title: Dhruv Vikram

text: Dhruv was to have made his feature film debut with Bala's "Varmaa", a remake of the Telugu film "Arjun Reddy" (2017); however, the release of the film was stalled after the producer was not content about the final product. The film was relaunched as "Adithya Varma" with Dhruv continuing his role, and released in 2019 with M. Suganth of "The Times of India" noting that "Dhruv Vikram comes up with a performance that captures Vijay Deverakonda's intense and raw act from the original note for note, but there is an assuredness and honesty here that makes us appreciate it rather than dismiss it just as mimicry". "Varmaa" had a delayed release in 2020 and Suganth stated that "As for Dhruv Vikram, he is rawer here, looking sure-footed in some scenes and like a novice in some". Dhruv acted alongside his father in the latter's 60th film, "Mahaan" which was released on 10 February 2022 on Amazon Prime Video. He also wrote and sang a song named "Missing Me" for the film. He signed up for an untitled film to be directed by Mari Selvaraj.


title: Hispaniola

text: Hispaniola (, ; ; Latin and ; ; ) is an island in the Caribbean that is part of the Greater Antilles. Hispaniola is the most populous island in the West Indies, and the region's second largest in area, after the island of Cuba.


title: Hispaniola

text: The island is divided into two separate nations: the Spanish-speaking Dominican Republic (48,445 km, 18,705 sq mi) to the east and the French/Haitian Creole-speaking Haiti (27,750 km, 10,710 sq mi) to the west. The only other divided island in the Caribbean is Saint Martin, which is shared between France (Saint Martin) and the Netherlands (Sint Maarten).


title: Hispaniola

text: Hispaniola is the site of one of the first European settlements in the Americas, La Navidad (1492–1493), as well as the first proper town, La Isabela (1493–1500), and the first permanent settlement, the current capital of the Dominican Republic, Santo Domingo (est. 1498). These settlements were founded successively during each of Christopher Columbus's first three voyages.


title: Hispaniola

text: The Spanish Empire controlled the entire island of Hispaniola from the 1490s until the 17th century, when French pirates began establishing bases on the western side of the island. The official name was "La Española", meaning "The Spanish (Island)". It was also called "Santo Domingo", after Saint Dominic.


title: Hispaniola

text: The island was called by various names by its native people, the Taíno. The Taino had no written language, hence, historical evidence for these names comes through three European historians: the Italian Peter Martyr d'Anghiera, and the Spaniards Bartolomé de las Casas and Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo. Based on a comprehensive survey and map prepared by Andrés de Morales in 1508, Martyr reported that the island as a whole was called "Quizquella" (or "Quisqueya") and "Haiti" referred to a rugged mountainous region on the eastern end of the island. Diego Álvarez Chanca, a physician on Columbus's second voyage, also noted that "Haiti" was the easternmost province of the island. On the other hand, Oviedo and Las Casas both recorded that the entire island was called "Haití" by the Taíno.


title: Hispaniola

text: When Columbus took possession of the island in 1492, he named it "Insula Hispana" in Latin and "La Isla Española" in Spanish, both meaning "the Spanish island". Las Casas shortened the name to "Española", and when Peter Martyr detailed his account of the island in Latin, he rendered its name as "Hispaniola".


title: Hispaniola

text: Due to Taíno, Spanish and French influences on the island, historically the whole island was often referred to as "Haiti", "Hayti", "Santo Domingo", or "Saint-Domingue". Martyr's literary work was translated into English and French soon after being written, the name Hispaniola became the most frequently used term in English-speaking countries for the island in scientific and cartographic works. In 1918, the United States occupation government, led by Harry Shepard Knapp, obliged the use of the name Hispaniola on the island, and recommended the use of that name to the National Geographic Society.


title: Hispaniola

text: The name "Haïti" was adopted by Haitian revolutionary Jean-Jacques Dessalines in 1804, as the official name of independent Saint-Domingue, in tribute to the Amerindian predecessors. It was also adopted as the official name of independent Santo Domingo, as the Republic of Spanish Haiti, a state that existed from November 1821 until its annexation by Haiti in February 1822.


title: Hispaniola

text: The Archaic Age people arrived from the mainland about 6,000 or 7,000 years ago. The primary indigenous group on the island of Hispaniola was the Taíno people. The Arawak tribe originated in the Orinoco Delta, spreading from what is now Venezuela. They arrived on Hispaniola around 1200 CE. Each society on the island was a small independent kingdom with a lead known as a cacique. In 1492, which is considered the peak of the Taíno, there were five different kingdoms on the island, the Xaragua, Higuey (Caizcimu), Magua (Huhabo), Ciguayos (Cayabo or Maguana), and Marien (Bainoa). Many distinct Taíno languages also existed in this time period. There is still heated debate over the population of Taíno people on the island of Hispaniola in 1492, but estimates range from no more than a few tens of thousands, according to a 2020 genetic analysis, to upwards of 750,000.


title: Hispaniola

text: A Taíno home consisted of a circular building with woven straw and palm leaves as covering. Most individuals slept in fashioned hammocks, but grass beds were also used. The cacique lived in a different structure with larger rectangular walls and a porch. The Taíno village also had a flat court used for ball games and festivals. Religiously, the Taíno people were polytheists, and their gods were called Zemí. Religious worship and dancing were common, and medicine men or priests also consulted the Zemí for advice in public ceremonies.


title: Hispaniola

text: For food, the Taíno relied on meat and fish as a primary source for protein; some small mammals on the island were hunted including rats, but ducks, turtles, snakes and bats were a common food source. The Taíno also relied on agriculture as a primary food source. The indigenous people of Hispaniola raised crops in a conuco, which is a large mound packed with leaves and fixed crops to prevent erosion. Some common agricultural goods were cassava, maize, squash, beans, peppers, peanuts, cotton, and tobacco, which was used as an aspect of social life and religious ceremonies.


title: Hispaniola

text: The Taíno people traveled often and used hollowed canoes with paddles when on the water for fishing or for migration purposes, and upwards of 100 people could fit into a single canoe. The Taíno came frequently in contact with the Caribs, another indigenous tribe. The Taíno people had to defend themselves using bows and arrows with poisoned tips and some war clubs. When Columbus landed on Hispaniola, many Taíno leaders wanted protection from the Caribs.


title: Hispaniola

text: Christopher Columbus first landed at Hispaniola on December 6, 1492 at a small bay he named San Nicolas, now called Môle-Saint-Nicolas on the north coast of present-day Haiti. He was welcomed in a friendly fashion by the indigenous people known as the Taíno. Trading with the natives yielded more gold than they had come across previously on the other Caribbean islands and Columbus was led to believe that much more gold would be found inland. Before he could explore further, his flagship, the "Santa Maria", ran aground and sank in the bay on December 24. With only two smaller ships remaining for the voyage home, Columbus built a fortified encampment, La Navidad, on the shore and left behind 21 crewman to await his return the following year.


title: Hispaniola

text: Colonization began in earnest the following year when Columbus brought 1,300 men to Hispaniola in November 1493 with the intention of establishing a permanent settlement. They found the encampment at Navidad had been destroyed and all the crewmen left behind killed by the natives. Columbus decided to sail east in search of a better site to found a new settlement. In January 1494 they established La Isabela in present-day Dominican Republic.


title: Hispaniola

text: In 1496, the town of Nueva Isabela was founded. After being destroyed by a hurricane, it was rebuilt on the opposite side of the Ozama River and called Santo Domingo. It is the oldest permanent European settlement in the Americas.


title: Hispaniola

text: The island had an important role in the establishment of Latin American colonies for decades to come. Due to its strategic location, it was the military stronghold of "conquistadors" of the Spanish Empire, serving as a headquarters for the further colonial expansion into the Americas. The colony was a meeting point of European explorers, soldiers, and settlers who brought with them the culture, architecture, laws, and traditions of the Old World.


title: Hispaniola

text: Harsh enslavement practiced by Spanish colonists against the Taínos, as well as redirection of food supplies and labor of the indigenous for feeding Spanish settlers, had a devastating impact on both mortality and fertility of the Taíno population over the first quarter century. Colonial administrators and Dominican and Hyeronimite priests observed that the search for gold and agrarian enslavement through the "encomienda" system were depressing population. Demographic data from two provinces in 1514 shows a low birth rate, consistent with a 3.5% annual population decline. In 1503, the colony began to import African slaves after a charter was passed in 1501, allowing the import of slaves by Ferdinand and Isabel. The Spanish believed Africans would be more capable of performing physical labor. From 1519 to 1533, the indigenous uprising known as Enriquillo's Revolt, after the Taíno cacique who led them, ensued, resulting from escaped African slaves on the island (maroons) possibly working with the Taíno people.


title: Hispaniola

text: Precious metals played a large role in the history of the island after Columbus's arrival. One of the first inhabitants Columbus came across on this island was "a girl wearing only a gold nose plug". Soon the Taínos were trading pieces of gold for hawk's bells with their cacique declaring the gold came from Cibao. Traveling further east from Navidad, Columbus came across the Yaque del Norte River, which he named Río de Oro (River of Gold) because its "sands abound in gold dust".


title: Hispaniola

text: On Columbus's return during his second voyage, he learned it was the chief Caonabo who had massacred his settlement at Navidad. While Columbus established a new settlement the village of La Isabela on Jan. 1494, he sent Alonso de Ojeda and 15 men to search for the mines of Cibao. After a six-day journey, Ojeda came across an area containing gold, in which the gold was extracted from streams by the Taíno people. Columbus himself visited the mines of Cibao on 12 March 1494. He constructed the Fort of Santo Tomás, present day Jánico, leaving Captain Pedro Margarit in command of 56 men. On 24 March 1495, Columbus, with his ally Guacanagarix, embarked on a war of revenge against Caonabo, capturing him and his family while killing and capturing many natives. Afterwards, every person over the age of fourteen had to produce a hawksbill of gold.


