Gettysburg National Cemetery

Soldiers National Monument at the center of Gettysburg National Cemetery.

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Shiloh National Military Park

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Shiloh National Military Park preserves the American Civil War Shiloh and Corinth battlefields. The main section of the park is in the unincorporated town of Shiloh, about nine miles (14 km) south of Savannah, Tennessee, with an additional area located in the city of Corinth, Mississippi, 23 miles (37 km) southwest of Shiloh. The Battle of Shiloh began a six-month struggle for the key railroad junction at Corinth. Afterward, Union forces marched from Pittsburg Landing to take Corinth in a May siege, then withstood an October Confederate counter-attack.

Shiloh battlefield

The Battle of Shiloh was one of the first major battles in the Western Theater of the American Civil War. The two-day battle, April 6 and April 7, 1862, involved about 65,000 Union troops under Ulysses S. Grant and Don Carlos Buell and 44,000 Confederates under Albert Sidney Johnston (killed in the battle) and P.G.T. Beauregard. The battle resulted in nearly 24,000 killed, wounded, and missing. The two days of fighting did not end in a decisive tactical victory for either side —the Union held the battlefield but failed to pursue the withdrawing Confederate forces. However, it was a decisive strategic defeat for the Confederate forces that had massed to oppose Grant’s and Buell’s invasion through Tennessee. The battlefield is named after Shiloh Methodist Church, a small log church near Pittsburg Landing, Tennessee.

Other Source:

Established in 1894 to preserve the scene of the first major battle in the Western theater of the Civil War, Shiloh is considered one of the best preserved battlefields in the Nation. Besides preserving the site of the bloody April 1862 battle in Tennessee, the park commemorates the subsequent siege, battle, and occupation of the key railroad junction at nearby Corinth, Mississippi.

Lincoln Memorial

The Lincoln Memorial is an American national monument built to honor the 16th President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln. It is located on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. across from the Washington Monument. The architect was Henry Bacon, the sculptor of the primary statue – Abraham Lincoln, 1920 – was Daniel Chester French, and the painter of the interior murals was Jules Guerin. It is one of several monuments built to honor an American president.

The building is in the form of a Greek Doric temple and contains a large seated sculpture of Abraham Lincoln and inscriptions of two well-known speeches by Lincoln, The Gettysburg Address and his Second Inaugural Address. The memorial has been the site of many famous speeches, including Martin Luther King‘s “I Have a Dream” speech, delivered on August 28, 1963 during the rally at the end of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.

Like other monuments on the National Mall – including the nearby Vietnam Veterans Memorial, Korean War Veterans Memorial, and National World War II Memorial – the memorial is administered by the National Park Service under its National Mall and Memorial Parks group. It has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places since October 15, 1966. It is open to the public 24 hours a day. In 2007, it was ranked seventh on the List of America’s Favorite Architecture by the American Institute of Architects.

Description	English: The Lincoln Memorial is a United States Presidential memorial built to honor the 16th President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln. It is located on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. The building is in the form of a Greek Doric temple and contains a large seated sculpture of Abraham Lincoln and inscriptions of two well-known speeches by Lincoln. Nederlands: Het Lincolnmonument is een presidentieel memoriaal om de zestiende president van de VS, Abraham Lincoln, te eren. Het is gelegen aan het uiteinde van de National Mall in Washington DC. Het gebouw heeft de vorm van een Griekse Dorische tempel, binnenin staat het monumentale beeld van een zittende Abraham Lincoln en inscripties met twee van zijn bekendste speeches (inauguratie en Gettysburg address)
Date	July 2007
Source	Own work
Author	Ad Meskens

Washington Monument

The Washington Monument is an obelisk on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., built to commemorate the first US president, General George Washington. The monument, made of marble, granite, and bluestone gneiss,^[1] is both the world’s tallest stone structure and the world’s tallest obelisk, standing 555 feet 5¹⁄₈ inches (169.294 m).^{[n 1]} Taller monumental columns exist, but they are neither all stone nor true obelisks.^{[n 2]} Construction of the monument began in 1848, but was halted from 1854 to 1877, and finally completed in 1884.

