of the resources that sustain the republic’s non-Russian languages and cultures. Moscow’s rhetoric and policies toward Uzbek, Tajik, Kyrgyz, and Azerbaijani migrants send the message that: (1) these Muslims are not wanted in Russia despite their now indispensable role in Russia’s economy; and (2) Central Asian and Caucasian Muslims’ cultures are alien to and incompatible with Russia’s prevailing culture despite the shared experience of seventy years of Soviet rule. Given Moscow’s current stance on indigenous and migrant Muslim people and cultures, it seems fairly clear that they are not prepared at this time to recognize the contributions of non-Slavic, non-Orthodox peoples to Russia’s past or to propose a vision of the future that would include Muslims as full members of Russian society.

Assistant Professor Danielle Ross. Photo by Andrew McAllister, used with permission from the History Department of Utah State University

FN: Who are the conveyers of modernity in today’s Muslim communities of Russia?

DR: I don’t know that “conveyers of modernity” is a useful term for discussing Islam in Russia today. Unlike in the 1880s-1920s, the major discourses in Islam today are not about how to adapt Islamic faith, law, and culture to the modern world, but, rather, about who speaks for Muslims, whose Islam is most correct and legitimate, what the appropriate languages for the transmission of Islamic knowledge are, and what the position of Islam in Russia should be now and in the future. The faces of Islam in contemporary Russia include historically Muslim peoples as well as recent ethnic Russian converts, Salafists as well as adherents of the various classical Islamic legal schools, and local and national Muslim intellectual traditions as well as international and transnational trends. This multiplicity of voices and opinions lends dynamism to Russia’s Muslim communities.

< p class='gv-rss-footer'>Written by Filip Noubel · comments (0) Donate · Share this: twitter facebook reddit

0 notes

esprit-de-corps-magazine · 4 years

Text

Canada & Russia’s Common Legacy: Victory over Nazi Germany

by H.E. Ambassador Alexander Darchiev - Embassy of the Russian Federation in Canada

As Hitler’s lair in Berlin fell to the Red Army, and Nazi Germany unconditionally surrendered to the USSR and the Allied powers on the night of May 9th, 1945, the cruelest and deadliest war in the world’s history came to an end.

This year we celebrate the 75th anniversary of this glorious date by paying tribute to our fallen heroes, and to the many millions of victims tortured and exterminated by the Nazi death machine.

For the Soviet people it was the Great Patriotic War and the epic battle for survival. According to Hitler’s Generalplan Ost, the European part of the USSR should have been completely cleansed of Jews, Russians and other “non-Aryan” ethnicities labeled as subhumans to provide Lebensraum (living space) for eventual Germanization of this conquered territory.

By amassing a massive invasion force and mobilizing the military-industrial potential of conquered Europe, Nazis arrogantly put stakes on a surprise blitzkrieg assault upon the USSR in the early hours of Sunday, June 22, 1941. The scale of the attack by German and Axis powers’ forces was unprecedented as it erupted along a 2900-kilometer front with more than 4 million troops, 4,600 tanks, up to 5,000 aircraft and 50,000 artillery pieces.

Over a series of fierce battles, starting from the border - where Soviet defenders of the Brest fortress continued fighting for almost a month, even after the German frontline had pushed a hundred kilometers eastward – Germany’s self-confidence in its invincibility faded away. During the initial offensive, the Nazi forces failed to capture Leningrad and they were stopped on the outskirts of Moscow just 25 kilometres short of the Kremlin.

The whole world breathlessly waited for the outcome of the Moscow battle. Highly inspiring was the traditional November 7th, 1941 military parade on the Red Square which demonstrated to everyone that Russian capital remained unvanquished. Shortly after this the Red Army delivered a devastating blow to the previously undefeated Wehrmacht in a major counteroffensive which pushed the Germans back.

By the spring of 1942, the Germans changed their strategy and attempted to crush Soviet defenses by seizing the Caucasus and Caspian oilfields as well as cutting vital supply routes from the south to Moscow. Hitler took aim at Stalingrad, a key industrial and transportation center on the Volga river.

The battle of Stalingrad which lasted from August 23, 1942 to February 2, 1943, was the largest and bloodiest clash in the history of warfare, with an estimated 2 million total casualties on both sides. Together with almost 100 thousand German troops, 24 generals and their commander Field Marshal Paulus were taken prisoners. As a result, Hitler’s dreams to defeat the USSR miserably failed and the tide of war turned westward.

Amidst fierce fightings in summer 1942, as German tanks were rushing toward the Volga river, with the Soviet troops struggling hard to shore up their crumbling frontline, Canadian Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King sent encouraging greetings on behalf of men and women of Canada to “the gallant peoples of the Soviet Union”. Stressing that “today our nations fight side by side”, Mackenzie King praised the “forcefulness and determination” of the Red Army “which have aroused the profound admiration of the civilized world”.

It was in this spirit of solidarity that the USSR and Canada established diplomatic relations on June 12, 1942.

Canada’s contribution to the war efforts of the anti-Hitler coalition was widely known and appreciated in the Soviet Union. The weekly magazine “British Ally” published in Russian by the UK Ministry of Information offered stories about Canadian operations, including the dramatic Dieppe raid in August 1942 (intended to test waters for a future landing in France) and the liberation of Sicily in August 1943.

A special praise and admiration has always been extended in Russia to the heroic Canadian sailors who braved the perilous Murmansk Run convoys to deliver weaponry and supplies in support of the USSR. These important missions from the sea ports of Saint John’s and Halifax to the Russian Artic harbours of Murmansk and Archangelsk took a heavy toll. Eighty-five Allied merchant vessels and 16 warships were lost to heavy German attacks. One particularly ill-fated convoy – PQ17 – lost 24 out of 35 ships at a cost of 153 lives.

Alex Polowin is one of those Canadian heroes. He joined the Navy in 1942 at the age of 17 and he currently resides in Ottawa. In 2013 Polowin was recognized for the noble service with the Russian medal which is named in honour of Admiral Fyodor Ushakov.

Mr. Polowin, whose name is now given to one of Ottawa’s streets said in an interview that “he’s fiercely proud of his contribution” to the war effort.

Another important Canadian input to the USSR’s war effort was the delivery of 1388 British designed Valentine infantry tanks which were assembled under licence in Montreal at the Angus railway shops. They took part, along with the famous Soviet T-34 tanks, in many of the Red Army operations, including the largest ever tank battle at the Kursk Bulge in July 1943. Kursk was the largest tank battle in history, and when the dust settled the Germans had suffered fatal defeat. From that point onward the Wehrmacht could only retreat.

By the end of 1943 the ground was literally burning under the feet of Nazi invaders. Around one million USSR citizens, young and old, men and women, who were located in the Nazi occupied territories were actively involved as partisans in a fierce underground struggle. This spirit of resistance and Red Army battlefield victories inspired prisoners of Nazi death camps and Jewish ghettos to revolt against the torturers and butchers of the Holocaust. Their anthem was the “Partisan song” which includes the lyrics “never say there is only death for you” penned by Girsh Glick, a young poet who escaped the Vilna ghetto and was later captured and executed by Germans. Most notable and the only successful uprising of its kind was the one at Sobibor concentration camp in 1943 which was led by the courageous Soviet officer Alexander Pechersky.

Symbolizing the courage and stamina of these defenders of the Motherland, their deep conviction that “ours is a righteous cause”, as proclaimed by Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov in his radio address on June 22, 1941, was the heroic death of General Dmitry Karbyshev. Starting his service in the Russian Imperial Army, he was later promoted to the rank of Lieutenant General of the Corps of Engineers in the Red Army. His manuals on the theory of engineering, battlefield operations and tactics were mandatory reading for Soviet commanders.

Captured by the Nazis after being rendered unconscious in combat in August 1941, General Karbyshev was held in succession of concentration camps. He refused to collaborate with his captors and despite his advanced age, led the camp’s underground movement. On February 18, 1945 Germans executed him at the notorious Mauthausen death camp by dousing him with ice water and then leaving him to expire in the freezing cold. This inhuman murder was witnessed and later testified to by a Canadian Army Major Seddon de Saint-Clair who survived captivity at the same place and unfortunately died a year after his liberation in a UK hospital.

Starting in January 1944, ten strategic Soviet offensives along the huge frontline from the Arctic to the Black Sea drove the Nazi forces out of the USSR’s territory paving the way for the liberation of Eastern Europe. The Wehrmacht’s resounding defeat near Leningrad fully relieved that long besieged city’s barbaric blockade during which close to one million inhabitants died from shelling and hunger. The Nazis and their satellites were expelled from the Soviet Ukraine and the Baltic states, with Finland, then a German ally, exiting the war. The 1944 Soviet victory in Belarus wherein 28 of 34 German divisions were completely destroyed, allowed the Red Army to secure a bridgehead for the final strike on Berlin.

The Hitler regime found itself between a rock and a hard place, with the Western Allies having finally opened the long awaited second front in Europe when they landed on June 6, 1944 in Normandy. Once ashore, the allied expeditionary force pushed through France, Belgium, the Netherlands and started to advance towards the German Rhineland. Overcoming heavy German resistance, Soviet troops successfully forced the Nazis out of Romania, Poland, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Austria and Czechoslovakia. After two weeks and two days of massive storming Berlin fell on May 2, 1945 to the Red Army.

Symbolically, on this very day the first direct contact between Russian soldiers and Canadian paratroopers from the 1st Canadian Parachute Battalion happened in the northern German city of Wismar. Several days earlier, on April 25, 1945, the historic encounter of Soviet and US troops occurred at the Elbe river marking the long-awaited link-up of the Allies' Eastern and Western fronts. Despite later biased interpretations influenced by the Cold War politics, these were the true and unforgettable moments of unity and happiness that the common deadly foe was finally vanquished.

Germans signed the instrument of unconditional surrender in Karlhorst, Berlin on May 9th, 1945 at the ceremony presided over by Soviet Marshal Georgy Zhukov in the presence of US, British and French generals. This date which is sacred and deeply meaningful for every Russian family has been celebrated ever since as Victory Day in Russia and most of the former USSR. Remarkably, Israel has also made it a national holiday expressing the gratitude of Shoah survivors and the Jewish people.