title: Hispaniola

text: Miguel Díaz and Francisco de Garay discovered large gold nuggets on the lower Haina River in 1496. These San Cristobal mines were later known as the Minas Viejas mines. Then, in 1499, the first major discovery of gold was made in the cordillera central, which led to a mining boom. By 1501 Columbus's cousin, Giovanni Colombo, had discovered gold near Buenaventura. The deposits were later known as Minas Nuevas. Two major mining areas resulted, one along San Cristobal-Buenaventura, and another in Cibao within the La Vega-Cotuy-Bonao triangle, while Santiago de los Caballeros, Concepción, and Bonao became mining towns. The gold rush of 1500–1508 ensued, and Ovando expropriated the gold mines of Miguel Díaz and Francisco de Garay in 1504, as pit mines became royal mines for Ferdinand II of Aragon, who reserved the best mines for himself, though placers were open to private prospectors. Furthermore, Ferdinand kept 967 natives in the San Cristobal mining area, supervised by salaried miners.


title: Hispaniola

text: Under Nicolás de Ovando y Cáceres' governorship, the Indians were made to work in the gold mines. By 1503, the Spanish Crown legalized the distribution of Indians to work the mines through the encomienda system. Once the Indians entered the mines, they were often wiped out by hunger and difficult conditions. By 1508, the Taíno population of about 400,000 was reduced to 60,000, and by 1514, only 26,334 remained. About half resided in the mining towns of Concepción, Santiago, Santo Domingo, and Buenaventura. The repartimiento of 1514 accelerated emigration of the Spanish colonists, coupled with the exhaustion of the mines. The first documented outbreak of smallpox, previously an Eastern hemisphere disease, occurred on Hispaniola in December 1518 among enslaved African miners. Some scholars speculate that European diseases arrived before this date, but there is no compelling evidence for an outbreak. The natives had no acquired immunity to European diseases, including smallpox. By May 1519, as many as one-third of the remaining Taínos had died. In the century following the Spanish arrival on Hispaniola, the Taino population fell by up to 95% of the population, out of a pre-contact population estimated from tens of thousands to 8,000,000. Many authors have described the treatment of Tainos in Hispaniola under the Spanish Empire as genocide.


title: Hispaniola

text: Sugar cane was introduced to Hispaniola by settlers from the Canary Islands, and the first sugar mill in the New World was established in 1516, on Hispaniola. The need for a labor force to meet the growing demands of sugar cane cultivation led to an exponential increase in the importation of slaves over the following two decades. The sugar mill owners soon formed a new colonial elite.


title: Hispaniola

text: The first major slave revolt in the Americas occurred in Santo Domingo during 1522, when enslaved Muslims of the Wolof nation led an uprising in the sugar plantation of admiral Don Diego Colon, son of Christopher Columbus. Many of these insurgents managed to escape where they formed independent maroon communities in the south of the island.


title: Hispaniola

text: Beginning in the 1520s, the Caribbean Sea was raided by increasingly numerous French pirates. In 1541, Spain authorized the construction of Santo Domingo's fortified wall, and in 1560 decided to restrict sea travel to enormous, well-armed convoys. In another move, which would destroy Hispaniola's sugar industry, in 1561 Havana, more strategically located in relation to the Gulf Stream, was selected as the designated stopping point for the merchant "flotas," which had a royal monopoly on commerce with the Americas. In 1564, the island's main inland cities Santiago de los Caballeros and Concepción de la Vega were destroyed by an earthquake. In the 1560s, English privateers joined the French in regularly raiding Spanish shipping in the Americas.


title: Hispaniola

text: By the early 17th century, Hispaniola and its nearby islands (notably Tortuga) became regular stopping points for Caribbean pirates. In 1606, the government of Philip III ordered all inhabitants of Hispaniola to move close to Santo Domingo, to fight against piracy. Rather than secure the island, his action meant that French, English, and Dutch pirates established their own bases on the less populated north and west coasts of the island.


title: Hispaniola

text: In 1625, French and English pirates arrived on the island of Tortuga, just off the northwest coast of Hispaniola, which was originally settled by a few Spanish colonists. The pirates were attacked in 1629 by Spanish forces commanded by Don Fadrique de Toledo, who fortified the island, and expelled the French and English. As most of the Spanish army left for main island of Hispaniola to root out French colonists there, the French returned to Tortuga in 1630 and had constant battles for several decades. In 1654, the Spanish re-captured Tortuga for the last time.


title: Hispaniola

text: In 1655 the island of Tortuga was reoccupied by the English and French. In 1660 the English appointed a Frenchman as Governor who proclaimed the King of France, set up French colours, and defeated several English attempts to reclaim the island. In 1665, French colonization of the island was officially recognized by King Louis XIV. The French colony was given the name Saint-Domingue. By 1670 a Welsh privateer named Henry Morgan invited the pirates on the island of Tortuga to set sail under him. They were hired by the French as a striking force that allowed France to have a much stronger hold on the Caribbean region. Consequently, the pirates never really controlled the island and kept Tortuga as a neutral hideout. The capital of the French Colony of Saint-Domingue was moved from Tortuga to Port-de-Paix on the mainland of Hispaniola in 1676.


title: Hispaniola

text: In 1680, new Acts of Parliament forbade sailing under foreign flags (in opposition to former practice). This was a major legal blow to the Caribbean pirates. Settlements were made in the Treaty of Ratisbon of 1684, signed by the European powers, that put an end to piracy. Most of the pirates after this time were hired out into the Royal services to suppress their former buccaneer allies. In the 1697 Treaty of Ryswick, Spain formally ceded the western third of the island to France. Saint-Domingue quickly came to overshadow the east in both wealth and population. Nicknamed the "Pearl of the Antilles", it became the most prosperous colony in the West Indies, with a system of human slavery used to grow and harvest sugar cane during a time when European demand for sugar was high. Slavery kept costs low and profit was maximized. It was an important port in the Americas for goods and products flowing to and from France and Europe.


title: Hispaniola

text: European colonists often died young due to tropical fevers, as well as from violent slave resistance in the late eighteenth century. In 1791, during the French Revolution, a major slave revolt broke out on Saint-Domingue. When the French Republic abolished slavery in the colonies on February 4, 1794, it was a European first. The ex-slave army joined forces with France in its war against its European neighbors. In the second 1795 Treaty of Basel (July 22), Spain ceded the eastern two-thirds of the island of Hispaniola, later to become the Dominican Republic. French settlers had begun to colonize some areas in the Spanish side of the territory.


title: Hispaniola

text: Under Napoleon, France reimposed slavery in most of its Caribbean islands in 1802 and sent an army to bring the island into full control. However, thousands of the French troops succumbed to yellow fever during the summer months, and more than half of the French army died because of disease. After an extremely brutal war with atrocities committed on both sides, the French removed the surviving 7,000 troops in late 1803, the leaders of the revolution declared western Hispaniola the new nation of independent Haiti in early 1804. France continued to rule Spanish Santo Domingo. In 1805, Haitian troops of General Henri Christophe tried to conquer all of Hispaniola. They invaded Santo Domingo and sacked the towns of Santiago de los Caballeros and Moca, killing most of their residents, but news of a French fleet sailing towards Haiti forced General Christophe to withdraw from the east, leaving it in French hands.


title: Hispaniola

text: In 1808, following Napoleon's invasion of Spain, the criollos of Santo Domingo revolted against French rule and, with the aid of the United Kingdom, returned Santo Domingo to Spanish control. Fearing the influence of a society of slaves that had successfully revolted against their owners, the United States and European powers refused to recognize Haiti, the second republic in the Western Hemisphere. France demanded a high payment for compensation to slaveholders who lost their property, and Haiti was saddled with unmanageable debt for decades. Haiti would Annex Spanish Haiti which had recently gained independence. However, suppression of the Dominican culture would lead to the Dominican War of Independence. This is one of the reasons for the tensions between the two countries today. Haiti would become one of the poorest countries in the Americas, while the Dominican Republic gradually has developed into one of the largest economies of Central America and the Caribbean.


title: Hispaniola

text: Hispaniola is the second-largest island in the Caribbean (after Cuba), with an area of , of which is under the sovereignty of the Dominican Republic occupying the eastern portion and under the sovereignty of Haiti occupying the western portion.


title: Hispaniola

text: The island of Cuba lies to the northwest across the Windward Passage; 190 km (118 mi) to the southwest lies Jamaica, separated by the Jamaica Channel. Puerto Rico lies 130 km (80 mi) east of Hispaniola across the Mona Passage. The Bahamas and Turks and Caicos Islands lie to the north. Its westernmost point is known as Cap Carcasse. Cuba, Hispaniola, Jamaica, and Puerto Rico are collectively known as the Greater Antilles.


title: Hispaniola

text: The island has five major ranges of mountains: The Central Range, known in the Dominican Republic as the Cordillera Central, spans the central part of the island, extending from the south coast of the Dominican Republic into northwestern Haiti, where it is known as the Massif du Nord. This mountain range boasts the highest peak in the Antilles, Pico Duarte at above sea level. The Cordillera Septentrional runs parallel to the Central Range across the northern end of the Dominican Republic, extending into the Atlantic Ocean as the Samaná Peninsula. The Cordillera Central and Cordillera Septentrional are separated by the lowlands of the Cibao Valley and the Atlantic coastal plains, which extend westward into Haiti as the Plaine du Nord (Northern Plain). The lowest of the ranges is the Cordillera Oriental, in the eastern part of the country.


title: Hispaniola

text: The Sierra de Neiba rises in the southwest of the Dominican Republic, and continues northwest into Haiti, parallel to the Cordillera Central, as the Montagnes Noires, Chaîne des Matheux and the Montagnes du Trou d'Eau. The Plateau Central lies between the Massif du Nord and the Montagnes Noires, and the Plaine de l'Artibonite lies between the Montagnes Noires and the Chaîne des Matheux, opening westward toward the Gulf of Gonâve, the largest gulf of the Antilles.


title: Hispaniola

text: The southern range begins in the southwesternmost Dominican Republic as the Sierra de Bahoruco, and extends west into Haiti as the Massif de la Selle and the Massif de la Hotte, which form the mountainous spine of Haiti's southern peninsula. Pic de la Selle is the highest peak in the southern range, the third highest peak in the Antilles and consequently the highest point in Haiti, at above sea level. A depression runs parallel to the southern range, between the southern range and the Chaîne des Matheux-Sierra de Neiba. It is known as the Plaine du Cul-de-Sac in Haiti, and Haiti's capital Port-au-Prince lies at its western end. The depression is home to a chain of salt lakes, including Lake Azuei in Haiti and Lake Enriquillo in the Dominican Republic.


