Random photos Hungarian army

Random photos Hungarian army

Hungary entered the war in 1941 on the Axis side. Hungary helped to defeat Yugoslavia, but the Hungarian army suffered defeat in the Soviet Union. Here are some photos that show the Hungarian army.

 

Joseph Stalin

Joseph Stalin

Besarionis dze Jughashvili was born 1878 and die 1953. He is best known for his assumed name, Joseph Stalin. Stalin took power in the Soviet Union, but was never head of state. Instead, he was general secretary of the Communist Party and in its name he claimed sovereignty over all Communists in the world. Stalin led the Soviet Union before during and after World War II.

Stalin was well aware that Hitler’s great German rhetoric and military build-up was a threat to peace and ultimately could threaten his country, but no suitable alliance against Hitler was available. Collaboration between the USSR, Britain and France was unthinkable 1938-1939 because of mutual suspicion and ideological differences.

USSR major refurbishment during Stalin could also be a pretext for German rearmament. Under the Versailles Treaty of 1919, the German armed forces do not amount to more than 100,000 men. Ahead of a refurbished Soviet Union, this was a small force and thus a motive for a German rearmament with or without Hitler.

To improve the country’s position ahead of a feared future war against Nazi Germany, he probably felt as inevitable, he sought different routes. To avoid war, he tried to approach the Nazi Germany.

23 August 21939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany was signed. It was very surprising for the West. This was only a formal non-aggression treaty between the Soviet Union and Germany, but contained a secret supplement a division of Poland, the three Baltic States and Finland between the USSR and Germany.

The agreement came as a shock to Britain, France and especially for Poland. On 1 September 1939 were Germany attacked Poland. Moreover, was captured in the German speaking refuge Danzig. This led to Britain and France declared war on Germany on 3 September. The Second World War had broken out. As agreed in the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact invaded the Soviet Union on September 17 eastern part of Poland, with almost no resistance from the under-equipped Polish army, which had already been crushed by the Germans.

Then Stalin turned against the Baltic countries, which was annexed without much resistance. In November, the Soviet Union demanded bases in Finland which were not accepted by the Finnish Government why the Soviet Union invaded Finland (the Winter War). The Winter War was initially very bad for the Soviet Union, but after a renewed effort was defeated Finland was forced to cede Karelia, among other areas of the Soviet Union.

After the German and Soviet troops met in Poland then were the demarcation line border, between the two great powers occupying no problem, because all the details were already fixing the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact establishment. Most of this demarcation line is today the border between Poland, Belarus and Ukraine. In the spring of 1941 came the intelligence services with increasingly close intelligence that Hitler planned to expand to the East Germany and the Axis powers would then attack the Soviet Union. Stalin, who was otherwise abnormally suspicious of even his closest officers, refused to the last to take the threat seriously.

This was one of the reasons for Hitler and the Axis major successes in Ukraine during the summer and autumn of 1941 after Operation Barbarossa commenced on June 22. Stalin now strengthened its already enormous power further by appointing himself prime minister, defense minister and commander in chief. The Soviet people’s will to resist was strengthened by Stalin remained in the capital, Moscow – also when the enemy approached the capital in October 1941, and the intensive airstrikes in November 1941.

When the Soviet Union start massive counterattack in December 1941, the Germans had been pushed back up to 300 kilometers from the capital. It meant a chance to conquer Moscow was gone, and in fact, Hitler had lost World War II. Axis attacks and the treatment of the occupied territories of Ukraine had, as in Poland, the character of genocide and demanded a total mobilization of the nation’s resources, human and financial, to be turned back. Long was estimated that at least 12 700 000 civil Soviet citizens lost their lives for the Axis

With the German attack on the Soviet Union established the Soviet Union in 1941 an alliance with Britain and the United States. The western allies supported the Soviet Union through very extensive deliveries of food, vehicles and weapons to strengthen the Soviet offensive, while the Red Army, in turn, already from 1941 band very significant German troops. Stalin demanded that a second front would be established in the west to relieve pressure on the Soviet Union, Britain and the United States would accept the revised boundaries for Poland (according to Curzon), and that the Baltic countries would be submitted to the Kremlin.

British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and US President Franklin Roosevelt dampened the usual ideological anti-communist criticism of Stalin and on both sides of the Atlantic came the propaganda to make Stalin and the Soviet Union in more conciliatory terms. Stalin has as few others have been named twice as Man of the Year in Time, in January 1940 as “the man that match Adolf Hitler as the most hated man in the world”, and in January 1943 strongly positively transformed, as if he himself said, the Russians’ heroic resistance.

After the battle of Stalingrad in the winter 1942-1943 and the Battle of Kursk in 1943 had the fortune of war definitely turned and the Germans could never launch an offensive on the eastern front again, and the initiative went over to the Soviet Union, who then found himself on a sustained offensive right up until the Berlin surrendered May 2, 1945.

During the counter-offensive as the Soviet Union had conquered eastern Germany, Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria, which after the war gave rise to the communist Eastern Bloc.