The Victory was won at an enormous price. The Soviet Union lost 27 million lives, of whom only one third were military losses, while millions of civilians became victims of mass brutal killings, bombardments and hunger both on occupied territories and in concentration camps.

Without the bravery and solidarity of the USSR and the Allied nations, Nazism would have never been destroyed. Echoing other world leaders, Prime Minister Mackenzie King congratulated Joseph Stalin on May 13, 1945 with the warm message stating that Canada will never forget “the tenacity and the heroism of the armies and the peoples of the USSR”.

Let us remember well this important history lesson that global challenges can only be overcome by acting together putting aside political divisions, phobias and short-sighted ambitions. WWII experience should not fall victim to pro-Nazi revisionism or be thrown into oblivion. For the sake of peace and the well-being of future generations.

0 notes

skullssales · 5 years

Text

Hunnic Empire | Wikipedia article

The Huns were a nomadic people who lived in Central Asia the Caucasus and Eastern Europe between the 4th and 6th century AD according to European tradition they were first reported living east of the Volga River in an area that was part of Scythia at the time the Huns arrival is associated with the migration westward of a Scythian people the Allens by 370 ad the Huns had arrived on the Volga and by 430 the Huns had established a vast if short-lived Dominion in Europe in the 18th century the French scholar Josef dig Wiens became the first to propose a link between the Huns and the Xiongnu people who were northern neighbors of China in the 3rd century BC since gheens time considerable scholarly effort has been devoted to investigating such a connection however there is no scholarly consensus on a direct connection between the dominant element of the Xiongnu and that of the Huns Priscus a 5th century Roman diplomat and historian mentions that the Huns had a language of their own little of it has survived and scholars have considered whether it was related to Turkic mongolic or even to music language families although the almost complete lack of a text corpus renders the language unclassifiable at present some researchers indeed argue the original Huns may have had a Yenisei and tribal elite which ruled initially over various Turkic mongolic and Iranian speaking tribes numerous other ethnic groups were included under Attila the Huns rule including very many speakers of Gothic which some modern scholars describe as a lingua franca of the Empire their main military technique was mounted archery the Huns may have stimulated the great migration a contributing factor in the collapse of the Western Roman Empire they formed a unified Empire under Attila the Hun who died in 453 after a defeat at the Battle of neta their empire disintegrated over the next 15 years their descendants or successors with similar names are recorded by neighboring populations to the south east and west as having occupied parts of Eastern Europe and Central Asia from about the 4th to 6th centuries variants of the Hun name are recorded in the Caucasus until the early 8th century the memory of the Huns also lived on in various Christian saints lives where the play the roles of antagonists as well as in Germanic heroic legend where the Huns are variously antagonists or allies to the Germanic main figures in Hungary a legend developed based on medieval chronicles that the Hungarians and the CKD ethnic group in particular are descended from the Huns however mainstream scholarship dismisses a close connection between the Hungarians and Huns topic origin the origins of the Huns and their links to other steppe people remain uncertain scholars generally agree that they originated in Central Asia but disagree on the specifics of their origins classical sources assert that they appeared in Europe suddenly around 370 most typically Roman writers attempt to elucidate the origins of the Huns simply equated them with earlier step peoples Roman writers also repeated a tale that the Huns had entered the domain of the Goths while they were pursuing a wild stag or else one of their cows that had gotten loose across the Kerch Strait into Crimea discovering the land good they then attacked the Goths jordan says get akka relates that the Goths held the Huns to be offspring of unclean spirits and Gothic witches topic relation to the Xiongnu and other people’s called Huns since Joseph Digg Wiens in the 18th century modern historians have associated the Huns who appeared on the borders of Europe in the 4th century AD with the Xiongnu who had invaded China from the territory of present-day Mongolia between the 3rd century BC and the second century AD due to the devastating defeat by the Chinese Han Dynasty the northern branch of the Xiongnu had retreated north westward their descendants may have migrated through Eurasia and consequently they may have some degree of cultural and genetic continuity with the Huns scholars also discussed the relationship between the Xiongnu the Huns and a number of people in Central Asia were also known as her came to be identified with the name hun or Iranian Huns the Chia Knights dakedo rights and the hoof delights or white Huns being the most prominent Otto J maintain health and was the first to challenge the traditional approach based primarily on the study of written sources and to emphasize the importance of archaeological research since maintian health ins work the identification of the Xiongnu as the Huns ancestors has become controversial additionally several scholars have questioned the identification of the iranian Huns with the european Huns walter pol cautions that none of the great Confederations of steppe warriors was ethnically homogeneous and the same name was used by different groups for reasons of prestige or by outsiders to describe their lifestyle or geographic origin it is therefore futile to speculate about identity or blood relationships between HS IU and G nu left the lights and Attila’s Huns for instance all we can safely say is that the name Huns in late antiquity described prestigious ruling groups of steppe warriors recent scholarship particularly by young Jin Kim and Etienne de la vie sea air has revived the hypothesis that the Huns and the Xiongnu are one and the same de la vie sea air argues that ancient chinese and indian sources used song nu and hunt to translate each other and that the various Iranian Huns were similarly identified with the Xiongnu Kim believes that the term Han was not primarily an ethnic group but a political category and argues for a fundamental political and cultural continuity between the Xiongnu and the European hunts as well as between the Xiongnu Anna Iranian Huns you topic race ancient descriptions of the Huns are uniform in stressing their strange appearance from a Roman perspective these descriptions typically caricature the Huns as monsters jordanes stressed that the Huns were short of stature and had tan skin various writers mentioned that the Huns had small eyes and flat noses the Roman writer Priscus gives the following eyewitness description of Attila short of stature with a broad chest and a large head his eyes were small his beard thin and sprinkled with grey and he had a flat nose and tanned skin showing evidence of his origin many scholars take these to be unflattering depictions of East Asian mongoloid racial characteristics main chin health and argues that while many Huns had some East Asian racial characteristics they were unlikely to have looked as Asiatic as the ocular Tongass he notes that archeological finds have presumed Huns suggest that they were a racially mixed group containing only some individuals with East Asian features Kim similarly cautions against seeing the Huns as a homogeneous racial group while still arguing that they were partially or predominantly of mongoloid extraction at least initially quote some archeologists have argued that archaeological finds have failed to prove that the Huns had any mongoloid features at all and some scholars have argued that the Huns were predominantly Caucasian Kim notes that at the Battle of chlons 451 the vast majority of Attila’s entourage and troops appears to have been European topic history topic before Attila the Romans became aware of the huns when the latter’s invasion of the pondok steps forced thousands of Goths to move to the lower Danube to seek refuge in the Roman Empire in 376 the Huns conquered the Allens the growth ngey or Western Goths and then the 13-year eastern Goths in 395 the Huns began their first large-scale attack on the eastern Roman Empire Huns attacked in Thrace overran Armenia and pillaged Cappadocia they entered parts of Syria threatened Antioch and passed through through the province of ufer diva after this the Huns invaded the Sassanid Empire this invasion was initially successful coming close to the capital of the empire at si te siphon however they were defeated badly during the Persian counter-attack during their brief diversion from the eastern Roman Empire the Huns may have threatened tribes further west old in the first hunt known by name headed a group of Huns and Allen’s fighting against Radig ASIS in defense of Italy alden was also known for defeating gothic rebels giving trouble to the east Romans around the Danube and beheading the goth gained is around four hundred to four hundred one the east Romans began to feel the pressure from Aldens Huns again in 408 olden crossed the Danube and pillaged Thrace the east Romans tried to buy Alden off but his sum was too high so they instead bought off Alden subordinates this resulted in many desertions from alguns group of Huns Hunnish mercenaries are mentioned on several occasions being employed by the east and west Romans as well as the Goths during the late 4th and 5th century in 433 some parts of Pannonia were ceded to them by Flavius EDS the Magister militant of the Western Roman Empire topic under attila from 434 the brothers attila and blade a ruled the hunts together Attila and blader were ambitious as their uncle rutila in 435 they forced the eastern roman empire to sign the treaty of Margus giving the Huns trade rights and an annual tribute from the Romans when the Romans breached the treaty in 440 Attila and bladah attacked Castro Constantius a Roman fortress and marketplace on the banks of the Danube war broke out between the Huns and Romans and the Huns overcame a weak Roman army to raze the cities of Margus singer Dunham and Vinay sium although a truce was concluded in 441 two years later constantinople again failed to deliver the tribute and war resumed in the following campaign hun armies approached constantinople and sacked several cities before defeating the Romans at the Battle of chersonesus the eastern Roman Emperor Theodosius ii gave into hunda man’s and in autumn 443 signed the Peace of Anatolia swith the two hunting’s bladed I’d in 445 and Attila became the sole ruler of the Huns in 447 Attila invaded the Balkans and Thrace the war came to an end in 449 with an agreement in which the Romans agreed to pay a till an annual tribute of 2100 pounds of gold throughout their raids on the eastern Roman Empire the Huns had maintained good relations with the Western Empire however in Honoria sister of the Western Roman Emperor Valentinian the third sent a Atilla a ring and requested his help to escape her betrothal to a senator attila claimed her as his bride and half the western roman empire as dowry additionally a dispute arose about the rightful heir to a king of the salian franks in 451 Attila’s forces entered gaul once in gaul the Huns first attacked Metz then his armies continued westwards passing both Paris and troice to lay siege to or lay on Flavius Adeus was given the duty of relieving or Leon by Emperor Valentinian the third a combined army of Roman and Visigoths then defeated the Huns at the Battle of the Catalonian Plains the following year attila renewed his claims to Honoria and territory in the Western Roman Empire leading his army across the Alps and into northern Italy he sacked and raised a number of cities hoping to avoid the sack of Rome Emperor Valentinian the third sent three envoys the high civilian officers gennadius abbe inocent Rajesh Asst as well as Pope Leo the first who met Attila at minseo in the vicinity of Mantua and obtained from him the promise that he would withdraw from Italy and negotiate peace with the Emperor the new eastern Roman Emperor Marcion then halted tribute payments resulting in a Atilla planning to attack Constantinople however in 453 he died of a hemorrhage on his wedding night topic after Attila after a Taylor’s death in 453 the Hunnic Empire faced an internal power struggle between its vassal eyes Germanic peoples in the Hunnic ruling body led by ellic attila’s favorite son and ruler of the Akatsuki the Huns engaged the Gepard king our derek at the Battle of Neto who led a coalition of Germanic peoples to overthrow Hunnic Imperial Authority the amali Goths would revolt the same year under Vil a mere allegedly defeating the Huns in a separate engagement however this did not result in the complete collapse of hunting power in