Reichsgau WarthelandThe Reichsgau Wartheland (initially Reichsgau Posen, also Warthegau) was a Nazi German Reichsgau formed from parts of Polish territory annexed in 1939 during World War II. It comprised the region of Greater Poland and adjacent areas. Parts of Warthegau matched the similarly named pre-Versailles Prussian province of Posen. The name was initially derived from the capital city, Posen (Poznań), and later from the main river, Warthe (Warta). During the Partitions of Poland from 1793, the bulk of the area had been annexed by the Kingdom of Prussia until 1807 as South Prussia.
StahlhelmThe Stahlhelm ('steel helmet') is a German military steel combat helmet intended to provide protection against shrapnels and fragments or shards of grenades. The term Stahlhelm refers both to a generic steel helmet and more specifically to the distinctive German military design. The armies of major European powers introduced helmets of this type during World War I. The German Army began to replace the traditional boiled leather Pickelhaube ('spiked helmet') with the Stahlhelm in 1916.
Barbarossa decreeDuring World War II, the Barbarossa decree was one of the Wehrmacht criminal orders given on 13 May 1941, shortly before Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union. The decree was laid out by Adolf Hitler during a high-level meeting with military officials on March 30, 1941, where he declared that the upcoming war against the Soviets would be a war of extermination, in which both the political and intellectual elites of Russia would be eradicated by German forces, in order to ensure a long-lasting German victory.
German war crimesThe governments of the German Empire and Nazi Germany (under Adolf Hitler) ordered, organized, and condoned a substantial number of war crimes, first in the Herero and Namaqua genocide and then in the First and Second World Wars. The most notable of these is the Holocaust, in which millions of European Jewish, Polish, and Romani people were systematically abused, deported, and murdered. Millions of civilians and prisoners of war also died as a result of German abuses, mistreatment, and deliberate starvation policies in those two conflicts.
