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This study presents the organization and functioning of the strategic planning process during between September 1940, when power was seized by General Ion Antonescu, who became the leader of the Romanian state, temporarily associating himself with the Legionary Movement, and June 22, 1941, when Romania joined Germany in "Operation Barbarossa" with the goal of liberating Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina, both annexed by the Soviet Union the year before. Romania's most important strategic objective was to defend its eastern borders, specifically the region between River Prut and Eastern Carpathians, the Danube mouths and the Romanian littoral at the Black Sea. In spite of the guarantees offered by Germany and Italy on August 30, 1940, the Soviet Union maintained an aggressive conduct. This fact triggered the deployment to this region of the most important forces, the erection of important fortification, such as the Focani-Nămoloasa-Brăila fortified line, and the elaboration of projects aiming to repel a potential aggressive action. After the arrival of the German Military Mission and Romania becoming a member of the Tripartite Pact, the plans of the General Staff were adjusted in accordance with German needs, represented by the two major operations, "Marita" and "Barbarossa". If, in what the former was concerned, Romania only had a modest role, in the latter Bucharest had a major interest, Ion Antonescu believing that the reclamation of the two provinces could only be achieved with German help. As a consequence, the General Staff, which was the structure tasked with strategic planning, followed the directives of the German High Command, taking steps to prepare the Romanian forces for action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From October 1940, the activity of the German Military Mission to Romania had multiple consequences over the Romanian-German relations during the regime of Ion Antonescu. The presence of the German troops marked not only Romania's irreversible entry into the German sphere of influence and the beginning of the process of readjustment of the Romanian army to the requirements of modern warfare, but also Romania's involvement in the military plans of the Third Reich. The role of the German Military Mission as a "transmission belt" between the Wehrmacht and the Romanian army would become apparent during the preparations of the operations "Marita" and especially "Barbarossa". To this end, one of the most important tasks of the German Military Mission was to evaluate the combat capacity of the Romanian army in view of the projected operations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The extensive and articulated report by General Hans Leyers, Plenipotentiary for Armament and War Production for Italy of the Third Reich Minister for Armaments and War Production, represents a document of great value, which confirms some hypotheses and offers new elements on the characters of the German occupation from an economic point of view and on the complexity of the relations between the various structures and actors, from the Italian industrialists to the organs of the RSI, to the German military and to the offices in charge of economic exploitation. Between 1943 and 1945 the Plenipotentiary pursued in a pragmatic way, and aiming at developing the collaboration of Italian industrialists, a continuous adaptation to a rapidly worsening military situation, while the Italian economic world acted thinking about the scenery that would be outlined in the postwar period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The historiography of the German opposition to Hitler involved in the putsch on 20 July 1944 is very mature. Nevertheless we still lack a comprehensive view of the involvement in Nazi excesses of many major participants. This article presents new evidence and consolidates earlier knowledge about three key actors, Colonel Claus Schenk Count von Stauffenberg, Brigadier General Henning von Tresckow, and Fritz-Dietlof Count von der Schulenburg. It demonstrates that they were prima facie perpetrators of Crimes against peace, War crimes, and Crimes against humanity, as defined by international jurisprudence after 1945. The article should inform future studies of the conspiracy and of the mental trajectories of its participants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the period immediately following the Second World War, during which Germany was occupied by the four victorious Allies, fierce competition erupted between them over the spoils of German military science and technology. Among this four-power squabbling, the British and Soviet authorities engaged in a particularly desperate struggle, especially over recruitment of expert German personnel, which they felt might give them the edge in any future conflict. This article explores the policies which arose from this struggle and shows that the first act of the Cold War arms race played out most vividly amongst the ruins of the Third Reich. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the capacity of the German Army to establish key conditions for successful tactical- and operational-level adaptation, innovation and emulation. In doing so, it explores the factors which stimulate and block adaptation, innovation and emulation. The article points to the need for accounts of German foreign, defence and security policy to pay greater attention to the intra-organisational barriers to effective policy implementation. Finally, it highlights avenues for future empirical and theoretical research on military change, especially the need for greater understanding of the role of learning processes in linking military adaptation in the field to wider organisational learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of College of Education is the property of Republic of Iraq Ministry of Higher Education & Scientific Research (MOHESR) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article analyses the cases of military actions in the territory of Western Lithuania and Latvia from 1915 to 1945. At the same time, attention is paid to the operational plans of the Lithuanian