Me & my bf

Japan announced its surrender to the Allies on August 15, six days after the bombing of Nagasaki and the Soviet Union's declaration of war. On September 2, the Japanese government signed the instrument of surrender, effectively ending World War II. The ethical and legal justification for the bombings is still debated to this day.

At the time of its bombing, Hiroshima was a city of both industrial and military significance. A number of military units were located nearby, the most important of which was the headquarters of Field Marshal Shunroku Hata's Second General Army, which commanded the defense of all of southern Japan,[111] and was located in Hiroshima Castle. Hata's command consisted of some 400,000 men, most of whom were on Kyushu where an Allied invasion was correctly anticipated.[112] Also present in Hiroshima were the headquarters of the 59th Army, the 5th Division and the 224th Division, a recently formed mobile unit.[113] The city was defended by five batteries of 7-cm and 8-cm (2.8 and 3.1 inch) anti-aircraft guns of the 3rd Anti-Aircraft Division, including units from the 121st and 122nd Anti-Aircraft Regiments and the 22nd and 45th Separate Anti-Aircraft Battalions. In total, an estimated 40,000 Japanese military personnel were stationed in the city.[114]

Thanks for the history lesson, Sweden

Attached: 1518432505101.png (1079x1225, 1.27M)

Hiroshima was a supply and logistics base for the Japanese military.[115] The city was a communications center, a key port for shipping, and an assembly area for troops.[77] It was a beehive of war industry, manufacturing parts for planes and boats, for bombs, rifles, and handguns.[116] The center of the city contained several reinforced concrete buildings and lighter structures. Outside the center, the area was congested by a dense collection of small timber workshops set among Japanese houses. A few larger industrial plants lay near the outskirts of the city. The houses were constructed of timber with tile roofs, and many of the industrial buildings were also built around timber frames. The city as a whole was highly susceptible to fire damage.[117] It was the second largest city in Japan after Kyoto that was still undamaged by air raids,[118] primarily because it lacked the aircraft manufacturing industry that was the XXI Bomber Command's priority target. On July 3, the Joint Chiefs of Staff placed it off limits to bombers, along with Kokura, Niigata and Kyoto.[119]

The population of Hiroshima had reached a peak of over 381,000 earlier in the war but prior to the atomic bombing, the population had steadily decreased because of a systematic evacuation ordered by the Japanese government. At the time of the attack, the population was approximately 340,000–350,000.[120] Residents wondered why Hiroshima had been spared destruction by firebombing.[121] Some speculated that the city was to be saved for U.S. occupation headquarters, others thought perhaps their relatives in Hawaii and California had petitioned the U.S. government to avoid bombing Hiroshima.[122] More realistic city officials had ordered buildings torn down to create long, straight firebreaks.[123] These continued to be expanded and extended up to the morning of August 6, 1945.[124]

Me & my husband

Attached: cuddle bug.jpg (700x560, 59K)

In a meeting held with Fascist Italy's leader Benito Mussolini and Galeazzo Ciano (the Foreign Minister of Italy) in June 1941, Hitler stated his opinion on Switzerland quite plainly:

"Switzerland possessed the most disgusting and miserable people and political system. The Swiss were the mortal enemies of the new Germany."[2]

In a later discussion the German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop directly alluded to the possibility of carving up Switzerland between the two Axis powers:

"On the Duce's query whether Switzerland, as a true anachronism, had any future, the Reich Foreign Minister smiled and told the Duce that he would have to discuss this with the Führer."[2]

In August 1942, Hitler further described Switzerland as "a pimple on the face of Europe" and as a state that no longer had a right to exist, denouncing the Swiss people as "a misbegotten branch of our Volk."[3] Switzerland as a small, multilingual, decentralized democracy – in which German-speakers felt an affinity with and loyalty towards their French-speaking fellow Swiss citizens, rather than towards their German brothers across the border – was from a National Socialist viewpoint a total antithesis of the racially homogeneous and collectivized "Führer State".[4] Hitler also believed that the independent Swiss state had come to existence due to the temporary weakness of the Holy Roman Empire, and now that its power had been re-established after the National Socialist takeover, the country had become obsolete.[4]