title: Hispaniola

text: The island has four distinct ecoregions. The Hispaniolan moist forests ecoregion covers approximately 50% of the island, especially the northern and eastern portions, predominantly in the lowlands but extending up to elevation. The Hispaniolan dry forests ecoregion occupies approximately 20% of the island, lying in the rain shadow of the mountains in the southern and western portion of the island and in the Cibao valley in the center-north of the island. The Hispaniolan pine forests occupy the mountainous 15% of the island, above elevation. The flooded grasslands and savannas ecoregion in the south central region of the island surrounds a chain of lakes and lagoons in which the most notable include that of Lake Azuei and Trou Caïman in Haiti and the nearby Lake Enriquillo in the Dominican Republic, which is not only the lowest point of the island, but also the lowest point for an island country.


title: Hispaniola

text: Hispaniola's climate shows considerable variation due to its diverse mountainous topography, and is the most varied island of all the Antilles. Except in the Northern Hemisphere summer season, the predominant winds over Hispaniola are the northeast trade winds. As in Jamaica and Cuba, these winds deposit their moisture on the northern mountains, and create a distinct rain shadow on the southern coast, where some areas receive as little as of rainfall, and have semi-arid climates. Annual rainfall under also occurs on the southern coast of Haiti's northwest peninsula and in the central Azúa region of the Plaine du Cul-de-Sac. In these regions, moreover, there is generally little rainfall outside hurricane season from August to October, and droughts are by no means uncommon when hurricanes do not come.


title: Hispaniola

text: On the northern coast, in contrast, rainfall may peak between December and February, though some rain falls in all months of the year. Annual amounts typically range from on the northern coastal lowlands; there is probably much more in the Cordillera Septentrional, though no data exist. The interior of Hispaniola, along with the southeastern coast centered around Santo Domingo, typically receives around per year, with a distinct season from May to October. Usually, this wet season has two peaks: one around May, the other around the hurricane season. In the interior highlands, rainfall is much greater, around per year, but with a similar pattern to that observed in the central lowlands.


title: Hispaniola

text: The variations of temperature depend on altitude and are much less marked than rainfall variations in the island. Lowland Hispaniola is generally more hot and humid, with temperatures averaging . with high humidity during the daytime, and around at night. At higher altitudes, temperatures fall steadily, so that frosts occur during the dry season on the highest peaks, where maxima are no higher than .


title: Hispaniola

text: There are many bird species in Hispaniola, and the island's amphibian species are also diverse. There are many species endemic to the island including insects and other invertebrates, reptiles, and mammals. The two endemic terrestrial mammals on the island are the Hispaniolan hutia ("Plagiodontia aedium") and the Hispaniolan solenodon ("Solenodon paradoxus"). There are also many avian species on the island, with six endemic genera ("Calyptophilus", "Dulus", "Nesoctites", "Phaenicophilus", "Xenoligea" and "Microligea"). More than half of the original distribution of its ecoregions has been lost due to habitat destruction impacting the local fauna.


title: Hispaniola

text: The island has four distinct ecoregions. The Hispaniolan moist forests ecoregion covers approximately 50% of the island, especially the northern and eastern portions, predominantly in the lowlands but extending up to elevation. The Hispaniolan dry forests ecoregion occupies approximately 20% of the island, lying in the rain shadow of the mountains in the southern and western portion of the island, and in the Cibao valley in the center-north of the island. The Hispaniolan pine forests occupy the mountainous 15% of the island, above elevation. The flooded grasslands and savannas ecoregion in the south central region of the island surrounds a chain of lakes and lagoons , of which the most notable include that of Etang Saumatre and Trou Caïman in Haiti, and the nearby Lake Enriquillo in the Dominican Republic.


title: Hispaniola

text: In Haiti, deforestation has long been cited by scientists as a source of ecological crisis; the timber industry dates back to French colonial rule. Haiti has seen a dramatic reduction of forests due to the excessive and increasing use of charcoal as fuel for cooking. Various media outlets have suggested that the country has just 2% forest cover, but this has not been substantiated by research.


title: Hispaniola

text: Recent in-depth studies of satellite imagery and environmental analysis regarding forest classification conclude that Haiti actually has approximately 30% tree cover; this is, nevertheless, a stark decrease from the country's 60% forest cover in 1925. The country has been significantly deforested over the last 50 years, resulting in the desertification of many portions of Haitian territory.


title: Hispaniola

text: In the Dominican Republic, the forest cover has increased. In 2003, the Dominican Republic's forest cover had been reduced to 32% of its land area, but by 2011, forest cover had increased to nearly 40%. The success of the Dominican forest growth is due to several Dominican government policies and private organizations for the purpose of reforesting, and a strong educational campaign that has resulted in increased awareness by the Dominican people of the importance of forests for their welfare and other forms of life on the island.


title: Hispaniola

text: Hispaniola is the most populous Caribbean island with combined population of almost 22 million inhabitants .


title: Hispaniola

text: The Dominican Republic is a Hispanophone nation of approximately 10.35 million people. Spanish is spoken by all Dominicans as a primary language. Roman Catholicism is the official and dominant religion.


title: Hispaniola

text: Haiti is a Creole-speaking nation of roughly 11.58 million people. Although French is spoken as a primary language by the educated and wealthy minority, virtually the entire population speaks Haitian Creole, one of several French-derived creole languages. Roman Catholicism is the dominant religion, practiced by more than half the population, although in some cases in combination with Haitian Vodou faith. Another 25% of the populace belong to Protestant churches. Haiti emerged as the first Black republic in the world.


title: Hispaniola

text: The ethnic composition of the Dominican population is 73% mixed ethnicity, 16% white and 11% black. Descendants of early Spanish settlers and of black slaves from West Africa constitute the two main racial strains.


title: Hispaniola

text: In recent times, Dominican and Puerto Rican researchers identified in the current Dominican population the presence of genes belonging to the aborigines of the Canary Islands (commonly called Guanches). These types of genes also have been detected in Puerto Rico.


title: Hispaniola

text: The island has the largest economy in the Greater Antilles, however most of the economic development is found in the Dominican Republic, the Dominican economy being nearly 800% larger than the Haitian economy. , the estimated annual per capita income is US$868 in Haiti and US$8,050 in Dominican Republic.


title: Hispaniola

text: The divergence between the level of economic development between Haiti and Dominican Republic makes its border the higher contrast of all western land borders and is evident that the Dominican Republic has one of the highest migration issues in the Americas.


title: Hispaniola

text: The island also has an economic history and current day interest and involvement in precious metals. In 1860, it was observed that the island contained a large supply of gold, which the early Spaniards had hardly developed. By 1919, Condit and Ross noted that much of the island was covered by government granted concessions for mining different types of minerals. Besides gold, these minerals included silver, manganese, copper, magnetite, iron and nickel.


title: Hispaniola

text: Mining operations in 2016 have taken advantage of the volcanogenic massive sulfide ore deposits (VMS) around Maimón. To the northeast, the Pueblo Viejo Gold Mine was operated by state-owned Rosario Dominicana from 1975 until 1991. In 2009, Pueblo Viejo Dominicana Corporation, formed by Barrick Gold and Goldcorp, started open-pit mining operations of the Monte Negro and Moore oxide deposits. The mined ore is processed with gold cyanidation. Pyrite and sphalerite are the main sulfide minerals found in the 120 m thick volcanic conglomerates and agglomerates, which constitute the world's second largest sulphidation gold deposit.


title: Hispaniola

text: Between Bonao and Maimón, Falconbridge Dominicana has been mining nickel laterites since 1971. The Cerro de Maimon copper/gold open-pit mine southeast of Maimón has been operated by Perilya since 2006. Copper is extracted from the sulfide ores, while gold and silver are extracted from both the sulfide and the oxide ores. Processing is via froth flotation and cyanidation. The ore is located in the VMS Early Cretaceous Maimón Formation. Goethite enriched with gold and silver is found in the 30 m thick oxide cap. Below that cap is a supergene zone containing pyrite, chalcopyrite, and sphalerite. Below the supergene zone is found the unaltered massive sulphide mineralization.


title: Fast food

text: Fast food is a type of mass-produced food designed for commercial resale, with a strong priority placed on speed of service. It is a commercial term, limited to food sold in a restaurant or store with frozen, preheated or precooked ingredients and served in packaging for take-out/take-away. Fast food was created as a commercial strategy to accommodate large numbers of busy commuters, travelers and wage workers. In 2018, the fast food industry was worth an estimated $570 billion globally.


title: Fast food

text: The fastest form of "fast food" consists of pre-cooked meals which reduce waiting periods to mere seconds. Other fast food outlets, primarily hamburger outlets such as McDonald's, use mass-produced, pre-prepared ingredients (bagged buns and condiments, frozen beef patties, vegetables which are prewashed, pre-sliced, or both; etc.) and cook the meat and french fries fresh, before assembling "to order".


title: Fast food

text: Fast food restaurants are traditionally distinguished by the drive-through. Outlets may be stands or kiosks, which may provide no shelter or seating, or fast food restaurants (also known as "quick service restaurants"). Franchise operations that are part of restaurant chains have standardized foodstuffs shipped to each restaurant from central locations.


title: Fast food

text: Many fast foods tend to be high in saturated fat, sugar, salt and calories. Fast food has been linked to increased risk of cardiovascular disease, colorectal cancer, obesity, high cholesterol, insulin resistance conditions and depression. These correlations remain strong even when controlling for confounding lifestyle variables, suggesting a strong association between fast food consumption and increased risk of disease and early mortality.


title: Fast food

text: The concept of ready-cooked food for sale is closely connected with urban developments. Homes in emerging cities often lacked adequate space or proper food preparation accoutrements. Additionally, procuring cooking fuel could cost as much as purchased produce. Frying foods in vats of searing oil proved as dangerous as it was expensive. Homeowners feared that a rogue cooking fire "might easily conflagrate an entire neighborhood". Thus, urbanites were encouraged to purchase pre-prepared meats or starches, such as bread or noodles, whenever possible. This also ensured that customers with strictly limited time (a commuter stopping to procure dinner to bring home to their family, for example, or an hourly laborer on a short lunch break) were not inconvenienced by waiting for their food to be cooked on-the-spot (as is expected from a traditional "sit down" restaurant). In Ancient Rome, cities had street stands – a large counter with a receptacle in the middle from which food or drink would have been served. It was during post-WWII American economic boom that Americans began to spend more and buy more as the economy boomed and a culture of consumerism bloomed. As a result of this new desire to have it all, coupled with the strides made by women while the men were away, both members of the household began to work outside the home. Eating out, which had previously been considered a luxury, became a common occurrence, and then a necessity. Workers, and working families, needed quick service and inexpensive food for both lunch and dinner. The traditional family dinner is increasingly being replaced by the consumption of takeaway fast food. As a result, the time invested on food preparation is getting lower, with an average woman in the United States spending 47 minutes per day preparing food and the average man spending 19 minutes per day in 2013.


