title: Julius Evola

text: According to A. James Gregor, Evola's definition of spirituality can be found in "Meditations on the Peaks": "what has been successfully actualized and translated into a sense of superiority which is experienced inside by the soul, and a noble demeanor, which is expressed in the body." Evola attempted to construct, Ferraresi wrote, "a model of man striving to reach the 'absolute' within his inner self". For Evola, Furlong wrote, transcendence "rested on the freeing of one's spiritual self through the purity of physical and mental discipline." Evola wrote that the tension between a detached "impulse toward transcendence" and an engaged "warrior spirit" defined his life and work.


title: Julius Evola

text: Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke wrote that Evola's "rigorous New Age spirituality speaks directly to those who reject absolutely the leveling world of democracy, capitalism, multi-racialism and technology at the outset of the twenty-first century. Their acute sense of cultural chaos can find powerful relief in his ideal of total renewal." Stephen Atkins summarized Evola's philosophy as "a complete rejection of modern society and its mores". Evola loathed liberalism, because, as Rose wrote, "Everything he revered—social castes, natural inequalities, and sacred privileges—was targeted by liberalism for reform or abolition." Goodrick-Clarke wrote that Evola invoked Indo-Aryan tradition to advance "a radical doctrine of anti-egalitarianism, anti-democracy, anti-liberalism and anti-Semitism".


title: Julius Evola

text: Thomas Sheehan wrote that "Evola's first philosophical works from the 'twenties were dedicated to reshaping neo-idealism from a philosophy of Absolute Spirit and Mind into a philosophy of the "absolute individual" and action." Accordingly, Evola developed his doctrine of "magical idealism", which held that "the Ego must understand that everything that seems to have a reality independent of it is nothing but an illusion, caused by its own deficiency." For Evola, this ever-increasing unity with the "absolute individual" was consistent with unconstrained liberty, and therefore unconditional power. In his 1925 work "Essays on Magical Idealism", Evola declared that "God does not exist. The Ego must create him by making itself divine."


title: Julius Evola

text: According to Sheehan, Evola discovered the power of metaphysical mythology while developing his theories. This led to his advocacy of supra-rational intellectual intuition over discursive knowledge. In Evola's view, discursive knowledge separates man from Being. Sheehan stated that this position is a theme in certain interpretations of Western philosophers such as Plato, Thomas Aquinas, and Martin Heidegger that was exaggerated by Evola. Evola would later write:


title: Julius Evola

text: Evola developed a doctrine of the "two natures": the natural world and the primordial "world of 'Being'". He believed that these "two natures" impose form and quality on lower matter and create a hierarchical "great chain of Being." He understood "spiritual virility" as signifying orientation towards this postulated transcendent principle. He held that the State should reflect this "ordering from above" and the consequent hierarchical differentiation of individuals according to their "organic preformation". By "organic preformation" he meant that which "gathers, preserves, and refines one's talents and qualifications for determinate functions."


title: Julius Evola

text: Among Evola's chief contacts was Arturo Reghini, a critic of Christianity and democracy and advocate for the ancient Roman aristocracy. Reghini welcomed the rise of Fascist Italy and sought to return to pre-Christian spirituality through the promotion of a "cultured magic". Through Reghini, Evola was introduced to the French Orientalist René Guénon, a leading figure of traditionalism at the time who shared an interest in the occult. Guénon's 1927 text "Crisis of the Modern World" inspired Evola to organise his thoughts around the critique of modernity, and Guénon would be one of the few writers Evola found worthy to debate with. In 1927, Reghini and Evola, along with other Italian esotericists, founded the "Gruppo di Ur" ("Ur Group"). The purpose of this group was to attempt to bring the members' individual identities into such a superhuman state of power and awareness that they would be able to exert a magical influence on the world. The group employed techniques from Buddhist, Tantric, and rare Hermetic texts. They aimed to provide a "soul" to the burgeoning Fascist movement of the time through the revival of ancient Roman religion, and to influence the fascist regime through esotericism.


title: Julius Evola

text: Articles on occultism from the Ur Group were later published in "Introduction to Magic". Reghini's support of Freemasonry would however prove contentious for Evola; accordingly, Reghini broke himself from Evola and left the Ur Group in 1928. Reghini accused him of plagiarising his thoughts in the book "Pagan Imperialism"; Evola, in turn, blamed him for its premature publication. Evola's later work owed a considerable debt to Guénon's "Crisis of the Modern World", though he diverged from Guénon on the issue of the relationship between warriors and priests.


title: Julius Evola

text: Evola held that "just relations between the sexes" involved women acknowledging their "inequality" with men. He quoted Joseph de Maistre's statement that "Woman cannot be superior except as woman, but from the moment in which she desires to emulate man she is nothing but a monkey." Coogan wrote, "It goes almost without saying that Evola's views on women were saturated with misogyny." Evola believed that the alleged higher qualities expected of a man of a particular race were not those expected of a woman of the same race. Evola believed that women's liberation was "the renunciation by woman of her right to be a woman". A woman, Evola wrote, "could traditionally participate in the sacred hierarchical order only in a mediated fashion through her relationship with a man." He held, as a feature of his idealised gender relations, the archaic Hindu "sati" (suicide), which for him was a form of sacrifice indicating women's respect for patriarchal traditions. For the "pure, feminine" woman, "man is not perceived by her as a mere husband or lover, but as her lord." Women would find their true identity in total subjugation to men.


title: Julius Evola

text: Evola regarded matriarchy and goddess religions as a symptom of decadence, and preferred a hyper-masculine, warrior ethos. He was influenced by Hans Blüher; a proponent of the "Männerbund" concept as a model for his "warrior-band" or "warrior-society". Goodrick-Clarke noted the fundamental influence of Otto Weininger's book "Sex and Character" on Evola's dualism of male-female spirituality. According to Goodrick-Clarke, "Evola's celebration of virile spirituality was rooted in Weininger's work, which was widely translated by the end of the First World War." Evola denounced homosexuality as "useless" for his purposes. He did not neglect sadomasochism, so long as sadism and masochism "are magnifications of an element potentially present in the deepest essence of eros." Then, it would be possible to "extend, in a transcendental and perhaps ecstatic way, the possibilities of sex."


title: Julius Evola

text: Evola held that women "played" with men, threatened their masculinity, and lured them into a "constrictive" grasp with their sexuality. He wrote that "It should not be expected of women that they return to what they really are ... when men themselves retain only the semblance of true virility", and lamented that "men instead of being in control of sex are controlled by it and wander about like drunkards". He believed that in Tantra and sex magic, in which he saw a strategy for aggression, he found the means to counter the "emasculated" West. Evola also said that the "ritual violation of virgins", and "whipping women" were a means of "consciousness raising", so long as these practices were done to the intensity required to produce the proper "liminal psychic climate".


title: Julius Evola

text: Evola translated Weininger's "Sex and Character" into Italian. Dissatisfied with simply translating Weininger's work, he wrote the text "Eros and the Mysteries of Love: The Metaphysics of Sex" (1958), where his views on sexuality were dealt with at length. Arthur Versluis described this text as Evola's "most interesting" work aside from "Revolt Against the Modern World" (1934). This book remains popular among many 'New Age' adherents.


title: Julius Evola

text: Evola scorned modern pornography for being a "scanty source" of erotic experience, denouncing it as "dreadfully squalid" both visually and in essence.


