title: Hempcrete

text: The fact that the mixture contains a plant-based compound introduces the caution against water and rising damp levels. Hempcrete walls need to be built with a joint between the wall and the ground in order to avoid capillary rising as well as water runoff at the wall base. Moreover, hempcrete block can only be installed above the ground level. External walls need to avoid rotting of shives by implementing protection by the rain gale with sand and lime plaster. The exterior of a hempcrete based assembly needs these protections, but the interior side of an assembly can stay exposed.


title: Hempcrete

text: Just like any crop, hemp absorbs CO from the atmosphere while growing, so hempcrete is considered a carbon-storing material. Accordingly, this CO will be stored in the hempcrete block after fabrication and for the duration of the block's life allowing positive environmental benefits. The specific amount of carbonates in the blocks actually increases with the age of the block. The amount of CO capture within the net life cycle CO emissions of hempcrete is estimated to be between -1.6 to -79 kg COe/m. There is a correlation that increasing the mass of the binder which increases the mixture density will increase the total estimated carbon uptake via carbonation.


title: Hempcrete

text: The main cause of the environmental footprint for hempcrete comes from the production of the binder. Reports have estimated that 18.5% - 38.4% of initial emissions from binder production can be recovered through the carbonation process. The binder is produced by the calcination of lime which takes place in kilns at very high temperatures. The transport phase poses an embodied energy footprint since it involves the consumption of diesel. The diesel consumption also occurs due to the functioning of machineries used for hemp shives production. Abiotic depletion is caused from the consumption of lead and cadmium in the electricity generation process, which is largest in the manufacturing of the hempcrete block inside the company.


title: Healthcare in Germany

text: Germany has a universal multi-payer health care system paid for by a combination of statutory health insurance (') and private health insurance (').


title: Healthcare in Germany

text: The turnover of the health sector was about US$368.78 billion (€287.3 billion) in 2010, equivalent to 11.6 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) and about US$4,505 (€3,510) per capita. According to the World Health Organization, Germany's health care system was 77% government-funded and 23% privately funded as of 2004. In 2004 Germany ranked thirtieth in the world in life expectancy (78 years for men). It was tied for eighth place in the number of practicing physicians, at 3.3 per 1,000 persons. It also had very low infant mortality rate (4.7 per 1,000 live births). In 2001 total spending on health amounted to 10.8 percent of gross domestic product.


title: Healthcare in Germany

text: According to the Euro health consumer index, which placed it in seventh position in its 2015 survey, Germany has long had the most restriction-free and consumer-oriented healthcare system in Europe. Patients are allowed to seek almost any type of care they wish whenever they want it. In 2017, the governmental health system in Germany kept a record reserve of more than €18 billion which made it one of the healthiest healthcare systems in the world at the time.


title: Healthcare in Germany

text: Germany has the world's oldest national social health insurance system, with origins dating back to Otto von Bismarck's social legislation, which included the "Health Insurance Bill of 1883", "Accident Insurance Bill of 1884", and "Old Age and Disability Insurance Bill of 1889". Bismarck stressed the importance of three key principles; solidarity, the government is responsible for ensuring access by those who need it, subsidiarity, policies are implemented with the smallest political and administrative influence, and corporatism, the government representative bodies in health care professions set out procedures they deem feasible. Mandatory health insurance originally applied only to low-income workers and certain government employees, but has gradually expanded to cover the great majority of the population.


title: Healthcare in Germany

text: Unemployment insurance was introduced in 1927. In 1932, Berlin treaty (1926) expired and Germany's modern healthcare system started shortly after the expiration of Berlin Treaty. 1935, Gerhard Domagk discovers sulfonamides. In 1956, Laws on Statutory health insurance (SHI) for pensioners come into effect.


title: Healthcare in Germany

text: New laws came in effect in 1972 to help finance and manage hospitals. In 1974 SHI covered students, artists, farmers and disabled living shelters. Between 1977 and 1983 several cost laws were enacted. Long-term care insurance ("Pflegeversicherung") was introduced in 1995.


title: Healthcare in Germany

text: Since 1976 the government has convened an annual commission, composed of representatives of business, labor, physicians, hospitals, and insurance and pharmaceutical industries. The commission takes into account government policies and makes recommendations to regional associations with respect to overall expenditure targets. In 1986 expenditure caps were implemented and were tied to the age of the local population as well as the overall wage increases. Although reimbursement of providers is on a fee-for-service basis the amount to be reimbursed for each service is determined retrospectively to ensure that spending targets are not exceeded. Capitated care, such as that provided by U.S. health maintenance organizations, has been considered as a cost-containment mechanism but would require consent of regional medical associations, and has not materialized.


title: Healthcare in Germany

text: Copayments were introduced in the 1980s in an attempt to prevent overutilization and control costs. The average length of hospital stay in Germany has decreased in recent years from 14 days to 9 days, still considerably longer than average stays in the U.S. (5 to 6 days). The difference is partly driven by the fact that hospital reimbursement is chiefly a function of the number of hospital days as opposed to procedures or the patient's diagnosis. Drug costs have increased substantially, rising nearly 60% from 1991 through 2005. Despite attempts to contain costs, overall health care expenditures rose to 10.7% of GDP in 2005, comparable to other western European nations, but substantially less than that spent in the U.S. (nearly 16% of GDP).


title: Healthcare in Germany

text: As of 2009, the system is decentralized with private practice physicians providing ambulatory care, and independent, mostly non-profit hospitals providing the majority of inpatient care. Approximately 92% of the population are covered by a 'Statutory Health Insurance' plan, which provides a standardized level of coverage through any one of approximately 1,100 public or private sickness funds. Standard insurance is funded by a combination of employee contributions, employer contributions and government subsidies on a scale determined by income level. Higher-income workers sometimes choose to pay a tax and opt-out of the standard plan, in favor of 'private' insurance. The latter's premiums are not linked to income level but instead to health status. Historically, the level of provider reimbursement for specific services is determined through negotiations between regional physicians' associations and sickness funds.


title: Healthcare in Germany

text: The German healthcare system is regulated by the Federal Joint Committee ("Gemeinsamer Bundesausschuss"), a public health organization authorized to make binding regulations growing out of health reform bills passed by lawmakers, along with routine decisions regarding healthcare in Germany. The Federal Joint Committee consists of 13 members, who are entitled to vote on these binding regulations. The members composed of legal representatives of the public health insurances, the hospitals, the doctors and dentists and three impartial members. Also, there are five representatives of the patients with an advisory role who are not allowed to vote.


title: Healthcare in Germany

text: The German law about the public health insurance () sets the framework agreement for the committee. One of the most important tasks is to decide which treatments and performances the insurances have to pay for by law. The principle about these decisions is that every treatment and performance has to be required, economic, sufficient and appropriate.


title: Healthcare in Germany

text: Since 2009, health insurance has been compulsory for the whole population in Germany, when coverage was expanded from the majority of the population to everyone.


title: Healthcare in Germany

text: As of 2021, salaried workers and employees who make less than €64,350 per year or €5,362.50 per month are automatically enrolled into one of currently around 105 public non-profit "sickness funds" (). The fund has a common rate for all members, and is paid for with joint employer-employee contributions. The employer pays half of the contribution, and the employee pays the other half. Insured persons can also choose optional plans that include higher deductibles and are therefore cheaper. Plans that include high reimbursements if no medical services are used are also possible. In addition, insured persons can forego certain services with some health insurance companies and choose cheaper plans. Self-employed workers and those who are unemployed without benefits must pay the entire contribution themselves. Provider payment is negotiated in complex corporatist social bargaining among specified self-governed bodies (e.g. physicians' associations) at the level of federal states (Länder). The sickness funds are mandated to provide a unique and broad benefit package and cannot refuse membership or otherwise discriminate on an actuarial basis. Social welfare beneficiaries are also enrolled in statutory health insurance, and municipalities pay contributions on their behalf.


title: Healthcare in Germany

text: Besides the statutory health insurance (), which covers the vast majority of residents, some residents can instead choose private health insurance: those with a yearly income above €64,350 (2022, unchanged from 2021), students and civil servants. About 11% of the population has private health insurance. Most civil servants benefit from a tax-funded government employee benefit scheme that covers a percentage of the costs, and cover the rest of the costs with a private insurance contract. Recently, private insurers provide various types of supplementary coverage as an add upon of the SHI benefit package (e.g. for glasses, coverage abroad and additional dental care or more sophisticated dentures). Health insurance in Germany is split in several parts. The largest part of 89% of the population is covered by statutory public health insurance funds, regulated under by the ("SGB V"), which defines the general criteria of coverage, which are translated into benefit packages by the Federal Joint Committee. The remaining 11% opt for private health insurance, including government employees.


title: Healthcare in Germany

text: Public health insurance contributions are based on the worker's salary. Private insurers charge risk-related contributions. This may result in substantial savings for younger individuals in good health. With age, private contributions tend to rise and a number of individuals formerly cancelled their private insurance plan in order to return to statutory health insurance; this option is now only possible for beneficiaries under 55 years.


title: Healthcare in Germany

text: Reimbursement for outpatient care was previously on a fee-for-service basis but has changed into basic capitation according to the number of patients seen during one quarter, with a capped overall spending for outpatient treatments and region. Moreover, regional panel physician associations regulate number of physicians allowed to accept Statutory Health Insurance in a given area. Co-payments, which exist for medicines and other items are relatively low compared to other countries.


title: Healthcare in Germany

text: Germany has a universal system with two main types of health insurance. Germans are offered three mandatory health benefits, which are co-financed by employer and employee: health insurance, accident insurance, and long-term care insurance.


title: Healthcare in Germany

text: Accident insurance for working accidents () is covered by the employer and basically covers all risks for commuting to work and at the workplace.


title: Healthcare in Germany

text: Long-term care insurance () is covered half and half by employer and employee and covers cases in which a person is not able to manage their daily routine (provision of food, cleaning of apartment, personal hygiene, etc.). It is about 2% of a yearly salaried income or pension, with employers matching the contribution of the employee.


title: Healthcare in Germany

text: There are two separate types of health insurance: public health insurance () and private insurance (). Both systems struggle with the increasing cost of medical treatment and the changing demography. About 87.5% of the persons with health insurance are members of the public system, while 12.5% are covered by private insurance (as of 2006).