title: Fast food

text: In the cities of Roman antiquity, much of the urban population living in "insulae", multi-story apartment blocks, depended on food vendors for much of their meal; the Forum itself served as a marketplace where Romans could purchase baked goods and cured meats. In the mornings, bread soaked in wine was eaten as a quick snack and cooked vegetables and stews later in "popina", a simple type of eating establishment. In Asia, 12th century Chinese ate fried dough, soups and stuffed buns, all of which still exist as contemporary snack food. Their Baghdadi contemporaries supplemented home-cooked meals with processed legumes, purchased starches, and even ready-to-eat meats. During the Middle Ages, large towns and major urban areas such as London and Paris supported numerous vendors that sold dishes such as pies, pasties, flans, waffles, wafers, pancakes and cooked meats. As in Roman cities during antiquity, many of these establishments catered to those who did not have means to cook their own food, particularly single households. Unlike richer town dwellers, many often could not afford housing with kitchen facilities and thus relied on fast food. Travelers such as pilgrims en route to a holy site, were among the customers.


title: Fast food

text: In areas with access to coastal or tidal waters, 'fast food' frequently included local shellfish or seafood, such as oysters or, as in London, eels. Often this seafood was cooked directly on the quay or close by. The development of trawler fishing in the mid-nineteenth century led to the development of a British favourite, fish and chips, and the first shop in 1860.


title: Fast food

text: A blue plaque at Oldham's Tommyfield Market marks the origin of the fish and chip shop and fast food industries. As a cheap fast food served in a wrapper, fish and chips became a stock meal among the Victorian working classes. By 1910, there were more than 25,000 fish and chip shops across the UK, and in the 1920s there were more than 35,000 shops. Harry Ramsden's fast food restaurant chain opened its first fish and chip shop in Guiseley, West Yorkshire in 1928. On a single day in 1952, the shop served 10,000 portions of fish and chips, earning a place in the "Guinness Book of Records".


title: Fast food

text: British fast food had considerable regional variation. Sometimes the regionality of a dish became part of the culture of its respective area, such as the Cornish pasty and deep-fried Mars bar. The content of fast food pies has varied, with poultry (such as chickens) or wildfowl commonly being used. Since the Second World War, turkey has been used more frequently in fast food. The UK has adopted fast food from other cultures as well, such as pizza, doner kebab, and curry. More recently, healthier alternatives to conventional fast food have also emerged.


title: Fast food

text: As automobiles became popular and more affordable following World War I, drive-in restaurants were introduced. The American company White Castle, founded by Billy Ingram and Walter Anderson in Wichita, Kansas in 1921, is generally credited with opening the second fast food outlet and first hamburger chain, selling hamburgers for five cents each. Walter Anderson had built the first White Castle restaurant in Wichita in 1916, introducing the limited menu, high-volume, low-cost, high-speed hamburger restaurant. Among its innovations, the company allowed customers to see the food being prepared. White Castle was successful from its inception and spawned numerous competitors.


title: Fast food

text: Franchising was introduced in 1921 by A&W Root Beer, which franchised its distinctive syrup. Howard Johnson's first franchised the restaurant concept in the mid-1930s, formally standardizing menus, signage and advertising.


title: Fast food

text: Curb service was introduced in the late 1920s and was mobilized in the 1940s when carhops strapped on roller skates.


title: Fast food

text: The United States has the largest fast food industry in the world, and American fast food restaurants are located in over 100 countries. Approximately 5.4 million U.S. workers are employed in the areas of food preparation and food servicing, including fast food in the US as of 2018. Worries of an obesity epidemic and its related illnesses have inspired many local government officials in the United States to propose to limit or regulate fast-food restaurants. Yet, US adults are unwilling to change their fast food consumption even in the face of rising costs and unemployment characterized by the great recession, suggesting an inelastic demand. However, some areas are more affected than others. In Los Angeles County, for example, about 45% of the restaurants in South Central Los Angeles are fast-food chains or restaurants with minimal seating. By comparison, only 16% of those on the Westside are such restaurants.


title: Fast food

text: The National Employment Law Project wrote in 2013, "according to a study by researchers at the University of California-Berkeley, more than half (52 percent) of front-line fast-food workers must rely on at least one public assistance program to support their families. As a result, the fast-food-industry business model of low wages, non-existent benefits, and limited work hours costs taxpayers an average of nearly $7 billion every year". They claim this funding allows these workers to "afford health care, food, and other basic necessities".


title: Fast food

text: Fast food outlets are "take-away" or "take-out" providers that promise quick service. Such fast food outlets often come with a "drive-through" service that lets customers order and pick up food from their vehicles. Others have indoor or outdoor seating areas where customers can eat on-site. The boom in IT services has allowed customers to order food from their homes through their smartphone apps in recent times.


title: Fast food

text: Nearly from its inception, fast food has been designed to be eaten "on the go," often does not require traditional cutlery, and is eaten as a finger food. Common menu items at fast food outlets include fish and chips, sandwiches, pitas, hamburgers, fried chicken, french fries, onion rings, chicken nuggets, tacos, pizza, hot dogs, and ice cream, though many fast food restaurants offer "slower" foods like chili, mashed potatoes, and salads.


title: Fast food

text: Convenience stores located within many petrol/gas stations sell pre-packaged sandwiches, doughnuts, and hot food. Many gas stations in the United States and Europe also sell frozen foods, and have microwave ovens on the premises in which to prepare them. Petrol Stations in Australia sell foods such as hot pies, sandwiches, and chocolate bars, which are easy for a customer to access while on their journey. Petrol stations are a place that are often open long hours and are open before and after shop trading hours, therefore, it makes it easy to access for consumers.


title: Fast food

text: Traditional street food is available around the world, usually through small and independent vendors operating from a cart, table, portable grill or motor vehicle. Common examples include Vietnamese rice soup vendors, Middle Eastern falafel stands, New York City hot dog carts, and taco trucks. Turo-Turo vendors (Tagalog for point point) are a feature of Philippine life. Commonly, street vendors provide a colorful and varying range of options designed to captivate passers-by and attract as much attention as possible quickly.


title: Fast food

text: Multiple street vendors may specialize in specific types of food; typically, they are characteristic of a given cultural or ethnic tradition depending on the locale. In some cultures, it is typical for street vendors to call out prices, sing or chant sales-pitches, play music, or engage in other forms of "street theatrics" to engage prospective customers. In some cases, this can garner more attention than the food.


title: Fast food

text: Modern commercial fast food is often highly processed and prepared in an industrial fashion, i.e., on a large scale with standard ingredients and standardized cooking and production methods. It is usually rapidly served in cartons or bags or in plastic wrapping, in a fashion that minimizes cost. In most fast food operations, menu items are generally made from processed ingredients prepared at a central supply facility and then shipped to individual outlets where they are reheated, cooked (usually by microwave or deep frying) or assembled in a short amount of time. This process ensures a consistent level of product quality. It is key to being able to deliver the order quickly to the customer and eliminate labor and equipment costs in the individual stores.


title: Fast food

text: Because of commercial emphasis on quickness, uniformity and low cost, fast food products are often made with ingredients formulated to achieve a certain flavor or consistency and to preserve freshness.


title: Fast food

text: Chinese takeaways/takeout restaurants are particularly popular in Western countries such as the US and UK. They normally offer a wide variety of Asian food (not always Chinese), which has normally been fried. Most options are some form of noodles, rice, or meat. In some cases, the food is presented as a smörgåsbord, sometimes self service. The customer chooses the size of the container they wish to buy, and then is free to fill it with their choice of food. It is common to combine several options in one container, and some outlets charge by weight rather than by item. In large cities, these restaurants may offer free delivery for purchases over a minimum amount.


title: Fast food

text: Sushi has seen rapidly rising popularity recently in the Western world. A form of fast food created in Japan (where bentō is the Japanese variety of fast food), sushi is normally cold sticky rice flavored with a sweet rice vinegar and served with some topping (often fish), or, as in the most popular kind in the West, rolled in nori (dried laver) with filling. The filling often includes fish, seafood, chicken or cucumber.


title: Fast food

text: Pizza is a common fast food category in the United States, with nationwide chains including Papa John's, Domino's Pizza, Sbarro and Pizza Hut. It trails only the burger industry in supplying children's fast food calories. Menus are more limited and standardized than in traditional pizzerias, and pizza delivery is offered.


title: Fast food

text: Kebab houses are a form of fast food restaurant from the Middle East, especially Turkey and Lebanon. Meat is shaven from a rotisserie, and is served on a warmed flatbread with salad and a choice of sauce and dressing. These doner kebabs or shawarmas are distinct from shish kebabs served on sticks. Kebab shops are also found throughout the world, especially Europe, New Zealand and Australia but they generally are less common in the US.


title: Fast food

text: Fish and chip shops are a form of fast food popular in the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand. Fish is battered and then deep fried, and served with deep-fried potato strips.


title: Fast food

text: The Dutch have their own types of fast food. A Dutch fast food meal often consists of a portion of french fries (called friet or patat) with a sauce and a meat product. The most common sauce to accompany french fries is fritessaus. It is a sweet, vinegary and low fat mayonnaise substitute, that the Dutch nevertheless still call "mayonnaise". When ordering it is very often abbreviated to "met" (literally "with"). Other popular sauces are ketchup or spiced ketchup ("curry"), Indonesian style peanut sauce ("satésaus" or "pindasaus") or piccalilli. Sometimes the fries are served with combinations of sauces, most famously "speciaal" (special): mayonnaise, with (spiced) ketchup and chopped onions; and "oorlog" (literally "war"): mayonnaise and peanut sauce (sometimes also with ketchup and chopped onions). The meat product is usually a deep fried snack; this includes the frikandel (a deep fried skinless minced meat sausage), and the kroket (deep fried meat ragout covered in breadcrumbs).