title: Julius Evola

text: Evola's views on race had roots in his aristocratic elitism. According to European studies professor Paul Furlong, Evola developed what he called "the law of the regression of castes" in "Revolt Against the Modern World" and other writings on racism from the 1930s and World War II period. In Evola's view "power and civilization have progressed from one to another of the four castes—sacred leaders, warrior nobility, bourgeoisie (economy, 'merchants') and slaves". Furlong explains: "for Evola, the core of racial superiority lay in the spiritual qualities of the higher castes, which expressed themselves in physical as well as in cultural features, but were not determined by them. The law of the regression of castes places racism at the core of Evola's philosophy, since he sees an increasing predominance of lower races as directly expressed through modern mass democracies." Evola used "a man of race" to mean "a man of breeding". "Only of an elite may one say that 'it is of a race': the people are only people, mass," Evola wrote in 1969.


title: Julius Evola

text: In "Synthesis of the Doctrine of Race" (1941) (Italian: "Sintesi di Dottrina della Razza"), Evola provides an overview of his ideas concerning race and eugenics, introducing the concept of "spiritual racism", and "esoteric-traditionalist racism". The book was endorsed by Benito Mussolini.


title: Julius Evola

text: Prior to the end of the Second World War, Evola frequently used the term "Aryan" to refer to the nobility, who in his view were imbued with traditional spirituality. Feinstein writes that this interpretation made the term "Aryan" more plausible in an Italian context and thereby furthered antisemitism in Fascist Italy. Evola's interpretation was adopted by Mussolini, who declared in 1938 that "Italy's civilization is Aryan". Wolff notes that Evola seems to have stopped writing about race in 1945, but adds that the intellectual themes of Evola's writings were otherwise unchanged. Evola continued to write about elitism and his contempt for the weak. His "doctrine of the Aryan-Roman super-race was simply restated as a doctrine of the 'leaders of men' ... no longer with reference to the SS, but to the mediaeval Teutonic knights or the Knights Templar, already mentioned in Rivolta."


title: Julius Evola

text: Evola wrote of "inferior, non-European races". He believed that military aggressions such as Fascist Italy's 1935 invasion of Ethiopia were justified by Italy's dominance, outweighing concerns he had about the possibility of race-mixing. Richard H. Drake wrote that "Evola was never prepared to discount the value of blood altogether". Evola wrote: "a certain balanced consciousness and dignity of race can be considered healthy" in a time where "the exaltation of the negro and all the rest, anticolonialist psychosis and integrationist fanaticism [are] all parallel phenomena in the decline of Europe and the West." Furlong wrote that a 1957 article by Evola about America "leaves no doubt as to his deep prejudice against black people".


title: Julius Evola

text: Evola's racism included racism of the body, soul, and spirit, giving primacy to the latter factor, writing that "races only declined when their spirit failed." For his spiritual interpretation of different racial psychologies, Evola was influenced by the German race theorist Ludwig Ferdinand Clauss. Like Evola, Clauss believed that physical race and spiritual race could diverge as a consequence of miscegenation. Peter Staudenmaier notes that many other racists of the time found Evola's "spiritual racism" perplexing.


title: Julius Evola

text: Like René Guénon, Evola believed that mankind is living in the Kali Yuga of the Hindu tradition—the Dark Age of unleashed materialistic appetites. He argued that both Italian fascism and Nazism represented hope that the "celestial" Aryan race would be reconstituted. He drew on mythological accounts of super-races and their decline, particularly the Hyperboreans, and maintained that traces of Hyperborean influence could be felt in Indo-European men. He felt that Indo-European men had devolved from these higher mythological races. Gregor noted that several contemporary criticisms of Evola's theory were published: "In one of Fascism's most important theoretical journals, Evola's critic pointed out that many Nordic-Aryans, not to speak of Mediterranean Aryans, fail to demonstrate any Hyperborean properties. Instead, they make obvious their materialism, their sensuality, their indifference to loyalty and sacrifice, together with their consuming greed. How do they differ from 'inferior' races, and why should anyone wish, in any way, to favor them?"


title: Julius Evola

text: Concerning the relationship between "spiritual racism" and biological racism, Evola put forth the following viewpoint, which Furlong described as pseudo-scientific:


title: Julius Evola

text: Writings by Evola in the late 1930s contributed arguments for Fascist Italy's repression of its Jews. Evola encouraged and applauded Mussolini's antisemitic racial laws in 1938, and called for a "supreme Aryan elite" to oppose the Jews. In some writings, Evola called Jews a virus. He said Fascism and Nazism's final victory over Jews would end "the spiritual decadence of the West" and thereby "re-establish genuine contact between man and a transcendent, supersensible reality".


title: Julius Evola

text: Evola wrote the foreword and an essay in the second Italian edition of the infamous antisemitic fabrication "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" published in 1938 by the Catholic fascist Giovanni Preziosi. In it, Evola argued that the "Protocols"—whether or not a forgery—"contain the plan for an occult war, whose objective is the utter destruction, in the non-Jewish peoples, of all tradition, class, aristocracy, and hierarchy, and of all moral, religious, and spiritual values." He was an admirer of Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, the antisemitic leader of the fascist Romanian Iron Guard. After Codreanu was assassinated in 1938 on orders from King Carol II, Evola railed against "the Judaic horde" that he accused of planning "Talmudic, Israelite tyranny."


title: Julius Evola

text: Evola's antisemitism did not emphasise the Nazi conception of Jews as "representatives of a biological race", but rather as "the carriers of a world view, a way of being and thinking—simply put, a spirit—that corresponded to the 'worst' and 'most decadent' features of modernity: democracy, egalitarianism and materialism", Wolff writes. According to Wolff, "Evola's 'totalitarian' or 'spiritual' racism was no milder than Nazi biological racism", and Evola was trying to promote an "Italian version of racism and antisemitism, one that could be integrated into the Fascist project to create a New Man". Evola dismissed the biological racism of chief Nazi theorist Alfred Rosenberg and others as reductionist and materialistic. He also argued that one could be "Aryan" but have a "Jewish" soul, and could be "Jewish" but have an "Aryan" soul. In Evola's view, Otto Weininger and Carlo Michelstaedter were Jews of "sufficiently heroic, ascetic, and sacral" character to fit the latter category. In 1970, Evola described Adolf Hitler's antisemitism as a paranoid idée fixe that damaged the reputation of the Third Reich. But Evola never clearly acknowledged the Holocaust committed by the regimes he associated with, perpetrated in the name of racism—Furlong called this a "fatal lapse that by itself ought to be enough to destroy his authority".


title: Julius Evola

text: Evola believed that society develops a "regression of castes" where classes he viewed as superior were replaced by those he viewed as inferior.


title: Julius Evola

text: He believed that the rule of spiritual leaders (the highest class) was replaced by that of warriors (the second highest) then by merchants and finally by the proletariat (whom he described as "spiritual eunuchs", quoting another philosopher).


title: Julius Evola

text: He believed that each aspect of society was effected by the dominant "caste", for example, war in the first type was "holy war" and in the second type "defending the honour of one's lord". In addition, bourgeois rule makes "usury" socially acceptable.


title: Julius Evola

text: Evola wrote more than 36 books and 1,100 articles. In some of his 1930s writings, and in works about magic, Evola used pseudonyms, including Ea (after a Babylonian god), Carlo d'Altavilla, and Arthos (from Arthurian legend).


