Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Adolf Hitler in Memel in March 1939. After Nazi Germany took over the area in 1939, many Lithuanians and their organizations began leaving Memel and the surrounding area. Memel was quickly turned into a fortified naval base by the Germans. After the failure of the German invasion of the USSR the fate of East Prussia and Memel was sealed. By ...
Memel, a name derived from the Couronian-Latvian memelis, mimelis, mēms for "mute, silent", may refer to: Memel, East Prussia, Germany, now Klaipėda , Lithuania Memelburg, ( Klaipėda Castle ), the Ordensburg in Memel, a castle built in 1252 by Teutonic Knights which was the nucleus for the city
Germany demanded that Lithuania give up the Klaipėda Region (also known as the Memel Territory) which had been detached from Germany after World War I, or the Wehrmacht would invade Lithuania and the de facto Lithuanian capital Kaunas would be bombed. The Lithuanians had been expecting the demand after years of rising tension between Lithuania ...
Memel was the northernmost and easternmost city in Germany, and although the government was engaged in a very costly tree-planting exercise to stabilise the sand-dunes on the Curonian Spit, most of the financial infusions in the province of East Prussia were concentrated in Königsberg, the capital of the province.
German-occupied Europe at the height of the Axis conquests in 1942 Gaue, Reichsgaue and other administrative divisions of Germany proper in January 1944. According to the Treaty of Versailles, the Territory of the Saar Basin was split from Germany for at least 15 years. In 1935, the Saarland rejoined Germany in a lawful way after a plebiscite.
However, the Treaty of Versailles following World War I granted West Prussia to Poland and made East Prussia an exclave of Weimar Germany (the so-called Polish Corridor separated East Prussia from the rest of Germany), while the Memel Territory, part of the Lithuania Minor region, was detached and annexed by Lithuania in 1923.
The Memel Territory, annexed by Germany from Lithuania before the war, was annexed by the Soviet Union in 1945 and transferred to the Lithuanian SSR. All territories annexed by Germany during the war from Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, Poland and Yugoslavia were returned to their respective countries.
The Battle of Memel or the siege of Memel (German: Erste Kurlandschlacht) was a battle which took place on the Eastern Front during World War II. The battle began when the Red Army launched its Memel offensive operation ( Russian : Мемельская наступательная операция ) in late 1944.