title: Fast food

text: In Portugal, there are some varieties of local fast-food and restaurants specialized in this type of local cuisine. Some of the most popular foods include "frango assado" (Piri-piri grilled chicken previously marinated), francesinha, francesinha poveira, espetada (turkey or pork meat on two sticks) and bifanas (pork cutlets in a specific sauce served as a sandwich). This type of food is also often served with french fries (called "batatas fritas"), some international chains started appearing specialized in some of the typical Portuguese fast food such as Nando's.


title: Fast food

text: An example of a local form of fast food in Poland is "pasztecik szczeciński", a deep-fried yeast dough stuffed with meat or vegetarian filling, typical fast food dish of the city of Szczecin well known in many other cities in the country. A dish is on Polish "List of traditional products". The first bar serving "pasztecik szczeciński", Bar "Pasztecik" founded in 1969, is located on Wojska Polskiego Avenue 46 in Szczecin.


title: Fast food

text: A fixture of East Asian cities is the noodle shop. Flatbread and falafel are today ubiquitous in the Middle East. Popular Indian fast food dishes include vada pav, panipuri and dahi vada. In the French-speaking nations of West Africa, roadside stands in and around the larger cities continue to sell—as they have done for generations—a range of ready-to-eat, char-grilled meat sticks known locally as "brochettes" (not to be confused with the bread snack of the same name found in Europe)


title: Fast food

text: In the United States, consumers spent $160 billion on fast food in 2012 (up from $6 billion in 1970). In 2013, the US restaurant industry had total projected sales of $660.5 billion. Fast food has been losing market share to fast casual dining restaurants, which offer more robust and expensive cuisines. Due to this competition, fast food giants have seen dramatic drops in their sales. While overall fast food sales have fallen, the number of Americans who eat in these restaurants "once a month or 'a few times a year'" has risen.


title: Fast food

text: In contrast to the rest of the world, American citizens spend a much smaller amount of their income on food — largely due to various government subsidies that make fast food cheap and easily accessible. Calorie for calorie, foods sold in fast food restaurants, costs less and is more energy-dense, and is made mostly of products that the government subsidizes heavily: corn, soy, and beef.


title: Fast food

text: The Australian fast food market is valued at more than 2.7 billion GPB and is composed of 1.4 billion fast food meals. This includes meals serviced at 17,000 fast food outlets. The fast food market has experienced an average annual growth rate of 6.5 percent, which is the most rapidly growing sector of the retail food market.


title: Fast food

text: In 2012, fast food restaurants spent roughly US$4.6 billion on advertising campaigns, which represented an 8% increase from 2009. In the same period of time, McDonald's spent nearly three times as much on advertising as all water, milk, and produce advertisers spent combined.


title: Fast food

text: A study done by researchers from the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth College saw results that suggest that when children watch more commercial television (and see more advertisements on fast food), they are more inclined to ask to visit these subsequent fast food restaurants. Specifically, fast food restaurants have been increasing their advertising efforts that target Black and Hispanic youth. A 2021 report from the Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity indicated that fast-food restaurants spent about $318 million on Spanish-language TV channels. The same report found that fast-food restaurants spent about $99 million on majority Black viewer TV channels. Black youth groups viewed fast-food advertisements about more than white youth groups.


title: Fast food

text: The Council of Better Business Bureaus started the Children's Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative in 2006 which asked fast food companies to pledge to "advertise only more healthful products to children" with McDonald's and Burger King signing on. However, despite a slight increase in healthful food advertising, the effectiveness of this initiative has been disputed by studies that reveal that "children couldn't remember or identify healthful foods in the ads, and that 81 percent of the 99 3 to 7 year olds in that study recalled French fries" even though there were no French fries in the advertisement.


title: Fast food

text: According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, about 4.1 million U.S. workers are employed in food preparation and serving (including fast food) as of 2010. The BLS's projected job outlook expects average growth and excellent opportunity as a result of high turnover. However, in April 2011, McDonald's hired approximately 62,000 new workers and received a million applications for those positions—an acceptance rate of 6.2%. The median age of workers in the industry in 2013 was 28.


title: Fast food

text: Obtaining Human Resource Management diploma or diploma in Fast Food Management can help to get a job in major fast food restaurants since it is one of the most desired.


title: Fast food

text: In 2006, the global fast-food market grew by 4.8% and reached a value of £102.4 billion and a volume of 80.3 billion transactions. McDonald's alone, has outlets in 126 countries on 6 continents and operates over 31,000 restaurants worldwide.


title: Fast food

text: One example of McDonald's expansion on a global scale was its introduction to the Russian market. In order for the American business to succeed it would have to be accepted and integrated into the daily lives of natives in Moscow. Thus, the restaurant was strategically implemented so that its offerings would align with the distinct and established eating habits, also known as the customs around food, eating and cooking, of Muscovites. One significant characteristic of Russian food culture is the emphasis on knowing about the locality of goods that are consumed. Essentially, in order to successfully launch this American brand in a foreign country, McDonald's interpreted the local interests of consumers in Moscow by promoting the origins of the produce used in the restaurant. On January 31, 1990, McDonald's opened a restaurant in Moscow and broke opening-day records for customers served. The Moscow restaurant is the busiest in the world.


title: Fast food

text: The largest McDonald's in the world, with 25,000 feet of play tubes, an arcade and play center, is located in Orlando, Florida, United States


title: Fast food

text: There are numerous other fast food restaurants located all over the world. Burger King has more than 11,100 restaurants in more than 65 countries. KFC is located in 25 countries. Subway is one of the fastest growing franchises in the world with approximately 39,129 restaurants in 90 countries as of May 2009, the first non-US location opening in December 1984 in Bahrain. Wienerwald has spread from Germany into Asia and Africa. Pizza Hut is located in 97 countries, with 100 locations in China. Taco Bell has 278 restaurants located in 14 countries besides the United States.


title: Fast food

text: Fast-food chains have come under criticism over concerns ranging from claimed negative health effects, alleged animal cruelty, cases of worker exploitation, and claims of cultural degradation via shifts in people's eating patterns away from traditional foods.


title: Fast food

text: The intake of fast food is increasing worldwide. A study done in the city of Jeddah has shown that current fast-food habits are related to the increase of overweight and obesity among adolescents in Saudi Arabia. In 2014, the World Health Organization published a study which claims that deregulated food markets are largely to blame for the obesity crisis, and suggested tighter regulations to reverse the trend. In the United States, local governments are restricting fast food chains by limiting the number of restaurants found in certain geographical areas.


title: Fast food

text: To combat criticism, fast-food restaurants are starting to offer more health-friendly menu items. In addition to health critics, there are suggestions for the fast-food industry to become more eco-friendly. The chains have responded by "reducing packaging waste".


title: Fast food

text: Although trying to overcome criticism through healthy options on fast food menus, Marion Nestle, who serves as the chair of New York University's Department of Nutrition and Food Studies, suggests that fast-food industries intentionally market unhealthy foods to children through advertising options and therefore create customers for life.


title: Fast food

text: Despite so much popularity, fast foods and fast-food chains have adverse impacts not only on the job and social skills, but on the health and academic performance of students. Fifty-six percent of students consume fast food on a weekly basis. The researcher who wrote "Fast Food Nation", Eric Schlosser, highlights this fact, arguing that this is not only a financial but also a psychological bait, in that the students are lured towards this early employment opportunity knowing little that the time spent on this no-skill-learning job is wasted. Two other researchers, Charles Hirschman and Irina Voloshin, highlight their dangerous impacts and consequences regarding the hiring and firing of teenage school-goers in the fast-food industry. Kelly Brownwell of "The Atlantic Times" has further supported this argument that Burger King and McDonald's adopted another dangerous practice for marketing to innocent children.


title: Fast food

text: In a research study conducted by Professors Purtell Kelly and Gershoff, they found that the students of fifth grades, who ate fast foods as compared to the students of the same age after some other social factors were controlled. Also, the percentage of the students having consumed fast food and showed poor grades was around 11 percent more than those who used organic foods. They are of the view that other social factors such as television watching, video games and playing were controlled to assess the real impacts of fast foods.


title: Fast food

text: There have been books and films, such as the 2004 film "Super Size Me", designed to highlight the potential negative health effects from the overconsumption of fast food such as its contribution to obesity.


title: Heinz Guderian

text: Heinz Wilhelm Guderian (; 17 June 1888 – 14 May 1954) was a German general during World War II who, after the war, became a successful memoirist. An early pioneer and advocate of the "blitzkrieg" approach, he played a central role in the development of the panzer division concept. In 1936, he became the Inspector of Motorized Troops.


title: Heinz Guderian

text: At the beginning of the Second World War, Guderian led an armoured corps in the Invasion of Poland. During the Invasion of France, he commanded the armoured units that attacked through the Ardennes forest and overwhelmed the Allied defenses at the Battle of Sedan. He led the 2nd Panzer Army during Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union. The campaign ended in failure after the German offensive Operation Typhoon failed to capture Moscow, after which Guderian was dismissed.


title: Heinz Guderian

text: In early 1943, Adolf Hitler appointed Guderian to the newly created position of Inspector General of Armoured Troops. In this role, he had broad responsibility to rebuild and train new panzer forces but saw limited success due to Germany's worsening war economy. Guderian was appointed Acting Chief of the General Staff of the Army High Command, immediately following the 20 July Plot to assassinate Hitler.


title: Heinz Guderian

text: Guderian was placed in charge of the "Court of Honour" by Hitler, which in the aftermath of the plot was used to dismiss people from the military so they could be tried in the "People's Court" and executed. He was Hitler's personal advisor on the Eastern Front and became closely associated with the Nazis. Guderian's troops carried out the criminal Commissar Order during Barbarossa, and he was implicated in the commission of reprisals after the Warsaw Uprising of 1944.


title: Heinz Guderian

text: Guderian surrendered to the United States forces on 10 May 1945 and was interned until 1948. He was released without charge and retired to write his memoirs. Entitled "Panzer Leader", the autobiography became a bestseller, widely read to this day. Guderian's writings promoted several post-war myths, including that of the "clean Wehrmacht". In his autobiography, Guderian portrayed himself as the sole originator of the German panzer force; he omitted any mentions of crimes that he authorised or condoned. Guderian died in 1954 and was buried in Goslar.