The hiatus in construction happened because of co-option by the Know Nothing party, a lack of funds, and the intervention of the American Civil War. A difference in shading of the marble, visible approximately 150 feet (46 m) or 27% up, shows where construction was halted. Its original design was by Robert Mills, an architect of the 1840s, but his design was modified significantly when construction resumed. The cornerstone was laid on July 4, 1848; the capstone was set on December 6, 1884, and the completed monument was dedicated on February 21, 1885.^[7] It officially opened October 9, 1888. Upon completion, it became the world’s tallest structure, a title previously held by the Cologne Cathedral. The monument held this designation until 1889, when the Eiffel Tower was completed in Paris, France. The monument stands due east of the Reflecting Pool and the Lincoln Memorial. The monument was damaged during the Virginia earthquake of August 23, 2011 and Hurricane Irene in 2011; it remains closed to the public while the structure is assessed and repaired.^[8] The National Park Service estimates the monument will be closed until 2014. Difficulties in repair include complexities such as the time needed to erect scaffolding.^[9]

Benjamin Franklin National Memorial

The Benjamin Franklin National Memorial, located in the rotunda of The Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, features a colossal statue of seated Benjamin Franklin. The 20-foot (6.1 m)-tall memorial, sculpted by James Earle Fraser between 1906 and 1911, honors the writer, inventor and American statesman. With a weight of 30 short tons (27 t), the statue stands on a 92-short-ton (83 t) pedestal of white Seravezza marble.^[2] The statue is the focal piece of the memorial hall, designed by John T. Windrim after the Pantheon, dedicated in 1938.

Vietnam War (1955 – 1975)

An alleged NLF activist, captured during an attack on an American outpost near the Cambodian border, is interrogated. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955[A 1] to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of South Vietnam, supported by the United States and other anti-communist countries.[26] The Viet Cong (also known as the National Liberation Front, or NLF), a lightly armed South Vietnamese communist-controlled common front, largely fought a guerrilla war against anti-communist forces in the region. The Vietnam People’s Army (North Vietnamese Army) engaged in a more conventional war, at times committing large units into battle. U.S. and South Vietnamese forces relied on air superiority and overwhelming firepower to conduct search and destroy operations, involving ground forces, artillery, and airstrikes. The U.S.

Government viewed involvement in the war as a way to prevent a communist takeover of South Vietnam as part of their wider strategy of containment. The North Vietnamese government and Viet Cong viewed the conflict as a colonial war, fought initially against France, backed by the U.S., and later against South Vietnam, which it regarded as a U.S. puppet state.[27] American military advisors arrived in what was then French Indochina beginning in 1950. U.S. involvement escalated in the early 1960s, with troop levels tripling in 1961 and tripling again in 1962.[28] U.S. combat units were deployed beginning in 1965. Operations spanned international borders, with Laos and Cambodia heavily bombed. American involvement in the war peaked in 1968, at the time of the Tet Offensive. After this, U.S. ground forces were gradually withdrawn as part of a policy known as Vietnamization. Despite the Paris Peace Accords, signed by all parties in January 1973, fighting continued.

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National World War II Memorial

National World War II Memorial

 

The Liberty Memorial – The National World War I Museum

The Liberty Memorial, located in Kansas City, Missouri, USA, is a memorial to the soldiers who died in World War I and houses The National World War I Museum, as designated by the United States Congress in 2004.^[3] Groundbreaking commenced November 1, 1921, and the city held a site dedication. The memorial was completed and dedicated on November 11, 1926.

On September 21, 2006, Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne declared Liberty Memorial a National Historic Landmark.^[4]

Germany The Third Reich 1933-45

Germany The Third Reich, 1933-45

Sources: The Library of Congress Country Studies; CIA World Factbook Adolf Hitler was born in the Austrian border town of Braunau am Inn in 1889. When he was seventeen, he was refused admission to the Vienna Art Academy, having been found insufficiently talented. He remained in Vienna, however, where he led a bohemian existence, acquiring an ideology based on belief in a German master race that was threatened by an international Jewish conspiracy responsible for many of the world’s problems. Hitler remained in Vienna until 1913, when he moved to Munich. After serving with bravery in the German army during World War I, he joined the right-wing Bavarian German Workers’ Party in 1919. The following year, the party changed its name to the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (National-Sozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei–NSDAP). Its members were known as Nazis, a term derived from the German pronunciation of “National.” In 1921 Hitler assumed leadership of the NSDAP.