and Latvian military forces in the second half of the 1930s. Using this method of analysis, based on military history research, an alternative defence concept for small countries whose defence depends on allies not only with ground capabilities but also with naval military capabilities and capabilities to conduct air operations, is disclosed. The strategic directions in which armies invade and retreat in the Eastern Baltic region in the first half of the twentieth century are essentially the same. Only changing technologies, capability of mobility and firepower, and growing/increasing opportunities have affected the pace and geography of military action. In 1915, the Russian army did not concentrate its forces in Courland, and through it the German army saw the possibility of manoeuvring in the northern wing. This helped to defeat the enemy on the Venta-Dubysa river line and take advantage of the success and maintain the initiative to occupy the entire territory of Lithuania by the autumn and reach the left bank of the Daugava. These operations influenced the military planning of interwar Lithuania and Latvia. In 1941, the German forces invaded to the east in the same direction as in 1915, the only difference being that the enemy failed to stop them in Samogitia and Courland, although there was some stopping at Raseiniai near Dubysa. In 1944, the Red Army (RA) broke into the Baltic Sea near Palanga - which is what it failed to do in 1919 - forming the Courland pocket, a bridgehead in which German forces, defending the sea with a sea connection to Germany, were cut off for seven months, from 10 October to 9 May 1945. The Curonian Boiler/bridgehead forces surrendered only after the German capitulation. Klaipėda was defended by the German military for more than 3 months: from October 10, 1944 to January 28, 1945, when there was a threat that the land route through the Curonian Spit would be interrupted; they abandoned the city and left it to the Red Army without a battle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Botulinum toxin is nowadays approved as an effective medication for various neurological disorders. The extreme toxicity of this toxin-inducing botulism, a severe lethal muscle-paralyzing illness, has been well known since the seminal works of the end of the 19th century. Because of this toxicity, botulinum toxin was one of the first agents to be considered for use as a biological weapon. The Second World War was a crucial period for the first attempts to weaponize this toxin even if many unknown factors about botulinum toxin still existed at the outbreak of the war. Using documents from the British National Archives and other published sources, we discuss the main points of the attempts to weaponize this toxin in German and Allied armies. During WW2, Allied intelligence services regularly reported a major German threat related to the potential use of botulinum toxin as a biological weapon, especially during the preparation of Operation Overlord, the Allied invasion to liberate Europe. All these reports would ultimately prove to be inaccurate: botulinum toxin was not part of the German military arsenal even if some German scientists tried to use the results of the French pre-war military research. Misinformation spread by intelligence services stimulated military research at Porton Down facilities in England and at Camp Detrick in the USA. These studies led to a succession of failures and myths about the weaponization of botulinum toxin. Nevertheless, major progress (purification, toxoid) arose from the military research, providing useful data for the first steps of the therapeutic use of botulinum toxin in the post-war years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This year will mark the end of an important stage in German political life, which has been dominated for more than a decade and a half by a coalition government led by Chancellor Angela Merkel and dominated by the Christian Democrats. Angela Merkel's legacy will depend heavily on the evolution of Germany's new political configuration, starting this autumn and will create challenges for the next federal chancellor, who will have to lead the future German executive for the next four years. In the context of new security challenges in Europe, in which Russia's expansionist tendencies at the eastern border and in the Black Sea are growing, Germany is deeply committed to "revitalizing" the transatlantic relationship with its main US ally, at least at pre-Trump's era, but also to become more actively involved in international politics, with the goal of becoming a "key player" in strengthening global and multilateral institutions, but also for his assertion as a leader, both internationally and especially within the EU. Last but not least, Germany is campaigning for increased EU -NA TO cooperation, an important element in strengthening European defense and security. Based on these objectives, the German Federal Government and the leadership of the Federal Ministry of Defense are increasingly concerned about the need for an in-depth analysis of Germany's security situation, while adapting to the new conditions of security and defense policy, as well as for adapting the objective, missions and organization of the Bundeswehr to the new conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why to go back to 1985 to discuss present-day key concerns of international relations from the perspective of World War II history during the Cold War? The May 5, 1985 Bitburg cemetery celebrations, when US president altogether with German chancellor (Helmut Kohl) paid tribute to WWII veterans (of both sides of the conflict) was an example of the Ronald Reagan administration's public relations fiasco: the "Great Communicator" failed to refer to WWII history in a manner that would save him from harsh criticism. Importantly, the 1985 debate concerning the Bitburg ceremony and the moral aspects of a homage to German (Axis) WWII soldiers gave an incentive to "Historikerstreit" in Germany, a dispute regarding WWII history in a manner comparable to Holocaust responsibility as a collective burden carried by Germans. The Bitburg cemetery, since the 1930s a monument (Kolmeshöhe Ehrenfriedhof) to WWI German military victims, and then to their younger colleagues during WWII (Wehrmacht and, controversially, Waffen-SS) remained a broadly commented upon focal point of Cold War disputes, allowing such questions that might bring about a possibility of ground-breaking change in present-day political rivalries caused by failed (or successful) Cold War propaganda related to WWII choices. The Bitburg case presents itself as a particularly illustrative one and could also shed more light on the post-Soviet Russian effort to increase its influence by relying on the myths of the "Great Patriotic War". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista Universitaria de Historia Militar (RUHM) is the property of Centro de Estudios de la Guerra and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article contributes to the growing debate on parliamentary war powers and shows how parliaments matter in shaping both force deployment and force employment. Through original analysis of the Italian and German decision-making on military interventions after the Cold War, the article illustrates how formal and informal constraints shape the opportunity structures faced by executives that are willing to undertake military interventions. Revisiting, and building on, the great deal of research recently emerged on institutional constraints to the use of force, the article details the types of costs – namely, transaction and audience costs – linked to involvement of legislatives in the decision-making and provides empirical support for theories based on parliamentary war powers, adding new dimensions of analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At the 55th Congress for General Medicine and Family Medicine (DEGAM) in Lübeck, the German Armed Forces (Bundeswehr) medical service was represented for the first time with several contributions at a DEGAM congress. Family physicians form the largest group of specialists in the Bundeswehr. In speciality training as well as in provided care there are large overlaps between civilian family physicians and those in the armed forces. The aim of this article is to report on the workshop "Learning together and from one another - synergy potentials in speciality training and care between the medical services of the Bundeswehr and civilian family medicine". Brief lectures and presentations of the current postgraduate training and care models from both "worlds" on the subjects of postgraduate training to become a family physician in the armed forces, the competence-based general medicine curriculum and the German network of competence centers in postgraduate training formed starting points for a joint discussion. The first very specific plan that emerged was participation in and use of the competence centers for postgraduate training by trainers and trainees in the armed forces, in order to promote exchange at this level as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By focusing so intently on rescuing German military psychiatrists from what she sees as a one-sided interpretation of their beliefs and actions, Bennette may have missed an opportunity to also look for continuities, and thus to deepen our understanding of the troubling consequences of the pathologizing of dissent. Bennette supports her argument by turning to documents used only sparingly by other historians of German military psychiatry - patient files. [Extracted from the article]

The following article explores the collective identifications (or self-perceptions) among members of the Danish-speaking minority in the Imperial German Army during the First World War, including views on German conscription and military service. Danish historians have traditionally portrayed the minority as soldiers who only served with reluctance, hoping for German defeat in the war and a 'reunification' between their home-region, North Schleswig, and the State of Denmark. However, the vast majority of Danish-speakers were well integrated in the German army and served as reliable soldiers throughout the course of the war. At first glance, this seems to constitute a contradiction, but this article will illustrate how members of the Danish minority, in order to serve as loyal soldiers, on the one hand reconciled ideas of both Danish and regional affiliation, as well as ancestral loyalty and civic rights, with feelings of coercion, discrimination and German enmity on the other. Furthermore, feelings of obligation, responsibility and civic duty was also connected with German military service. It will be argued that the key to understand the sometimes-contradictory self-perceptions of the Danish minority soldiers lays in how many-sided understandings of community encased or negotiated feelings of reluctance. If the war experiences of the Danish-speaking minority are viewed in a purely national perspective, it become difficult to explain the various forms of self-perception present in the source material: For instance, German military service could be justified as a way to secure Danish interests regionally within the German state, and a way to improve civic rights for the minority group. In this way, the self-perceptions of a minority soldiers could be Danish in terms of national affiliation, but to a high degree collective 'identity' also had the regional community at its centre. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Influence of transversal reinforcement on the crackin behaviour of reinforced concrete slabs under service load In the framework of a research project at the Universität der Bundeswehr München, experimental and theoretical studies were conducted to observe the influence of reinforcement on the crack and deformation behaviour of reinforced slabs in the serviceability limit state. Besides experimental investigations on the influence of reinforcement bars, arranged perpendicular to the direction of tensile stress, on cracking in reinforced concrete strips, tests on concrete slabs with inclined reinforcement mesh subjected to uniaxial and biaxial bending load were also conducted. Overall, the evaluation of the test results showed a significant influence of the perpendicular and skewed arranged reinforcement bars on cracking behaviour of reinforced concrete slabs under particular conditions. On the basis of preliminary mechanical considerations, test results and additional numerical parameter studies, an approach to calculate the crack spacing and the crack width in concrete slabs, based on the classical crack model and with taking the influence of arbitrary reinforcement direction into account, was developed. The following article presents selected contents of the conducted investigations and summarizes the essential results of the research project. The focus is on experimental investigations on slabs under uniaxial bending load. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Der Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND) war im Untersuchungszeitraum 1953 bis 1968 ein Auslandsnachrichtendienst mit Fähigkeiten eines Militärnachrichtendienstes. Im Kriegsfall wäre dieser mobilisiert und seine Zentrale nach Spanien verlegt worden. Dieser »Kriegs-BND« wäre seinen Aufgaben nach ein Militärnachrichtendienst gewesen. Mit Aufbau der Bundeswehr wäre er auf über 12 000 Mitarbeiter aufgewachsen. Er wäre, in sechs jeweils von einem aktiven oder Brigadegeneral der Reserve der Bundeswehr geführten Abteilungen gegliedert sowie von Generalleutnant der Reserve Gehlen geführt, der amerikanischen CIA unterstellt worden. Dies zeigt, wie die Bundesrepublik Deutschland in der Nachkriegszeit für den potenziellen Kriegsfall Regelungen anstrebte, um trotz des angenommenen Verlustes weiter Teile des Staatsterritoriums ein Höchstmaß an staatlicher Souveränität zu bewahren. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Während des Kalten Krieges existierte weithin ein stabiles Kriegsszenario im Ostseeraum. Vereinte westdeutsch-dänische Land-, Luft-, und Seestreitkräfte würden die Ostseeausgänge vor einem sowjetischen, polnischen, ostdeutschen Angriff verteidigen. Die Streitkräfte der sozialistischen Ostseestaaten würden auf der Kimbrischen Halbinsel vorstoßen sowie Landungskräfte gegen die dänischen Inseln einsetzen und damit die Flanken der Hauptoffensive in Zentraleuropa abdecken und die Sowjetische Ostseeflotte würde den Sprung in die Nordsee ermöglichen. Auf Basis genau dieser Annahme führten beide Seiten im Ost-West-Konflikt über Jahrzehnte ihre militärischen Übungen durch. Umso wichtiger gestalteten sich die Vorbereitungen, die bereits zu Friedenszeiten ergriffen werden konnten. Dieser Artikel fokussiert vor allem auf die westliche Seite und ihre Verteidigung des dänischen Raumes. Besondere Berücksichtigung finden dabei die folgenden Faktoren: Verstärkungen, Ausbau militärischer Strukturen, nachrichtendienstliche Tätigkeit, Kernwaffen und Zivilverteidigung. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Der Beitrag beschäftigt sich mit dem militärischen Mobilmachungssystem in der DDR. Im Rahmen der Umstellung von Frieden auf Krieg in allen gesellschaftlichen Bereichen nahm die Mobilmachung der Nationalen Volksarmee (NVA) einen zentralen Platz ein. Ihre Struktur-, Mobilmachungs- und Einsatzplanungen waren eng miteinander verknüpft. Im Mobilmachungsfall sollten unter anderen fünf Divisionen der NVA-Landstreitkräfte auf der Basis sogenannter Ausbildungszentren personell und materiell aufgestellt werden, um nach 48 Stunden Mobilmachung und weiteren 48 Stunden Ausbildung voll einsatzbereit zu sein. Ständige Kontrollen und Überprüfungen unterstrichen die Bedeutung der Mobilmachungsarbeit in den ostdeutschen Streitkräften. Die militärische Mobilmachung als Teil des gesamtstaatlichen Mobilmachungssystems förderte die Militarisierung der ostdeutschen Gesellschaft in erheblichem Maße. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When the German Empire was founded in 1871, the country had one of the highest birth rates in Europe. In particular in contrast to its French neighbour, the German population was massively growing. From a military point of view, this development was seen as a huge advantage. With its population surplus, the German army had more than enough soldiers and was able to conscript only the fittest recruits. But the situation changed in the years before and during the First World War. The German birth rate started to decline and reached an all-time low during the war. This article analyses the army's perception of the change in the demographic development and its influence on pronatalist policies in Imperial Germany with a focus on the First World War. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

If all states want to survive, why do some of them enter unpropitious alliances? International Relations (IR) theory's conventional answer is that imperfect information and systemic complexity result in miscalculation. This explanation begs the question: any alliance that fails is a miscalculated one, so the puzzle is not whether but why such mistakes are made. This article imports from recent scholarship on network theory and interpersonal trust to offer an alternative explanation. Alliances are not entities ethereally formed out of strategic imperatives, but products of interactions within transnational social networks of political, military, and business elites in the prospective allies. Such interactions enable alliances because people who are connected to each other through mutual association or previous exchanges develop mutual trust and gain subjective certainty about each other's intentions and capabilities, which points at a previously ignored mechanism in alliance behavior: brokerage. In a case study that combines theory-based archival research and social network analysis, this article uses historical evidence on the Turco-German alliance to empirically demonstrate the brokerage role Colmar von der Goltz, the head of the German military mission to the Ottoman Empire, played in the two countries' relations at the turn of the century and their eventual alliance in the First World War. The analysis points at a potential means of bridging IR, history, and sociology while expanding our understanding of alliance behavior and providing policy-relevant insights on geo-economic competition and the weaponization of interdependence at a time of growing strategic rivalry on the world stage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]