title: Heinz Guderian

text: Guderian was born in Kulm, West Prussia (since 1920 Poland), on 17 June 1888, the son of Friedrich and Clara (née Kirchhoff). His father and grandfathers were Prussian officers and he grew up in garrison towns surrounded by the military. In 1903, he left home and enrolled at a military cadet school. He was a capable student, although he performed poorly in his final exam. He entered the army as an officer cadet in February, 1905 with the 10th Hanoverian Light Infantry Battalion, under his father's command. He became a second lieutenant in January, 1908. On 1 October 1913 he married Margarete Goerne, with whom he had two sons: Heinz Günther (1914–2004) and Kurt (1918–1984).


title: Heinz Guderian

text: At the outbreak of World War I, Guderian served as a communications officer and the commander of a radio station. In November, 1914 he was promoted to first lieutenant. Between May, 1915 and January, 1916 Guderian was in charge of signals intelligence for the 4th Army. He fought at the Battle of Verdun during this period and was promoted to captain on 15 November 1915. He was then sent to the 4th Infantry Division before becoming commander of the Second Battalion of Infantry Regiment 14. On 28 February 1918, Guderian was appointed to the General Staff Corps. Guderian finished the war as an operations officer in occupied Italy. He disagreed with Germany signing the armistice in 1918, believing that the German Empire should have continued the fight.


title: Heinz Guderian

text: Early in 1919, Guderian was selected as one of the four thousand officers allowed by the Versailles Treaty in the reduced-size German army, the Reichswehr. He was assigned to serve on the staff of the central command of the Eastern Frontier Guard Service which was intended to control and coordinate the independent "freikorps" units in the defense of Germany's eastern frontiers against Polish and Soviet forces engaged in the Russian Civil War in conjunction with the Estonian War of Independence. In June, 1919 Guderian joined the Iron Brigade (later known as the Iron Division) as its second General Staff officer.


title: Heinz Guderian

text: In the 1920s, Guderian was introduced to armored warfare tactics by Ernst Volckheim, a World War I tank commander and a prolific writer on the subject. He studied the leading European literature on armored warfare and, between 1922 and 1928, wrote five papers for "Military Weekly", an armed forces journal. While the topics covered were mundane, Guderian related them to why Germany had lost World War I, a controversial subject at the time, and thus raised his profile in the military. There were some trial maneuvers conducted in the Soviet Union and Guderian academically evaluated the results. Britain was experimenting with armoured units under General Percy Hobart, and Guderian kept abreast of Hobart's writings. In 1924, he was appointed as an instructor and military historian at Stettin. As a lecturer he was polarizing; some of his pupils enjoyed his wit, but he alienated others with his biting sarcasm.


title: Heinz Guderian

text: In 1927, Guderian was promoted to major and in October he was posted to the transport section of the Truppenamt, a clandestine form of the army's General Staff, which had been forbidden by the Treaty of Versailles. By the autumn of 1928, he was a leading speaker on tanks; however, he did not set foot in one until the summer of 1929, when he briefly drove a Swedish Stridsvagn m/21-29. In October, 1928 he was transferred to the Motor Transport Instruction Staff to teach. In 1931, he was promoted to lieutenant-colonel and became chief of staff to the Inspectorate of Motorized Troops under Oswald Lutz. This placed Guderian at the center of Germany's development of mobile warfare and armored forces.


title: Heinz Guderian

text: In the 1930s, Guderian played a significant role in the development of both the panzer division concept and a doctrine of mechanized offensive warfare that would later become known as blitzkrieg. Guderian's 3rd Motor Transport Battalion became the blueprint for the future German armored force. However, his role was less central than he claimed in his memoirs and that historians repeated in the postwar era.


title: Heinz Guderian

text: Guderian and his immediate superior Lutz had a symbiotic relationship. Both men worked tirelessly with the shared aim of creating a panzer force. Guderian was the public face advocating mechanized warfare and Lutz worked behind the scenes. Guderian reached into the Nazi regime to promote the panzer force concept, attract support and secure resources. This included a demonstration of the concept to Hitler himself. Lutz persuaded, cajoled and compensated for Guderian's often arrogant and argumentative behavior towards his peers. The modern historian Pier Battistelli writes that it is difficult to determine exactly who developed each of the ideas behind the panzer force. Many other officers, such as Walther Nehring and Hermann Breith, were also involved. However, Guderian is widely accepted as having pioneered the communications system developed for the panzer units. The central tenets of blitzkriegindependence, mass and surprisewere first published in doctrinal statements of mechanized warfare by Lutz.


title: Heinz Guderian

text: During the autumn of 1936, Lutz asked Guderian to write "Achtung – Panzer!" He requested a polemical tone that promoted the Mobile Troops Command and strategic mechanized warfare. In the resulting work, Guderian mixed academic lectures, a review of military history and armored warfare theory that partly relied on a 1934 book on the subject by Ludwig von Eimannsberger. While limited, the book was in many respects a success. It contained two important questions which would require answering if the army was to be mechanized: how will the army be supplied with fuel, spares and replacement vehicles; and how to move large mechanized forces, especially those that are road-bound? He answered his own questions in discussions of three broad areas: refueling; spare parts; and access to roads.


title: Heinz Guderian

text: In 1938, Hitler purged the army of personnel who were unsympathetic to the Nazi regime. Lutz was dismissed and replaced by Guderian. In the spring of that year, Guderian had his first experience of commanding a panzer force during the annexation of Austria. The mobilization was chaotic: tanks ran out of fuel or broke down and the combat value of the formation was non-existent. Had there been any real fighting Guderian would certainly have lost. He stood beside the Führer in Linz as Hitler addressed Germany and Austria in celebration. Afterwards, he set about remedying the problems that the panzer force had encountered. In the last year before the outbreak of World War II, Guderian fostered a closer relationship with Hitler. He attended opera with the Führer and received invitations to dinner. When Neville Chamberlain, in his policy of appeasement, gave Hitler the Sudetenland, it was occupied by Guderian's XVI Motorized Corps.


title: Heinz Guderian

text: During August, 1939 Guderian took command of the newly formed XIX Army Corps. At short notice he was ordered to spearhead the northern element of the invasion of Poland which began on 1 September. Under his corps command was one of Germany's six panzer divisions; Guderian's corps controlled 14.5 per cent of Germany's armoured fighting vehicles. His task was to advance through the former West Prussian territory (which included his birthplace of Kulm), then travel through East Prussia before heading south towards Warsaw. Guderian used the German concept of "leading forward", which required commanders to move to the battlefront and assess the situation. He made use of modern communication systems by travelling in a radio-equipped command vehicle with which he kept himself in contact with corps command.


title: Heinz Guderian

text: By 5 September, XIX Corps had linked up with forces advancing west from East Prussia. Guderian had accomplished his first operational victory and he gave a tour of the battlefield to Hitler and Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS. The next day, he shifted his corps across East Prussia to participate in the advance on Warsaw. On 9 September his corps was reinforced by 10 Panzer Division and he continued deeper into Poland, finishing at Brest-Litovsk. In ten days Guderian's XIX Corps advanced , at times against strong resistance. The tank had proven itself to be a powerful weapon, with only 8 destroyed out of 350 employed. On 16 September, Guderian launched an attack on Brest Litovsk; the next day the Soviet Union invaded Poland. He issued an ultimatum to the city—surrender to the Germans or Sovietsthe garrison capitulated to the Germans. The Soviet Union's entry into the war shattered Polish morale and Polish forces began to surrender en masse to Guderian's troops. At the conclusion of the campaign, Guderian was awarded a Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross.


title: Heinz Guderian

text: The historian Russell Hart writes that Guderian supported the invasion because he "despised the Catholic, Slavic Poles who now occupied parts of his native, beloved Prussia". Foremost in his mind was the "liberation" of his former family estate at Gross-Klonia; Guderian ordered the advance on Gross-Klonia at night and through fog, leading to what he subsequently admitted were "serious casualties".


title: Heinz Guderian

text: During the invasion, the German military mistreated and killed prisoners of war, ignoring both the Geneva Convention and their own army regulations. Guderian's corps withdrew before the SS began its ethnic cleansing campaign. He learned of murder operations and of Jews being forced into Nazi ghettos from his son, Heinz Günther Guderian, who had witnessed some of them. There is no record of his having made any protest.


title: Heinz Guderian

text: Guderian was involved in the strategic debates that preceded the invasion of France and the Low Countries. The plan was being developed by his classmate at the 1907 War Academy, Erich von Manstein. The Manstein Plan shifted the weight of the armoured formations away from a head-on attack through the Low Countries to one through the Ardennes. Guderian confidently proclaimed the feasibility of taking armor through the hilly Ardennes Forest and was subsequently told he may have to command the spearhead of the attack himself. He then complained about the lack of resources until he was given seven mechanized divisions with which to accomplish the task. The plan established a force for the penetration of the forest that comprised the largest concentration of German armor to that date: 1,112 out of Germany's total of 2,438 tanks.


title: Heinz Guderian

text: Guderian's corps spearheaded the drive through the Ardennes and over the Meuse River. He led the attack that broke the French lines at the Battle of Sedan. Guderian's panzer group led the "race to the sea", ending with the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) and French forces trapped at Dunkirk. A British counter-attack at Arras on 21 May slowed down the German advance and allowed the BEF to establish defenses around points of evacuation, while Hitler, conscious of potential reverses and of allowing unsupported armor into urban fighting, issued the order to halt. A general resumption of the attack was ordered on 26 May, but by that time the Allied forces rallied, offering stiff resistance. On 28 May, with his losses mounting, Guderian advised the abandonment of the armoured assault in favor of a traditional artillery-infantry operation. Guderian was then ordered to advance to the Swiss border. The offensive started at the Weygand Line on 9 June and finished on 17 June with the encirclement of the Maginot Line defences and the remaining French forces.


title: Heinz Guderian

text: Despite the success of the invasion, French defeat was not inevitable; the French had better, more numerous military equipment and were not overwhelmed by a numerically or technologically superior military force. Instead, the French loss stemmed from poor army morale, faulty military strategy and a lack of coordination among Allied troops. Hitler and his generals became overconfident after their historic victory, and came to believe they could defeat the Soviet Union: a country with significantly more natural resources, manpower and industrial capacity.