title: Healthcare in Germany

text: In 2013 a state funded private care insurance was introduced (). Insurance contracts that fit certain criteria are subsidized by €60 per year. It is expected that the number of contracts will grow from 400,000 by end of 2013 to over a million within the next few years. These contracts have been criticized by consumer rights foundations.


title: Healthcare in Germany

text: The German federal legislature has reduced the number of public health insurance organizations from 1209 in 1991 down to 123 in 2015.


title: Healthcare in Germany

text: The public health insurance organizations () are the (EK), (AOK), (BKK), (IKK), (KBS), and the (LKK).


title: Healthcare in Germany

text: As long as a person has the right to choose health insurance, they can join any insurance that is willing to include them.


title: Healthcare in Germany

text: Regular salaried employees must have public health insurance unless their income exceeds €64,350 per year (2021). This is referred to as the compulsory insurance limit (). If their income exceeds that amount, they can choose to have private health insurance instead. Freelancers and self-employed persons can have public or private insurance, regardless of their income. Public health insurers are not forced to accept self-employed persons, which can create difficulties for foreign freelancers, who can get refused by both public and private health insurers. Since health insurance coverage is a requirement for their residence permit, they can be forced to leave the country.


title: Healthcare in Germany

text: For persons who have opted out of the public health insurance system to get private health insurance, it can prove difficult to subsequently go back to the public system, since this is only possible under certain circumstances, for example if they are not yet 55 years of age and their income drops below the level required for private selection. Since private health insurance is usually more expensive than public health insurance, although not always, the higher premiums must then be paid out of a lower income. During the last twenty years private health insurance became more and more expensive and less efficient compared with the public insurance.


title: Healthcare in Germany

text: In Germany, all privately financed products and services for health are assigned as part of the 'second health market'. Unlike the 'first health market' they are usually not paid by a public or private health insurance. Patients with public health insurance paid privately about €1.5 billion in this market segment in 2011, while already 82% of physicians offered their patients in their practices individual services being not covered by the patient's insurances; the benefits of these services are controversial discussed. Private investments in fitness, for wellness, assisted living, and health tourism are not included in this amount. The 'second health market' in Germany is compared to the United States still relatively small, but is growing continuously.


title: Healthcare in Germany

text: Besides the primary governmental health insurance and the secondary private health insurance mentioned above, all governmental and private clinics generally work in an inpatient setting with a prepayment system, requiring a cost estimate that needs to be covered before the perspective therapy can be planned. Several university hospitals in Germany have therefore country-specific quotes for pre-payments that can differ from 100% to the estimated costs and the likelihood of unexpected additional costs, i.e. due to risks for medical complications.


title: Healthcare in Germany

text: Health economics in Germany can be considered as a collective term for all activities that have anything to do with health in this country. This interpretation done by in 2002 seems, however, very generous due to several overlaps with other economic sectors. A simple outline of the health sector in three areas provides an "onion model of health care economics" by Elke Dahlbeck and Josef Hilbert from the (IAT) at the University of Applied Sciences Gelsenkirchen: Core areas are the ambulatory and inpatient acute care and geriatric care, and health administration. Around it is located wholesale and supplier sector with pharmaceutical industry, medical technology, healthcare, and wholesale trade of medical products. Health-related margins are the fitness and spa facilities, assisted living, and health tourism.


title: Healthcare in Germany

text: According to this basic idea, an almost totally regulated health care market like in the UK would not be very productive, but also a largely deregulated market as in the United States would not be optimal. Both systems would suffer concerning sustainable and comprehensive patient care. Only a hybrid of social well-balanced and competitive market conditions created a relevant optimum. Nevertheless, forces of the healthcare market in Germany are often regulated by a variety of amendments and health care reforms at the legislative level, especially by the Social Security Code (Sozialgesetzbuch- SGB) in the past 30 years.


title: Healthcare in Germany

text: Health care, including its industry and all services, is one of the largest sectors of the German economy. Direct inpatient and outpatient care equivalent to just about a quarter of the entire 'market' – depending on the perspective. A total of 4.4 million people working in this, that means about one in ten employees in 2007 and 2008. The total expenditure in health economics was about €287.3 billion in Germany in 2010, equivalent to 11.6 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) this year and about €3,510 per capita.


title: Healthcare in Germany

text: The pharmaceutical industry plays a major role in Germany within and beyond direct health care. Expenditure on pharmaceutical drugs is almost half of those for the entire hospital sector. Pharmaceutical drug expenditure grew by an annual average of 4.1% between 2004 and 2010. Such developments caused numerous health care reforms since the 1980s. An actual example of 2010 and 2011: First time since 2004 the drug expenditure fell from €30.2 billion in 2010 to €29.1 billion in 2011, i.e. a fall of €1.1 billion or 3.6%. That was caused by restructuring the Social Security Code: manufacturer discount 16% instead of 6%, price moratorium, increasing discount contracts, increasing discount by wholesale trade and pharmacies.


title: Healthcare in Germany

text: As of 2010, Germany has used reference pricing and incorporates cost sharing to charge patients more when a drug is newer and more effective than generic drugs. However, as of 2013 total out-of-costs for medications are capped at 2% of income, and 1% of income for people with chronic diseases.


title: Healthcare in Germany

text: In a sample of 13 developed countries Germany was seventh in its population weighted usage of medication in 14 classes in 2009 and tenth in 2013. The drugs studied were selected on the basis that the conditions treated had high incidence, prevalence and/or mortality, caused significant long-term morbidity and incurred high levels of expenditure and significant developments in prevention or treatment had been made in the last 10 years. The study noted considerable difficulties in cross border comparison of medication use. It has the highest number of dentists in Europe – 64,287 in 2015.


title: Healthcare in Germany

text: In 2002, the top diagnosis for male patients released from the hospital was heart disease, followed by alcohol-related disorders and hernias. For women, a 2020 study lists the three most common diagnoses as heart disease, dementia and cardiovascular diseases.


title: Healthcare in Germany

text: In 2016, an epidemiological study highlighted significant differences among the 16 federal states of Germany in terms of prevalence and mortality for the major cardiovascular diseases (CVD). The prevalence of major CVD was negatively correlated with the number of cardiologists, whereas it did not show any correlation with the number of primary care providers, general practitioners or non-specialized internists. A more relevant positive relation was found between the prevalence or mortality of major CVD and the number of residents per chest pain unit. Bremen, Saarland and the former East German states had higher prevalence and mortality rates for major CVD and lower mean lifespan durations.


title: Healthcare in Germany

text: The average length of hospital stay in Germany has decreased in recent years from 14 days to 9 days, still considerably longer than average stays in the United States (5 to 6 days). Drug costs have increased substantially, rising nearly 60% from 1991 through 2005. Despite attempts to contain costs, overall health care expenditures rose to 10.7% of GDP in 2005, comparable to other western European nations, but substantially less than that spent in the U.S. (nearly 16% of GDP).


title: Healthcare in Germany

text: In 2017 the BBC reported that compared with the United Kingdom the Caesarean rate, the use of MRI for diagnosis and the length of hospital stay are all higher in Germany.


title: Healthcare in Germany

text: According to several sources from the past decade, waiting times in Germany remain low for appointments and surgery, although a minority of elective surgery patients face longer waits. In 1992, a study by Fleming et al. (cited in Siciliani & Hurst, 2003, p. 8), 19.4% of German respondents said they had waited more than 12 weeks for their surgery.


title: Healthcare in Germany

text: In the Commonwealth Fund 2010 Health Policy Survey in 11 countries, Germany reported some of the lowest waiting times. Germans had the highest percentage of patients reporting their last specialist appointment took less than 4 weeks (83%, vs. 80% for the U.S.), and the second-lowest reporting it took 2 months or more (7%, vs. 5% for Switzerland and 9% for the U.S.). 70% of Germans reported that they waited less than 1 month for elective surgery, the highest percentage, and the lowest percentage (0%) reporting it took 4 months or more.


title: Healthcare in Germany

text: Both Social Health Insurance (SHI) and privately insured patient experienced low waits, but privately insured patients' waits were even lower. According to the National Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians (KBV, ), the body representing contract physicians and contract psychotherapists at federal level, 56% of Social Health Insurance patients waited 1 week or less, while only 13% waited longer than 3 weeks for a doctor's appointment. 67% of privately insured patients waited 1 week or less, while 7% waited longer than 3 weeks. Waits can also vary somewhat by region. Waits were longer in eastern Germany according to the KBV (KBV, 2010), as cited in "Health at a Glance 2011: OECD Indicators".


title: Healthcare in Germany

text: Germany has a large hospital sector capacity measured in beds: it has the highest rate of intensive care beds among high income countries and the highest rate of overall hospital capacity in Europe. High capacity on top of significant day surgery outside of hospitals (especially for ophthalmology and orthopaedic surgery) with doctors paid fee-for-service for activity performed are likely factors preventing long waits, despite hospital budget limitations. Activity-based payment for hospitals also is linked to low waiting times (Siciliani & Hurst, 2003, 33–34, 70). Germany introduced Diagnosis-Related Group activity-based payment for hospitals (with a soft cap budget limit).


title: Corona radiata

text: In neuroanatomy, the corona radiata is a white matter sheet that continues inferiorly as the internal capsule and superiorly as the centrum semiovale. This sheet of both ascending and descending axons carries most of the neural traffic from and to the cerebral cortex. The corona radiata is associated with the corticopontine tract, the corticobulbar tract, and the corticospinal tract.


title: Corona radiata

text: Projection fibers are afferents carrying information to the cerebral cortex, and efferents carrying information away from it. The most prominent projection fibers are the corona radiata, which radiate out from the cortex and then come together in the brain stem. The projection fibers that make up the corona radiata also radiate out of the brain stem via the internal capsule. Cerebral white matter is commonly regarded today as an intricately organized system of fasciculi that facilitate the highest expression of cerebral activity.