the Carpathian region but did result in the loss of many of their Germanic vassals at the same time the Huns were also dealing with the arrival of more augur turkic-speaking peoples from the east including the ogres Serra Gore’s own ogres and thus appears in 463 the Serra gore’s defeated the akan Seri or a Kadir Huns and asserted dominance in the Pontic region the Western Huns under Deng such experienced difficulties in 461 when they were defeated by villa mere in a war against the santa giuse of people allied with the Huns his campaigning was also met with dissatisfaction from earning ruler of the akan Ceri hunts who wanted to focus on the incoming ogre speaking people’s dens each attacked the Romans in 467 without the assistance of ur neck he was surrounded by the Romans and besieged and came to an agreement that they would surrender if they were given land and his starving forces given food during the negotiations a hunting service of the Romans named she’ll chill persuaded the enemy Goths to attack their hunt overlords the Romans under their general a spar and with the help of his bachelor e then attacked the quarreling Goths and Huns defeating them in 469 den ziget was defeated and killed in Thrace after densey gages death the Huns seemed to have been absorbed by other ethnic groups such as the bull Gers Kim however argues that the Huns continued under earn ik becoming the ku trigger and you Tagore Hondo Bulger’s this conclusion is still subject to some controversy some scholars also argue that another group identified in ancient sources as Huns the North Caucasian hunts were genuine hunts the rulers of various post Hunnic steppe peoples are known to have claimed descent from Attila in order to legitimize their right to power and various steppe peoples were also called Huns by Western and Byzantine sources from the fourth century onward lifestyle and economy topic pastoral nomadism the Huns have traditionally been described as pastoral nomads living off of hurting and moving from pasture to pasture to graze their animals Jung Jin Kim however holds the term nomads to be misleading te term nomads if it denotes a wandering group of people with no clear sense of territory cannot be applied wholesale to the Hong’s all the so called nomads of Eurasian steppe history where people’s whose territory territories were usually clearly defined who is pastoralists moved about in search of pasture but within a fixed territorial space maintian health and notes that pastoral nomads or semi nomads typically alternate between summer pastures and winter quarters while the pastures may vary the winter quarters always remain the same this is in fact what jordanes writes of the Han occult xia giri tribe they pastured near terse anon the Crimea and then wintered further north with maintian health and holding the size as a likely location ancient sources mentioned that the Huns herds consisted of various animals including cattle horses and goats sheep though unmentioned in ancient sources are more essential to the steppe nomads even than horses and must have been a large part of their herds additionally maintian health and argues that the Huns may have kept small herds of Bactrian camels in the part of their territory in modern Romania and Ukraine something attested for the Tsar Nations immunised says that the majority of the Huns diet came from the meat of these animals with maintian health and arguing on the basis of what is known of other steppe nomads that they likely mostly ate mutton along with sheep’s cheese and milk they also certainly ate horse meat drank mares milk and likely made cheese in kumis in times of starvation they may have boiled their horses blood for food ancient sources uniformly denied that the Huns practiced any sort of agriculture Thompson taking these accounts at their word argues that w without the assistance of the settled agricultural population at the edge of the step they could not have survived he argues that the Huns were forced to supplement their diet by hunting and gathering maintian health and however notes that archaeological finds indicate that various steppe Nomad populations did grow grain in particular he identifies a find at Cunha u-az in queires amman the o bravura of agriculture among a people who practiced artificial cranial deformation as evidence of Hunnic agriculture Kim similarly argues that all step empires have possessed both pastoralist and sedentary populations classifying the Hans s agro pastoralist you topic horses and transportation as a nomadic people the Huns spent a great deal of time riding horses on me and has claimed that the Huns are almost glued to their horses Zosima same that they live and sleep on their horses and Cydonia shamed that s cars had an infant learned to stand without his mother’s aid when a horse takes him on his back they appear to have spent so much time riding that they walked clumsily something observed in other nomadic groups Roman sources characterized the hunting horses as ugly it is not possible to determine the exact breed of horse the Huns used despite relatively good Roman descriptions seiner believes that it was likely a breed of mongolian pony however horse remains are absent from all identified hun burials based on anthropological descriptions and archaeological finds of other nomadic horses maintian health and believes that they rode mostly geldings besides horses ancient sources mentioned that the Huns used wagons for transportation which maintenance were primarily used to transport their tents booty and the old people women and children topic economic relations with the Romans the Huns received a large amount of gold from the Romans either in exchange for fighting for them as mercenaries or as tribute raiding and looting also furnished the Huns with gold and other valuables civilians and soldiers captured by the Huns might also be ransomed back or else sold to Roman slave dealers as slaves the Huns themselves maintain health and argues had little use for slaves due to their nomadic pastoralist lifestyle those slaves that existed likely performed menial tasks Thompson argues that all Hunnic slaves appear to have been captives from war the Huns also traded with the Romans he aid Thompson argued that this trade was very large scale with the Huns trading horses first meat and slaves for Roman weapons linen and grain and various other luxury goods while maintian helfen concedes that the Huns traded their horses for what he considered to have been a very considerable source of income in gold he is otherwise skeptical of Thompson’s argument he notes that the Romans strictly regulated trade with the barbarians and that according to Priscus trade only occurred at a fair once a year while he notes that smuggling also likely occurred he argues that the volume of both legal and illegal trade was apparently modest he does note that wine and silk appeared to have been imported into the Hunnic Empire in large quantities however Roman gold coins appear to have been in circulation as currency within the whole of the Hunnic Empire topic government Hunnic governmental structure has long been debated Peter Heather argues that the Huns were a disorganized Confederation in which leaders acted completely independently and that eventually established a ranking hierarchy much like Germanic societies denis signer similarly notes that with the exception of the historically uncertain Balam er no hun leaders are named in the sources until Alden indicating their relative unimportance Thompson argues that permanent kingship only developed with the Huns invasion of Europe and the near constant warfare that followed regarding the organization of Hunnic rule under Attila Peter golden comments it can hardly be called a state much less an empire golden speaks instead of a hunnit Confederacy Kim however argues that the Huns continued the Xiongnu state organization in which their polity was divided into left-right south and north in that order of priority Kim argues that the Huns continued the Council of six horns Nobles that the Xiongnu had under their emperor likewise kim suggests that the Huns continued to use the decimal military organization of the Xiongnu as well amy and has said that the Huns of his day had no kings but rather that each group of Huns instead had a group of leading men primates for times of war ii a thompson supposes that even in war the leading men had little actual power he further argues that they most likely did not acquire their position purely hereditarily Heather however argues that ami and his merely means that the Huns didn’t have a single ruler he notes that Olympia Doris mentions the Huns having several kings with one being the first of the Kings Omni andis also mentions that the Huns made their decisions in a general council omne zijn commune while seated on horseback he makes no mention of the Huns organization in two tribes but Priscus and other writers do naming some of them the first Hunnic ruler known by name is Eldon Thompson takes old in sudden disappearance after he was unsuccessful at war as a sign that the Hunnic kingship was democratic at this time rather than a permanent institution kim however argues that alden is actually a title and that he was likely merely a sub king Priscus calls Attila king or Emperor bacillus but it is unknown what native title he was translating with the exception of the sole rule of Attila the Huns often had two rulers Attila himself later appointed his son alack his cocaine subject peoples of the Huns were led by their own kings Priscus also speaks a pict men or low gates low gates forming part of a Tila’s government naming five of them samatha picked men seem to have been chosen because of birth others for reasons of merit thompson argued that these picked men were the hinge upon which the entire administration of the hun empire turned he argues for their existence in the government of alden and that each had command over detachments of the Hunnic army and ruled over specific portions of the Hunnic empire where they were responsible also for collecting tribute and provisions maintian health and however argues that the word low gates denotes simply prominent individuals and not a fixed rank with fixed duties kim affirms the importance of the low gates for hunting administration but notes that there were differences of rank between them and suggests that it was more likely lower ranking officials who gathered taxes and tribute he suggests that various Roman defectors to the Huns may have worked in a sort of Imperial bureaucracy topic society and culture topic art and material culture there are two sources for the material culture and art of the huns ancient descriptions in archaeology unfortunately the nomadic nature of hunt society means that they have left very little in the archaeological record it can be difficult to distinguish Hunnic archaeological finds from those of the Sarmatian x’ as both peoples lived in close proximity and seemed to have had very similar material cultures kim thus cautions that it is difficult to assign any artifact to the Huns ethnically roman descriptions of the Huns meanwhile are often highly biased stressing they’re supposed primitiveness archaeological finds have produced a large number of cauldrons that have since the work of paul rynek in 1896 been identified as having been produced by the Huns although typically described as bronze cauldrons the cauldrons are often made of copper which is generally of poor quality maintian health enlists 19 known finds of Hunnish cauldrons from all over Central and Eastern Europe and Western Siberia he argues from the state of the bronze castings that the Huns were not very good metalsmiths and that it is likely that the cauldrons were cast in the same locations where they were found they come in various shapes and are sometimes found together with vessels of various other origins maintian health and argues that the cauldrons were cooking vessels for boiling meat but that the fact that many are found deposited near water and were generally not buried with individuals may indicate a sacral usage as well the cauldrons appeared to derive from those used by the Xiongnu ami anise also reports that the Huns had iron swords Thompson is skeptical that the Huns cast them themselves but maintian helfen argues that t he idea that the Hun horsemen fought their way to the walls of Constantinople into the Marne with bartered and captured swords as absurd both ancient sources and archaeological finds from graves confirmed that the Huns wore elaborately decorated golden or gold-plated diadem’s maintian helfen lists a total of six known Hunnish diadem’s Hunnic women seem to have worn necklaces and bracelets of mostly imported beads of various materials as well the later common early medieval practice of decorating jewelry and weapons with gemstones appears to have originated with the Huns they are also known to have made small mirrors of an originally Chinese type which often appear to have been intentional broken when placed into a grave archaeological finds indicate that the Huns wore gold plaques as ornaments on their clothing as well as imported glass beads on me and his reports that they wore clothes made of linen or