title: Heinz Guderian

text: In Guderian's 1937 book "Achtung – Panzer!" he wrote that "the time has passed when the Russians had no instinct for technology" and that Germany would have to reckon "with the Eastern Question in a form more serious than ever before in history". However, during the planning for Operation Barbarossa—the German invasion of the Soviet Union—he had become optimistic about the supposed superiority of German arms. By May, 1941 Guderian had accepted Hitler's official position that Operation Barbarossa was a preemptive strike. He had accepted some core elements of National Socialism: the Lebensraum concept of territorial expansion and the destruction of the supposed Judeo-Bolshevik threat.


title: Heinz Guderian

text: Guderian's 2nd Panzer Group began its offensive on 22 June by crossing the Bug River and advancing towards the Dnieper. The combined forces of 2nd and 3rd Panzer Groups closed the Minsk pocket, taking 300,000 prisoners before attacking towards Smolensk. Guderian was awarded a Knight's Cross with Oak Leaves on 17 July 1941. Following the conclusion of the Battle of Smolensk, which ended with the encirclement and destruction of the Soviet 16th, 19th and 20th Armies, General Franz Halder, Chief-of-Staff of the OKH, argued in favor of the all-out drive toward Moscow. Halder had Guderian fly to Führer Headquarters to argue the Army's case for continuing the assault against Moscow. Guderian, who had just recently been vehemently opposed to Hitler's plan for the drive to the south, unexpectedly sided with the dictator. This abrupt change of heart angered both Halder and Field Marshal Fedor von Bock, commander of Army Group Centre, and turned Guderian into somewhat of a pariah amid Army leaders.


title: Heinz Guderian

text: By 15 September, German forces including the 1st and 2nd Panzer Groups had completed the largest encirclement in history: the Battle of Kiev. Owing to the 2nd Panzer Group's southward turn during the battle, the Wehrmacht destroyed the entire Southwestern Front east of Kiev, inflicting over 600,000 losses on the Red Army by 26 September. However, the campaign had been costly; the German forces had just half the tanks they had three months earlier. They were bogged down in a war of attrition for which the Wehrmacht was not prepared. Guderian's 2nd Panzer Group was in the worst shape; it had just 21 per cent of its tanks in working order. In mid-September, he was ordered to make a drive for Moscow. On 30 September the Battle of Moscow began. On 4 October, the 4th Panzer Division, part of the 2nd Panzer Group, suffered a severe setback at Mtsensk, near Oryol. Guderian demanded an inquiry into the realities of tank warfare on the Eastern Front, eventually suggesting in November to senior German tank designers and manufacturers that the quickest solution was to produce a direct copy of the Soviet T-34 tank.


title: Heinz Guderian

text: By November, the attack by the 2nd Panzer Group on Tula and Kashira, south of Moscow, achieved limited success, while Guderian vacillated between despair and optimism, depending on the situation at the front. Facing pressure from the German High Command, Field Marshal Günther von Kluge finally committed the weaker south flank of his 4th Army to the attack on 1 December. In the aftermath of the battle, Guderian blamed slow commitment of 4th Army to the attack for the German failure to reach Moscow. This assessment grossly overestimated the capabilities of Kluge's remaining forces. It also failed to appreciate the reality that Moscow was a metropolis that German forces lacked the numbers to either encircle or to capture in a frontal assault. In the aftermath of the German failure, Guderian refused to pass on Hitler's 'stand fast' order and fell out with Kluge, the new commander of the Army Group Centre. Guderian was relieved of command on 25 December.


title: Heinz Guderian

text: The German formations on the Eastern Front ubiquitously implemented the criminal Commissar Order and the Barbarossa Decree. For all divisions within Guderian's panzer group where files are preserved, there is evidence of illegal reprisals against the civilian population. In his memoirs, Guderian denied having given the Commissar Order. However, General Joachim Lemelsen, a corps commander within Guderian's panzer group, is documented as saying "prisoners, who could be shown to have been commissars, had to be immediately taken aside and shot"and that the order came directly from Guderian. Reporting to the OKW, Guderian is documented as saying his panzer group had "shunted off" 170 commissars by the beginning of August.


title: Heinz Guderian

text: In September, 1942, when Erwin Rommel was recuperating in Germany from health problems, he suggested Guderian to OKW as the only man suitable to replace him in Africa. The response from OKH came in the same night: "Guderian is not accepted".


title: Heinz Guderian

text: On 1 March 1943, after the German defeat in the Battle of Stalingrad, Hitler appointed Guderian to the newly created position of Inspector General of Armoured Troops. The latter had successfully lobbied to be reinstated, resulting in the new posting. Guderian's responsibilities were to oversee the panzer arm and the training of Germany's panzer forces. He established a collaborative relationship with Albert Speer regarding the manufacture and development of armored fighting vehicles. The military failures of 1943 prevented Guderian from restoring combat power to the armored forces to any significant degree. He had limited success with improved tank destroyers and fixing flaws in the third generation of tanks, the Panther and the Tiger.


title: Heinz Guderian

text: Operation Citadel, the last major German offensive operation in the east, was an attempt by the German army to regain the initiative. Guderian opposed the offensive. In a conversation with Hitler prior to the offensive, Guderian said: "Why are we attacking in the east at all this year?" Hitler responded, "You are right. Whenever I think of this attack, my stomach turns over." Guderian concluded, "Then you have the right attitude towards this situation. Leave it alone."


title: Heinz Guderian

text: Guderian became the Acting Chief of the General Staff of the Army High Command with the responsibility of advising Hitler on the Eastern Front. He replaced General of the Infantry Kurt Zeitzler, who had abandoned the position on 1 July after losing faith in Hitler's judgement and suffering a nervous breakdown.


title: Heinz Guderian

text: Germany was already heading to inevitable defeat, and Guderian could not shape the military situation nor Hitler's strategic decisions. Hitler placed Guderian in charge of the "Honour Court": a kangaroo court for those accused of involvement in the 20 July Plot. Guderian himself denied any involvement with the plot; nevertheless, he had unexpectedly retired to his estate on the day of the assassination attempt. The court discharged those found guilty of participating in the plot from the armed forces so that they could be tried by the People's Court, set up for the purpose of prosecuting the alleged plotters. Those accused were tortured by the Gestapo and executed by hanging. Some plotters were hanged by a thin hemp rope, by Hitler's direct orders, so that they slowly strangled to death after a lengthy agony.


title: Heinz Guderian

text: Post-war, Guderian claimed that he had attempted to get out of this duty and that he had found the sessions "repulsive". In reality, Guderian had applied himself to the task with the vigour of a Nazi adherent, which perhaps was due to the desire to deflect attention from himself. Hart writes that he fought to save Rommel's chief of staff, Hans Speidel, because Speidel could have implicated Guderian in the plot.


title: Heinz Guderian

text: As head of the OKH, Guderian was faced with the pressing issues of the staff work being impacted by arrests, which among the OKH staff and their families eventually ran into the hundreds. Guderian had to fill serious gaps, such as one created by the suicide of General Eduard Wagner, the quartermaster general, in July. Even with vacancies filling up, a key problem remained: too many of the personnel were new to their roles and lacked institutional knowledge, including Guderian himself. Guderian relied heavily on Colonel Johann von Kielmansegg who was the most senior staff officer with experience at the OKH, but he was himself arrested in August. The situation was not improved by Guderian's long-standing bias against the General Staff which he blamed for having allegedly opposed his attempts to introduce modern armored doctrine into the army back in the 1930s. The latter months of 1944 were marked by the ever-increasing strife between the OKH and the OKW (Oberkommando der Wehrmacht), as the two organizations competed for resources, especially in the run-up to the last-ditch German December, 1944 offensive on the Western Front. After the war, Guderian blamed Hitler for frittering away the last German reserves in the operation; nonetheless, Germany's strategic situation was such that even twenty or thirty extra divisions would not have helped.


title: Heinz Guderian

text: Guderian completed the total Nazification of the army general staff with a 29 July order that demanded that all officers join the party. He also made the Nazi salute obligatory throughout the armed forces. He supported the politicization of the military, but failed to see why other officers perceived him as a Nazi. As chief-of-staff of the OKH, Guderian did not object to the orders that Hitler and Himmler issued during the brutal suppression of the Warsaw Uprising nor the atrocities being perpetrated against the civilian population of the city. At a Volkssturm rally in November, 1944, Guderian said that there were "95 million National Socialists who stand behind Adolf Hitler".


title: Heinz Guderian

text: After the war, Guderian claimed that his actions in the final months as head of the OKH were driven by a search for a solution to Germany's increasingly-bleak prospects. This was supposedly the rationale behind Guderian's plans to turn major urban centers along the Eastern Front into so-called fortress cities ("feste Plätze"). This fantastical plan had no hope of succeeding against the mobile operations of the Red Army. In any event, most of the "fortresses" were poorly provisioned and staffed by older garrison troops. On 28 March, following the failed operation to retake the town of Küstrin (now Kostrzyn nad Odrą in Poland), Guderian was sent on leave. He was replaced by General Hans Krebs.


title: Heinz Guderian

text: Guderian cultivated close personal relationships with the most powerful people in the regime. He had an exclusive dinner with Himmler on Christmas Day, 1944. On 6 March 1945, shortly before the end of the war, Guderian participated in a propaganda broadcast that denied the Holocaust; the Red Army in its advance had just liberated several extermination camps. Despite the general's later claims of being anti-Nazi, Hitler most likely found Guderian's values to be closely aligned with Nazi ideology. Hitler brought him out of retirement in 1943 and especially appreciated the orders he issued in the aftermath of the failed plot.


title: Heinz Guderian

text: Guderian and his staff surrendered to US forces on 10 May 1945. He avoided being convicted as a war criminal at the Nuremberg Trials because there was no substantial documentary evidence against him at that time. He answered questions from the Allied forces and denied being an ardent supporter of Nazism. He joined the US Army Historical Division in 1945 and the US refused requests from the Soviet Union to have him extradited. Even after the war, Guderian retained an affinity with Hitler and National Socialism. While interned by the Americans, his conversations were secretly taped. In one such recording, while conversing with former Field Marshal Wilhelm Ritter von Leeb and former General Leo Geyr von Schweppenburg, Guderian opined: "The fundamental principles [of Nazism] were fine".