Stalin used the success to celebrate itself as the “victorious genius”. 1943 Stalin was given the highest military rank: Marshal of the Soviet Union. At Tehran with Churchill and Roosevelt in November 1943, he received the promise of a western front would be opened in May 1944, by an invasion of France. At the same time the Soviet Union in different ways compensated after the war for all the enormous sacrifices it made to defeat Nazi Germany.

At the Yalta Conference in February 1945, Germany was basically defeated. Germany would until further divided into four occupation zones and the Red Army gained control of the area that later became East Germany, including East Berlin (Berlin was occupied by the Soviet Union, but was divided into four occupation zones). At the Yalta Conference, Stalin also committed them to go to war against Japan three months after Germany surrendered. He held the contract, and August 8, 1945 Japan attacked the man and caught in a week occupy Manchuria and the northern part of the Korean peninsula. The Red Army occupied parts of the Korean Peninsula in 1948 was North Korea.

 

Anthony J Marchione, the last American soldier to die in World War II

Anthony J Marchione, the last American soldier to die in World War II

Anthony J Marchione was born August 12, 1925 in Pottstown, Pennsylvania and died August 18, 1945. Marchione was the last American soldier who lost his life in World War II.

On Nov. 20, 1943 Marchione decided to enlist in the U.S. Army Air Forces because of his interest in airplanes and the technical aspects of aviation. Marchione became an aerial gunner and survived several combat missions during the course of World War II.

On Aug. 18, 1945, two B-32 Dominator bombers took off from Yontan, Okinawa, for what should have been a post-war photo mission over Japan. The flight was scheduled to consist of four bombers, but two were unable to take off because of mechanical problems. Nearly all Japanese troops had laid down their arms, but the situation remained tense. Anthony Marchione, fondly known as Tony, was a gunner and photographer’s assistant with the Yotan-based 20th Reconnaissance Squadron.

The airplane Macrchione sat in was the suddenly attacked by Japanese fighters. Three days earlier the Japanese had announced that they would surrender. But the war continued in some places, on the mainland Japanese troops fought against Soviet and Chinese troops until late August and early September. Marchione was hit by bullets from machine guns and badly damaged. He bled to death and became the last American who died in the war. The B-32 pilots initially attempted to communicate to the Japanese – the war was over, but the Japanese did not understand or did not care.

Anthony J Marchiones rank was sergeant and the hade received Purple Heart, American Campaign Medal and World War II Victory Medal.

Anthony J Marchione

Marchiones grave

Kalmücken-Kavallerie-Korps

Kalmücken-Kavallerie-Korps

Kalmücken-Kavallerie-Korps, KKK ore The Kalmykian Cavalry Corps was a unit of about 5,000 Kalmyk volunteers who chose to join the German Wehrmacht in 1942 rather than remain in Kalmykia as the German Army retreated before the Red Army. In 1943, Josef Stalin subsequently declared the Kalmyk population as a whole to be German collaborators and had them deported to Siberia suffering great loss of life.

When Erich von Manstein led the 16th Motorized Infantry Division into Kalmykia in early 1942 he already had some Kalmyk advisors from a committee drawn together by Josef Goebbels for propaganda purposes. These were supplemented by other Kalmyk’s who had settled in Belgrade following their flight with White Russian emigres after the Russian October Revolution.

Kalmyk Kavallerie Korps acted within German Wehrmacht as an independent allied force with all leadership positions taken by Kalmyks. Most of the officers were Kalmyks themselves, with previous Soviet military experience. A few Germans that were present within the corps performed only auxiliary and administrative functions. Kalmyks contributed cavalry and rode on horses and camels!

The Kalmykian Cavalry Corps fought with the Nazi army behind the lines, especially around the Azov Sea. At the end of 1944, the surviving Kalmyk cavalry troops, together with their families, retreated with the German army. About 2,000 went to Silesia, Poland and 1,500 to Zagreb, Croatia, where they were reorganized to fight against the partisans.

In January last year of the war would Kalmyks sent to Kaukasischer Verband der Waffen SS. This was made impossible when Soviet troops intervened. In March, they received orders to be submitted to the XV SS Kosaken Kavallerie Korps which of course was formally part of the Waffen-SS. In May, after the war was ended the sent soldiers sent back to the Soviet Union.

Martin James Monti

Martin James Monti

Monti was born in 1921, was born in an Italian-American family where isolationist disagreed that the United States led an active foreign policy. Monti Joined the US Air Force when he was called up. In 1944 he defected and joined the Germans. He was transferred to the “Kurt Eggers” and worked with propaganda. Some of the work was directed to Allied prisoners of war. Monti got the degree of SS untersturmführer and bar SS uniform when he was captured. Monti received 25 years in prison but was released conditionally 1960. Monti died in September 2000.

Monti in court

Monti 1949

 

Nagasaki was bombed with atomic bomb, August 9, 1945.

Nagasaki was bombed with atomic bomb, August 9, 1945.

