REGENBOGEN (May 1945) REGENBOGEN (MAY 1945) The final operation carried out by the German U-boat fleet at the end of the war, in May 1945 Rather than surrender, 218 Uboats were scuttled by their crews That was about half the survivors of the fleet, including most operable “Elektroboote.” Another 43 U-boats surrendered at Western Allied ports around the Atlantic, while 131 were abandoned by their crews in various north German ports or German-occupied Norway The numbers here not include U-boats still under construction Almost all captured U-boats were taken to sea and destroyed by the Allies after the end of the war, with a small number retained by various powers REGIA AERONAUTICA See Italian Air Force “Royal Air Force.” REGIA MARINA “Royal Navy.” See Italian Navy REGIMENT A traditional military unit in European armies that was mostly displaced by the brigade during World War II Some armies maintained regimental structures for morale and unit identity purposes, and occasionally still deployed and fought in that formation as well Complement varied, but ranged from 1,800 to 3,000 men organized into two or three battalions REGIO ESERCITO See Italian Army “Royal Army.” REICH Any empire of a Germanic people The “First Reich” was a retroactive name given by German nationalists to the Holy Roman Empire, 962–1806 The “Second Reich” was Bismarck’s creation: Imperial Germany, from the proclamation of a new German empire in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles following Prussia’s defeat of France in January 1871, to abdication of Kaiser Wilhelm II in November 1918 “Third Reich” was the propaganda name Hitler gave his regime in Germany to identify the Nazis as linear inheritors of the imperial tradition and their empire as its culmination on a scale as grand as that of the Holy Roman Empire The term was used from Hitler’s ascent to power in January 1933, until unconditional surrender and occupation of Germany in May 1945 Hitler famously boasted that his “Third Reich” would last “a thousand years.” It was reduced to rubble in just 12 REICHENAU ORDER (OCTOBER 10, 1941) A murder order drafted by Field Marshal Walter von Reichenau It was read out to the rank and fi le of the Wehrmacht by additional order of Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt Explaining policy to the troops was highly unusual within the German military tradition, so that this instance may have been a response to unease felt by some soldiers at orders to 912