title: Corona radiata

text: Evidence from subcortical small infarcts suggests that motor fibers are somatotopically arranged in the human corona radiata. Following subtotal brain damage, localization of the corticofugal projection in the corona radiata and internal capsule can assist in evaluating a patient's residual motor capacity and predicting their potential for functional restitution. Data suggests that the corona radiata and superior capsular lesions may correlate with more favorable levels of functional recovery. Lesions seated inferiorly are likely to correlate with poorer levels of recovery regarding upper limb movement. Findings also suggest that motor deficit severity is likely to increase as a lesion occupies progressively more posterior regions of the internal capsule.


title: Corona radiata

text: The corona radiata may be affected by diseases affecting the cerebral white matter, including ischemic leukoencephalopathy, multiple sclerosis, and progressive leukoencephalopathy. These may have major effects on intellectual, social, and emotional functioning.


title: Corona radiata

text: In normal pressure hydrocephalus, expansion of the lateral ventricles causes distortion of the fibers of the corona radiata. This contributes to the urinary incontinence seen with NPH.


title: Personal life of Osama bin Laden

text: Osama bin Laden, a militant and founder of al Qaeda in 1988, believed Muslims should kill civilians and military personnel from the United States and allied countries until they withdrew support for Israel and withdrew military forces from Islamic countries. He was indicted in United States federal court for his involvement in the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Dar es Salaam Tanzania and Nairobi, Kenya, and was on the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list.


title: Personal life of Osama bin Laden

text: In 1974, at the age of 17, bin Laden married his first wife Najwa Ghanem at Latakia, Syria. Osama bin Laden married at least four other women; he fathered between 20 and 24 children.


title: Personal life of Osama bin Laden

text: Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden was born in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. In a 1998 interview with Al Jazeera, he gave his birth date as 10 March 1957. His father was Mohammed bin Laden, from Yemen. Before World War I, Mohammed had emigrated from Hadhramaut, on the south coast of Yemen, to the Red Sea port of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, where he began to work as a porter. Starting his own business in 1930, Mohammed built his fortune as a building contractor for the Saudi royal family during the 1950s. Though there is no definitive account of the number of children born to Mohammed bin Laden, it is generally put at 58. Mohammed bin Laden was married 22 times, although to no more than four women at a time per Sharia. Osama was the only son of Mohammed bin Laden and his tenth wife, Hamida al-Attas, née Alia Ghanem, who was born in Syria.


title: Personal life of Osama bin Laden

text: Bin Laden's parents divorced soon after he was born, according to Khaled M. Batarfi, a senior editor at the Al Madina newspaper in Jeddah who knew him during the 1970s. Bin Laden's mother then married a man named Muhammad al-Attas, who worked at the bin Laden company. The couple had four children, and bin Laden lived in the new household with three half-brothers and one half-sister.


title: Personal life of Osama bin Laden

text: Osama bin Laden was raised as a devout Sunni Muslim. Bin Laden's father ensured that he was regularly attending school. Bin Laden attended schools with some Western curricula and culture. No evidence has been found that he ever received full-time education in a religious madrassa. He was likely educated for some of his primary school years in Syria and that may have been in connection to his mother's frequent visits to Latakia, Syria. By the time bin Laden was an 8th grader, "he was a solid if unspectacular student". His mother remembered that he was "not an A student. He would pass exams with average grades."


title: Personal life of Osama bin Laden

text: In the mid-1960s, around age 10, bin Laden briefly attended Brummana High School, a Quaker institution in Brummana, Lebanon, along with several of his half brothers. Five former administrators and students said he attended for less than a year before returning home; they did not say or recall why he left, but his leaving was not due to poor behavior or grades. Renee Bazz, a former administrative staff member, said that bin Laden went to another school in Lebanon before he attended Brummana. British comedian and journalist Dom Joly claimed on an episode of BBC's "Would I Lie To You?" that he attended the school with bin Laden, with Osama being a senior and Joly being in elementary school. The claim is undermined by the fact that Joly was born in 1967 and Bin Laden was in Jeddah from 1968.


title: Personal life of Osama bin Laden

text: He seemed to have stayed in Latakia for a period. He moved back to Jeddah in the following September. From 1968 to 1976 he attended Al Thager academy. Bin Laden was probably in the fifth or sixth grade when he began attending school. In the 1960s, King Faisal had welcomed exiled teachers from Syria, Egypt, and Jordan, so that by the early seventies it was common to find members of the Muslim Brotherhood teaching at Saudi schools and universities. During that time, bin Laden became a member of the Brotherhood and attended its political teachings during after-school Islamic study groups.


title: Personal life of Osama bin Laden

text: Bin Laden earned a degree in civil engineering in 1979 from King Abdulaziz University in Jeddah. Despite his major subject, at university his main interest was religion; he was involved in both interpreting the Quran and charitable work. A close friend reports, "we read Sayyid Qutb. He was the one who most affected our generation." Sayyid Qutb himself, author of "Ma'alim fi-l-Tariq", or "Milestones," one of the most influential tracts on the importance of jihad against all that is un-Islamic in the world, was deceased, but his brother and publicizer of his work, Muhammad Qutb, lectured regularly at the university. So did another charismatic Muslim Brotherhood member, Abdallah Azzam, an Islamic scholar from Palestine who was instrumental in building pan-Islamic enthusiasm for jihad against the Soviets in Afghanistan and in drawing Muslims (like Osama) from all over the Middle East to fight there.


title: Personal life of Osama bin Laden

text: Bin Laden was described by University friend Jamal Khalifa as extremely religious. Neither man watched films nor listened to popular music, because they believed such activities went against the teachings of the Qur'an. During his University career he witnessed many world-changing events, especially in 1979. First he watched the Iranian Revolution, in which Ayatollah Khomeini overthrew Iran’s Western supported government to install an Islamist state. Then he saw the seizure of the Grand Mosque in Mecca by radicals in Saudi Arabia and the Saudi government’s dependent response and reliance on Western power. It was not until the French special forces came in that the government was able to regain control of Mecca’s holiest site. Bin Laden was disgusted with his government’s lack of ability to protect the sacred city, and he began to see the royal family more and more as corrupt. Finally, he ended 1979 ready to fight off the invading Soviets in Afghanistan.


title: Personal life of Osama bin Laden

text: In regard to his Islamic learning, bin Laden was sometimes referred to as a "sheikh", considered by some to be "well versed in the classical scriptures and traditions of Islam", and was said to have been mentored by scholars such as Musa al-Qarni. He had no formal training in Islamic jurisprudence, however, and was criticized by Islamic scholars as having no standing to issue religious opinions (fatwa).


title: Personal life of Osama bin Laden

text: Bin Laden is reported to have married at least five women, although he later divorced the first two. Three of Osama bin Laden's wives were university lecturers, highly educated, from distinguished families. According to Wisal al Turabi, bin Laden married them because they were "spinsters", who "were going to go without marrying in this world. So he married them for the Word of God". His known wives were:


title: Personal life of Osama bin Laden

text: On 27 April 2012, BBC News reported that the three widows as well as eleven children of Osama bin Laden were deported to Saudi Arabia from the Pakistani capital, Islamabad. However, since the youngest of his widows, Amal Ahmed al-Sadah, is a Yemeni, it is believed that she will travel on to Yemen.


title: Personal life of Osama bin Laden

text: Bin Laden fathered between 20 and 24 children. The children of his first wife, Najwa, include Abdallah (born c. 1976), Omar, Saad and Mohammed. His son Mohammed Babrak bin Laden (born c. 1983) married the daughter of the former al-Qaeda military chief Mohammed Atef (also called Abu Haf) in January 2001, at Kandahar.


title: Personal life of Osama bin Laden

text: Osama Bin Laden was known to be a “huge fan” of English Premier League club Arsenal FC, with the former Al Qaeda leader using some of his large wealth to buy shares in the club in 1994, it is unknown how big of a percentage Bin Laden owned, but it was said that he was a vocal shareholder, which means he owned at least 5 percent of the club or more.


title: Personal life of Osama bin Laden

text: The FBI described Osama bin Laden as tall and thin, between and in height and weighing about . Interviewees of Lawrence Wright, on the other hand, described him as quite slender, but not particularly tall. He had an olive complexion, was left-handed, and usually walked with a cane. He wore a plain white turban and did not wear the traditional Saudi male headdress, generally white.


title: Personal life of Osama bin Laden

text: In terms of personality, bin Laden was described as a soft-spoken, mild mannered man. His soft voice was also a function of necessity. Interviews with reporters had reportedly left his vocal cords inflamed and bin Laden unable to speak the following day. His bodyguard contended Soviet chemical weapons were to blame for this malady; reporters have speculated that kidney disease was the cause.


title: Personal life of Osama bin Laden

text: The author Adam Robinson has alleged that bin Laden supported Arsenal Football Club, visiting the team's stadium twice when he visited London in 1994.


title: Personal life of Osama bin Laden

text: Bin Laden's "wealth and generosity ... simplicity of ... behaviour, personal charm and ... bravery in battle" have been described as "legendary." According to Michael Scheuer, bin Laden claims to speak only Arabic. In a 1998 interview, he had the English questions translated into Arabic. But others, such as Rhimaulah Yusufzai and Peter Bergen, believe he understood English.


title: Personal life of Osama bin Laden

text: Bin Laden had been praised for his self-denial, despite his great wealth – or former great wealth. While living in Sudan, a lamb was slaughtered and cooked every evening at his home for guests, but bin Laden "ate very little himself, preferring to nibble what his guests left on their plates, believing that these abandoned morsels would gain the favor of God."


title: Personal life of Osama bin Laden

text: Bin Laden was said to have "consciously modeled himself" since childhood "on certain features of the Prophet's life", using "the fingers of his right hand," rather than a spoon when eating, believing it to be "sunnah": "the way the Prophet did it, ... choosing to fast on the days that Prophet fasted, to wear clothes similar to those the Prophet may have worn, even to sit and to eat in the same postures that tradition ascribes to him."