US Air Force bomb Hiroshima on August 6 1945.Three days after the bombing of Hiroshima US Air Force dropped an atomic bomb on Nagasaki. Fortunately subdued the hills around the city of the effects of the atomic bomb and the damage to the city were less than at Hiroshima. But a great human tragedy was played out yet in the Japanese port city of Nagasaki. Perhaps as many as 80,000 people may have been killed by this single bomb.

The bomb over Nagasaki.

After the bomb has kill 80 000 people.

King George II of Greece

King George II of Greece

George II, Georgios of Greece, was born July 19, 1890. King of Greece, 1922-1924 and 1935-1947. George was son to Constantine I of Greece and Sofia of Prussia.  George as married to Elisabeth of Romania, born 1894, died November 1956.

George was suspended from the throne at the same time with his father removal from the throne in 1917. When his father returned in 1920, George II was reinstated in their rights, and became the second after his father’s abdication in 1922 king. After the Republican election victory in 1923, he was forced to leave the country. He lived in exile in Britain, but after a referendum in 1935, he was called back to Greece.

As king George let Ioannis Metaxas rein Greece in the form of right-wing rule. Metaxas had sympathies with the Germans, but the king was pro-British. 28 October 1940 Italy declares war against Greece. The Greeks mounted a successful defense and eventually occupied the southern half of Albania, then an Italian protectorate, but when the Germans invaded from Bulgaria on 6 April 1941 the Greeks and the British Expeditionary Force were overrun, and mainland Greece occupied.

On April 23 the King and the government left the Greek mainland for Crete, but after the German airborne attack on the island he was evacuated to Egypt. Once again he went into exile to Great Britain, seemingly at the behest of King Farouk of Egypt and Farouk’s pro-Italian ministers.

During the war he remained the internationally recognized head of state, backed by the exiled government and Greek forces serving in the Middle East. In occupied Greece, however, the leftist partisans of the National Liberation Front, EAM and National Popular Liberation Army, ELAS, now unfettered by Metaxas’ oppression, had become the largest Greek Resistance movement, enjoying considerable popular support. As liberation drew nearer, however, the prospect of the King’s return caused dissensions both inside Greece and among the Greeks abroad. Although the King effectively renounced the Metaxas regime in a radio broadcast, a large section of the people and many politicians rejected his return on account of his support of the dictatorship. In November 1943 George wrote to the Prime Minister-in-exile Emmanouil Tsouderos, “I shall examine anew the question of the date of my return to Greece in agreement with the Government”. Either deliberately or accidentally, the version released for publication omitted the words “of the date”, creating the impression that George had agreed to a further plebiscite on the monarchy, even though a retraction was issued.

After two changes of Prime Minister, the establishment of a rival Communist-led government in occupied Greece and a pro-EAM mutiny among the armed forces in the Middle East, it was agreed in the May 1944 Lebanon conference that the fate of the monarchy would be decided in a national referendum. Bowing to Allied pressure, George was forced to appoint Archbishop Damaskinos of Athens as Regent in January 1945. Damaskinos immediately appointed a republican-dominated government. Ill, exhausted and powerless, George bought a lease on a house in Chester Square, Belgravia and made a home there with his long-time mistress. During World War II the king lived in exile in South Africa and the United Kingdom. After another referendum in favor of the monarchy, he returned to Greece in 1946. George II die I April 1947 and was succeeded by his younger brother, Paul I.

 

 

Charley Havlat

Charley Havlat

Ironically, it was the last American to be killed in Europe during World War II, a soldier who died in the Czech Republic. The irony is that the soldier’s parents emigrated from this land, which was then part of Austria-Hungary. The Havlat immigrate to USA. The family lived in Nebraska. The son Charley was born where 1910. Charley Havlat joins the US army and arrived to UK 1943. He was member of the 803rd Tank Destroyer Battalion. Havlat fight in the invasion of Normandy and in the Ardennes.

In May 1945 the Germans start to surrender. The unit Havlat served in had just crossed the old border to Czechoslovakia the 7 may.  Havlat’s reconnaissance platoon was blindsided by a hail of enemy machine gun and small arms fire from concealed enemy positions. Moments after the attack began, Halvat took a bullet to the head, ending his life. His fellow soldiers returned fire until their radio operator received word that some nine minutes before the ambush; a cease fire order had gone into effect. Taken prisoner, the German officer who led the ambush knew nothing of the cessation of hostilities at the time of the attack, and apologized for the incident. Havlat lost his life a mere six hours before Germany’s unconditional surrender.

Charley Havlat

Arild Hamsun

Arild Hamsun

Was born in 1914 and was the child of the famous authors Knut and Marie Hamsun. The father had received the Nobel Prize in Literature, and both spouses supported Hitler. Arild Hamsun joined the Waffen-SS Nordland and was kriegsberichter – a kind of combat reporter. Hamsun received the Iron Cross.

After the war Hamsun was sentenced to a short prison sentence. He took over his parents’ farm. Arild Hamsun was also a writer and he wrote both before and after the war. Arild Hamsun die 1988.

Arild Hamsun