the furs of marmots and leggings of goat skin AMI and his reports that the Huns had no buildings but in passing mentions that the Huns possessed tents and wagons maintian health and believes that the Huns likely had tents of felt and sheepskin Priscus once mentions at Teela’s tent and jordanes reports that attila lay in state in a silk tent however by the middle of the fifth century the Huns are also known to have also owned permanent wooden houses which maintian health and believes were built by their Gothic subjects topic artificial cranial deformation artificial cranial deformation was practiced by the Huns and sometimes by tribes under their influence artificial cranial deformation of the circular type can be used to trace the route that the Huns took from North China to the Central Asian steppes and subsequently to the southern Russian steppes the people who practiced an Euler type artificial cranial deformation in Central Asia were using cushions some artificially deformed crania from the 5th 6th century AD have been found in northeastern Hungary and elsewhere in Western Europe none of them have any mongoloid features and all the skulls appear euro poit these skulls may have belonged to Germanic or other subject groups whose parents wish to elevate their status by following a custom introduced by the Huns topic languages a variety of languages were spoken within the hun empire Priscus noted that the hunnic language differed from other languages spoken at a Teela’s court he recounts how a Teela’s gestures hurcomb ada teyla’s guests laugh also by the promiscuous jumble of words latin mixed with Hunnish and gothic Priscus said that a Tila’s Scythian subject spoke besides their own barbarian tongues either Hunnish or gothic or as many have dealings with the Western Romans flattened but not one of them easily speaks Greek except captives from the Thracian or illyrian frontier regions some scholars have argued that the Gothic was used as the lingua franca of the Hunnic Empire young Jin Kim argues that the Huns may have used as many as four languages at various levels of government without anyone being dominant Hunnic gothic Latin and Sarmatian as to the Hunnic language itself only three words are recorded in ancient sources as being Hunnic all of which appeared to be from an indo-european language all other information on Hunnic is contained in personal names and tribal ethnonyms on the basis of these names scholars have proposed that Hunnic may have been a Turkic language a language between mongolic and Turkic Orellana Sein language however given the small corpus many scholars hold the language to be unclassifiable topic religion almost nothing is known about the religion of the huns roman writer ami and his Marcellinus claimed that the Huns had no religion while the 5th century Christian writer Salvi include them as pagans jordans Aesthetica also records that the Huns worshiped the sword of Mars an ancient sword that signified to till his right to rule the whole world maintian helfen notes a widespread worship of a war God in the form of a sword among steppe peoples including among the Xiongnu denis signer however holds the worship of a sword among the hunts to be a proc raffle maintian health and also argues that while the Huns themselves do not appear to have regarded Attila as divine some of his subject people clearly did a belief in prophecy and divination is also attested among the Huns maintian health and argues that the performers of these acts of soothsaying and divination were likely shaman’s signer also finds it likely that the Huns had shaman’s although they are completely unattested main chin health and also deduces a belief in water spirits from a custom mentioned in ami anise he further suggests that the Huns may have made small metal wooden or stone idols which are attested among other steppe tribes and which a Byzantine source attests for the Huns in Crimea in the 6th century he also connects archaeological finds of Hunnish bronze cauldrons found buried near or in running water two possible rituals performed by the Hong’s in the spring John Mann argues that the Huns of attila’s time likely worshipped the sky and the steppe deity Tengri who has also attested as having been worshipped by the Xiongnu maintian health and also suggests the possibility that the Huns of this period may have worshipped Tengri but notes that the god is not attested in european records until the 9th century worship of Tengri under the name Tangra khan is attested among the Caucasian Huns in the armenian chronicle attributed to moths s task Sharan see during the later 7th century moths s also records that the Caucasian Huns worshipped trees and burnt horses as sacrifices to Tengri and a day made sacrifices to fire and water and to certain gods of the roads and to the moon and to all creatures considered in their eyes to be in some way remarkable there is also some evidence for human sacrifice among the European Huns maintian health and argues that humans appear to have been sacrificed at a Teela’s funerary right recorded in jordanes under the name Strava Priscus claims that the hun sacrificed their prisoners to victory after they entered Scythia but this is not otherwise that tested as a hunted custom and may be fiction in addition to these pagan beliefs there are numerous attestations of hunts converting to christianity and receiving Christian missionaries the missionary activities among the Huns of the Caucasus seem to have been particularly successful resulting in the conversion of the Hunnish Prince Albert BER Attila appears to have tolerated both Nicene and Aryan Christianity among his subjects topic warfare topic strategy and tactics hun warfare as a whole is not well studied and many scholars as of recent have discounted Ana’s description of the Huns while ami and his claims that the Huns knew no metalworking maintian health and argues that a people so primitive could never have been successful in war against the Romans a major source of information on hun warfare comes from the 6th century strategy icon which describes the warfare of dealing with the Scythians that is Avars turks and others whose way of life resembles that of the Hunnish peoples the strategy icon describes the Avars and Huns as devious and very experienced in military matters they are described as preferring to defeat their enemies by deceit surprise attacks and cutting off supplies the Huns brought large numbers of horses to use as replacements and to give the impression of a larger army on campaign the Hunnish people’s did not set up an entrenched camp but spread out across the grazing fields according to clan and guard their necessary horses until they began forming the battle line under the cover of early morning the strategy Kahn States the Huns also stationed sentries at significant distances and in constant contact with each other in order to prevent surprise attacks according to the strategy Kahn the Huns did not form a battle line in the method that the Romans and Persians used but in irregularly sized divisions in a single line and keep a separate force nearby for ambushes and as a reserve the strategy Kahn also states the Huns used deep formations with a dense and even front auto maintenance states that the Huns likely formed up in divisions according to tribal clans and families which Omni andis calls Q nay the leader of which was called occur and inherited the title as it was passed down through the clan the strategy Kahn states that the Huns kept their spare horses and baggage trained to either side of the line about a mile away with a moderate sized guard and would sometimes tie their spare horses together behind the main battle line the Huns preferred to fight at long range utilizing ambush encirclement and the feigned retreat the strategy Kahn also makes note of the wedge-shaped formations mentioned by ami anise and corroborated as familial regiments by maintian Halfin the strategy Kahn states the Huns preferred to pursue their enemies relentlessly after a victory and then wear them out by a long siege after defeat Peter Heather notes that the Huns were able to successfully besiege walled cities and fortresses in their campaign of 441 they were thus capable of building siege engines while Heather believes that this was likely a newly acquired skill he notes that the Huns as potential descendants of the Xiongnu may have already known how to make CG equipment before entering Europe topic military equipment the strategy con states the Huns typically used male swords bows and Lance’s and that most Hunnic warriors were armed with both the bow and lance and used them interchangeably as needed it also states the Huns used quilted linen wool or sometimes iron bar ting for their horses and also wore quilted cloths and captain’s this assessment is largely corroborated by archaeological finds of hun military equipment such as the volnek aapke and brute burials a late Roman Ridge helmet of the burkas ovo type was found with a hun burial at consist e a hunnic helmet of the segmental helm type was found at chu Jeske a hun expanding helmet at tera zovsky grave 1784 and another of the band helm type at torre vile fragments of lamellar helmets dating to the Hunnic period and within the Hunnic sphere have been found at eye Atris Ilic f gu and cult me hun lamellar armor has not been found in europe although two fragments of likely hun origin have been found on the upper Oban in west kazakhstan dating to the 3rd 4th centuries a find of lamellar dating to about 520 from the top-40 warehouse in the fortress of homura’s near bodybag romania suggests a late 5th or early 6th century introduction it is known that the Eurasian avars introduced lamellar Armour to the Roman army and migration era Germanic sin the middle sixth century but this later type does not appear before then it is also widely accepted that the Huns introduced the Lang’s eyx a 60 centimeters cutting blade that became popular among the migration era Germanic sand in the late Roman army into Europe it is believed these blades originated in China and that the Tsar Nations and hung served as a transmission vector using shorter si axes in Central Asia that developed into the narrow Lange’s eyx in Eastern Europe during the late fourth and first half of the 5th century these earlier blades date as far back as the 1st century AD with the first of the newer type appearing in Eastern Europe being the Wien simmerman example dated to the late 4th century AD other notable hunt examples include the Lang’s eyx from the more recent find at volna kafka in Russia the Huns used a type of spatha in the ironic or sassanid style with a long straight approximately 83 centimetres blade usually with a diamond shaped iron guard plate swords of this style have been found at sites such as Alzheimer Bassanio volna Kafka novo ivanovka and civilians 61 they typically had gold foil hilts gold sheet scabbards and scabbard fittings decorated in the polychrome style the sword was carried in the Iranian style attached to a sword belt rather than on a baldric the most famous weapon of the Huns as the comb Daria type composite recurve bow often called the Hunnish bow this bow was invented sometime in the 3rd or 2nd centuries BC with the earliest finds near Lake Baikal but spread across Eurasia long before the hunting migration these bows were typify by being asymmetric in cross-section between 145 to 150 5 centimeters in length having between 4 to 9 lathes on the grip and in the seus although whole bows rarely survive in european climatic conditions signs of bone Sia’s are quite common in characteristic of steppe burials complete specimens have been found at sites in the trim basin and Gobi Desert such as nia come Darya and Shambhu simbel care Eurasian nomads such as the Huns typically used trial abate diamond shaped iron arrowheads attached using birch tar in a tank with typically 75 centimeters shafts and fletching attached with tar and sinew whipping such trial abate arrowheads are believed to be more accurate and a better penetrating power or capacity to injure than flat arrowheads topic legacy topic in Christian hagiography after the fall of the hunnic Empire various legends arose concerning the Huns among these are a number of Christian hagiographic legends in which the Huns play a role in an anonymous medieval biography of Pope Leo the first a deal is marched into Italy in 452 as stopped because when he meets Leo outside Rome the Apostles Peter and Paul appeared to him holding swords over his head and threatening to kill him unless he follows the Pope’s command to turn back in other versions attila takes the pope hostage and is forced by the saints to release him in the legend of Saint Ursula Ursula and her 11,000 holy virgins arrive at Cologne on their way back from a pilgrimage just as the hunks under an unnamed Prince are besieging the city Ursula and her virgins killed by the Huns with arrows after they refused the Huns sexual advances afterwards however the souls of the slaughtered virgins form a heavenly army that drives away the Huns and saves cologne other cities with legends regarding the Huns and a Saint include Orleans Troy’s Do’s Mets Madonna and Ron’s in legend surrounding st.