title: Personal life of Osama bin Laden

text: At the same time, other actions of his were motivated by concern for appearances. Bin Laden was known for his media savvy, using the Islamic imagery of the cave in Tora Bora "as a way of identifying himself with the prophet in the minds of many Muslims," despite the fact the caves in question were tunnels dug with the modern technology of earth moving machinery to store ammunition. He had dyed his beard to cover the streaks of gray. In 2001 he restaged a recitation of a poem intended for Arab television when he was not satisfied with the original video results done before an audience at his son's wedding dinner. The second take, done the next day after the wedding was over, had a handful of supporters crying in praise to simulate the noise of the full room the day before. "His image management extended to asking one of the reporters, who had taken a digital snapshot, to take another picture because his neck was 'too full'".


title: Religious views on suicide

text: In Buddhism, an individual's past acts are recognized to heavily influence what they experience in the present; present acts, in turn, become the background influence for future experiences (the doctrine of karma). Intentional actions by "mind, body or speech" have a reaction. This reaction, or repercussion, is the cause of conditions and differences one encounters in life.


title: Religious views on suicide

text: Buddhism teaches that all people experience substantial suffering ("dukkha"), in which suffering primarily originates from past negative deeds (karma), or may result as a natural process of the cycle of birth and death ("samsara"). Other reasons for the prevalence of suffering concern the concepts of impermanence and illusion ("maya"). Since everything is in a constant state of impermanence or flux, individuals experience dissatisfaction with the fleeting events of life. To break out of "samsara", Buddhism advocates the Noble Eightfold Path, and does not advocate suicide.


title: Religious views on suicide

text: In Theravada Buddhism, for a monk to so much as praise death, including dwelling upon life's miseries or extolling stories of possibly blissful rebirth in a higher realm in a way that might condition the hearer to commit suicide or to pine away to death, is explicitly stated as a breach in one of highest vinaya codes, the prohibition against harming life, one that will result in automatic expulsion from Sangha.


title: Religious views on suicide

text: For Buddhists, since the first precept is to refrain from the destruction of life, including one's self, suicide is seen as a negative act. If someone commits suicide in anger, he may be reborn in a sorrowful realm due to negative final thoughts. Nevertheless, Buddhism does not condemn suicide without exception, but rather observes that the reasons for suicide are often negative and thus counteract the path to enlightenment. With that said, in thousands of years of Buddhist history, very few exceptions are found.


title: Religious views on suicide

text: But in the Buddhist tale of a "bhikkhu" named Vakkali who was extremely ill and racked with excruciating pain. He was said to have died by suicide when near death and upon making statements suggesting he had passed beyond desires (and thus perhaps an "arhant"). Self-euthanasia appears to be the context for his death.


title: Religious views on suicide

text: Another case is the story of a "bhikkhu" named Godhika, also beset by illness, who had repeatedly attained temporary liberation of mind but was unable to gain final liberation due to illness. While believing himself again in a state of temporary liberation it occurred to him to cut his own throat, in hopes thus to be reborn in a high realm. The Buddha was said to have stated:


title: Religious views on suicide

text: Ultimately, tales like these could be read as implying past Buddhist beliefs that suicide might be acceptable in certain circumstances if it might lead to non-attachment. In both above cases, the monks were not enlightened before dying by suicide but they hoped to become enlightened following their deaths.


title: Religious views on suicide

text: The Channovàda-sutra gives a third exceptional example of one who died by suicide and subsequently attained enlightenment.


title: Religious views on suicide

text: Sokushinbutsu in Japanese Buddhism involves asceticism to the point of death and entering mummification while alive. This is done to attain Buddha-nature in one's body.


title: Religious views on suicide

text: In Hinduism, suicide is spiritually unacceptable. Generally, taking your own life is considered a violation of the code of "ahimsa" (non-violence) and therefore equally sinful as murdering another. Some scriptures state that to die by suicide (and any type of violent death) results in becoming a ghost, wandering earth until the time one would have otherwise died, had one not died by suicide.


title: Religious views on suicide

text: The "Mahabharata" talks of suicide, stating those who commit it can never attain to regions (of heaven) that are blessed. [not in citation given]


title: Religious views on suicide

text: Hinduism accepts a person's right to end one's life through "Prayopavesa". Prayopavesa is for old age yogis who have no desire or ambition left, and no responsibilities remaining in this life. Another example is dying in a battle to save one's honor.


title: Religious views on suicide

text: Swami Vivekananda reached both Moksha and suicide during meditation- means he attained Mahasamadhi and died simultaneously on 4th July 1902 willingfully.


title: Religious views on suicide

text: In Jainism, suicide is regarded as the worst form of "himsā" (violence) and is not permitted. "Ahimsā" (nonviolence) is the fundamental doctrine of Jainism.


title: Religious views on suicide

text: According to the Jain text "Puruşārthasiddhyupāya", "when death is near" the vow of "sallekhanā" (fasting to death) is observed by properly thinning the body and the passions. It also mentions that "sallekhanā" is not suicide since the person observing it is devoid of all passions like attachment.


title: Religious views on suicide

text: There is no express biblical warrant condemning and prohibiting suicide, and there are persons mentioned within the Bible who die by suicide. Depending on a denomination's canon of books, there are six or eleven suicides mentioned in the Bible. On the other hand, the descriptions of people in the Bible who died by suicide are negative. Major contexts include betrayal (Ahitophel and Judas) and divine judgement resulting in military defeat (Saul and Abimelech). In particular, :14-15 describes the "wicked" as falling on their own swords, and Zimri is described as having "died for his sins which he committed, doing evil in the eyes of Yahweh" (:18-19). Many Christian theologians take an unfavorable view of suicide.


title: Religious views on suicide

text: According to the theology of the Roman Catholic Church, suicide is objectively a sin which violates the commandment "Thou shalt not kill". However, the gravity and culpability for that sin changes based on the circumstances surrounding that sin. The "Catechism of the Catholic Church" (1992), Paragraph 2283 states: "We should not despair of the eternal salvation of persons who have taken their own lives. By ways known to him alone, God can provide the opportunity for salutary repentance. The Church prays for persons who have taken their own lives." Paragraph 2282 also points out that "Grave psychological disturbances, anguish, or grave fear of hardship, suffering, or torture can diminish the responsibility of the one committing suicide." The Catholic Church used to deny all suicides a Catholic funeral mass and burial in consecrated ground. However, the Church has since changed this practice.


title: Religious views on suicide

text: Protestants such as Evangelicals, Charismatics, Pentecostals, and other denominations have often argued that suicide is self-murder, and so anyone who commits it is sinning and it is the same as if the person murdered another human being. An additional view concerns the act of asking for salvation and accepting Jesus Christ as personal savior, which must be done prior to death. This is an important aspect of many Protestant denominations, and the problem with suicide is that once dead the individual is unable to accept salvation. The unpardonable sin then becomes not the suicide itself, but rather the refusal of the gift of salvation.


title: Religious views on suicide

text: Suicide is regarded generally within the Eastern Orthodoxy tradition as a rejection of God's gift of physical life, a failure of stewardship, an act of despair, and a transgression of the sixth commandment, "You shall not kill" (:13).


title: Religious views on suicide

text: The Orthodox Church normally denies a Christian burial to a person who has died by suicide. However, factors bearing on the particular case may become known to the priest who must share this information with the diocesan bishop; the bishop will consider the factors and make the decision concerning funeral services. However, the Eastern Orthodox Church shows compassion on those who have taken their own life because of mental illness or severe emotional stress, when a physician can verify a condition of impaired rationality.


title: Religious views on suicide

text: In early Christian traditions, the condemnation of suicide is reflected in the teachings of Lactantius, St. Augustine, Clement of Alexandria, and others. Among the martyrs at Antioch were three women who died by suicide to avoid rape; although professor William E. Phipps gives this as an example of virtuous early Christian suicides, Augustine declared that although they may have done "what was right in the sight of God," in his view the women "should not have assumed that rape would necessarily have deprived them of their purity" (as purity was, to Augustine, a state of mind).


title: Religious views on suicide

text: Some other denominations of Christianity may not condemn those who commit suicide per se as committing a sin, even if suicide is not viewed favorably; factors such as motive, character, etc. are believed to be taken into account. One such example is The New Church. In the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), suicide is generally viewed as wrong, although the victim may not be considered responsible for the act depending on the circumstances.


title: Religious views on suicide

text: The prohibition of suicide has also been recorded in statements of hadith (sayings of Muhammad); for example:


title: Religious views on suicide

text: Suicides are frowned upon and buried in a separate part of a Jewish cemetery, and may not receive certain mourning rites. In practice, every means is used to excuse suicide—usually by determining either that the suicide itself proves that the person was not in their right mind, or that the person must have repented after performing the deadly act but shortly before death occurred. Taking one's own life may be seen as a preferred alternative to committing certain cardinal sins. Most authorities hold that it is not permissible to hasten death to avoid pain if one is dying in any event, but the Talmud is somewhat unclear on the matter. However, assisting in suicide and requesting such assistance (thereby creating an accomplice to a sinful act) is forbidden, a violation of Leviticus 19:14 ("Do not put a stumbling block before the blind"), which is understood as prohibiting tempting to sin as well as literally setting up physical obstacles.


title: Religious views on suicide

text: Biblical and other Jewish accounts of suicide include those of Samson and the woman with seven sons. Although the Jewish historian Josephus described a Jewish mass suicide at Masada, according to the archaeologist Kenneth Atkinson, no "archaeological evidence that Masada's defenders committed mass suicide" exists.


title: Religious views on suicide

text: In Wicca as well as numerous other Neopagan religions, there is no consensus concerning suicide. Some view suicide as a violation of the sanctity of life, and a violation of the most fundamental of Wiccan laws, the Wiccan Rede. However, as Wicca teaches a belief in reincarnation instead of permanent rewards or punishments, many believe that suicides are reborn (like every one else) to endure the same circumstances in each subsequent lifetime until the capacity to cope with the circumstance develops.


title: Hurdy Gurdy Man

text: "Hurdy Gurdy Man" is a song by the Scottish singer-songwriter Donovan. It was recorded in April 1968 and released the following month as a single. The song gave its name to the album "The Hurdy Gurdy Man", which was released in October of that year in the United States. The single reached number 5 on the "Billboard" Hot 100 in the U.S. and number 4 on the UK Singles Chart.