title: Julius Evola

text: In 1928, Evola wrote an attack on Christianity titled "Pagan Imperialism", which proposed transforming fascism into a system consistent with ancient Roman values and Western esotericism. Evola proposed that fascism should be a vehicle for reinstating the caste system and aristocracy of antiquity. Although he invoked the term "fascism" in this text, his diatribe against the Catholic Church was criticised by both Benito Mussolini's fascist regime and the Vatican itself. A. James Gregor argued that the text was an attack on fascism as it stood at the time of writing, but noted that Mussolini made use of it to threaten the Vatican with the possibility of an "anti-clerical fascism". Richard Drake wrote that Evola "rarely missed an opportunity to attack the Catholic Church". On account of Evola's anti-Christian proposals, in April 1928 the Vatican-backed right wing Catholic journal "Revue Internationale des Sociétés Secrètes" published an article entitled "Un Sataniste Italien: Julius Evola", accusing him of satanism.


title: Julius Evola

text: In his "The Mystery of the Grail" (1937), Evola discarded Christian interpretations of the Holy Grail and wrote that it "symbolizes the principle of an immortalizing and transcendent force connected to the primordial state ... The mystery of the Grail is a mystery of a warrior initiation." He held that the Ghibellines, who had fought the Guelph for control of Northern and Central Italy in the thirteenth century, had within them the residual influences of pre-Christian Celtic and Nordic traditions that represented his conception of the Grail myth. He also held that the Guelph victory against the Ghibellines represented a regression of the castes, since the merchant caste took over from the warrior caste. In the epilogue to the book, Evola argued that the fictitious "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion", regardless of whether it was authentic or not, was a cogent representation of modernity. The historian Richard Barber said, "Evola mixes rhetoric, prejudice, scholarship, and politics into a strange version of the present and future, but in the process he brings together for the first time interest in the esoteric and in conspiracy theory which characterize much of the later Grail literature."


title: Julius Evola

text: Goodrick-Clarke wrote that Evola "regarded the advent of Christianity as an era of unprecedented decline", because Christianity's egalitarianism and accessibility undermined the Roman ideals of "duty, honor and command" that Evola believed in.


title: Julius Evola

text: In his "The Doctrine of Awakening" (1943), Evola argued that the Pāli Canon could be held to represent true Buddhism. His interpretation of Buddhism is intended to be anti-democratic. He believed that Buddhism revealed the essence of an "Aryan" tradition that had become corrupted and lost in the West. He believed it could be interpreted to reveal the superiority of a warrior caste. Harry Oldmeadow described Evola's work on Buddhism as exhibiting a Nietzschean influence, but Evola criticised Nietzsche's purported anti-ascetic prejudice. Evola claimed that the book "received the official approbation of the Pāli [Text] Society", and was published by a reputable Orientalist publisher. Evola's interpretation of Buddhism, as put forth in his article "Spiritual Virility in Buddhism", is in conflict with the post-World War II scholarship of the Orientalist Giuseppe Tucci, who argues that the viewpoint that Buddhism advocates universal benevolence is legitimate. Arthur Versluis stated that Evola's writing on Buddhism was a vehicle for his own theories, but was a far from accurate rendition of the subject, and he held that much the same could be said of Evola's writings on Hermeticism. Ñāṇavīra Thera was inspired to become a bhikkhu from reading Evola's text "The Doctrine of Awakening" in 1945 while hospitalised in Sorrento.


title: Julius Evola

text: Evola's "Revolt Against the Modern World" (1934) promotes the mythology of an ancient Golden Age which gradually declined into modern decadence. In this work, Evola described the features of his idealised traditional society in which religious and temporal power were created and united not by priests, but by warriors expressing spiritual power. In mythology, he saw evidence of the West's superiority over the East. Moreover, he claimed that the traditional elite had the ability to access power and knowledge through a hierarchical magic which differed from the lower "superstitious and fraudulent" forms of magic. He asserted that history's intellectuals starting as early as ancient Greece had undermined traditional values through their questioning. He insisted that only "nonmodern forms, institutions, and knowledge" could produce a "real renewal ... in those who are still capable of receiving it." The text was "immediately recognized by Mircea Eliade and other intellectuals who allegedly advanced ideas associated with Tradition." Eliade was one of the most influential twentieth-century historians of religion, a fascist sympathiser associated with the Romanian Christian right wing movement Iron Guard. Evola was aware of the importance of myth from his readings of Georges Sorel, one of the key intellectual influences on fascism. Hermann Hesse described "Revolt Against the Modern World" as "really dangerous." Richard Drake wrote that the book was not widely influential in the 1930s but eventually received a cult following on the extreme right and is now considered Evola's most important work.


title: Julius Evola

text: "Ride the Tiger" (1961), Evola's last major work, saw him examining dissolution and subversion in a world in which God was dead, and rejected the possibility of any political or collective revival of Tradition due to his belief that the modern world had fallen too far into the Kali Yuga for any such thing to be possible. Instead of this and rather than advocating a return to religion as Rene Guenon had, he conceptualised what he considered an apolitical manual for surviving and ultimately transcending the Kali Yuga. This idea was summarised in the title of the book, the Tantric metaphor of "Riding the Tiger" which in general practice, consisted of turning things that were considered inhibitory to spiritual progress by mainstream Brahmanical society (for example, meat, alcohol and in very rare circumstances, sex, were all employed by Tantric practitioners) into a means of spiritual transcendence. The process that Evola described involved potentially making use of everything from modern music, hallucinogenic drugs, relationships with the opposite sex and even substituting the atmosphere of an urban existence for the Theophany that Traditionalists had identified in virgin nature.


title: Julius Evola

text: During the 1960s Evola thought right-wing entities could no longer reverse the corruption of modern civilisation. E. C. Wolff noted that this is why Evola wrote "Ride the Tiger," choosing to distance himself completely from active political engagement, without excluding the possibility of action in the future. He argued that one should stay firm and ready to intervene when the tiger of modernity "is tired of running." Goodrick-Clarke notes that, "Evola sets up the ideal of the 'active nihilist' who is prepared to act with violence against modern decadence."


title: Julius Evola

text: Evola contributed to Giuseppe Bottai’s magazine "Critica Fascista" for a time"." From 1934 to 1943 Evola was responsible for 'Diorama Filosofico', the cultural page of "Il Regime Fascista", an influential radical fascist daily newspaper owned by Roberto Farinacci, the pro-Nazi mayor of Cremona. Evola used the page to publish international right-wing thinkers. Evola's writings on the page argued for imperialism; leading up to Mussolini's invasion of Ethiopia, Evola praised "the sacred valor of war". During the same period he contributed to the antisemite Giovanni Preziosi's magazine "La vita italiana."


title: Julius Evola

text: Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke has written that Evola's 1945 essay "American 'Civilization'" described the United States as "the final stage of European decline into the 'interior formlessness' of vacuous individualism, conformity and vulgarity under the universal aegis of money-making." According to Goodrick-Clarke, Evola argued that the U.S. "mechanistic and rational philosophy of progress combined with a mundane horizon of prosperity to transform the world into an enormous suburban shopping mall."


title: Julius Evola

text: In the posthumously published collection of writings, "Metaphysics of War", Evola, in line with the conservative revolutionary Ernst Jünger, explored the viewpoint that war could be a spiritually fulfilling experience. He proposed the necessity of a transcendental orientation in a warrior.


title: Julius Evola

text: In Evola's view, a state ruled by a spiritual elite must reign with unquestionable supremacy over its populace. He cited two models of such an elite as the Nazi SS and Romanian Iron Guard, known for their violence. Evola's philosophy, over his long career, adapted the spiritual orientation of Traditionalist writers such as René Guénon and the political concerns of the European authoritarian right, Furlong wrote. Sheehan described Evola as "perhaps the most original and creative — and, intellectually, the most nonconformist, of the Italian Fascist philosophers".