Carrier of Tonga and courting to at least the eighth century service is alleged to have modified Attila and the Huns to Christianity earlier than they later grew to become apostates and back to their paganism matter in Germanic legend the Huns also play an primary position in medieval Germanic legends which generally carry versions of movements from the migration interval and have been at the start transmitted orally recollections of the conflicts between the Goths and Huns in japanese Europe appeared to be maintained within the historic English poem with Sethe as good as in historic Norse poem the fight of the Goths and Huns which is transmitted within the 13th century Icelandic Rivera saga wid Sethe additionally mentions that Atilla having been ruler of the Huns placing him on the head of a record of various legendary and historical rulers and peoples and marking the Huns as essentially the most famous the name of Atilla rendered in historic English as eighth ‘la was a given identify in use in anglo-saxon England ex Bishop Ayla of Dorchester and its use in England at the time can have been related to the heroic Kings legend represented in works equivalent to Widseth maintian well being and however doubts using the title via the anglo-saxons had something to do with the Huns arguing that it used to be no longer a rare name beed in his ecclesiastical history of the English individuals lists the Huns among other peoples residing in Germany when the anglo-saxons invaded England this may increasingly indicate that beed seen the anglo-saxons as descending partly from the Huns the Huns and Attila additionally formed imperative figures within the two most popular Germanic legendary cycles that of the Nibelungs and of dietrich von Bern the old theater at the nice the Nibelung legend above all as recorded in the ancient norse poetic Edda and vole sangha saga as good as within the german nibel lung and lead connects the Huns and Attila and within the Norse tradition attila’s demise to the destruction of the Burgundian kingdom on the rhine in 437 within the legends about dietrich von Bern Attila and the Huns furnish Dietrich with a refuge and help after he has been pushed from his kingdom at Verona a version of the pursuits of the combat of nadao may be / served in a legend transmitted in two differing types in the core excessive German die Rabin schlock and ancient Norse didrik saga in which the sons of Attila fall in battle the legend of Walter of Aquitaine in the meantime shows the Huns to acquire youngster hostages as tribute from their area folks’s usually the Continental Germanic traditions paint a extra constructive image of Attila and the Huns than the Scandinavian sources where the Huns show up in a surprisingly poor gentle in medieval German legend the Huns were identified with the Hungarians with their capital of Etzel burg attila metropolis being recognized with Esther gamma or Buda the historic norse didrik saga nonetheless which is centered on North German sources locates Hoonah land in northern Germany with a capital at Sohus tin Westphalia in different ancient Norse sources the term hon has repeatedly applied indiscriminately to more than a few individuals chiefly from south of Scandinavia from the 13th century onward the center excessive german word for hon hello own grew to be a synonym for colossal and continued for use in this that means in the varieties hoon and Hyun into the brand new generation in this method quite a lot of prehistoric megalithic constructions in particular in northern Germany came to be identified as hunting Graber hun graves or hoon in Benton hun beds matter hyperlinks to the Hungarians beginning in the excessive middle a long time Hungarian sources have claimed descent from or a close relationship between the Hungarians Magyars and the Huns the claim seems to have first arisen in non Hungarian sources and handiest gradually been taken up through the Hungarians themselves for the reason that of its terrible connotations the anonymous visitor ahangar Orem after 1200 is the primary Hungarian supply to mention that the road of artwork Padian Kings were descendants of Attila however he makes no declare that the Hungarian and hun peoples are related the primary Hungarian author to say that hun and Hungarian peoples had been associated with Simon of kaiza in his visitor a Honora at hangar Orem 1282 to 1285 Simon claimed that the Huns and Hungarians have been descended from two brothers named Honora and Magor these claims gave the Hungarians an historic pedigree and served to legitimize their conquest of Pannonia cutting-edge scholars mostly disregarded these claims regarding the claimed Hunnish origins located in these chronicles jeno suits writes the Hunnish foundation of the Magyars is of path a fiction just like the trojan starting place of the french or any of the opposite Arrigo gentes theories fabricated at a lot the same time the Magyars actually originated from the U Gurion branch of the finno-ugric peoples in the direction of their wanderings in the steppes of japanese Europe they assimilated a type of especially Iranian and one of a kind Turkic cultural and ethnic factors but they had neither genetic nor historical hyperlinks to the Huns usually the proof of the relationship between the Hungarian and the finno-ugric languages within the nineteenth century has taken to have scientifically disproven the Hunnic origins of the Hungarians a different declare additionally derived from Simon of kaiza is that the Hungarian speaking CK persons of Transylvania are descended from Huns who fled to Transylvania after a Teela’s death and remained there unless the Hungarian conquest of Pannonia whilst the origins of the CK are unclear modern-day scholarship is skeptical that they’re concerning the Huns unlike within the legend the CK have been resettled in Transylvania from Western Hungary within the eleventh century their language in a similar way suggests no proof of a metamorphosis from any non Hungarian language to Hungarian as one would assume in the event that they were Huns at the same time the Hungarians and the CK’s is probably not descendants of the hunt they were traditionally carefully related to Turkic people’s Paul Engle notes that it can’t be fully excluded that our Padian kings will have been descended from Attila however and believes that it is doubtless the Hungarians once lived underneath the rule of thumb of the Huns jung jin kim supposes that the hungarians might be linked to the Huns by way of the bulgar xin Avars each of whom he holds to have had Hunnish elements nevertheless there is no genetic or linguistic proof aiding a connection between old or today’s hungarians and the Huns even as the idea that the hungarians are descended from the Huns has been rejected through mainstream scholarship the inspiration has persisted to excerpt a relevant affect on hungarian nationalism and national identity a majority of the hungarian aristocracy endured to ascribe to the Hunnic view into the early twentieth century the fascist arrow move events similarly stated hungary as Honea in its propaganda hunnic origins also performed a colossal function within the ideology of the cutting-edge radical correct-wing celebration javac aspect ii ology of pantora nism legends related to the Hunnic origins of the seek a minority in romania meanwhile persisted to play a massive role in that organizations ethnic identity the Hunnish origin of the CK’s stays essentially the most preferred theory of their origins among the many hungarian basic public subject twentieth-century use in reference to Germans on the twenty seventh of July 1900 doing the Boxer uprising in China kaiser wilhelm ii of germany gave the order to act ruthlessly closer to the rebels mercy is probably not proven prisoners might not be taken just as a thousand years ago the Huns below attila received a repute of could that lives on in legends so made the name of germany in china such that no chinese will also again dare so much as to seem askance at a german this evaluation was later heavily employed by using british and english language propaganda for the duration of World war one and to a lesser extent for the period of World warfare two in an effort to paint the Germans as savage barbarians matter see also list of rulers of the Huns nomadic Empire topic notes subject references matter extra reading attila died huntin beg like Bexar Estela HRSG vom historian museum do fowls Speyer stuttgart 2007 Christopher Kelly Attila the Hun barbarian terror in the fall of the Roman Empire London 2008 Rudy Paul Lindner nomadism horses and Huns in past and present ninety two 1981 p3 to 1987 ago Vern early empires of critical Asia 1939 Frederick Jon Taggart China in Rome 1969 re PR 1983 matter outside links Dornoch Chris M 2008 chinese language sources on the historical past of the brand new cyc Aussie oi rashiku RC RC rewsey and their kuosheng Kushan dynasty GG a hundred and ten tenchu 94 a the Xiongnu synopsis of chinese usual text and several Western translations with extant annotations a weblog on significant asian history Hun’s Encyclopedia Britannica eleventh ed 1911