title: Hurdy Gurdy Man

text: Donovan wrote "Hurdy Gurdy Man" while in Rishikesh in India, where he was studying Transcendental Meditation with the Beatles. The recording features a harder rock sound than Donovan's usual material, supplying a range of distorted guitars and aggressive drums. It also features an Indian influence with the use of a tambura, a gift to Donovan from George Harrison, who also helped write the lyrics. The song may have been influenced by "Green Circles", a psychedelic 1967 song by Small Faces. The similarity is in the melody of the descending verse, the strange vocal delivery, and the topic of being visited by an enlightened stranger. In 2012, Donovan revealed that he had become friends with Small Faces in 1965.


title: Hurdy Gurdy Man

text: According to some sources, the song was written for the band Hurdy Gurdy (which included Donovan's old friend and guitar mentor Mac MacLeod), with Donovan intending to be the producer, but the collaboration was cancelled due to creative disagreements, leading Donovan to record the song himself. In the chapter dedicated to the song in Donovan's autobiography, he says that he originally wanted it to be recorded by Jimi Hendrix.


title: Hurdy Gurdy Man

text: There is some dispute regarding the musicians who performed on the song. In the booklet that came with Donovan's 1992 double CD, "", Allan Holdsworth and Jimmy Page are listed as the electric guitar players and John Bonham and Clem Cattini (spelled as "Clem Clatini") as drummers on the recording. John Paul Jones, who arranged and played bass on the track (and also booked the session musicians), was reported to have said by email that Clem Cattini played the drums and Alan Parker played the electric guitar. This line-up was confirmed by Cattini. In Donovan's autobiography, he credits Cattini (spelled as "Catini") and Bonham for the drums. In a published interview circa 2013, Donovan is quoted as primarily crediting Cattini for the drums but saying he wasn't sure whether Bonham was also involved, and said he and Jones both credit Holdsworth for the guitar.


title: Hurdy Gurdy Man

text: On Jimmy Page's website, he lists this song as one on which he plays. Engineer Eddie Kramer also cites Jimmy Page as playing on the track, but says that John Bonham did not. In Hannes Rossacher's 2008 documentary "Sunshine Superman: The Journey of Donovan", Donovan said that Page was the guitarist; he also asserted that the song ushered in the Celtic rock sound which would lead to Page, Jones, and Bonham forming Led Zeppelin soon afterwards. In Donovan's autobiography, he credited both Page and "Allen Hollsworth" as the "guitar wizards" for the song. However, he also says that "Hollsworth" had played with Blue Mink, which was a band that Alan Parker had played in. In the autobiography, Donovan said that perhaps this session inspired the creation of Led Zeppelin.


title: Hurdy Gurdy Man

text: The four-string tambura that Donovan plays on the track had been given to him in India by George Harrison, who also helped write the lyrics. In his autobiography, Donovan recalls that he began writing "Hurdy Gurdy Man" on the tambura after Harrison discussed the sitar scales he had learned from Ravi Shankar. Donovan also says that with the drone of the tambura on the song, he had created "Celtic Rock".


title: Hurdy Gurdy Man

text: The session was produced by Mickie Most and engineered by Eddie Kramer. Donovan had originally hoped Jimi Hendrix would play on the song, but he was unavailable. In fact, Donovan said he wanted to give the song to Hendrix for him to record, but that Mickie Most "flipped out" when he heard the song and insisted that Donovan should record it himself as his next single.


title: Hurdy Gurdy Man

text: The lyrics recount the tale of a nameless narrator being visited in his dreams by the eponymous "hurdy gurdy man" and his close associate, the "roly poly man", who come "singing songs of love". The song invokes "histories of ages past" with "unenlightened shadows cast" and the "crying of humanity" through "all eternity", and says tis then when the hurdy gurdy man comes singing songs of love".


title: Hurdy Gurdy Man

text: On his 1990 live album "The Classics Live" and in his autobiography, Donovan has said that there is also an additional verse that had been written by George Harrison that was not included on the radio single:


title: Hurdy Gurdy Man

text: When performing the song in concert, Donovan often relates to his audience the story of how this final verse came about. He played the song for Harrison when they were together in Rishikesh, and Harrison offered to write a verse for the song, which he recorded. Since the running time had to be kept below the three-minute maximum generally allowed for singles at the time, the producer had to choose between the extra verse and the guitar solo, and ended up keeping just the solo.


title: Hurdy Gurdy Man

text: Donovan has said that the additional verse is a summary of the explanation given by their meditation teacher (or guru), Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, on the way in which transcendental consciousness is eventually reawakened after having been forgotten for a long period of time, and is based on part of the Maharishi's commentary on the Bhagavad Gita. Donovan said the Hurdy Gurdy Man is the one who reawakens this knowledge – in this case, the Maharishi.


title: Hurdy Gurdy Man

text: "Billboard" described the song as "a groovy and infectious rhythm item." "Cash Box" said that the "lyric presents a transcendental love & word play message, but the musical backing has shifted from the small jazz combo style of “Wear Your Love Like Heaven” and “Jennifer Juniper” to an easy folk + electric rock & sitar blend"


title: Hurdy Gurdy Man

text: In the Beastie Boys song "Car Thief", the first drum break is sampled following the lyrics "Space cake cookies I discover who I am / I'm a dusted old bummy Hurdy Gurdy man". Donovan's daughter Ione Skye used to be married to bandmember Adam Horovitz.


title: Hurdy Gurdy Man

text: "Hurdy Gurdy Man" has been used as a framing device or otherwise appeared on the soundtrack or trailer of various films and television shows, including:


title: Sturer Emil

text: The 12.8 cm "Selbstfahrlafette auf" VK 30.01(H) ""Sturer Emil"" (German for "Stubborn Emil"), also called "Panzer Selbstfahrlafette" V (Pz.Sfl. V), was an experimental World War II German self-propelled anti-fortification gun. It was based on the Henschel VK 30.01 (H) chassis and armed with a Rheinmetall 12.8 cm Kanone 40 L/61 gun (based on the 12.8 cm FlaK 40). This gun could traverse 7° to each side, elevate 10° and depress -15°. It carried 15 rounds for the main gun.


title: Sturer Emil

text: The hulls were left over from Henschel's submission for the canceled VK 30.01 heavy tank program - development of a 30-tonne tank which led to the Tiger - but the hull was stretched and an extra road wheel added to its overlapped and interleaved "Schachtellaufwerk" roadwheel-based suspension system, to accommodate the large gun, which was mounted on a pedestal ahead of the engine. A large, open-topped fighting compartment, much like that fitted to the Panzer IV-based "Hummel" self-propelled 15 cm howitzer, was built where the turret was intended to go in the original design.


title: Sturer Emil

text: Two vehicles were built (and named after Max and Moritz, the storybook characters); both of which served on the Eastern Front. Max was either destroyed or abandoned due to persistent mechanical issues in 1942, while Moritz was captured at Stalingrad in January 1943, with at least 22 kill marks painted on the barrel. This captured vehicle is now displayed in the collection on the Kubinka Tank Museum.


title: City Union Bank

text: City Union Bank Limited (CUB) is an Indian private sector bank headquartered in Kumbakonam, Tamil Nadu. The bank was initially named Kumbakonam Bank Limited, and was incorporated on 31 October 1904. The bank preferred the role of a regional bank in the Thanjavur district of Tamil Nadu. In FY2016 the bank had a market capitalization of and operated 700 branches, and 1762 ATMs.


title: City Union Bank

text: The City Union Bank Limited was originally incorporated under the name Kumbakonam Bank as a limited company on 31 October 1904. The bank preferred a regional role and adopted an agency model in the initial years. The first branch was opened in 1930. In 1987, the name of the bank was changed to City Union Bank.


title: Alba Rohrwacher

text: From the age of 17 to 21 she studied medicine, intending to be a doctor. At the age of 21 she moved to Rome to study acting at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia.


title: Alba Rohrwacher

text: Her first movie role was in 2004 in "L'amore ritrovato". In 2008, she was awarded the David di Donatello for Best Supporting Actress. In 2009, she received a David di Donatello for Best Actress for her performance in Pupi Avati's "Giovanna's Father". At the Berlin International Film Festival 2009 she was awarded the Shooting Stars Award.


title: Alba Rohrwacher

text: Rohrwacher worked with her sister, director Alice Rohrwacher in the 2014 film "The Wonders" a semi-autobiographical film in which Alba played a role loosely based on the sisters' mother.


title: Alba Rohrwacher

text: On 6 September 2014, Rohrwacher won the Volpi Cup for Best Actress at the 71st Venice International Film Festival in "Hungry Hearts", a film by Italian director Saverio Costanzo. Under the presidency of Meryl Streep, she was member of the jury of the Berlinale 2016.


title: Alba Rohrwacher

text: Rohrwacher worked with her sister a second time on the film "Happy as Lazzaro" which premiered at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival.


title: Alba Rohrwacher

text: Rohrwacher provided the narration for the series "My Brilliant Friend", an adaptation of Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan Novels.


title: Collaboration with the Axis powers

text: Within nations occupied by the Axis powers in World War II, some citizens and organizations, prompted by antisemitism, nationalism, ethnic hatred, anti-communism and opportunism, collaborated with the Axis Powers. Collaborators committed some of the worst atrocities of the Holocaust.


title: Collaboration with the Axis powers

text: Collaboration has been defined as cooperation between elements of the population of a defeated state and representatives of the victorious power. Stanley Hoffmann subdivided collaboration into involuntary (reluctant recognition of necessity) and voluntary (exploitation of necessity). According to Hoffmann, collaborationism can be subdivided into "servile" and "ideological"; the former is deliberate service to an enemy, whereas the latter is deliberate advocacy of cooperation with a foreign force which is seen as a champion of desirable domestic transformations. In contrast, Bertram Gordon uses the terms "collaborator" and "collaborationist", respectively, about non-ideological and ideological collaborations.


title: Collaboration with the Axis powers

text: The German Wehrmacht forces in North Africa established the "Kommando Deutsch-Arabische Truppen"; which comprised two battalions of Arab volunteers of Tunisian origin, an Algerian battalion and a Moroccan battalion. The four units made up a total of 3,000 men; with German cadres.