Much as Hitler despised the democratically-minded German Swiss as the "wayward branch of the German people", he still acknowledged their status as Germans.[5] Furthermore, the openly pan-German political aims of the NSDAP called for the unification of all Germans into a Greater Germany, including the Swiss people.[2] The first goal of the 25-point National Socialist Program stated that "We [the National Socialist Party] demand the unification of all Germans in the Greater Germany on the basis of the people's right to self-determination."[6]

In their maps of Greater Germany, German textbooks included the Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, Bohemia-Moravia, the German-speaking parts of Switzerland, and western Poland from Danzig (now Gdańsk) to Kraków. Ignoring Switzerland's status as a sovereign state, these maps frequently showed its territory as a German Gau.[2] The author of one of these textbooks, Ewald Banse, explained, "Quite naturally we count you Swiss as offshoots of the German nation, along with the Dutch, the Flemings, the Lorrainers, the Alsatians, the Austrians and the Bohemians ... One day we will group ourselves around a single banner, and whosoever shall wish to separate us, we will exterminate!"[7] Various Nazis were vocal about the German intent to "expand Germany's boundaries to the farthest limits of the old Holy Roman Empire, and even beyond."[8]

An increase in Swiss defense spending was approved, with a first installment of 15 million Swiss francs (out of a total multiyear budget of 100 million francs) to go towards modernization. With Hitler's renunciation of the Treaty of Versailles in 1935, this spending jumped up to 90 million francs.[10] The K31 became the standard-issue infantry rifle in 1933, and was superior to the German Kar98 in ease of use, accuracy, and weight. By the end of World War II, nearly 350,000 would be produced.[11][dubious – discuss]

Switzerland has a unique form of generalship. In peacetime, there is no officer with a rank higher than that of Korpskommandant (3-star-general). However, in times of war and in 'need', the Bundesversammlung elects a General to command the army and air force. On 30 August 1939, Henri Guisan was elected with 204 votes out of 227 cast.[12] He immediately took charge of the situation.

The invasion of Poland by the Wehrmacht two days later caused Britain to declare war on Germany. Guisan called a general mobilization, and issued Operationsbefehl Nr. 1, the first of what was to be a series of evolving defensive plans. The first assigned the existing three army corps to the east, north, and west, with reserves in the center and south of the country.[13] Guisan reported to the Federal Council on September 7 that by the moment of the British declaration of war, "our entire army had been in its operational positions for ten minutes." He also had his Chief of the General Staff increase the service eligibility age from 48 to 60 years old (men of these ages would form the rear-echelon Landsturm units), and ordered the formation of an entirely new army corps of 100,000 men.[14][15]

Germany started planning the invasion of Switzerland on 25 June 1940, the day France surrendered. At this point the German Army in France consisted of three army groups with two million soldiers in 102 divisions.[16] Switzerland and Liechtenstein were surrounded by Occupied France and the Axis Powers, and so Guisan issued Operationsbefehl Nr. 10, a complete overhaul of existing Swiss defensive plans. The Fortress Saint-Maurice, the Gotthard Pass in the south, and the Fortress Sargans in the northeast would serve as the defense line. The Alps would be their fortress. The Swiss 2nd, 3rd, and 4th Army Corps were to fight delaying actions at the border, while all who could retreated to the Alpine refuge known as the Réduit national. The population centers were, however, all located in the flat plains of the north. They would have to be left to the Germans in order for the rest to survive.[17]

Hitler demanded to see plans for the invasion of Switzerland after the armistice with France. Franz Halder, the head of OKH, recalled: "I was constantly hearing of outbursts of Hitler's fury against Switzerland, which, given his mentality, might have led at any minute to military activities for the army."[18] Captain Otto-Wilhelm Kurt von Menges in OKH submitted a draft plan for the invasion. Generaloberst Wilhelm Ritter von Leeb's Heeresgruppe 'C' (HGr. C), led by Generalleutnant Wilhelm List and 12th Army would conduct the attack. Leeb himself personally reconnoitered the terrain, studying the most promising invasion routes and paths of least resistance.[19] Menges noted, in his plan, that Swiss resistance was unlikely and that a nonviolent Anschluss was the most likely result. With "the current political situation in Switzerland," he wrote, "it might accede to ultimatum demands in a peaceful manner, so that after a warlike border crossing a rapid transition to a peaceful invasion must be assured."[20]