title: Julius Evola

text: Evola had access to Benito Mussolini in the last years of the Fascist regime, and advised him on racial policies, but "without much effect", Ferraresi wrote; Evola "was kept (or stayed) on the sidelines of officialty, as some sort of eccentric". Evola was in charge of the cultural page of the influential fascist newspaper "Il Regime Fascista" for the regime's last decade."" Evola declined to join Italy's National Fascist Party or any other party of the time; Ferraresi wrote that Evola's "lofty nonconformism" and "imperial paganism" did not fit well in a party that would make the Catholic Church a regime pillar. Evola's lack of party membership was later emphasized by admirers to distance him from the regime.


title: Julius Evola

text: Autobiographical remarks by Evola allude to his having worked for the "Sicherheitsdienst", the intelligence agency of the SS and the Nazi Party. With its help, he fled to Berlin in Nazi Germany when the Italian Fascist regime fell in 1943. In May 1951, Evola was arrested in Italy and charged with promoting the revival of the Fascist Party, and of glorifying Fascism. Evola declared that he was not a Fascist but was instead "" (). He was acquitted of all charges.


title: Julius Evola

text: Evola experienced Mussolini's March on Rome in 1922 and was intrigued by fascism. He would praise fascism for "its attempt to refashion the Italian people into a severe, military mold", in Ferraresi's words, but would criticize any concessions to "democratic" pressures. Atkins wrote that "Evola was critical of the Fascist regime because it was not fascist enough."


title: Julius Evola

text: Evola's first published political work in 1925 was anti-fascist. He applauded Mussolini's anti-bourgeois orientation and his goal of making Italian citizens into hardened warriors, but criticised Fascist populism, party politics, and elements of leftism that he saw in the fascist regime. Evola saw Mussolini's Fascist Party as possessing no cultural or spiritual foundation. He was passionate about infusing it with these elements in order to make it suitable for his ideal conception of "Übermensch" culture which, in Evola's view, characterised the imperial grandeur of pre-Christian Europe.


title: Julius Evola

text: Evola applauded the fascist motto "Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State". Sheehan described Evola as "an ardent supporter of Mussolini". But his Traditionalist ethos rejected nationalism, which he viewed as a conception of the modern West and not of a Traditional hierarchical social arrangement. He stated that to become "truly human", one would have to "overcome brotherly contamination" and "purge oneself" of the feeling that one is united with others "because of blood, affections, country or human destiny".


title: Julius Evola

text: Evola argued that the regime should dictate to the Catholic Church, not negotiate with it, and warned in "Critica fascista" in 1927 that allowing the church independent power would make fascism a "laughable revolution". In 1928, he wrote that fascists had made "the most absurd of all errors" through entente with Christianity and the church. He also opposed the futurism that Italian society was aligned with, along with the "plebeian" nature of the movement. He opined that Mussolini should have disbanded his party after 1922 and become a loyal advisor to King Victor Emmanuel III instead. Accordingly, Evola launched the journal "La Torre" (The Tower) in 1930, to advocate for a more elitist social order. He wrote in "La Torre", "We would like a fascism more radical, more intrepid, a truly absolute fascism, made of pure force, inaccessible to any compromise." Evola's ideas were poorly received by the contemporary fascist mainstream. Evola wrote that Mussolini's censors had repressed "La Torre", which lasted five months and ten issues; in Drake's words, Italian fascism "had as little tolerance for opposition on the right as on the left". Regardless, a few years later in 1934, Evola was put in charge of the cultural page of the influential radical fascist newspaper "Il Regime Fascista", a position he held until 1943.""


title: Julius Evola

text: Scholars disagree about why Benito Mussolini embraced racist ideology in 1938—some have written that Mussolini was more motivated by political considerations than ideology when he introduced antisemitic legislation in Italy. Other scholars have rejected the argument that the racial ideology of Italian fascism could be attributed solely to Nazi influence. A more recent interpretation is that Mussolini was frustrated by the slow pace of fascist transformation and, by 1938, had adopted increasingly radical measures including a racial ideology. Aaron Gillette has written that "Racism would become the key driving force behind the creation of the new fascist man, the "uomo fascista"." With the passage of the Italian racial laws in 1938 and Italy's campaign against Jews, Evola demanded measures to counter "the Jewish menace", through "discrimination and selection". Echoing Evola's writings, Mussolini declared in 1938 that "The population of Italy today is of Aryan origin and Italy's civilization is Aryan."


title: Julius Evola

text: Mussolini read Evola's "Synthesis of the Doctrine of Race" in August 1941, and met with Evola to offer him his praise. Evola later recounted that Mussolini had found in his work a uniquely Roman form of Fascist racism distinct from that found in Nazi Germany. With Mussolini's backing, Evola started preparing the launch of a minor journal "Sangue e Spirito" (Blood and Spirit) which never appeared. While not always in agreement with German racial theorists, Evola travelled to Germany in February 1942 and obtained support for German collaboration on "Sangue e Spirito" from "key figures in the German racial hierarchy." Fascists appreciated the palingenetic value of Evola's "proof" "that the true representatives of the state and the culture of ancient Rome were people of the Nordic race." Evola eventually became Italy's leading racial philosopher. Mussolini directed the Ministry of Popular Culture to be guided by "Evola's racist thought".


title: Julius Evola

text: Evola blended Sorelianism with Mussolini's eugenics agenda. Evola has written that "The theory of the Aryo-Roman race and its corresponding myth could integrate the Roman idea proposed, in general, by fascism, as well as give a foundation to Mussolini's plan to use his state as a means to elevate the average Italian and to enucleate in him a new man."


title: Julius Evola

text: Finding Italian fascism "too compromising" (in Goodrick-Clarke's words), Evola sought more recognition in Nazi Germany. He began lecturing there in 1934. He described Berlin's Herrenklub, associated with the Conservative Revolution aristocracy, as his "natural habitat". His considerable amount of time in Germany in 1937 and 1938 included a series of lectures to the German–Italian Society in 1938. Evola appreciated what he called Nazism's "attempt to create a kind of new political-military Order with precise qualifictions of race", and believed that the Nazis' brand of fascism had taken its traditionalist thinkers seriously. Evola thought far more highly of Adolf Hitler than Mussolini, although he had reservations about Hitler's "völkisch" nationalism. Evola wanted a spiritual unity between Italy and Germany and an Axis victory in Europe. (Martin A. Lee calls Evola an "Italian Nazi philosopher" in "The Beast Reawakens".)


title: Julius Evola

text: Evola admired Heinrich Himmler, whom he knew personally. Evola took issue with Nazi populism and biological materialism. SS authorities initially rejected Evola's ideas as supranational and aristocratic though he was better received by members of the conservative revolutionary movement. The Nazi Ahnenerbe reported that many considered his ideas to be pure "fantasy" which ignored "historical facts". Himmler's Schutzstaffel ("SS") kept a dossier on Evola—dossier document AR-126 described his plans for a "Roman-Germanic Imperium" as "utopian" and described him as a "reactionary Roman," whose goal was an "insurrection of the old aristocracy against the modern world." The document recommended that the SS "stop his effectiveness in Germany" and provide him with no support, particularly because of his desire to create a "secret international order".


title: Julius Evola

text: Despite this opposition, Evola was able to establish political connections with pan-Europeanist elements inside the Reich Security Main Office. He subsequently ascended to the inner circles of Nazism as the influence of pan-European advocates overtook that of Völkisch proponents, due to military contingencies. Evola wrote the article "Reich and Imperium as Elements in the New European Order" for the Nazi-backed journal "European Review". He spent World War II working for the Sicherheitsdienst. The Sicherheitsdienst bureau Amt VII, a Reich Security Main Office research library, helped Evola acquire arcane occult and Masonic texts.