title: Collaboration with the Axis powers

text: During the successful Italian invasion of British Somaliland, some Somalis volunteered to fight alongside Fascist Italy, in contrast to the majority of Somalis, who volunteered to fight for the Allies of World War II.


title: Collaboration with the Axis powers

text: At least four, and possibly five, Australian prisoners of war in Axis custody volunteered for the British Free Corps (BFC), a Waffen-SS unit. Three of the four men whose identity is known were members of the Second Australian Imperial Force's 2/32nd Battalion, and the other was a merchant seaman. Following the war, the three soldiers claimed that they had joined the BFC as part of attempts to escape from German custody, and the merchant seaman stated that he had been given a choice of either signing up for the Corps or being imprisoned in a concentration camp after a relationship with a German woman was revealed. One of the soldiers and the seaman were convicted of aiding the enemy and imprisoned after the war, and the other two soldiers were not punished.


title: Collaboration with the Axis powers

text: The Japanese invasion was assisted by Burmese nationalists known as Burma Independence Army, who hoped for independence. They were later transformed into the Burma National Army as the armed forces of the State of Burma. Minority groups were also armed by the Japanese, such as the Arakan Defense Army and the Chin Defense Army.


title: Collaboration with the Axis powers

text: The Japanese set up several puppet regimes in occupied Chinese territories. The first of which was Manchukuo in 1932, followed by the East Hebei Autonomous Government in 1935. Similar to Manchukuo in its supposed ethnic identity, Mengjiang (Mengkukuo) was set up in late 1936. Wang Kemin's collaborationist Provisional Government of the Republic of China was set up in Beijing in 1937 following the start of full-scale military operations between China and Japan, another puppet regime was the Reformed Government of the Republic of China, set up in Nanjing in 1938. The Wang Jingwei collaborationist government, established in 1940, "consolidated" these regimes, though in reality neither Wang's government nor the constituent governments had any autonomy, although the military of the Wang Jingwei Government was equipped by the Japanese with planes, cannons, tanks, boats, and German-style stahlhelm (already widely used by the National Revolutionary Army, the "official" army of the Republic of China).


title: Collaboration with the Axis powers

text: The military forces of these puppet regimes, known collectively as the Collaborationist Chinese Army, numbered more than a million at their height, with some estimates that the number exceeded 2 million conscripts. Great numbers of collaborationist troops were men originally serving in warlord forces within the National Revolutionary Army who had defected when facing both Communists and Japanese as enemies. Although its manpower was very large, the soldiers were very ineffective compared to NRA soldiers due to low morale for being considered as "Hanjian". Although certain collaborationist forces had limited battlefield presence during the Second Sino-Japanese War, most were relegated to behind-the-line duties.


title: Collaboration with the Axis powers

text: The Wang Jingwei government was disbanded after the Japanese surrendered to Allies in 1945, and Manchukuo and Mengjiang were destroyed in the Soviet invasion of Manchuria.


title: Collaboration with the Axis powers

text: On 22 September 1940, an agreement was signed between Vichy France and the Empire of Japan, which allowed the Japanese to station no more than 6,000 troops in French Indochina, and never have more than 25,000 transiting the colony. Rights were given for three airfields, with all other Japanese forces forbidden to enter Indochina without Vichy's consent. Vichy signed Joint Defense and Joint Military Cooperation treaty with Japan on 29 July. It granted the Japanese eight airfields, allowed them to have more troops present, and to use the Indochinese financial system, in return for a fragile French autonomy.


title: Collaboration with the Axis powers

text: The French colonial government had largely stayed in place, as the Vichy government was on reasonably friendly terms with Japan. The Japanese permitted the French to put down nationalist rebellions in 1940.


title: Collaboration with the Axis powers

text: The Japanese occupation forces kept French Indochina under nominal rule of Vichy France until March 1945, when the French colonial administration was overthrown, and the Japanese supported the establishment of Empire of Vietnam, Kingdom of Kampuchea and Kingdom of Laos as Japanese puppet states. Vietnamese militia were used to assist the Japanese. In Cambodia, the ex-colonial Cambodian constabulary was allowed to continue its existence, though it was reduced to ineffectuality. A plan to create a Cambodian volunteer force was not realized due to Japanese surrender. In Laos, the local administration and ex-colonial (Indigenous Guard, a paramilitary police force) were reformed by Prince Phetsarath who replaced its Vietnamese members with Laotians.


title: Collaboration with the Axis powers

text: Hong Kong was a British crown colony before its occupation by the Japanese. During the Japanese rule, former members of the Hong Kong Police Force including the Indians and Chinese were recruited into reformed police called the "Kenpeitai" with new uniforms.


title: Collaboration with the Axis powers

text: The "Legion Freies Indien", or (also known as the ) was created in August 1942, drawing its recruits chiefly from disaffected Indian prisoners of war from the British Indian Army who had been captured by Axis forces in the North African campaign. The majority of Indian POWs who switched sides to fight alongside Nazi Germany against the Allies were supporters of the exiled nationalist and former president of the Indian National Congress, Subhas Chandra Bose. The Royal Italian Army formed a similar unit of Indian prisoners of war, the "Battaglione Azad Hindoustan". A Japanese-supported nominally sovereign state, the Azad Hind, was also established with the Indian National Army as its military force.


title: Collaboration with the Axis powers

text: Among Indonesians to receive Japanese imperial honours from Hirohito in November 1943 were Sukarno and Mohammad Hatta. Sukarno actively recruited and organised Indonesian "Rōmusha" forced labour. They succeeded respectively to become the founding President of Indonesia and Vice President of Indonesia in August 1945.


title: Collaboration with the Axis powers

text: After occupying British Malaya, the Japanese occupational authorities reorganized the disbanded British colonial police force and created a new auxiliary police. Later on, a 2,000-men strong Malay Volunteer Army and a part-time Malay Volunteer Corps were created. Local residents were also encouraged to join the Imperial Japanese Army as auxiliary "Heiho". There was a Railway Protection Corps as well.


title: Collaboration with the Axis powers

text: The Second Philippine Republic was a puppet state established by Japanese forces after occupying the Philippines. The puppet state relied on the reformed Bureau of Constabulary and the Makapili militia to police the occupied country and fight the local resistance movement and regular troops of the Philippine Commonwealth Army. The president of the republic, Jose P. Laurel, had his presidential guard unit that was recruited from the ranks of the collaborationist government. When the Americans were closing in on the Philippines in 1944, the Japanese began recruiting Filipinos to augment their losses. Most of the Filipino recruits served in the Imperial Japanese Army and fought actively until Japan's surrender. After the war, members of Makapili and other civilian collaborators were subject to harsh treatment by both the Philippine government and civilians sympathetic to the Allied cause. This was due to their pro-Axis involvement and actions which led to the capture, torture, and execution of many Filipinos.


title: Collaboration with the Axis powers

text: Portugal was neutral during the war, but its colony Timor was occupied by the Japanese. Local militiamen were organized into Black Columns to help Japanese forces fight Allies.


title: Collaboration with the Axis powers

text: The British territory of the Straits Settlements came under Japanese occupation after the fiasco suffered by Commonwealth forces of the Fall of Singapore. The Straits Settlements Police Force came under the control of the Japanese and all vessels owned by the Marine Police were confiscated.


title: Collaboration with the Axis powers

text: After the Italian invasion of Albania, the Royal Albanian Army, police and gendarmerie were amalgamated into the Italian armed forces in the newly created Italian protectorate of Albania. The Albanian Fascist Militia was also formed, and in the Yugoslav part of Kosovo, they established Vulnetari (or Kosovars), a volunteer militia of Albanians from Kosovo. Ethnic Albanian elements of the Italian armed forces participated in the Italian invasion of Greece, and the German-led Axis invasion of Yugoslavia. After Italy's capitulation, the Germans stepped in and established more collaborationist units such as police volunteer regiments and a national militia. In annexed Kosovo, the Germans established the Kosovo Regiment out of Balli Kombëtar forces.


title: Collaboration with the Axis powers

text: In April 1943, "Reichsfuhrer"-SS Heinrich Himmler created the 21st Waffen Mountain Division of the SS Skanderbeg (1st Albanian) manned by Albanians and Kosovo Albanians. By June 1944, its military value against the Albanian and Yugoslav Partisans was considered poor, after the German occupation of Albania and the creation of the Albanian client state, by November 1944 it had been disbanded. The remaining cadre, now called "Kampfgruppe Skanderbeg", was transferred to the 7th SS Volunteer Mountain Division "Prinz Eugen" where they successfully participated in actions against Josip Broz Tito's partisans in December 1944. The emblem of the division was a black Albanian eagle.


title: Collaboration with the Axis powers

text: Belgium was invaded by Nazi Germany in May 1940 and remained under German occupation until the end of 1944.


title: Collaboration with the Axis powers

text: The political collaboration took separate forms across the Belgian language divide. In Dutch-speaking Flanders, the Vlaamsch Nationaal Verbond (Flemish National Union or VNV), an authoritarian party and part of the pre-war Flemish Movement, became a major part of the German occupation strategy and VNV politicians were promoted to positions in the Belgian civil administration. VNV's comparatively moderate stance meant that it was increasingly eclipsed later in the war by the more radical and pro-German DeVlag movement. In French-speaking Wallonia, Léon Degrelle's Rexist Party, a pre-war authoritarian and Catholic Fascist political party, became the VNV's Walloon equivalent, although Rex's Belgian nationalist stance put it at odds with the Flemish nationalism of VNV and the German "Flamenpolitik". Rex became increasingly radical after 1941 and declared itself part of the Waffen-SS. After the German invasion of the Soviet Union, Rex helped support the creation of a military unit to fight alongside German troops on the Eastern Front, the Walloon Legion, and a similar Flemish Legion was created in Flanders. Both began as formations in the German regular army but would eventually become part of the Waffen-SS.


title: Collaboration with the Axis powers

text: Although the pre-war Belgian government went into exile in 1940, the Belgian civil service was left in place for much of the occupation. The Committee of Secretaries-General, an administrative panel of civil servants, was created to coordinate the state's activities and, although it was intended to be a purely techocratic institution, has been accused of helping implement German occupation policies. The Belgian police have also been accused of collaborating during the occupation, especially in The Holocaust in Belgium.


