Word: prussia
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...years the rich lands felt the strong influence of the Germans, first from the Knights of the Teutonic Order, later under imperial Prussia's black eagle, still later under Hitler's hooked cross. Dotted between vast estates of Junker aristocrats were thriving industrial and port cities until Allied bombs and the savage conflict between Nazi and Russian armies wiped them out, leaving half the homes and 60% of the factories gutted. Soviet plunderers took most of what was left-railroad rolling stock, machines and livestock. Under the Potsdam Agreement this barren area (the size of Virginia) went...
...Warsaw, Erich Koch, former Gauleiter of East Prussia and Hitler's Reichskommissar in occupied Ukraine, stood accused of responsibility or complicity in the gas-chamber and concentration-camp deaths of 4,000,000 Russians, 160,000 Jews and 72,000 Poles. After nearly a decade in prison and four months on trial, frail emaciated Erich Koch, now 62, was still defiant. Coughing into a handkerchief, sipping tea and porridge to rally his strength, Koch made long, fiery speeches in Polish in his own defense, disputing the court's right to try him, insisting that Polish Communists were guilty...
...announced that they intended to keep permanently the 68,667 sq. mi. of eastern Poland, beyond the so-called Curzon line, which they had grabbed in the piping days of the Nazi-Soviet Pact. As compensation, Stalin proposed to give the Poles large chunks of the provinces of East Prussia, Pomerania and Silesia-all in all, some 38,660 sq. mi. of former German territory, including coal deposits richer than those of the Ruhr...
Slowly Voigt caught on to the fact that in militaristic Prussia the badge of authority was invariably accepted as the real thing. Once free, he bought a captain's uniform and commandeered a squad of soldiers by the simple method of walking up to them and ordering them to follow him. Barking "Los" with all the crisp confidence of a drill instructor, he led his band on a raid of Koepenick's town hall, arrested the bumbling mayor and treasurer, walked off with the contents of the town till. Later, after Voigt gave himself up in return...
Expensive Jester. Voltaire had been in the Bastille twice, and though the governor had made him quite comfortable, Voltaire had insisted that he must not be arrested again without plenty of notice. The court of Prussia's Frederick the Great was open to Voltaire as a refuge. But it consisted, says Author Mitford tartly, "of middle-class intellectuals, cosmopolitan Sodomites and Prussian soldiers"; moreover, jealous Emilie detested Frederick for trying to lure her lover to the Prussian court. Frederick's efforts to do so make some of the funniest sections of the book. Luckily for Emilie. monarch...