title: Julius Evola

text: Mussolini was deposed and imprisoned in 1943, and Italy surrendered to the Allies. At this point, Evola fled to Berlin in Nazi Germany with the help of the Sicherheitsdienst. Evola was one of the first people to greet Mussolini when the latter was broken out of prison by Otto Skorzeny in September 1943. According to Sheehan, Adolf Hitler also met with Evola and other fascist intellectuals. After the meeting with Mussolini, at Hitler's Wolf's Lair, Evola involved himself in Mussolini's Italian Social Republic (the Republic of Salò, a Nazi puppet regime). Evola returned to Rome in 1943 to organize a radical right group called the Movimento per la Rinascita dell'Italia. He fled to Vienna in 1944, barely avoiding capture by the Americans when the Allies took Rome.


title: Julius Evola

text: In Vienna, Evola studied Masonic and Jewish documents confiscated by the Nazis, and worked with the SS and fascist leaders on recruiting an army to resist the Allies' advances. It was Evola's custom to walk around the city during bombing raids in order to better "ponder his destiny". During one such aerial bombardment in 1945, a shell fragment damaged his spinal cord and he became paralysed from the waist down, remaining so for the rest of his life.


title: Julius Evola

text: About the alliance during World War II between Allies and the Soviet Union, Evola wrote:The democratic powers repeated the error of those who think they can use the forces of subversion for their own ends without cost. They do not know that, by a fatal logic, when exponents of two different grades of subversion meet or cross paths, the one representing the more developed grade will take over in the end.


title: Julius Evola

text: Evola, partially paralysed after the Soviet bombing raid in Vienna in 1945, returned to postwar Italy in 1948, after being treated for his injuries in Austria.


title: Julius Evola

text: Ferraresi wrote that Evola was ""the" guru" for generations of radical right Italian militants, through his writings and youth groups. "The political model Evola selected after 1945 was neither Mussolini nor Hitler," Wolff writes; instead, in post-World War II conversations with neo-fascists, Evola would reference the Nazi SS, the Spanish Falange, Codreanu's Legionary Movement, Knut Hamsun, Vidkun Quisling, Léon Degrelle, Drieu La Rochelle, Robert Brasillach, Maurice Bardèche, Charles Maurras, Plato (particularly "The Republic"), Dante (particularly "De Monarchia"), Joseph de Maistre, Donoso Cortés, Otto von Bismarck, Klemens von Metternich, Gaetano Mosca, Vilfredo Pareto, and Robert Michels. He wrote for publications of the neo-fascist Italian Social Movement (MSI) but never joined the party. Adkins wrote that the MSI "claimed him as their philosopher-king, but he barely tolerated their attention". Wolff described him as a "freelance political commentator".


title: Julius Evola

text: Evola continued his work in esotericism, writing a number of books and articles on sex magic and various other esoteric studies, including "The Yoga of Power: Tantra, Shakti, and the Secret Way" (1949), "Eros and the Mysteries of Love: The Metaphysics of Sex" (1958), and "Meditations on the Peaks: Mountain Climbing as Metaphor for the Spiritual Quest" (1974). He also wrote his two explicitly political books "Men Among the Ruins: Post-War Reflections of a Radical Traditionalist" (1953), "Ride the Tiger: A Survival Manual for the Aristocrats of the Soul" (1961), and his autobiography, "The Path of Cinnabar" (1963). He also expanded upon critiques of American civilisation and materialism, as well as increasing American influence in Europe, collected in the posthumous anthology "Civiltà Americana".


title: Julius Evola

text: Evola was arrested along with thirty-six others in April 1951 by the Political Office of the Rome Police Headquarters and charged on suspicion that he was an ideologist of the militant neofascist organisation Fasci di Azione Rivoluzionaria (FAR), after attempted bombings in 1949-50 were linked to Evola's circle. Evola's charges were glorifying fascism and promoting the revival of the Fascist Party. His lawyer was Francesco Carnelutti. He was carried into the courtroom on a stretcher. Defending himself at trial, Evola said that his work belonged to a long tradition of anti-democratic writers who could be linked to fascism—at least fascism interpreted according to certain Evolian criteria—but who could not be identified with the Fascist regime under Mussolini. Evola then denied being a fascist and instead referred to himself as "" (). Concerning this statement, historian Elisabetta Cassina Wolff wrote that it is unclear whether this meant he was placing himself "above or beyond Fascism". The judges, who themselves had served during the fascist era, ruled that Evola could not be held responsible for the crimes. Evola was acquitted of all charges on 20 November 1951. Of the 36 other defendants, 13 received prison sentences.


title: Julius Evola

text: While trying to distance himself from Nazism, Evola wrote in 1955 that the Nuremberg trials were a farce. Evola also made an effort to differentiate his caste based aristocratic state from totalitarianism, preferring the concept of the "organic" state, which he put forth in his text "Men Among the Ruins," as well as in his "autodifesa". Evola sought to develop a strategy for the implementation of a "conservative revolution" in post-World War II Europe. He rejected nationalism, advocating instead for a European "Imperium", which could take various forms according to local conditions, but should be "organic, hierarchical, anti-democratic, and anti-individual". Evola endorsed Francis Parker Yockey's neo-fascist manifesto "Imperium", but said Yockey had a "superficial" understanding of what was immediately possible. Evola believed that his conception of neo-fascist Europe could best be implemented by an elite of "superior" men who operated outside normal politics. He dreamt that such a "New Order" of aristocracy might seize power from above during a democratic crisis.


title: Julius Evola

text: Evola's occult ontology exerted influence over post-war neo-fascism. After 1945, Evola was considered the most important Italian theoretician of the conservative revolutionary movement and the "chief ideologue" of Italy's post-war radical right. Ferraresi wrote that "Evola’s thought was the 'essential mortar' that held together generations of militants". According to Jacob Christiansen Senholt, Evola's most significant post-war political texts are "Orientamenti" and "Men Among the Ruins". In the opening phrase in the first edition of "Men Among the Ruins", Evola said: Our adversaries would undoubtedly want us, in a Christian spirit, under the banner of progress or reform, having been struck on one cheek to turn the other. Our principle is different: "Do to others what they would like to do to you: but do it to them first.In "Men Among the Ruins", Evola defines the Fourth Estate as being the last stage in the cyclical development of the social elite, the first beginning with a spiritual elite of divine right. Expanding the concept in an essay in 1950, the Fourth State according to Evola would be characterised by "the collectivist civilization... the communist society of the faceless-massman".


title: Julius Evola

text: "Orientamenti" was a text against "national fascism"—instead, it advocated for a European Community modelled on the principles of the Nazis' Waffen-SS, which had mustered international forces. The Italian neo-fascist group Ordine Nuovo adopted "Orientamenti" as a guide for action in postwar Italy. Evola praised Ordine Nouvo as the only Italian group that had "doctrinally had held firm without descending to compromise". The European Liberation Front of Francis Parker Yockey called Evola "Italy's greatest living authoritarian philosopher" in the April 1951 issue of its publication "Frontfighter".


title: Julius Evola

text: Evola was childless and never married. He spent his postwar years in his Rome apartment. He died on 11 June 1974 in Rome from congestive heart failure. His ashes, per his will, were deposited in a hole cut in a glacier on Monte Rosa in the Pennine Alps.