title: Heinz Guderian

text: Guderian was released from captivity without trial in 1948. Many of his peers were not so lucky. Von Manstein was sentenced to 18 years and Albert Kesselring was given a life sentence. Guderian had informed on his ex-colleagues and co-operated with the Allies, which had helped him evade prosecution. He retired to Schwangau near Füssen in Southern Bavaria and began writing. His most successful book was "Panzer Leader". He remained an ardent German nationalist for the rest of his life. Guderian died on 14 May 1954 at the age of 65 and is buried at the "Friedhof Hildesheimer Straße" in Goslar.


title: Heinz Guderian

text: Guderian's post-war autobiography "Panzer Leader" was a success with the reading public. He cast himself as an innovator and the "father" of the German panzer arm, both before the war and during the blitzkrieg years. This allowed him to re-imagine himself as the master of the blitzkrieg between 1939 and 1941; however, this was an exaggeration. Guderian's German memoirs were first published in 1950. At that time they were the only source on the development of panzer forces, German military records having been misplaced or lost. Consequently, historians based their interpretation of historical events upon Guderian's self-centred autobiography. Subsequent biographers supported the myth and embellished it. In 1952 Guderian's memoirs were reprinted in English. British journalist and military theorist B. H. Liddell Hart gained access to a group of German generals, imprisoned in the No. 1 POW camp in Grizedale Hall in the north of England from 9 August 1945, as a Political Intelligence Department lecturer taking part in the Re-education programme, in an effort to use that to re-establish his reputation as a military theorist and commentator. He asked Guderian to say that he had based his military theories on Liddell Hart's; Guderian obliged. Liddell Hart, in turn, became an advocate for West German rearmament.


title: Heinz Guderian

text: In newer studies, historians began to question Guderian's memoirs and criticize the myth that they had created. Battistelli, examining Guderian's record, said he was not the father of the panzer arm. He was one of a number of innovators. He stood out from his arguably more able compatriot, Lutz, for two reasons. Firstly, he sought the limelight, and secondly, he fostered a close relationship with Hitler. In portraying himself as the father of blitzkrieg and ingratiating himself with the Americans, he avoided being handed over to the Soviet Union. Battistelli writes that his most remarkable skill was not as a theoretician or commander, it was as an author. His books "Achtung-Panzer!" and "Panzer Leader" were a critical and commercial success upon publication and continue to be discussed, researched and analysed 67 years after his death.


title: Heinz Guderian

text: Guderian was a capable tactician and technician, leading his troops successfully in the Invasion of Poland, the Battle of France and during the early stages of the invasion of the Soviet Union: especially in the advance to Smolensk and the Battle of Kiev. Liddell Hart writes that most of his success came from positions of substantial advantage, and he was never able to accomplish victory from a position of weakness. Hart suggests that his strengths were outweighed by his deficiencies, such as deliberately creating animosity between his panzer force and the other military arms, with disastrous consequences. His memoirs omitted mention of his military failings and his close relationship with Hitler. James Corum writes in his book "The Roots of Blitzkrieg: Hans von Seeckt and German Military Reform" that Guderian was an excellent general, a first-rate tactician and a man who played a central role in developing Panzer divisions, irrespective of his memoirs.


title: Heinz Guderian

text: Battistelli writes that Guderian rewrote history in his memoirs, but notes that the biggest re-writing of history comes not in his putative fathering of the panzer force but in the cover-up of his culpability for war crimes during Operation Barbarossa. Units under his command carried out the Commissar order, which entailed the murder of Red Army political officers. He also played a large role in the commission of reprisals after the Warsaw Uprising of 1944.


title: Heinz Guderian

text: Like other generals, Guderian's memoirs emphasized his loyalty to Germany and the German people; however, he neglected to mention that Hitler bought this loyalty with bribes, including landed estates and a monthly payment of . Guderian wrote in his memoirs that he had been given a Polish estate as a retirement gift. Worth , the estate covered an area of and it was located at Deipenhof (now Głębokie, Poland) in the Warthegau area of occupied Poland. The occupants had been evicted. Guderian also did not mention that he had initially requested an estate three times larger, but he was turned down by the local Gauleiter, with support from Himmler. The Gauleiter balked at giving such an opulent estate to someone with the rank of only a Colonel-General.


title: Heinz Guderian

text: In 1950, Guderian published a pamphlet entitled "Can Europe Be Defended?", where he lamented that the Western powers had picked the wrong side to ally themselves with during the war, even as Germany "was fighting for its naked existence", as a "defender of Europe" against the supposed Bolshevik menace. Guderian issued apologetics for Hitler, writing: "For one may judge Hitler's acts as one will, in retrospect his struggle was about Europe, even if he made dreadful mistakes and errors". He claimed that only the Nazi civilian administration (not the Wehrmacht) was responsible for atrocities against Soviet civilians, and scapegoated Hitler and the Russian winter for the Wehrmacht's military reverses, as he later did in "Panzer Leader"; in addition, he wrote that six million Germans died during their expulsion from the Eastern territories by the Soviet Union and its allies, while also writing that the defendants executed at the Nuremberg trials (for war crimes such as the Holocaust) were "defenders of Europe".


title: Heinz Guderian

text: Ronald Smelser and Edward J. Davies, in their book "The Myth of the Eastern Front", conclude that Guderian's memoirs are full of "egregious untruths, half truths, and omissions", as well as outright "nonsense". Guderian claimed, contrary to historical evidence, that the criminal Commissar Order was not carried out by his troops because it "never reached [his] panzer group". He also lied about the Barbarossa Decree that preemptively exempted German troops from prosecution for crimes committed against Soviet civilians, claiming that it was never carried out either. Guderian claimed to have been solicitous towards the civilian population, that he took pains to preserve Russian cultural objects and that his troops had "liberated" Soviet citizens.


title: Heinz Guderian

text: David Stahel writes that English-speaking historians too readily presented a distorted image of German generals in the post-war era. In his book "Operation Barbarossa and Germany's Defeat in the East", Stahel wrote: "The men in control of Hitler's armies were not honourable men, carrying out their orders as dutiful servants of the state. With resolute support for the regime, the generals unquestioningly waged one war of aggression after the other, and, once Barbarossa began, willingly partook in the genocide of the Nazi regime".


title: Heinz Guderian

text: Guderian's memoirs remain popular. The favourable descriptions started with the British journalist and military theorist Liddell Hart, who described Guderian as one of the "Great Captains of History" in a book published by the mass-market Ballantine Books in 1957. As late as 2002, for the 55th anniversary of the first publication of the book, "The New York Times", "Newsweek", "The New Yorker" and other outlets published positive reviews, reinforcing the tenets of the myth of the clean Wehrmacht. The reviews stressed the separation between the professional soldiers and the Nazi regime, while "The New York Times Book Review" described the book as one of the best written by former German generals. Kenneth Macksey in his biography eulogized Guderian, inflating his true accomplishments.


title: Heinz Guderian

text: In 1976, the leading wargaming magazine, "Strategy and Tactics", spotlighted Guderian in a featured game of the month called "Panzergruppe Guderian". The magazine cover included a photo of Guderian in military dress, with his Knight's Cross and a pair of binoculars, suggesting a commanding role. The magazine featured a glowing profile of Guderian in which he was identified as the originator of blitzkrieg and lauded for his military achievements. Adhering to the postwar myths, the profile posited that a commander like this could "function in any political climate and be unaffected by it". Guderian thus came across as a consummate professional who stood apart from the crimes of the Nazi regime.


title: Bungie

text: Bungie, Inc. is an American video game company based in Bellevue, Washington. It is a studio owned by Sony Interactive Entertainment. The company was established in May 1991 by Alex Seropian, who later brought in programmer Jason Jones after publishing Jones' game "". Originally based in Chicago, Illinois, the company concentrated on Macintosh games during its early years and created two successful video game franchises called "Marathon" and "Myth". An offshoot studio, Bungie West, produced "Oni", published in 2001 and owned by Take-Two Interactive, which held a 19.9% ownership stake at the time.


title: Bungie

text: Microsoft acquired Bungie in 2000, and its project "" was repurposed as a launch title for Microsoft's Xbox console. "Halo" became the Xbox's "killer app", selling millions of copies and spawning the "Halo" franchise. On October 5, 2007, Bungie announced that it had split from Microsoft and become a privately held independent company, Bungie LLC, while Microsoft retained ownership of the "Halo" franchise intellectual property. It signed a ten-year publishing deal with Activision in April 2010. Their first project was the 2014 first-person shooter, "Destiny", which was followed by "Destiny 2" in 2017. In January 2019, Bungie announced it was ending this partnership, and would take over publishing for "Destiny". Sony Interactive Entertainment completed its acquisition of Bungie in July 2022, with Bungie remaining as an independent and multi-platform studio and publisher.


title: Bungie

text: Among Bungie's side projects is Bungie.net, the company's website, which includes company information, forums, and statistics-tracking and integration with many of its games. Bungie.net serves as the platform from which Bungie sells company-related merchandise out of the Bungie Store and runs other projects, including Bungie Aerospace, a charitable organization called The Bungie Foundation, a podcast, and online publications about game topics. The company is known for its informal and dedicated workplace culture.


title: Bungie

text: In the early 1990s, Alex Seropian was pursuing a mathematics degree at the University of Chicago, as the university did not offer undergraduate degrees in computer science. Living at home shortly before graduation, his father's wishes for him to get a job convinced Seropian to start his own game company instead.


title: Bungie

text: Seropian's first video game was a "Pong" clone, written and released nearly 20 years after the original, called "Gnop!" ("Pong" spelled backwards). The game was created in 1990, almost a year before Bungie's official incorporation, but was released under the Bungie name and is considered by Bungie as its first game. Seropian released "Gnop!" free of charge, but sold the source code for the game for US$15. "Gnop!" was later included in several compilations of early Bungie games, including the "Marathon Trilogy Box Set" and the "Mac Action Sack".


title: Bungie

text: Seropian officially founded Bungie Software Products Corporation in May 1991 to publish "". Seropian culled funding from friends and family, assembling the game boxes and writing the disks himself. "Operation: Desert Storm" sold 2,500 copies, and Seropian looked for another game to publish.