Source: https://skullssales.com/

#tee shirts men #skull leggings #biker gear

0 notes

whatdoesshedotothem · 2 years

Text

Saturday 1 March 1840

2 40/..

Long in washing etc. R12 ½° on my table at 10 a.m. breakfast over at 11 – Reading Schnitzler vol. 2 p. 684 et seq. government of Saratoff [Saratov] – had our landlord up – no steppe on this side the Volga – no eaux minérales here – they are at the Caucasus –

to go to Orenburg, must return to Simbirsk – 500v. from here to Uralsk

the éboulement – there was one in 1827 – one 3 years ago 2v. from here – a brandy distillery slipped away – only a brewery left there – the village is removed – belongs to government –

the slip last summer was at Féodorfka 250v. from here on the great road to Astrakhan no lives lost – 50 or 60 cottages slipped away –

Mr. Stalepine has no verrerie here

no Tartar mosques or schools here – the Botanic garden on the hill that we passed yesterday at 1st supposing it a vineyard – mulberry trees there – these were what we took for vines in the distance but on nearing them (never very near) they looked like orchid trees –

about 30,000 inhabitants – trade in fish and caviar – had just written so far at 12 55/.. – out at 1 ½ A- and I in a traineau and pair (good horses as at Kazan) along our street Rue de Moscou, some distance – then turned right, along the street where the post office is, and then into the great Astrakhan road for some way, and then left this and drove another road by which also one goes to A- in summer, and then to the Botanic garden! – a quiz upon Botanic gardens if this be one – the serres that Schnitzler mentions are a small wooden erection heated [entirely] but only for a few hydrangeas oleanders geraniums and 1 or 2 pair of viburnum huddled together on the floor – there were also a few bulbs or onions, - and in the lower part lettuces just come up – there must be some other botanic garden but the German colonist living there and inspector of the silk thread manufactory a little building near declared there was no other garden belonging to la ville – he shewed us a specimen of the silk thread – yellow and white – pretty good? good road here a day or 2 ago – now snowed up – our horses lunged sank deep (several times) and we had to get as we could up to the house – returned past the prison a large building full of people for Siberia – our barrier that we entered by close by – we kept outside and drove along the old town – the rue de tartars down upon the Volga close to the great ravine which parts the town in 2 and in the bot[tom] of which several brick-ovens and sheds – but saw nothing of the old rampart that Geo. Dictionary speaks of – on getting upon the river drove northwards to see the mountain slip of last summer – it is a little beyond (north) of the 4 lines of magasins à sel – the Sokolof [Sokolov] mountains aboutissent, and a bit of the end of this sandy range slipped off its marly [?] bed in the great heat of August last (said our driver) – and just beyond this (north) was the larger slip in 1827 – a mere Isle of Wright landship – no lives lost – then at 3 ½ drove across (5v.) to the Pokrofsky [Pokrovsky] slobode in ½ hour – drove to the salt warehouses (near our one of the 3 good churches in this village of peasants belonging to government) – a crowd of [?] – busy loading with the salt – sells here at 1/40 per

SH:7/ML/E/24/00029

pood and at the lake itself the people gather the salt then [?] and pay ./80 per pood for it – all broken pretty small – in very coarse grain – looked like a coarse dusky gravel – but good salt (tasted it) and in this state the peasants use it; but if they want fine salt, each can easily refine for himself by means of alum – then drove about the village – went in to the one of the little Isbas – apparently one of the worse – very small – always 2 rooms however small or they could not keep their living place warm enough the entrance room or vestibule is a sort of receptacle for everything – the inner room entered by a little low door that we had to creep in at, has the oven stove and shelf over it the bench and a table – a white calf lay by the stove – the man of the house on the bench in his dark coloured shirt, and a young girl or 2 on the stove – just room for all these people to turn themselves and not much more – the wife was not at home – the man put on his shube, and came out with wondering why we should trouble ourselves to peep into such a place – he looked pale – how could he do otherwise – the heat and smell of the little hot place were intolerable – but this man at his ease – 3 cows – a horse – some sheep, geese, pigs and poultry and a couple of telegas, and a willow wattled round farmyard like all the rest of the people – not a cottage without the like appurtenances – the village had a striking appearance thus full of wattled enclosures a great out-buildings for the cattle and many many of the huts of this sort of wicker work mud-plastered over – passed near to each of the 3 good churches and went into one of them – vespers – full of shubed people – the service well chaunted – beautiful singing – I could have staid longer but A- was cold and anxious to be off – we had put R on the now few minutes before (at 4 ½) and it stood at only -7 1/2° - but there was a cold wind – the church all painted in fresco was even handsome seemed spacious for a Greek church the nave from the belfry and the great dome being all church – the prestole in the Apsis behind the dome – square tower clocher, nave, Dome, apsis – such is the style of church here and all along since Kazan – the 5 dome churches are rare hereabouts, and the little domes where they exist are mere reminiscences – little things like 4 chimneys – very cold wind in our faces as we returned, and the snow blown up and driven about us – returned up our street (the main street – Rue de Moscou), but turned left to see the large cathedral planted round at a little distance with trees (young) along a nice walk here is the senate house – the large handsome house of Ivanof the [?] chez que the emperor stays when he comes – the clocher (at a little distance) is only about ½ built – the church is finished and has been finished did the man say 12 years – a largeish square finished in an inscribed circle

of 2 grades from the highest of which springs the large handsome dome – towards the clocher (west?) there is a hexastyle? and pediment – opposite (last?) is an apsis – the other 2 sides have each a hexastyle with architrave and cornice without pediment – this church standing on high ground is seen from far the most massive building in the town – as strikingly huge and massive here, as the new town hall is at Birmingham – came in at 5 ½ M. and Madame Stalapine had called – disappointed not to find us at home – had invited us to dinner tomorrow at 12 – at noon! the courier and Gross declared it was so – and they would send their carriage but had promised it yesterday to some friends – a great ball of the noblesse tomorrow night – ordered 2 horses to be put to our own kibitka – had the courier and George – from here to Astrakhan the posting sans pour boire = 280/. – to give the courier [100/.] tomorrow – he is to inquire if there is a road from here to Uralsk – the distance – road from thence to Orenburg and distance – from where to turn off to the Calmuck [Kalmyk] Encampment etc. etc. dinner at 6 ½ - a bottle of red Donskoi 1/. sweetish and pleasant and a bottle of white champagne-like Donskoi 3/. as yesterday – we finished the bottle as yesterday and sat over it till 8 – then lay down for a few minutes – could not be more than 8 ½ when Madame Stalepine called and staid till 10 – talked very agreeably – there is a better Inn than this – the hotel de Petersburg – I said the courier managed all these things – to dine at 4 p.m. tomorrow and the carriage to be sent for us – Mr. S- has 4000 peasants – one village = 1000 – [?] in sheep – has made a contract for 10 years with a Mr. Cowley fermier from not far from London who pays ½ expense and .:. takes ½ profits – M. S- finding (I conclude) the pasturage – has 60,000 arpens of land – Mr. Cowley has sent over an English shepherd who brought his young wife with him – arrived at St. P- in June last and here in September – the sheep by water to St. P- and ditto from there here – Mr. and Mrs. Cowley were here 2 or 3 months last summer he delighted with the place and would have been glad to remain here – the terre where the sheep are is 10v. from the next station from here on the Simbirsk road – not far .: from Volsk [Vol’sk] – we at our last station were 10v. from our compatriot shepherd and our English long fine wool sheep – one ram cost 600/. and one Ewe 200/. Mr. S- had 400 from England and several others of the Russian nobility of St. P- and elsewhere had sheep of the same kind so that a large flock must have come – Madame S- has 3 children the oldest aet. 5 – 2 girls and a boy – looks young – and prettyish – very civil – tea after she went away – then reading Dictionary geography till 1 and then till 2 10/.. wrote all but the first 13 lines of today – fine day but cold wind and cold this afternoon after between 2 and 3 p.m.

4 notes · View notes

neverwasmag · 6 years

Text

One of the earliest descriptions of a dieselpunk world was written by “Piecraft” in 2006. He envisaged an alternate 1950s “where the Great Depression never arrived and World War II is still being fought as a prolonged Cold War.”

Japan continues its progress toward technological modernization, developing the earliest computers and terminals. Nazi scientists continue experimenting by taking the route of biotechnology, sparking off a genetic revolution of bio-mods, clones and organ harvesting, while the Americans and British take both of these technologies to develop mind-control devices, spawning man-machine interfaces and sparking the atomic-powered machine age.

Let’s explore this diesel-fueld world in the first installment of a new series we’ll call worldbuilding.

Britain makes peace

A bombed-out Buckingham Palace appears in the BBC’s SS-GB (2017)

King Edward VIII of the United Kingdom visits Adolf Hitler in Bavaria, Germany, October 1937

Art by Sam van Olffen

We deviate from our timeline during the Battle of Britain. The Luftwaffe is able to destroy the Royal Air Force. Nazi Germany successfully carries out Operation Sea Lion and occupies the south of England.

With London on the verge of being surrounded, King George VI and his family flee to Canada. Winston Churchill is arrested and shot. The Nazis restore Edward VIII to the throne, who negotiates the island’s surrender. India refuses to recognize a Nazi puppet as emperor and declares its independence. The remaining British Empire recognizes Elizabeth as queen when Edward’s brother George dies in 1952.

Click here to learn how the Nazis planned to invade Great Britain.

Turkey joins the Axis

Field Marshal Fevzi Çakmak presides over a meeting of the Turkish General Staff in the 1940s (Wikimedia Commons)

With Britain out of the war, but the British and French still fighting in Iraq and Syria, Turkey’s generals spot an opportunity to restore their country to its former glory.

President İsmet İnönü, who had kept Turkey neutral, is ousted in a military coup and replaced with a pro-Axis junta. It allows the Germans to use Turkish territory to open a second front against the British in Egypt and support the conquest of the Caucasus from the south. In exchange, Turkey gets Armenia, Kurdistan and Mesopotamia.

Map of a feared German invasion of the Middle East, from Life magazine, April 28, 1941

Britain and the Soviet Union are forced to withdraw from Iran, which they had occupied preemptively in 1941. Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the young shah, signs a nonaggression pact with Germany, which the latter breaks only months later to use northern Iran as a staging ground for its encirclement of the Caspian Sea.

Click here to learn about Hitler’s feared invasion of the Middle East.

Germany colonizes the East

Map of the Great German Reich (1Blomma)

With Germany in control of southwest Russia, including the oil fields of the Caucasus and the Volga Delta, it can out-wait the Red Army during the winter of 1942-43 and seize Stalingrad and Moscow in the spring.

Joseph Stalin and the Soviet government flee first to Kuybyshev and then to Omsk, from where they continue to lead a guerrilla war in the Ural Mountains. Without the bulk of their territory, people and resources, though, it is a hopeless struggle.

1936 Nazi propaganda poster celebrating German farmers

The Nazis reorganize Eastern Europe into four Reichskommissariaten, each largely cleansed of ethnic Slavs and made ripe for German settlement: Ostland, comprising the Baltics and the former Belarus; Ukraine, extending eastward to the River Volga; Moskowien in the northeast and Kaukasus in the south. The Crimea becomes part of the Reich itself.

Despite land being freely available to ethnic Germans, resettlement proves less popular than the regime had anticipated. With forced labor freeing Germans from hard work, only fanatics, many of them in the SS, dream of leaving the comforts of the Reich behind to become Wehrbauern in the East.

Destruction of New York

Two Messerschmitt Me P.08.01 German flying wings over Manhattan, New York (Matin Letts)

Nuclear attack on New York as depicted in Wolfenstein: The New Order (2014)

Wolfenstein: The New Order concept art of New York after a nuclear attack (Bethesda Softworks)

Even though Britain has been defeated and the Soviet Union is reduced to a rump state in Siberia, America continues to fight — until the Germans drop the Bomb.

