Barbarosa Essays - Operation Barbarossa, Adolf Hitler,

Barbarosa On the night of June 22, 1941, more than 3 million German soldiers, 600 000 vehicles and 3350 tanks were amassed along a 2000km front stretching from the Baltic to the Black Sea. Their sites were all trained on Russia. This force was part of 'Operation Barbarossa', the eastern front of the greatest military machine ever assembled. This machine was Adolf Hitler's German army. For Hitler, the inevitable assault on Russia was to be the culmination of a long standing obsession. He had always wanted Russia's industries and agricultural lands as part of his Lebensraum or 'living space' for Germany and their Thousand Year Reich. Russia had been on Hitler's agenda since he wrote Mein Kampf some 17 years earlier where he stated: 'We terminate the endless German drive to the south and the west of Europe, and direct our gaze towards the lands in the east...If we talk about new soil and territory in Europe today, we can think primarily only of Russia and its vassal border states'. Hitler wanted to exterminate and enslave the 'degenerate' Slavs and he wanted to obliterate their 'Jewish Bolshevist' government before it could turn on him. His 1939 pact with Stalin was only meant to give Germany time to prepare for war. As soon as Hitler controlled France, he looked east. Insisting that Britain was as good as defeated, he wanted to finish off the Soviet Union as soon as possible, before it could significantly fortify and arm itself. 'We only have to kick in the front door and the whole rotten edifice will come tumbling down'ii he told his officers. His generals warned him of the danger of fighting a war on two fronts and of the difficulty of invading an area as vast as Russia but, Hitler simply overruled them. He then placed troops in Finland and Romania and created his eastern front. In December 1940, Hitler made his final battle plan. He gave this huge operation a suitable name. He termed it 'Operation Barbarossa' or 'Redbeard' which was the nickname of the crusading 12th century Holy Roman emperor, Frederick I. The campaign consisted of three groups: Army Group North which would secure the Baltic; Army Group South which would take the coal and oil rich lands of the Ukraine and Caucasus; and Army Group Centre which would drive towards Moscow. Prior to deploying this massive force, military events in the Balkans delayed 'Barbarossa' by five weeks. It is now widely agreed that this delay proved fatal to Hitler's conquest plans of Russia but, at the time it did not seem important. In mid-June the build-up was complete and the German Army stood poised for battle. Hitler's drive for Russia failed however, and the defeat of his army would prove to be a major downward turning point for Germany and the Axis counterparts. There are many factors and events which contributed to the failure of Operation Barbarossa right from the preparatory stages of the attack to the final cold wintry days when the Germans had no choice but to concede. Several scholars and historians are in basic agreement with the factors which led to Germany's failure however, many of them stress different aspects of the operation as the crucial turning point. One such scholar is the historian, Kenneth Macksey. His view on Operation Barbarossa is plainly evident just by the title of his book termed, 'Military errors Of World War Two. Macksey details the fact that the invasion of Russia was doomed to fail from the beginning due to the fact that the Germans were unprepared and extremely overconfident for a reasonable advancement towards Moscow. Macksey's first reason for the failure was the simply that Germany should not have broken its agreement with Russia and invaded its lands due to the fact that the British were not defeated on the western front, and this in turn plunged Hitler into a war on two fronts. The Germans, and Hitler in particular were stretching their forces too thin and were overconfident that the Russians would be defeated in a very short time. Adolf Hitler's overconfidence justifiably stemmed from the crushing defeats which his army had administered in Poland, France, Norway, Holland, Belgium and almost certainly Great Britain had the English Channel not stood in his way.iv Another important point that Macksey describes is the lack of hard intelligence that the Germans possessed about the Russian army and their equipment, deployment tactics, economic situation and communication networks. They had not invested much time and intelligence agents in collecting information from a country

The meninas essays

The meninas essays Late in his life, in 1656, Velzquez painted what is his acknowledged masterpiece, "Las Meninas" or the "Maids of Honor". Here he provided his own original essay on the nature of reality by fusing several subjects. The group portrait, the "genre" (scenes of everyday life) theme, the self-portrait, the artist in the studio and the interior... have all come together in a new and distinctive form. "The Maids of Honor" is, in fact, a series of portraits within portraits. It is first a portrait of a room: the artists studio.... Gathered in the room are the Infanta Dos space. They, in fact, may be the subject of a double portrait being painted on the canvas upon which Velzquez shows himself working the artist in his studio has been woven into the scene. "Las Meninas" hung in Phillips private office, a sure indication that it was special to him. Here, in a single image, much that was important to Phillip was ingeniously brought together. His family, his retainers (servants), his newly knighted painter, and above all, his beautiful daughter are gathered in the room that belonged to his dead son and heir. In an image both charming and melancholy, Velzquez has captured the waning years of the Spanish Hapsburgs. Velzquez died only four years later, and Phillip died in 1666. During the years...

Proposal Research Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words - 1

Research Proposal Example This is principally because ethical decision making activities contribute in protecting the interests of the employees and also of the different types of stakeholders whether internal or external to a business organization. Furthermore, ethical decisions would also tend to have potential implications for the business corporation in that the same may tend to potentially affect the positions and status of different groups and employee and stakeholder communities. The paper in the light of the above issue aims to critically analyze the ambit of ethical decision making practices. The concept of ethical behavior or ethical practices relates to the influence of honesty, fairness of treatment generated to different individuals. It can also be related to the level of equality reflected in the interpersonal behavior among individuals. Furthermore, several scholars have related it with the development of professional relationships among people working in an organization (Riivari & Là ¤msà ¤, 2014). Ethical behavior reflects on the existence of dignity and equal rights of individuals working as a community in a business organization. The concept of equality relates to the aspect of fair treatment generated to the different individuals operating in a business organization (Riivari & Là ¤msà ¤, 2014). It also reflects the existence of honesty in terms of level of truthfulness pursued in the dialogues between the different organizational individuals. Moreover, the aspect of fairness relates to the generation of decisions in a fair and equitable fashion that works in an unbiased manner and legitimate with the existing organizational rules. Ethical behavior or practices relate to the level of respect generated to the different individuals. In terms of ethical behaviors it is required by the managers to pay heed to the needs and aspirations of the different