title: Collaboration with the Axis powers

text: With the German annexation of Czechoslovakia between 1938 and 1939, the country was divided. Most of the Czech part of pre-war Czechoslovakia was reconstituted into the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, a protectorate of Nazi Germany. The Protectorate had its own military forces, including a 12-battalion 'Government Army', police and gendarmerie. The majority of the 'government army' was sent to Northern Italy in 1944 as labour and guard troops. Whether or not the Government Army can be considered a collaborationist force has been debated. Its commanding officer, Jaroslav Eminger, was tried and acquitted on charges of collaboration following World War II, some members of the force engaged in active resistance operations simultaneous with their service in the army, and – in the waning days of the conflict – elements of the army joined in the Prague uprising.


title: Collaboration with the Axis powers

text: The Slovak Republic ("Slovenská Republika") was a quasi-independent ethnic Slovak state which existed from 14 March 1939 to 8 May 1945 as an ally and client state of Nazi Germany. The Slovak Republic existed on roughly the same territory as present-day Slovakia (except for the southern and eastern parts of present-day Slovakia). The Republic bordered Germany, the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, German-occupied Poland, and Hungary.


title: Collaboration with the Axis powers

text: At 04:15 on 9 April 1940 (Danish standard time), German forces crossed the border into neutral Denmark, in violation of a German–Danish treaty of non-aggression signed the previous year. After two hours the Danish government surrendered. The German authorities were inclined towards lenient terms with Denmark for several reasons which allowed Denmark a favourable relationship with Nazi Germany. German officials claimed that they would "respect Danish sovereignty and territorial integrity, as well as neutrality." The Danish government remained intact and the parliament continued to function more or less as it had before, maintaining control over domestic policy. Danish public opinion generally backed the new government, particularly after the fall of France in June 1940.


title: Collaboration with the Axis powers

text: Throughout the war the Danish government enacted a number of policies to satisfy Germany and retain the social order. Newspaper articles and news reports "which might jeopardize German-Danish relations" were outlawed and on 25 November 1941, Denmark joined the Anti-Comintern Pact. The Danish government and King Christian X repeatedly discouraged sabotage and encouraged informing on the resistance movement, an activity which resulted in resistance fighters being imprisoned or executed during the war and informants being sentenced to death for after the war.


title: Collaboration with the Axis powers

text: Prior to, during and after the war Denmark enforced a restrictive refugee policy and handed Jewish refugees that managed to get over the border over to German authorities. 21 such incidents are known and 18 of the people transferred to German custody later died in concentration camps, including a woman and her three children. In 2005 prime minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen officially apologized for these policies.


title: Collaboration with the Axis powers

text: Following the German invasion of the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941, German authorities demanded that Danish communists be arrested. The Danish government complied and directed the police to arrest 339 communists using secret registers. Of these, 246, including the three communist members of the Danish parliament, were imprisoned in the Horserød camp, in violation of the Danish constitution. On 22 August 1941, the Danish parliament passed the Communist Law, outlawing the Communist Party of Denmark and also communist activities, in another violation of the Danish constitution. In 1943, about half of the imprisoned communists were transferred to Stutthof concentration camp, where 22 of them died.


title: Collaboration with the Axis powers

text: On 29 June 1941 Free Corps Denmark was founded as a corps of Danish volunteers to fight against the Soviet Union. Free Corps Denmark was set up at the initiative of the SS and National Socialist Workers' Party of Denmark (DNSAP) who approached Lieutenant-Colonel C.P. Kryssing of the Royal Danish Army shortly after the invasion of the USSR had begun. According to Danish law, it was not illegal to join a foreign army, but active recruiting on Danish soil was illegal. German authorities disregarded this law and began recruiting efforts and ultimately 12,000 Danish citizens volunteered for German army duty of which 6,000 were approved for service. After the war, it was retroactively made illegal to have served in the German army and many of the returning soldiers were given long prison sentences.


title: Collaboration with the Axis powers

text: Industrial production and trade were, partly due to geopolitical reality and economic necessity redirected towards Germany. Many government officials saw expanded trade with Germany as vital to maintaining social order in Denmark. It was feared that increased unemployment and poverty could lead to civil unrest which would result in a crackdown by the German authorities. The structure of the Danish unemployment system meant that unemployment benefits could be denied if jobs were available in Germany and this practice was widely followed resulting in an average of some 20,000 Danes working in German factories through the 5 years of the war.


title: Collaboration with the Axis powers

text: In return for these concessions, the Danish cabinet rejected German demands for legislation discriminating against Denmark's Jewish minority. Demands to introduce the death penalty were likewise rebuffed and so were German demands to allow German military courts jurisdiction over Danish citizens and demands for the transfer of Danish army units to German military use.


title: Collaboration with the Axis powers

text: Although the Estonian Self-Administration did not have complete freedom of action, it exercised a significant measure of autonomy, within the framework of German policy, political, racial and economic. Thus, the Directors exercised their powers pursuant to the laws and regulations of the Republic of Estonia, but only to the extent that these had not been repealed or amended by the German military command. The Director's position was voluntary. The Self-Administration's autonomy enabled it to maintain police structures that cooperated with the Germans in rounding up and killing Jews and Roma and in seeking out and killing Estonians deemed to be opponents of the occupiers, and it was ultimately incorporated into the Estonian Security Police and SD. It also extended to the unlawful conscription of Estonians for forced labor or for military service under German command.


title: Collaboration with the Axis powers

text: The Estonian Security Police and SD, the 286th, 287th and 288th Estonian Auxiliary Police Battalions, and 2.5–3% of the Estonian Omakaitse (Home Guard) militia units (approximately between 1,000 and 1,200 men) were directly involved in criminal acts, taking part in the rounding-up, guarding or killing of 400–1,000 Roma people and 6,000 Jews in the concentration camps in the Pskov region, Russia and the Jägala, Vaivara, Klooga and Lagedi concentration camps in Estonia. Guarded by the above-listed formations, 15,000 Soviet POWs died in Estonia: some through neglect and mistreatment and some through execution.


title: Collaboration with the Axis powers

text: The Vichy French government, headed by Marshal Philippe Pétain and Pierre Laval, actively collaborated in the extermination of the European Jews. It also participated in Porajmos, the extermination of Roma people, and the extermination of other "undesirables." Vichy opened up a series of internment camps in France where Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, and political opponents were interned. Directed by René Bousquet, the French police helped in the deportation of 76,000 Jews to the extermination camps. In 1995, President Jacques Chirac officially recognized the responsibility of the French state for the deportation of Jews during the war, in particular, the more than 13,000 victims of the Vel' d'Hiv Roundup of July 1942, during which Laval decided, of his own volition (and without being requested by the occupying German authorities), to deport children along with their parents. Only 2,500 of the deported Jews survived the war. The 1944 Battle of Marseille was another event during which the French police assisted the Gestapo in a massive raid, which included an urban reshaping plan involving the destruction of a whole neighbourhood in the popular Old Port. Some few collaborators were tried in the 1980s for crimes against humanity (Paul Touvier, etc.), while Maurice Papon, who had become after the war prefect of police of Paris (a function in which he illustrated himself during the Paris massacre of 1961) was convicted in 1998 for crimes against humanity. He had been Budget Minister under President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing. Other collaborators, such as Émile Dewoitine, managed to have important functions after the war (Dewoitine was eventually named head of Aérospatiale, the firm which created the Concorde plane). Debates concerning state collaboration remain very strong in France.


title: Collaboration with the Axis powers

text: French workers at naval bases provided the Kriegsmarine with an essential workforce, thereby supporting Nazi Germany in the Battle of the Atlantic. By 1939, the Kriegsmarine's planning had presumed that they had time to build up resources before the war started. When France fell and the ports of Brest, Lorient and Saint-Nazaire became available, there were insufficient Germans to man these repair and maintenance facilities, so huge reliance was made on the French workforce. At the end of 1940, the Kriegsmarine requested 2,700 skilled workers from Wilhelmshaven to work in bases on the Atlantic coast, but this was out of a total available workforce of only 3,300. This same request included 870 men skilled in machinery and engine building, but there were only 725 people with these skills in Wilhelmshaven. This massive deficit was made up of French naval dockyard workers. In February 1941, the naval dockyard at Brest had only 470 German workers, compared with 6,349 French workers. In April 1941, French workers replaced defective superheater tubes on the Scharnhorst, carrying out the work slowly but, in the opinion of Scharnhorst's captain, to a better standard than could be obtained in the yards in Germany. An assessment commissioned by Vizeadmiral Walter Matthiae in October 1942 of the potential effect of withdrawal of French dockyard workers (considered possible after 32 French fatalities in an air raid at Lorient Submarine Base) stated that all repairs on the surface fleet would cease and U-boat repairs would be cut by 30 per cent. Admiral Darlan stated, on 30 September 1940, that it was useless to decline German requests for collaboration. In September 1942, Rear Admiral Germain Paul Jardel, commander of the French navy in the occupied zone stated "We have a special interest in that the workers at our arsenals work, and that they work in the arsenals and not in Germany." From a practical point of view, French workers needed employment and could be conscripted to work in Germany (as happened to one million of them). A small number objected to carrying out war work but the majority were found by the Germans to be willing and efficient workers.


title: Collaboration with the Axis powers

text: French volunteers formed the Legion of French Volunteers Against Bolshevism (LVF), Légion impériale, SS-Sturmbrigade Frankreich and finally in 1945 the 33rd Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS Charlemagne (1st French), which was among the final defenders of Berlin.


title: Collaboration with the Axis powers

text: Breton nationalists such as Olier Mordrel and François Debeauvais had longstanding links with Nazi Germany because of their fascist and Nordicist ideologies, linked to the belief that the Bretons were a "pure" Celtic branch of the Aryan-Nordic race. At the outbreak of the war, they left France and declared support for Germany. After 1940, they returned and their supporters such as Célestin Lainé and Yann Goulet organized militias that worked in collaboration with the Germans. Lainé and Goulet later took refuge in Ireland.