Rexford Tugwell, circa 1935-42 (Wikimedia Commons)

In the morning of April 20, 1945 — the Führer‘s 56th birthday — two Messerschmitt Me P.08.01 flying wings detonate what the Germans call the Heisenberg Device over Manhattan. Around one million people die instantly. Tens of thousands more perish in the aftermath from burns and radiation poisoning. President Rexford Tugwell, who succeeded Franklin Roosevelt in 1940, agrees to negotiate America’s surrender at a peace summit in Iceland.

Neither Germany nor Japan has designs on the continental United States. Japan does demand America’s Pacific possessions, including Hawaii, while Germany formalizes its influence in South America in the Reykjavík Treaty.

Although now at peace with the Axis powers, America continues to clandestinely support what is left of the British Empire, China and the Soviet Union in their war efforts.

Greater Finland

Map of a fictional Greater Finland (1Blomma)

Finland defeated the Soviet Union in the Winter War of 1939-40 and was rewarded by the Nazis with control of the Kola Peninsula and Karelia.

Like its Scandinavian neighbors, the country seeks an equidistant position for itself between Germany and the United States. But the nearness of Germany, and the American exit from the war, mean it must often defer to Berlin.

The Nordics’ official neutrality is useful to all powers, though, as it gives them a venue for diplomacy and a way to circumvent trade embargoes.

Empire of the Sun

Japan’s imperial ambitions as depicted in the 1945 American propaganda film Why We Fight: War Comes to America

Japan controls much of East Asia as well as most islands in the Pacific, including the formerly American Aleutian Islands and Hawaii, the Kamchatka Peninsula, the Kuril Islands, Karafuto (formerly Sakhalin), Manchuria, Korea, coastal China, Formosa (Taiwan), Indochina, the Philippines. Plaek Phibunsongkhram’s Thailand and Sukarno’s Indonesia (the former Dutch East Indies) are nominally independent but in reality subjugated to Tokyo. Pridi Banomyong leads the Free Thai Movement from Burma.

President Sukarno of Indonesia, circa 1949 (KITLV)

Field Marshal Plaek Phibunsongkhram of Thailand (Wikimedia Commons)

General Hideki Tojo of Japan (Wikimedia Commons)

Japan still eyes Australia, Burma and India. It has little interest in Siberia but occasionally engages in border skirmishes with the Soviets to keep the Germans happy. Communists continue to wage a guerrilla war in the Chinese hinterland.

Artwork of the I-400-class Japanese submarine aircraft carrier

Japan got the atomic bomb from Germany in return for the submarine aircraft carrier. Relations between the two Axis powers are strained, however. Japan doesn’t trust the Germans, who consider all Asians racially inferior.

British remnant

Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom and her husband, Prince Philip, attend a ceremony in Lansdowne Park, Ottawa, Canada, October 1957 (Library and Archives Canada)

Britain’s dominions — Australia, Canada, Ceylon, Newfoundland, New Zealand, South Africa — have become independent states, as have Kenya and Rhodesia, which house many refugees from European Britain. All recognize Elizabeth II as head of state. The remaining colonies in Africa and the Caribbean are ruled by the British government-in-exile, led by Admiral Conolly Abel Smith from Ottawa.

India’s independence was a blow to British prestige, but it freed up troops for the defense of Burma under Lord Louis Mountbatten. His hope was to retake Malaya and Singapore next, but with America out of the war after the nuclear attack on New York, and the Soviet Union unable to open a second front in Manchuria, those plans had to be postponed indefinitely.

Democracy in America

Art by Stephane Belin

Art by Stefan Prohaczka

Millard Sheets’ design for a Monument to Democracy in Los Angeles

With New York gone, America’s economic and cultural life shifts to Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia and Los Angeles. Without the interruption of the Great Depression, art, architecture, fashion and technology have progressed steadily from the Roaring Twenties, although the Cold War with Nazi Germany and Japan is giving way to more austere preferences.

A Monument to Democracy, designed by Millard Sheets, graces the Port of Los Angeles. Like the Statue of Liberty before it, it holds out the promise of a better future for the oppressed peoples of the world.

Click here for more unbuilt Los Angeles and here to learn about the fashion of the 1930s.

World Capital Germania

The skyline of Berlin, Germany as depicted in Amazon’s The Man in the High Castle (2016)

With the war effectively over, Hitler can concentrate on his hobbies: architecture and trains.

Adolf Hitler in old age (Andrzej Dragan)

The former involves the total reconstruction of Berlin into the world capital of Germania. Designed by Albert Speer, Hitler’s chief architect, Germania was meant to convey the greatness of the German people, but it turned into a dud for the German people living in it.

Speer did not believe in traffic lights, nor was he a big supporter of trams. Germania has excellent subways, but its denizens tire of going underground. It’s not just the metro; pedestrians are forced into tunnels every time they want to cross one of the city’s ridiculously broad streets and, in the city center, enormous towers block out the sun altogether.

Click here to learn more about Hitler’s nightmare capital of the world.

Super trains

Artist’s impression of Nazi Germany’s proposed Breitspurbahn

Proposed route map for Nazi Germany’s Breitspurbahn from 1943 (Wikimedia Commons)

Artist’s impression of a diesel train arriving in Germania, capital of the Third Reich

Hitler’s trains are more popular. The giant double-decker trains that connect the Reich’s major cities on broad three-meter gauge tracks, called the Breitspurbahn, are fast, luxurious and affordable. Only a few hours and you’re in Paris, Vienna or Lemberg for a weekend getaway. Members of the Hitler Youth get a free Breitspurbahn travel pass to see the Reich when they turn eighteen.

Click here to learn more about Hitler’s super trains.

Eugenics

Nazi propaganda photo of young German men

In Germany, eugenics and selective breeding are widespread with the purpose of improving the Aryan master race. People with congenital defects are removed from the gene pool. Those who are deemed to possess superior genes are encouraged to have as many children as possible. The result is a society obsessed with pure blood and building the Übermensch.

Draining the Mediterranean

Artwork of Atlantropa created by Andrea Dopaso for The Man in the High Castle (Amazon)

Map of a proposed dam in the Central Mediterranean. From Herman Soergel, Lowering the Mediterranean, Irrigating the Sahara. Panropa Project (1929)

The next step in creating living space the German people do not need is draining the Mediterranean.

First proposed by Herman Sörgel in 1929, the Atlantropa project would dam off the Strait of Gibraltar and the Dardanelles. A third dam, between Sicily and Tunisia, would further lower the Mediterranean’s sea level and create vast new areas of land. The Adriatic Sea would largely disappear, which is why Italy isn’t keen on the plan.

Click here to learn more about Atlantropa.

New Roman Empire

Map of the Italian Empire (1Blomma)

Nazi propaganda poster that claims German “living space” in Africa

The modern Roman Empire stretches from Savoy in the northwest to Somaliland in the southeast. Albania, Corsica, Libya, Tunisia, the Sudan and Italian East Africa are integral parts of the new Italy while Croatia, Cyprus, Egypt and Greece are ruled by puppets.

Benito Mussolini has expanded Rome itself with large neoclassicist neighborhoods in the style of the EUR.

Click here to learn more about Mussolini’s new Rome.

In Hitler’s shadow

1964 portrait of Spanish dictator Francisco Franco (Biblioteca Virtual de Defensa)

Portuguese dictator António de Oliveira Salazar, circa 1965 (Keystone-France)

Portrait of Hungarian strongman Miklós Horthy

Europe’s other fascist dictators are content to live in Hitler’s shadow. The only ones who pursue an independent foreign policy are Spain’s Francisco Franco and Portugal’s António de Oliveira Salazar. Both came to power before the war.

Salazar is regarded warily by the Nazis. Portugal is the only country in Europe that recognizes continued British and French rule in Africa and Asia. Franco is considered more reliable, despite his refusal to give Gibraltar to the Reich.

Jozef Tiso still rules in Slovakia. Miklós Horthy has abolished the Regency in Hungary and formally established himself as dictator. In Bulgaria, Tsar Simeon II presides over a pliant, pro-German government. Michael I has become more powerful as king of Romania as Ion Antonescu’s health has failed. There are rumors that Antonescu has in fact died already, but that the regime cannot agree on a successor.

Antarctica base

Nazis in Antarctica

Wolfenstein: The New Order concept art of an underground Nazi base (Bethesda Softworks)

In the late 1930s, German explorers discovered a large ice-free plateau in the Antarctic with more than 100 freshwater lakes and outlets to the sea. They dubbed the area the Schirmacher Oasis and started building a base there.

It is now the center for German military and scientific activity in the Southern Hemisphere, housing U-boats and Haunebu flying discs.

Click here to learn more about Nazis’ Antarctica base.

To the Moon

Art by Rainyempire

The next step is the Moon. Wernher von Braun leads a Nazi space program at Peenemünde. His rocket technology is also being used to develop long-range missiles that can reach North America. The hope is to put a man on the Moon before 1960.

Click here to learn more about the Nazi Moon base.

Nuclear power

Soldiers observe a nuclear weapons test in Nevada, April 15, 1955 (NNSA)

Engineers control a nuclear weapons test in Nevada in early 1952 from the Control Point at Yucca Pass (NNSA)

Scientists observe a nuclear weapons test in Nevada, March 22, 1955 (NNSA)

All three superpowers have atomic weapons, but America, with the help of British, Jewish and Soviet scientists, has surpassed Japan and the Reich, detonating the world’s first hydrogen bomb in the Nevada desert in 1952.

Airplanes

Flying wing in Captain America: The First Avenger (2011)

Art by Marek Hlavaty

German flying wings on the cover of War Front: Turning Point (2007)

Art by Ed Thomas

Supersonic German jet in Amazon’s The Man in the High Castle (2015)

Germany built the first jet-powered fighter plane, the Messerschmitt Me 262. It also pioneered the flying wing. Supersonic German jets ferry civilians and officials between Tokyo and Berlin.

Click here to learn more about the strange aircraft of the Third Reich.

