Simo Häyhä

Simo Häyhä (Finnish pronunciation: [ˈsimɔ ˈhæy̯hæ]; December 17, 1905 – April 1, 2002), nicknamed "White Death" (Russian: Белая смерть, Belaya Smert; Finnish: valkoinen kuolema; Swedish: den vita döden) by the Red Army, was a Finnish marksman. Using a modified Mosin–Nagant in the Winter War, he acquired the highest recorded number of confirmed sniper kills – 505 – in any major war.[2] Early life[edit] Winter War service[edit] During the Winter War (1939–1940) between Finland and the Soviet Union, Häyhä served as a sniper for the Finnish Army against the Red Army in the 6th Company of JR 34 during the Battle of Kollaa. A "Swedish donation rifle" Simo later received as gift was a Finnish model M/28-30 but he did not use it in battle. Häyhä in the 1940s, with visible damage to his left cheek after his 1940 wound The Soviet's efforts to kill Häyhä included counter-snipers and artillery strikes, and on March 6, 1940, Häyhä was shot in his lower left jaw by a Russian soldier. Later life[edit] P.

Operation Long Jump Operation Long Jump (German: Unternehmen Weitsprung) was a German plan to simultaneously assassinate Joseph Stalin, Winston Churchill, and Franklin Roosevelt at the 1943 Tehran Conference during World War II.[1] The operation to kill the "Big Three" Allied leaders in Iran was to be led by SS-Obersturmbannführer Otto Skorzeny from the Waffen SS. A group of agents from the Soviet Union, led by Armenian spy Gevork Vartanian, uncovered the plot before its inception and the mission was never launched.[2] The assassination plan and its disruption has been popularized by the Russian media with appearances in films and novels. The operation[edit] Beginnings[edit] According to Soviet sources, German military intelligence discovered, after breaking a U.S. Navy code, that a major conference would be held at Tehran in mid-October 1943.[3] Based on this information, Adolf Hitler approved a scheme to kill all three Allied leaders. Counter-intelligence[edit] Skorzeny in 1943 Cancellation[edit]

File:Attack on Hamburg.jpg Jack Churchill Churchill stares down the barrel of a captured Belgian 75 mm field gun. Early life[edit] Second World War[edit] Churchill resumed his commission after Poland was invaded. In May 1940 Churchill and his unit, the Manchester Regiment, ambushed a German patrol near L'Epinette, France. Churchill was second in command of No. 3 Commando in Operation Archery, a raid on the German garrison at Vågsøy, Norway on 27 December 1941.[10] As the ramps fell on the first landing craft, Churchill leapt forward from his position playing "March of the Cameron Men"[11] on his bagpipes, before throwing a grenade and running into battle in the bay. Jack Churchill (far right) leads a training exercise, sword in hand, from a Eureka boat in Inveraray. In September 1944 Churchill and a Royal Air Force officer crawled under the wire, through an abandoned drain and attempted to walk to the Baltic coast. Later life[edit] Family[edit] Notes[edit] References[edit]

File:World War I Observation Balloon HD-SN-99-02269.JPEG Ernst Kaltenbrunner Ernst Kaltenbrunner (4 October 1903 – 16 October 1946) was an Austrian-born senior official of Nazi Germany during World War II. An Obergruppenführer (general) in the Schutzstaffel (SS), between January 1943 and May 1945 he held the offices of Chief of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (RSHA, Reich Main Security Office) and President of the ICPC, later to become Interpol. He was the highest-ranking member of the SS to face trial at the first Nuremberg Trials. He was found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity and executed. Early life[edit] SS career[edit] World War II[edit] Kaltenbrunner with Himmler and Ziereis In July 1940, he was commissioned as a SS-Untersturmführer in the Waffen-SS Reserve.[5] Later in April 1941, he was promoted to major general (Generalleutnant) of the Police. In December 1944, Kaltenbrunner was granted the rank of General of the Waffen-SS. On 18 April 1945, Himmler named Kaltenbrunner Commander-in-Chief of those remaining German forces in Southern Europe.

File:NationaalArchief uboat155London.jpg Tehran Conference Prelude[edit] As soon as the German-Soviet war broke out, Churchill offered assistance to the Soviets and an agreement to this effect was signed on 12 July 1941.[2] Delegations had traveled between London and Moscow to arrange the implementation of this support and when the United States joined the war, the delegations included Washington in their meeting venues. A Combined Chiefs of Staff committee was created to coordinate British and American operations as well as their support to the Soviet Union. Stalin obsessively wished to control everything in Moscow and was unwilling to risk journeys by air,[3] while Roosevelt was physically disabled and found travel grueling. Churchill was an avid traveler and had met with Roosevelt on two previous occasions in the United States and had also held two prior meetings with Stalin in Moscow.[2] In order to engineer this urgently needed meeting, Roosevelt tried to persuade Stalin to travel to Cairo. Proceedings of the Conference[edit] See also[edit]