Sunday, May 7, 2017

Visegrád Group - V4


The Visegrád GroupVisegrád Triangle, Visegrád Four, or V4, is a cultural and political alliance of four Central European states – the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia, that are members of the European Union (EU) and NATO – for the purposes of advancing military, cultural, economic and energy cooperation with one another along with furthering their integration in the EU.

The Group traces its origins to the summit meetings of leaders from [3 nations] Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Poland held in the Hungarian castle-town of Visegrád on 15 February 1991. Visegrád was chosen as the location for the 1991 meeting as an intentional allusion to the medieval Congress of Visegrád in 1335 between John I of Bohemia, Charles I of Hungary and Casimir III of Poland

From the 1500s, large parts of the present-day countries became part of or were influenced by the Vienna-based Habsburg Monarchy, until after the end of WW1 and the dissolution of the Habsburg-ruled Austria-Hungary. After WW2, the countries became satellite states of the Soviet Union as the Polish People's Republic, the Hungarian People's Republic and the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic. In 1989 came the Fall of the Berlin Wall and after the Fall of Communism in Central and Eastern Europe. The Visegrád Triangle was founded (15 February 1991) between the 1990 end of the three Communist People's Republics and the December, 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union collapsed.

The group was referred to as the Visegrád Triangle prior to the dissolution of Czechoslovakia into the Czech Republic and Slovakia in 1993.
After the dissolution of Czechoslovakia in 1993, the Czech Republic and Slovakia became independent members of the group, thus increasing the number of members from three to four. All four members of the Visegrád Group joined the European Union on 1 May 2004.
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Geostrategic Projection
European Geostrategic Projection ..
NATO

Monday, April 3, 2017

45-9-4 Forgotten German Unit Surrenders

A small group of German soldiers deployed on Svalbard in Operation Haudegen to establish and man a weather station there lost radio contact in May 1945; they surrendered to some Norwegian seal hunters on 4 September , 1945, two days after the Surrender of Japan.

The Forgotten Wehrmacht Unit | Last Germans to Surrender after WW2 > .

On the 7th of May 1945, the German General Alfred Jodl signed the unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany at the Allied headquarters in Reims, France. It meant the Second World War had come to an end, at least, in the European theatre of war.

But… the war didn’t end for a small Wehrmacht unit consisting of 11 men that were housed at Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago in the Arctic Ocean. The Wehrmacht unit was tasked with a secret mission named Operation Haudegen. They had to establish meteorological stations on Svalbard. In the chaos following the German capitulation, this Wehrmacht unit was forgotten… And these men would eventually, stuck on an island in the freezing cold, far from civilization, months after Germany’s capitulation. They would become the last German soldiers to surrender after the Second World War.

Hitler’s Holdouts – Meet the Last German Troops to Surrender in WW2
VE Plus 119 - The very last German troops of the Second World War to call it quits turned themselves in to a band of Norwegian seal hunters on the remote Bear Island in the Barents Sea on Sept. 4, 1945 – nearly four months after VE Day! The small detachment had been sent to the distant Arctic outpost to establish a weather station sometime late in the war. Having lost radio contact with headquarters in May. They gave up without a fight.

sī vīs pācem, parā bellum

igitur quī dēsīderat pācem praeparet bellum    therefore, he who desires peace, let him prepare for war sī vīs pācem, parā bellum if you wan...