title: Collaboration with the Axis powers

text: After the German invasion of Greece, a Nazi-held government was put in place. All three quisling prime ministers, (Georgios Tsolakoglou, Konstantinos Logothetopoulos and Ioannis Rallis), cooperated with the Axis authorities. Although their administrations did not directly assist the occupation forces, they collaborated with the German forces, creating armed "anti-communist" and "anti-gangster" paramilitary organisations such as the Security Battalions and others. Greek National-Socialist parties, like the Greek National Socialist Party of Georgios Merkouris, the ESPO organization or openly anti-semitic organisations, like the National Union of Greece, helped German authorities fight the Greek resistance, and identify and deport Greek Jews. It was also the Organization BUND, with her leader Aginor Giannopoulos, who trained a battalion of Greek Volunteers, who fought with German Uniforms in SS and in Brandenburgers.


title: Collaboration with the Axis powers

text: About one thousand Greeks from Greece and more from the Soviet Union, ostensibly avenging their ethnic persecution from Soviet authorities, joined the Waffen-SS, mostly in Ukrainian divisions. A special case was that of the infamous Ukrainian-Greek Sevastianos Foulidis, a fanatical anti-communist who had been recruited by the Abwehr as early as 1938 and became a Wehrmacht official, with extensive action in intelligence and agitation work in the Eastern front.


title: Collaboration with the Axis powers

text: During the Axis occupation, a number of Cham Albanians set up their own administration and militia in Thesprotia, Greece, subservient to the Resistance Balli Kombëtar organization, and actively collaborated first with the Italian and, subsequently, the German occupation forces, committing a number of atrocities. In one incident, on 29 September 1943, Nuri and Mazzar Dino, Albanian paramilitary leaders, instigated the mass execution of all Greek officials and notables of Paramythia.


title: Collaboration with the Axis powers

text: An Aromanian political and paramilitary force, the Roman Legion, was also established on the territory of Greece, collaborating with Italian forces in the country. It was led by the Aromanian nationalists Alcibiades Diamandi and Nicolaos Matussis.


title: Collaboration with the Axis powers

text: In the days before the capture of Riga by German forces, the deportations and murders of Latvians by the Soviet NKVD had reached their peak. Those that the NKVD could not deport in time before the arrival of the Germans were shot in the Central Prison. RSHA's instructions to their agents to unleash pogroms fell on fertile ground. After the entry of Einsatzkommando 1a and part of Einsatzkommando 2 into the Latvian capital contact between Viktors Arājs and Einsatzgruppe A's commander Franz Walter Stahlecker was established on 1 July. Stahlecker instructed Arājs on that same day to set up a commando unit that obtained an official name Latvian Auxiliary Security Police or Arajs "Kommando". The group was composed of students and former officers of far-right orientation; all the members of this group were volunteers, and free to leave at any time. The following day on 2 July Arājs learned from Stahlecker during a conference that the Arājs "Kommando" had to unleash a pogrom that looked spontaneous and these pogrom-like disorders were to break out before German occupation authorities had been properly established.


title: Collaboration with the Axis powers

text: The Einsatzkommando influenced mobs of former members of Pērkonkrusts and other extreme right-wing groups began mass arrests, pillaging and murders of Jews in Riga, which led to death of between 300 and 400 Jews. Killings continued under the supervision of SS "Brigadeführer" Walter Stahlecker and ended when more than 2,700 Jews had been murdered. The activities of the Einsatzkommando were constrained after the full establishment of the German occupation authority, after which the SS made use of select units of native recruits. German General Wilhelm Ullersperger and Voldemārs Veiss, a well known Latvian nationalist, appealed to the population via a radio address to attack "internal enemies". During the next few months, activities of the Latvian Auxiliary Security Police were primarily focused on killing Jews, Communists and Red Army stragglers in Latvia as well as in neighbouring Byelorussia. The group alone murdered almost half of Latvia's Jewish population, about 26,000 Jews, mainly in November and December 1941.


title: Collaboration with the Axis powers

text: The creation of the Arājs "Kommando" was "one of the most significant inventions of the early Holocaust", that marked a transition from German organised "pogroms" to the systematic killing of Jews by local volunteers (former army officers, policemen, students, Aizsargi). This helped resolve a chronic problem with German personnel shortages and provided the Germans with relief from the psychological stress of routinely murdering civilians. By the autumn of 1941, the SS deployed Latvian Auxiliary Police Battalions to Leningrad, where they were consolidated as 2nd Latvian SS Infantry Brigade. In 1943, this brigade, which would later become the 19th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (2nd Latvian), was consolidated with the 15th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (1st Latvian) to become the Latvian Legion. Although formally the Latvian Legion was a volunteer Waffen-SS military formation; it was voluntary only by name because approximately 80–85% of personnel were conscripted into the legion.


title: Collaboration with the Axis powers

text: Prior to the German invasion, some leaders in Lithuania and in exile believed Germany would grant the country autonomy along the lines of the status of the Slovak Republic. German intelligence Abwehr believed it had control of the Lithuanian Activist Front, a pro-German organization based in the Lithuanian embassy in Berlin. Lithuanians formed the Provisional Government of Lithuania on their own initiative, but the Germans did not recognize it diplomatically and did not allow Lithuanian ambassador Kazys Škirpa to become the Prime Minister and actively thwarted his activities. The Provisional Government disbanded itself as it had no power and it became clear that the Germans came as occupiers instead of liberators from Soviet occupation, as initially thought.


title: Collaboration with the Axis powers

text: Units under Algirdas Klimaitis and supervised by SS "Brigadeführer" Walter Stahlecker started pogroms in and around Kaunas on 25 June 1941. Lithuanian collaborators would become involved in the murders of hundreds of thousands of Jews, Poles and Gypsies. Lithuanian-American scholar Saulius Sužiedėlis points to the increasingly antisemitic atmosphere clouding Lithuanian society, and the presence of antisemitic LAF émigrés who "needed little prodding from 'foreign influences. Overall, he concludes that Lithuanian collaboration was "a significant help in facilitating all phases of the genocidal program . . . [and that] the local administration contributed, at times with zeal, to the destruction of Lithuanian Jewry". Elsewhere, Sužiedėlis has similarly emphasised that Lithuania's "moral and political leadership failed in 1941, and that thousands of Lithuanians participated in the Holocaust", though warned that, "[u]ntil buttressed by reliable accounts providing time, place and at least an approximate number of victims, claims of large-scale pogroms before the advent of the German forces must be treated with caution".In 1941, the Lithuanian Security Police, subordinate to Nazi Germany's Security Police and Nazi Germany's Criminal Police, was created. Of the 26 Lithuanian Auxiliary Police Battalions that were formed, 10 were involved in the Holocaust. The Special SD and German Security Police Squad in Vilnius killed 70,000 Jews in Paneriai and other places. In Minsk, the 2nd Battalion shot about 9,000 Soviet prisoners of war, in Slutsk it massacred 5,000 Jews. In March 1942 in Poland, the 2nd Lithuanian Battalion carried out guard duty in the Majdanek concentration camp. In July 1942, the 2nd Battalion participated in the deportation of Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto to Treblinka extermination camp. In August–October 1942, some of the Lithuanian police battalions were in Belarus and Ukraine: the 3rd in Molodechno, the 4th in Donetsk, the 7th in Vinnytsa, the 11th in Korosten, the 16th in Dnepropetrovsk, the 254th in Poltava and the 255th in Mogilev (Belarus). One battalion was also used to put down the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943.


title: Collaboration with the Axis powers

text: The participation of the local populace was a key factor in the Holocaust in Nazi-occupied Lithuania which resulted in the near total destruction of Lithuanian Jews living in the Nazi-occupied Lithuanian territories that would, from 25 July 1941, become the "Generalbezirk Litauen" of "Reichskommissariat Ostland". Out of approximately 210,000 Jews, (208,000 according to the Lithuanian pre-war statistical data) an estimated 195,000–196,000 perished before the end of World War II (wider estimates are sometimes published); most from June to December 1941. The events happening in the USSR's western regions occupied by Nazi Germany in the first weeks after the German invasion (including Lithuania – ) marked the sharp intensification of The Holocaust.


title: Collaboration with the Axis powers

text: The Lithuanian Territorial Defense Force, composed of volunteers, was formed in 1944. Its leadership was Lithuanian, whereas arms were provided by Germans. The purpose of the Lithuanian Territorial Defense Force was to defend Lithuania against the approaching Soviet Army and to defend the civilian population in Lithuanian territory from actions by Soviet and Polish partisans. The LTDF disbanded itself after it was ordered to act under direct German command and refused to swear the Hitler Oath. Shortly before it was disbanded, the LTDF suffered a major defeat from Polish partisans in the battle of Murowana Oszmianka.


title: Collaboration with the Axis powers

text: Luxembourg was invaded by Nazi Germany in May 1940 and remained under German occupation until early 1945. Initially, the country was governed as a distinct region as the Germans prepared to assimilate its Germanic population into Germany itself. The "Volksdeutsche Bewegung" (VdB) was founded in Luxembourg in 1941 under the leadership of Damian Kratzenberg, a German teacher at the Athénée de Luxembourg. It aimed to encourage the population towards a pro-German position, prior to outright annexation, using the slogan "Heim ins Reich". In August 1942, Luxembourg was annexed and became a region of Nazi Germany, meaning that Luxembourgers were given the same legal obligations as German citizens. Luxembourgish men were conscripted into the German military.


title: Collaboration with the Axis powers

text: During the Nazi occupation of Monaco, the Monaco police arrested and turned over 42 Central European Jewish refugees to the Nazis while also protecting Monaco's own Jews.


title: Collaboration with the Axis powers

text: The Germans reformed pre-war Dutch police and established a new Communal Police, which helped Germans fight resistance and deport Jews. The National Socialist Movement in the Netherlands (NSB) had its militia units, whose members were transferred to other Paramilitaries like the Netherlands Landstorm or the Control Commando. A small number of people greatly assisted the German in their hunt for Jews, including some policemen and the Henneicke Column. A large part of them were members of the NSB. The column alone was already responsible for the arrest of about 900 Jews.


title: Collaboration with the Axis powers

text: During the war famous actor and singer Johannes Heesters made his career in Nazi Germany, befriending high-ranking Nazis such as Joseph Goebbels and living in houses stolen from wealthy Jews.