The plan continued to undergo revision until October, when the 12th Army submitted its fourth draft, now called Operation Tannenbaum. The original plan called for 21 German divisions, but that figure was downsized to 11 by the OKH. Halder himself had studied the border areas, and concluded that the "Jura frontier offers no favorable base for an attack. Switzerland rises, in successive waves of wood-covered terrain across the axis of an attack. The crossing points on the river Doubs and the border are few; the Swiss frontier position is strong." He decided on an infantry feint in the Jura in order to draw out the Swiss Army and then cut it off in the rear, as had been done in France. With the 11 German divisions and roughly 15 more Italian divisions prepared to enter from the south, the Swiss were looking at an invasion by somewhere between 300,000 and 500,000 men.[21]

Hitler never gave the go-ahead, for reasons still uncertain today. Some people[who?] think that a neutral Switzerland would have been useful to hide Axis gold and to escape for war criminals in case of defeat. This was also the reason for maintaining Sweden's neutrality. Although the Wehrmacht feigned moves toward Switzerland in its offensives, it never attempted to invade. After D-Day, the operation was put on hold, and Switzerland remained neutral for the duration of the war.

God, i'm so fucking gay

The Normandy landings were the landing operations on Tuesday, 6 June 1944 of the Allied invasion of Normandy in Operation Overlord during World War II. Codenamed Operation Neptune and often referred to as D-Day, it was the largest seaborne invasion in history. The operation began the liberation of German-occupied northwestern Europe from Nazi control, and laid the foundations of the Allied victory on the Western Front.

Planning for the operation began in 1943. In the months leading up to the invasion, the Allies conducted a substantial military deception, codenamed Operation Bodyguard, to mislead the Germans as to the date and location of the main Allied landings. The weather on D-Day was far from ideal and the operation had to be delayed 24 hours; a further postponement would have meant a delay of at least two weeks as the invasion planners had requirements for the phase of the moon, the tides, and the time of day that meant only a few days each month were deemed suitable. Adolf Hitler placed German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel in command of German forces and of developing fortifications along the Atlantic Wall in anticipation of an Allied invasion.

giv bf pls

Attached: qts.jpg (700x973, 83K)

The amphibious landings were preceded by extensive aerial and naval bombardment and an airborne assault—the landing of 24,000 American, British, and Canadian airborne troops shortly after midnight. Allied infantry and armoured divisions began landing on the coast of France at 06:30. The target 50-mile (80 km) stretch of the Normandy coast was divided into five sectors: Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno, and Sword. Strong winds blew the landing craft east of their intended positions, particularly at Utah and Omaha. The men landed under heavy fire from gun emplacements overlooking the beaches, and the shore was mined and covered with obstacles such as wooden stakes, metal tripods, and barbed wire, making the work of the beach-clearing teams difficult and dangerous. Casualties were heaviest at Omaha, with its high cliffs. At Gold, Juno, and Sword, several fortified towns were cleared in house-to-house fighting, and two major gun emplacements at Gold were disabled, using specialised tanks.

The Allies failed to achieve any of their goals on the first day. Carentan, St. Lô, and Bayeux remained in German hands, and Caen, a major objective, was not captured until 21 July. Only two of the beaches (Juno and Gold) were linked on the first day, and all five beachheads were not connected until 12 June; however, the operation gained a foothold which the Allies gradually expanded over the coming months. German casualties on D-Day have been estimated at 4,000 to 9,000 men. Allied casualties were at least 10,000, with 4,414 confirmed dead.

i-if you don't mind i can help

cute desu

Attached: 1523197337137.jpg (649x649, 63K)