As leader of the NSDAP, Hitler reorganized the party and encouraged the assimilation of other radical right-wing groups. Gangs of unemployed demobilized soldiers were gathered under the command of a former army officer, Ernst Röhm, to form the Storm Troops (Sturmabteilung–SA), Hitler’s private army. Under Hitler’s leadership, the NSDAP joined with others on the right in denouncing the Weimar Republic and the “November criminals” who had signed the Treaty of Versailles. The postwar economic slump won the party a following among unemployed ex-soldiers, the lower middle class, and small farmers; in 1923 membership totaled about 55,000. General Ludendorff supported the former corporal in the Beer Hall Putsch of November 1923 in Munich, an attempt to overthrow the Bavarian government. The putsch failed, and Hitler received a light sentence of five years, of which he served less than one. Incarcerated in relative comfort, he wrote Mein Kampf (My Struggle), in which he set out his long-term political aims.

After the failure of the putsch, Hitler turned to “legal revolution” as the means to power and chose two parallel paths to take the Nazis to that goal. First, the NSDAP would employ propaganda to create a national mass party capable of coming to power through electoral successes. Second, the party would develop a bureaucratic structure and prepare itself to assume roles in government. Beginning in the mid-1920s, Nazi groups sprang up in other parts of Germany. In 1927 the NSDAP organized the first Nuremberg party congress, a mass political rally. By 1928 party membership exceeded 100,000; the Nazis, however, polled only 2.6 percent of the vote in the Reichstag elections in May.

A mere splinter party in 1928, the NSDAP became better known the following year when it formed an alliance with the DNVP to launch a plebiscite against the Young Plan on the issue of reparations. The DNVP’s leader, Alfred Hugenberg, owner of a large newspaper chain, considered Hitler’s spellbinding oratory a useful means of attracting votes. The DNVP-NSDAP union brought the NSDAP within the framework of a socially influential coalition of the antirepublican right. As a result, Hitler’s party acquired respectability and access to wealthy contributors.

Had it not been for the economic collapse that began with the Wall Street stock market crash of October 1929, Hitler probably would not have come to power. The Great Depression hit Germany hard because the German economy’s well-being depended on short-term loans from the United States. Once these loans were recalled, Germany was devastated. Unemployment went from 8.5 percent in 1929 to 14 percent in 1930, to 21.9 percent in 1931, and, at its peak, to 29.9 percent in 1932. Compounding the effects of the Depression were the drastic economic measures taken by Center Party politician Heinrich Brüning, who served as chancellor from March 1930 until the end of May 1932. Brüning’s budget cuts were designed to cause so much misery that the Allies would excuse Germany from making any further reparations payments. In this at least, Brüning succeeded. United States president Herbert Hoover declared a “reparations moratorium” in 1932. In the meantime, the Depression deepened, and social discontent intensified to the point that Germany seemed on the verge of civil war.

In times of desperation, voters are ready for extreme solutions, and the NSDAP exploited the situation. Skilled Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels launched an intensive media campaign that ceaselessly expounded a few simple notions until even the dullest voter knew Hitler’s basic program. The party’s program was broad and general enough to appeal to many unemployed people, farmers, white-collar workers, members of the middle class who had been hurt by the Depression or had lost status since the end of World War I, and young people eager to dedicate themselves to nationalist ideals. If voters were not drawn to some aspects of the party platform, they might agree with others. Like other right-wing groups, the party blamed the Treaty of Versailles and reparations for the developing crisis. Nazi propaganda attacked the Weimar political system, the “November criminals,” Marxists, internationalists, and Jews. Besides promising a solution to the economic crisis, the NSDAP offered the German people a sense of national pride and the promise of restored order.

Three elections–in September 1930, in July 1932, and in November 1932–were held between the onset of the Depression and Hitler’s appointment as chancellor in January 1933. The vote shares of the SPD and the Center Party fluctuated somewhat yet remained much as they had been in 1928, when the SPD held a large plurality of 153 seats in the Reichstag and the Center Party held sixty-one, third after the DNVP’s seventy-three seats. The shares of the parties of the extreme left and extreme right, the KPD and the NSDAP, respectively, increased dramatically in this period, KPD holdings almost doubling from fifty-four in 1928 to 100 in November 1932. The NSDAP’s success was even greater. Beginning with twelve seats in 1928, the Nazis increased their delegation seats nearly tenfold, to 107 seats in 1930. They doubled their holdings to 230 in the summer of 1932. This made the NSDAP the largest party in the Reichstag, far surpassing the SPD with its 133 seats. The gains of the NSDAP came at the expense of the other right-wing parties.