title: Julius Evola

text: At one time Italian Fascist leader Benito Mussolini, the Nazi Grail seeker Otto Rahn, and the Romanian fascist sympathiser and religious historian Mircea Eliade admired Evola. After World War II, Evola's writings continued to influence many European far-right political, racist and neo-fascist movements. He is widely translated in French, Spanish, partly in German, and mostly in Hungarian (the largest number of his translated works). Franco Ferraresi described Evola in 1987 as "possibly the most important intellectual figure for the Radical Right in contemporary Europe" but "virtually known outside the Right". In 2004, Atkins described him as "the leading philosopher of the European neo-fascist movement".


title: Julius Evola

text: Giuliano Salierni, who was an activist in the neo-Fascist Italian Social Movement during the early 1950s, later recalled Evola's calls to violence, along with Evola's reminiscences about Nazis such as Joseph Goebbels. Roberto Fiore and his colleagues in the early 1980s helped the National Fronts "Political Soldiers" forge a militant elitist philosophy based on Evola's "most militant tract", "The Aryan Doctrine of Battle and Victory". "The Aryan Doctrine" called for a "Great Holy War" that would be fought for spiritual renewal and fought in parallel to the physical "Little Holy War" against perceived enemies.


title: Julius Evola

text: Richard Drake wrote that Evola advocated for terrorism. Peter Merkl noted that Evola's advocacy of force was part of his appeal to the radical right. Wolff wrote: "The debate around his 'moral and political' responsibility for terrorist actions perpetrated by right-wing extremist groups in Italy between 1969 and 1980 began as soon as Evola died in 1974 and have not yet come to an end." Giorgio Almirante referred to him as "our Marcuse—only better." According to one leader of the neofascist "black terrorist" Ordine Nuovo, "Our work since 1953 has been to transpose Evola's teachings into direct political action." Franco Freda and Mario Tuti reprinted Evola's most militant texts. Umberto Eco's 1995 essay "Ur-Fascism" referred to Evola as the "most influential theoretical source of the theories of the new Italian right", and as "one of the most respected fascist gurus".


title: Julius Evola

text: Radicals of the Nuclei Armati Rivoluzionari (NAR) helped spread Evola's philosophy in far-right circles abroad after fleeing Italy in the wake of the terrorist bombing of the Bologna railway station in 1980; some influenced Britain's National Front. But outside Italy, France and Germany, Evola was not well known until around 1990 when he received wider English language publication, according to Furlong.


title: Julius Evola

text: The far-right English politician and orator Jonathan Bowden gave lectures on Evola's philosophy. The French far-right figure Alain de Benoist has cited Evola as an influence.


title: Julius Evola

text: Evola's "Heidnischer Imperialismus" (1933) was translated by the Russian radical-right Eurasianist Aleksandr Dugin in 1981. Dugin has said that in his youth he was "deeply inspired" by Guénon's and Evola's Traditionalism.


title: Julius Evola

text: The Greek neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn includes his works on its suggested reading list, and the leader of Jobbik, the Hungarian nationalist party, admires Evola and wrote an introduction to his works.


title: Cody Walker (actor)

text: Cody Beau Walker (born June 13, 1988) is an American actor. He is the youngest brother of actor Paul Walker, and helped complete the final scenes for his character Brian O'Conner in the film "Furious 7" (2015) following his brother's death. Walker made his acting debut in "Abandoned Mine" (2013). He went on to appear in films "" (2016) and "The Last Full Measure" (2020).


title: Cody Walker (actor)

text: Cody Walker was born on June 13, 1988 in Los Angeles, California. His mother, Cheryl (née Crabtree), was a fashion model, and his father, Paul William Walker III, was a sewer contractor and former amateur boxer, who was a two-time Golden Gloves champion. Walker's paternal grandfather, William, had a short-lived boxing career as "Irish" Billy Walker, while another raced factory cars for Ford in the 1960s. Walker grew up with four siblings: Aimee, Ashlie, Caleb, and actor Paul.


title: Cody Walker (actor)

text: Walker graduated from La Canada High School in 2006 and subsequently earned a Bachelor's Degree in Cultural Anthropology from the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is a licensed paramedic after completing Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) certification from University of California, Los Angeles Center for Prehospital Care. Walker moved to Coos County, Oregon and worked as a paramedic in an ambulance for nearly three years.


title: Cody Walker (actor)

text: Walker made his acting debut in the horror film "Abandoned Mine" (2013), portraying the role of Thomas. The film received mixed reviews.


title: Cody Walker (actor)

text: Walker appeared in the action film "Furious 7" (2015) after his brother Paul died on November 30, 2013, in a single-vehicle accident. Cody and Caleb Walker both stepped in to help finish their brother's scenes as Brian O'Conner in the movie, which was still filming at the time of Paul's death. "Furious 7" premiered in Los Angeles on April 1, 2015, and was theatrically released in the United States on April 3, exactly six years after the fourth film was released. Upon release, the film became a critical and financial success, and it grossed $397.6 million worldwide during its opening weekend, which was the highest of all-time at the time. The film grossed over $1.5 billion worldwide, making it the third highest-grossing film of 2015 and the fourth highest-grossing film of all time at the time of release. After his appearance in "Furious 7", Walker decided to pursue acting, and signed with Paradigm Talent Agency in 2015.


title: Cody Walker (actor)

text: He portrayed Petty Officer Third class James West in the World War II film "" (2016) alongside Nicolas Cage and Matt Lanter. The film is based largely on the true story of the loss of the ship of the same name in the closing stages of the Second World War. He appeared in the documentary film "I Am Paul Walker" (2018) that aired on Paramount Network. Walker played Eric Shaw in the action-adventure film "Shadow Wolves" (2019), which was originally planned to be a television series. He appeared in the war drama film "The Last Full Measure" (2020) as Young Kepper.


title: Cody Walker (actor)

text: Walker is the Chief Executive Officer for his brother Paul's charity foundation, Reach Out Worldwide, that helps bring first responders to disaster areas to augment local relief efforts. In November 2020, Reach Out Worldwide donated 120 cases of hand sanitizer to North Bend Fire Department during COVID-19 pandemic. Walker is the co-founder of car show FuelFuest, which returned for the fourth time in June 2022. The car show benefits Reach Out Worldwide.


title: Cody Walker (actor)

text: Walker married his girlfriend of seven years, Felicia Knox, on August 15, 2015, in Gold Beach, Oregon. The couple have two children together, a daughter who was born in December 2017 and a son born in November 2020.


title: Cardiac cycle

text: The cardiac cycle is the performance of the human heart from the beginning of one heartbeat to the beginning of the next. It consists of two periods: one during which the heart muscle relaxes and refills with blood, called diastole, following a period of robust contraction and pumping of blood, called systole. After emptying, the heart immediately relaxes and expands to receive another influx of blood returning from the lungs and other systems of the body, before again contracting to pump blood to the lungs and those systems. A normally performing heart must be fully expanded before it can efficiently pump again. Assuming a healthy heart and a typical rate of 70 to 75 beats per minute, each cardiac cycle, or heartbeat, takes about 0.8 second to complete the cycle.


title: Cardiac cycle

text: There are two atrial and two ventricle chambers of the heart; they are paired as the left heart and the right heart—that is, the left atrium with the left ventricle, the right atrium with the right ventricle—and they work in concert to repeat the cardiac cycle continuously, (see cycle diagram at right margin). At the start of the cycle, during "ventricular diastole"–early, the heart relaxes and expands while receiving blood into both ventricles through both atria; then, near the end of "ventricular diastole"–late, the two atria begin to contract ("atrial systole"), and each atrium pumps blood into the ventricle below it. During "ventricular systole" the ventricles are contracting and vigorously pulsing (or ejecting) two separated blood supplies from the heart—one to the lungs and one to all other body organs and systems—while the two atria are relaxed ("atrial diastole"). This precise coordination ensures that blood is efficiently collected and circulated throughout the body.