Convair B-36 Peacemaker strategic bomber in flight (USAF)

North American XB-70 Valkyrie strategic bomber in flight (NASA)

America has gone the atomic route. The first aircraft that was equipped with a small nuclear reactor was the Convair B-36 Peacemaker. North American Aviation is developing the XB-70 Valkyrie as a deep-penetration strategic bomber that would extend American deterrence around the globe.

Click here to learn more about America’s atomic-powered aircraft.

Landkreuzers

Artwork of the German Landkreuzer P. 1000 Ratte super tank (TIGΞΓ)

Panzer 88 concept art by Stuart Jennett

Hitler’s obsession with size has seen Germany develop impractically large tanks and guns. Landkreuzern (“land cruisers”) are really only deployable in the desert of the North Africa. Huge railway guns guard the Eastern Front but are an ill fit in the guerrilla war against the remnants of the Soviet Union.

Click here to learn more about the wonder weapons of the Third Reich.

In a #dieselpunk world, World War II is still being fought as a prolonged Cold War One of the earliest descriptions of a dieselpunk world was written by "Piecraft" in 2006. He envisaged an alternate 1950s "where the Great Depression never arrived and World War II is still being fought as a prolonged Cold War."

#Second World War #Secret Nazi stuff #Worldbuilding

0 notes

anne-lister-adventures · 4 years

Text

Saturday, 1 March 1840

2 40/’’

Long in washing &c. Reaumur 12 1/2º on my table at 10 a.m. breakfast over at 11 – Reading Schnitzler vol.[volume] 2 p.[page] 684 et seq. Government of Saratof – Had our landlord up – No steppe on this side the Volga – No Eaux Minérales here – They are at the Caucasus – To go to Orenburg, must return to Simbirsk –

500 v.[versts] from here to Uralsk the Eboulement – There was one in 1827 – One 3 years ago 2 v.[versts] from here – A brandy distillery slipped away – Only a brewery left there – The village is removed – Belongs to Government – The slip last summer was at Féodorofka 250 v.[versts] from here on the great road to Astrakhan no lives lost – 50 or 60 cottages slipped away –

Mr. Stalepine has no verrerie here - No Tatar mosques or schools here – The Botanic Garden on the hill that we passed yesterday at 1st supposing it a vineyard – Mulberry trees there – These were what we took for vines in the distance but on nearing them (never very near) they looked like orchard trees – about 30,000 inhabitants – Trade in fish and caviar – Had just written so far at 12 55/’’ –

Out at 1 1/2 A-[Ann] and I in a Traineau and pair (good horses as at Kazan) along our Street Rue de Moscou, some distance – Then turned right, along the street where the post office is, and then into the Great Astrakhan road for some way, and then left this and drove another road by which one goes to A-[Astrakhan] in summer, and then to the Botanic Garden! – A quiz upon Botanic Gardens if this be one – The serres that Schnitzler mentions are a small wooden erection heated certainly but only for a few hydrangeas oleanders geraniums and 1 or 2 species of huddled together on the floor there was also viburnum a few bulbs or onions – And in the lower part lettuces just come up – There must be some other Botanic Garden but the German colonist living there and inspector of the Silk Thread Manufactory a little building near, declared there was no other garden belonging to la ville – He shewed us a specimen of the silk thread – Yellow and white – Pretty good?

The cheerful sleigh-ride by Pjotr C. Stojanow (Image Source)

Good road here a day or 2 ago – Now snowed up – Our horses lunged sank deep (several times) and we had to get as we could up to the house – Returned past the prison a large building full of people for Siberia – Our barrier that we entered by close by – We kept outside and drove along the Old Town – The Rue des Tatars down upon the Volga close to the great ravine which parts the town in 2 and in the bottom of which several brick-ovens and sheds – But saw nothing of the old rampart that Geography Dictionary speaks of –

On getting upon the river drove Northwards to see the mountain slip of the last summer – It is a little beyond (North) of the 4 lines of Magazins à Sel – The Sokolof Mountains aboutissent, and a bit of the end of this sandy range slipped off its marly clayey bed in the great heat of August last (said our driver) – And just beyond this (North) was the larger slip in 1827 – A mere Isle of Wight landslip – No lives lost – Then at 3 1/2 drove across, 5 v.[versts], to the Pokrofsky Slobode in 1/2 hour –

Drove to the Salt Warehouses (near one one of the 3 good churches in this village of peasants belonging to Government) – A crowd of Drovnis – Busy loading with the salt – Sells here at 1/40 per pood and at the lake itself the people gather the salt themselves and pay -/80 per pood for it – All broken pretty small – In very coarse grains – Looked like a coarse dusky gravel – But good salt (tasted it) and in this state the peasants use it; but if they want fine salt each can easily refine for himself by means of alum –

Then drove about the village – Went in to one of the little Isbas – Apparently one of the worst – Very small – Always 2 rooms however small or they could not keep their living place warm enough the entrance room or vestibule is a sort of receptacle for everything – The inner room entered by a little low door that we had to creep in at, has the oven stove and shelf over it, the bench and a table – A white calf lay by the stove – The man of the house on the bench in his dark coloured shirt, and a young girl or 2 on the stove – Just room for all these people to turn themselves and not much more – The wife was not at home – The man put on his Shube, and came out with wondering why we should trouble ourselves to peep into such a place – He looked pale – How could he do otherwise – The heat and smell of the little hot place were intolerable – But this man at his ease – 3 cows – A horse – Some sheep, geese, pigs and poultry and a couple of Telegas, and a willow wattled round farmyard like all the rest of the people – Not a cottage without the like appurtenances –

Interior of a Russian Peasant Izba by Karl Kolman (Image source)

The village has a striking appearance thus full of wattled enclosures a great out-buildings for the cattle and many of the huts of this sort of wicker work mud-plastered over – Passed near to each of the 3 good churches and went into one of them – Vespers – Full of Shubed people – The service well chauntered – Beautiful singing – I could have staid longer but A-[Ann] was cold and anxious to be off – We had put Reaumur on the snow a few minutes before, at 4 1/2, and it stood at only -7 1/2º - but there was a cold wind – The church all painted in fresco was even handsome seemed spacious for a Greek church the nave from the belfry and the great dome being all church – The prestole in the Apsis behind the dome – Square tower clocher, nave, dome, apsis – Such is the style of church here and all along since Kazan – The 5 dome-churches are rare hereabouts, and the little domes when they exist are mere reminiscences – Little things like 4 chimneys –

Very cold wind in our faces as we returned, and the snow blown up and driven about us – Returned up our street (the main street – Rue de Moscou), but turned left to see the large cathedral planted round at a little distance with trees (young) along a nice walk here is the Senate House – The large handsome house of Ivanof the Seigneur chez qui the Emperor stays when he comes – The clocher, at a little distance, is only about 1/2 built – The church is finished and has been finished did the man say 12 years – A largeish square finished in an inscribed circle of 2 grades from the highest of which springs the large handsome dome – Towards the clocher (West?) there is a hexastyle? and pediment – Opposite (East?) is one Apsis – The other 2 sides have each a hexastyle with architrave and cornice without pediment – This church standing on high ground is seen from far the most massive building in the town – As strikingly huge and massive here, as the new Town Hall is at Birmingham –

Came in at 5 1/2 M.[Monsieur] and Madame Stalepine had called – Disappointed not to find us at home – Had invited us to dinner tomorrow at 12 – At noon! The Courier and Gross declared it was so – And they would send their carriage but had promised it yesterday to some friends – A great ball of the Noblesse tomorrow night –

Ordered 2 horses to be put to our own Kibitka – Had the Courier and George – From here to Astrakhan the posting sans pour boire = 280/- - to give the Courier 400/- tomorrow – He is to inquire if there is a road from here to Uralsk – The distance – Road from thence to Orenburg and distance – From where to turn off to the Calmuck Encampment &c. &c. –

Dinner at 6 1/2 – A bottle of red Donskoi 1/- sweetish and pleasant and a bottle of white Champagne-like Donskoi 3/- as yesterday – We finished the bottle as yesterday and sat over it till 8 – Then lay down for a few minutes –

Could not be more than 8 1/2 when Madame Stalepine called and staid till 10 – Talked very agreeably – There is a better Inn than this – The Hotel de Petersburg – I said the Courier managed all these things – To dine at 4 p.m. tomorrow and the carriage to be sent for us – Mr. S-[Stalepine] has 4000 peasants – One village = 1000 – Connoisseur in sheep – Has made a contract for 10 years with a Mr. Cowley fermier from not far from London who pays 1/2 expense and ∴[therefore] takes 1/2 profits – M.[Monsieur] S-Stalepine finding, I conclude, the pasturage – Has 60,000 arpens of land – Mr. Cowley has sent over an English shepherd who brought his young wife with him – Arrived at St. P-[Petersburg] in June last and here in September – The sheep by water to St. P-[Petersburg] and ditto from there here – Mr. and Mrs. Cowley were here 2 or 3 months last summer he delighted with the place and would have been glad to remain here –

The terre where the sheep are is 10 v.[versts] from the next Station from here on the Simbirsk road – Not far ∴[therefore] from Volsk – We at our last Station were 10 v.[versts] from our compatriot shepherd and our English long fine wool sheep – One ram cost 600/- and one Ewe 200/- Mr. S-[Stalepine] had 400 from England and several others of the Russian nobility of St. P-[Petersburg] and elsewhere had sheep of the same kind so that a large flock must have come – Madame S-Stalepine has 3 children the oldest Æt[aetatis] 5 – 2 girls and a boy – Looks young – And prettyish – Very civil –

Tea after she went away – Then reading Dictionary Geography till 1 and then till 2 10/’’ wrote all but the first 13 lines of today – fine day but cold wind and cold this afternoon after between 2 and 3 p.m.

[in the margin of the page:] Pokrofsky

[in the margin of the page:] Reaumur -7 1/2º at 4 1/2 p.m. dehors

Page References: SH:7/ML/E/24/0028 and SH:7/ML/E/24/0029

#anne lister code breaker #anne lister #ann walker #moscow to baku 1840

2 notes · View notes