Chancellor Brüning was unable to secure parliamentary majorities for his austerity policy, so he ruled by decree, a right given him by President Hindenburg. Head of the German army during World War I, Hindenburg had been elected president in 1925. Ruling without parliament was a major step in moving away from parliamentary democracy and had the approval of many on the right. Many historians see this development as part of a strategic plan formulated at the time by elements of the conservative establishment to abolish the republic and replace it with an authoritarian regime.

By late May 1932, Hindenburg had found Brüning insufficiently pliable and named a more conservative politician, Franz von Papen, as his successor. After the mid-1932 elections that made the NSDAP Germany’s largest party, Papen sought to harness Hitler for the purposes of traditional conservatives by offering him the post of vice chancellor in a new cabinet. Hitler refused this offer, demanding the chancellorship instead.

General Kurt von Schleicher, a master intriguer and a leader of the conservative campaign to abolish the republic, convinced Hindenburg to dismiss Papen. Schleicher formed a new government in December but lost Hindenburg’s support within a month. On January 30, 1933, Papen again put together a cabinet, this time with Hitler as chancellor. Papen and other conservatives thought they could tame Hitler by tying him down with the responsibilities of government and transferring to themselves his tremendous popularity with a large portion of the electorate. But they proved no match for his ruthlessness and his genius at knowing how–and when–to seize power. Within two months, Hitler had dictatorial control over Germany.
The Third Reich, 1933-45

Data as of August 1995

NOTE: The information regarding Germany on this page is re-published from The Library of Congress Country Studies and the CIA World Factbook. No claims are made regarding the accuracy of Germany The Third Reich, 1933-45 information contained here. All suggestions for corrections of any errors about Germany The Third Reich, 1933-45 should be addressed to the Library of Congress and the CIA.

Citation model:

The World Factbook 2009. Washington, DC: Central Intelligence Agency, 2009.

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/index.html
Comments and queries are welcome and may be addressed to:

Central Intelligence Agency
Attn: Office of Public Affairs
Washington, DC 20505
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German Order (decoration)

The German Order (German: Deutscher Orden) was the most important award that the Nazi Party could bestow on an individual for “duties of the highest order to the state and party” and designed by Benno von Arent. This award was first made by Adolf Hitler posthumously to Reichsminister Fritz Todt at his funeral in February 1942. A second posthumous award of the German Order was given to SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich at his funeral in June of that same year.

Cynics called the award the “dead hero order” as it was almost always awarded posthumously. The only two persons who received the German Order who survived the war and its consequences were Konstantin Hierl and Arthur Axmann.

The German Order was originally to be awarded in three grades, but only the neck order (the highest grade) was ever awarded. This award ranks the second rarest award in the Third Reich (second only to the National Prize for Art and Science). The holders of this award were supposed to form a confraternity.

Adolf Hitler viewed this award as his personal decoration to be bestowed only upon those whose services to the state and party he deemed worthy. For this reason, plus the fact that the reverse of the medal bears a facsimile of his signature, it was also informally known as the ‘Hitler Order’.

There were in all eleven confirmed recipients of this award between 1942 and 1945. According to some documents, the order was intended to be awarded to Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler and Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz, but this was never done.

Confirmed Recipients and Date of Award

• Fritz Todt (posthumous), February 12, 1942
• Reinhard Heydrich (posthumous), June 9, 1942
• Adolf Hühnlein (posthumous), June 21, 1942
• Viktor Lutze (posthumous), May 8, 1943
• Adolf Wagner (posthumous) April 17, 1944
• Josef Bürckel (committed suicide September 28, 1944), October 3, 1944
• Rudolf Schmundt (posthumous), October 7, 1944
• Konstantin Hierl, February 24, 1945
• Karl Hanke (killed during a POW escape attempt at a transport, June 8, 1945), April 12, 1945
• Karl Holz (killed in action April 20, 1945), April 19, 1945
• Artur Axmann, April 28, 1945