title: Cardiac cycle

text: The mitral and tricuspid valves, also known as the atrioventricular, or AV valves, open during ventricular diastole to permit filling. Late in the filling period the atria begin to contract (atrial systole) forcing a final crop of blood into the ventricles under pressure—see cycle diagram. Then, prompted by electrical signals from the sinoatrial node, the ventricles start contracting (ventricular systole), and as back-pressure against them increases the AV valves are forced to close, which stops the blood volumes in the ventricles from flowing in or out; this is known as the "isovolumic contraction" stage.


title: Cardiac cycle

text: Due to the contractions of the systole, pressures in the ventricles rise quickly, exceeding the pressures in the trunks of the aorta and the pulmonary arteries and causing the requisite valves (the aortic and pulmonary valves) to open—which results in separated blood volumes being ejected from the two ventricles. This is the ejection stage of the cardiac cycle; it is depicted (see circular diagram) as the "ventricular systole–first phase" followed by the "ventricular systole–second phase". After ventricular pressures fall below their peak(s) and below those in the trunks of the aorta and pulmonary arteries, the aortic and pulmonary valves close again—see, at the right margin, Wiggers diagram, blue-line tracing.


title: Cardiac cycle

text: Now follows the "isovolumic relaxation", during which pressure within the ventricles begin to fall significantly, and thereafter the atria begin refilling as blood returns to flow into the right atrium (from the vena cavae) and into the left atrium (from the pulmonary veins). As the ventricles begin to relax, the mitral and tricuspid valves open again, and the completed cycle returns to ventricular diastole and a new "Start" of the cardiac cycle.


title: Cardiac cycle

text: Throughout the cardiac cycle, blood pressure increases and decreases. The movements of cardiac muscle are coordinated by a series of electrical impulses produced by specialised pacemaker cells found within the sinoatrial node and the atrioventricular node. Cardiac muscle is composed of myocytes which initiate their internal contractions without applying to external nerves—with the exception of changes in the heart rate due to metabolic demand.


title: Cardiac cycle

text: In an electrocardiogram, electrical systole initiates the atrial systole at the P wave deflection of a steady signal; and it starts contractions (systole).


title: Cardiac cycle

text: The cardiac cycle involves four major stages of activity: 1) "Isovolumic relaxation", 2) Inflow, 3) "Isovolumic contraction", 4) "Ejection". (See Wiggers diagram, which presents the stages, label-wise, in 3,4,1,2 order, left-to-right.) Moving from the left along the Wiggers diagram shows the activities within four stages during a single cardiac cycle. (See the consecutive panels labeled, at bottom-right, "Diastole" then "Systole").


title: Cardiac cycle

text: Stages 1 and 2 together—"Isovolumic relaxation" plus Inflow (equals "Rapid inflow", "Diastasis", and "Atrial systole")—comprise the ventricular "Diastole" period, including atrial systole, during which blood returning to the heart flows through the atria "into" the relaxed ventricles. Stages 3 and 4 together—"Isovolumic contraction" plus "Ejection"—are the ventricular "Systole" period, which is the simultaneous pumping of separate blood supplies "from" the two ventricles, one to the pulmonary artery and one to the aorta. Notably, near the end of the "Diastole", the atria begin contracting, then pumping blood into the ventricles; this pressurized delivery during ventricular relaxation (ventricular diastole) is called the "atrial systole", aka "atrial kick".


title: Cardiac cycle

text: The time-wise increases and decreases of the heart's blood volume (see Wiggers diagram), are also instructive to follow. The red-line tracing of "Ventricular volume" provides an excellent track of the two periods and four stages of one cardiac cycle. Starting with the Diastole period: the low-volume plateau of "Isovolumic relaxation" stage, followed by a rapid rise and two slower rises, all components of the "Inflow stage"—increasing to the high-volume plateau of the "Isovolumic contraction" stage; (find the label at left side of diagram). Then, the Systole, including the high "Isovolumic contraction" stage to the rapid decrease in blood volume (i.e., the vertical drop of the red-line tracing) which signifies the emptying of the ventricles during the "Ejection" stage of the completed cycle—all equal to one heartbeat.


title: Cardiac cycle

text: Stages 1, 2a, and 2b together comprise the "Diastole" period; stages 3 and 4 together comprise the "Systole" period.


title: Cardiac cycle

text: Dicrotic notch- rebounding of the aorta, helps perfuse coronary arteries, with increasing age the aorta stiffens and less elasticity hence the notch may be less and problems arise perfusing coronary arteries


title: Cardiac cycle

text: The heart is a four-chambered organ consisting of right and left halves, called the right heart and the left heart. The upper two chambers, the left and right atria, are entry points "into" the heart for blood-flow returning from the circulatory system, while the two lower chambers, the left and right ventricles, perform the contractions that eject the blood "from" the heart to flow through the circulatory system. Circulation is split into pulmonary circulation—during which the right ventricle pumps oxygen-depleted blood to the lungs through the pulmonary trunk and arteries; or the systemic circulation—in which the left ventricle pumps/ejects newly oxygenated blood throughout the body via the aorta and all other arteries.


title: Cardiac cycle

text: In a healthy heart all activities and rests during each individual cardiac cycle, or heartbeat, are initiated and orchestrated by signals of the heart's electrical conduction system, which is the "wiring" of the heart that carries electrical impulses throughout the body of cardiomyocytes, the specialized muscle cells of the heart. These impulses ultimately stimulate heart muscle to contract and thereby to eject blood from the ventricles into the arteries and the cardiac circulatory system; and they provide a system of intricately timed and persistent signaling that controls the rhythmic beating of the heart muscle cells, especially the complex impulse-generation and muscle contractions in the atrial chambers. The rhythmic sequence (or sinus rhythm) of this signaling across the heart is coordinated by two groups of specialized cells, the sinoatrial (SA) node, which is situated in the upper wall of the right atrium, and the atrioventricular (AV) node located in the lower wall of the right heart between the atrium and ventricle. The sinoatrial node, often known as the "cardiac pacemaker", is the point of origin for producing a wave of electrical impulses that stimulates atrial contraction by creating an action potential across myocardium cells.


title: Cardiac cycle

text: Impulses of the wave are delayed upon reaching the AV node, which acts as a gate to slow and to coordinate the electrical current before it is conducted below the atria and through the circuits known as the bundle of His and the Purkinje fibers—all which stimulate contractions of both ventricles. The programmed delay at the AV node also provides time for blood volume to flow through the atria and fill the ventricular chambers—just before the return of the systole (contractions), ejecting the new blood volume and completing the cardiac cycle. (See Wiggers diagram: "Ventricular volume" tracing (red), at "Systole" panel.)


title: Cardiac cycle

text: Cardiac diastole is the period of the cardiac cycle when, after contraction, the heart relaxes and expands while refilling with blood returning from the circulatory system. Both atrioventricular (AV) valves open to facilitate the 'unpressurized' flow of blood directly through the atria into both ventricles, where it is collected for the next contraction. This period is best viewed at the middle of the Wiggers diagram—see the panel labeled "Diastole". Here it shows pressure levels in both atria and ventricles as near-zero during most of the diastole. (See gray and light-blue tracings labeled "Atrial pressure" and "Ventricular pressure"—Wiggers diagram.) Here also may be seen the red-line tracing of "Ventricular volume", showing increase in blood volume from the low plateau of the "Isovolumic relaxation" stage to the maximum volume occurring in the "Atrial systole" sub-stage.


title: Cardiac cycle

text: Atrial systole is the contracting of cardiac muscle cells of both atria following electrical stimulation and conduction of electrical currents across the atrial chambers (see above, "Physiology"). While nominally a component of the heart's sequence of systolic contraction and ejection, atrial systole actually performs the vital role of completing the diastole, which is to finalize the filling of both ventricles with blood while they are relaxed and expanded for that purpose. Atrial systole overlaps the end of the diastole, occurring in the sub-period known as "ventricular diastole–late" (see cycle diagram). At this point, the atrial systole applies contraction pressure to 'topping-off' the blood volumes sent to both ventricles; this "atrial kick" closes the diastole immediately before the heart again begins contracting and ejecting blood "from" the ventricles (ventricular systole) to the aorta and arteries.


title: Cardiac cycle

text: Atrial kick is absent or disrupted if there is loss of normal electrical conduction in the heart, such as caused by atrial fibrillation, atrial flutter, or heart block. Atrial kick may also be degraded by any deterioration in the condition of the heart, such as "stiff heart" found in patients with diastolic dysfunction.


title: Cardiac cycle

text: Ventricular systole is the contractions, following electrical stimulations, of the ventricular syncytium of cardiac muscle cells in the left and right ventricles. Contractions in the right ventricle provide pulmonary circulation by pulsing oxygen-depleted blood through the pulmonary valve then through the pulmonary arteries to the lungs. Simultaneously, contractions of the left ventricular systole provide systemic circulation of oxygenated blood to all body systems by pumping blood through the aortic valve, the aorta, and all the arteries. (Blood pressure is routinely measured in the larger arteries off the left ventricle during the left ventricular systole).


title: German battleship Tirpitz

text: Tirpitz was the second of two s built for Nazi Germany's "Kriegsmarine" (navy) prior to and during the Second World War. Named after Grand Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz, the architect of the "Kaiserliche Marine" (Imperial Navy), the ship was laid down at the Kriegsmarinewerft Wilhelmshaven in November 1936 and her hull was launched two and a half years later. Work was completed in February 1941, when she was commissioned into the German fleet. Like her sister ship, , "Tirpitz" was armed with a main battery of eight guns in four twin turrets. After a series of wartime modifications she was 2000 tonnes heavier than "Bismarck", making her the heaviest battleship ever built by a European navy.


title: German battleship Tirpitz

text: After completing sea trials in early 1941, "Tirpitz" briefly served as the centrepiece of the Baltic Fleet, which was intended to prevent a possible break-out attempt by the Soviet Baltic Fleet. In early 1942, the ship sailed to Norway to act as a deterrent against an Allied invasion. While stationed in Norway, "Tirpitz" was also intended to be used to intercept Allied convoys to the Soviet Union, and two such missions were attempted in 1942. This was the only feasible role for her, since the St Nazaire Raid had made operations against the Atlantic convoy lanes too risky. "Tirpitz" acted as a fleet in being, forcing the British Royal Navy to retain significant naval forces in the area to contain the battleship.


title: German battleship Tirpitz

text: In September 1943, "Tirpitz", along with the battleship , bombarded Allied positions on Spitsbergen, the only time the ship used her main battery in an offensive role. Shortly thereafter, the ship was damaged in an attack by British mini-submarines and subsequently subjected to a series of large-scale air raids. On 12 November 1944, British Lancaster bombers equipped with "Tallboy" bombs scored two direct hits and a near miss which caused the ship to capsize rapidly. A deck fire spread to the ammunition magazine for one of the main battery turrets, which caused a large explosion. Figures for the number of men killed in the attack range from 950 to 1,204. Between 1948 and 1957, the wreck was broken up by a joint Norwegian and German salvage operation.


title: German battleship Tirpitz

text: The two s were designed in the mid-1930s by the German "Kriegsmarine" as a counter to French naval expansion, specifically the two s France had started in 1935. Laid down after the signing of the Anglo-German Naval Agreement of 1935, "Tirpitz" and her sister were nominally within the limit imposed by the Washington regime that governed battleship construction in the interwar period. The ships secretly exceeded the figure by a wide margin, though before either vessel was completed, the international treaty system had fallen apart following Japan's withdrawal in 1937, allowing signatories to invoke an "escalator clause" that permitted displacements as high as .


title: German battleship Tirpitz

text: "Tirpitz" displaced as built and fully loaded, with a length of , a beam of and a maximum draft of . Her standard crew numbered 103 officers and 1,962 enlisted men; during the war this was increased to 108 officers and 2,500 men. She was powered by three Brown, Boveri & Cie geared steam turbines, each driving a screw propeller, with steam provided by twelve oil-fired Wagner superheated water-tube boilers. Her propulsion system developed a total of and yielded a maximum speed of on speed trials.


title: German battleship Tirpitz

text: She was armed with eight 38 cm SK C/34 L/52 guns arranged in four twin gun turrets: two superfiring turrets forward—Anton and Bruno—and two aft—Caesar and Dora. Her secondary armament consisted of twelve 15 cm L/55 guns, sixteen 10.5 cm L/65 and sixteen L/83, and initially twelve C/30 anti-aircraft guns. The number of 2 cm guns was eventually increased to 58. After 1942, eight above-water torpedo tubes were installed in two quadruple mounts, one mount on each side of the ship.


title: German battleship Tirpitz

text: As built, "Tirpitz" was equipped with Model 23 search radars mounted on the forward, foretop, and rear rangefinders. These were later replaced with Model 27 and then Model 26 radars, which had a larger antenna array. A Model 30 radar, known as the "Hohentwiel", was mounted in 1944 in her topmast, and a Model 213 "Würzburg" fire-control radar was added on her stern Flak rangefinders.


title: German battleship Tirpitz

text: The ship's main belt was thick and was covered by a pair of upper and main armoured decks that were and thick, respectively. The 38 cm turrets were protected by thick faces and thick sides.


title: German battleship Tirpitz

text: "Tirpitz" was ordered as "Ersatz Schleswig-Holstein" as a replacement for the old pre-dreadnought , under the contract name "G". The "Kriegsmarinewerft" shipyard in Wilhelmshaven was awarded the contract, where the keel was laid on 20 October 1936. The hull was launched on 1 April 1939; during the elaborate ceremonies, the ship was christened by Ilse von Hassell, the daughter of Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz, the ship's namesake. Adolf von Trotha, a former admiral in the Imperial German Navy, spoke at the ship's launching, which was also attended by Adolf Hitler. Fitting-out work was completed by February 1941. British bombers repeatedly attacked the harbour in which the ship was being built; no bombs struck "Tirpitz", but the attacks slowed construction work. "Tirpitz" was commissioned into the fleet on 25 February for sea trials, which were conducted in the Baltic.


title: German battleship Tirpitz

text: After sea trials, "Tirpitz" was stationed in Kiel and performed intensive training in the Baltic. While the ship was in Kiel, Germany invaded the Soviet Union. A temporary Baltic Fleet was created to prevent the breakout of the Soviet fleet based in Leningrad. "Tirpitz" was briefly made the flagship of the squadron, which consisted of the heavy cruiser , the light cruisers , , , and , several destroyers, and two flotillas of minesweepers. The Baltic Fleet, under the command of Vice Admiral Otto Ciliax, patrolled off Åland from 23 to 26 September 1941, after which the unit was disbanded and "Tirpitz" resumed training. During the training period, "Tirpitz" tested her primary and secondary guns on the old pre-dreadnought battleship , which had been converted into a radio-controlled target ship. The British Royal Air Force (RAF) continued to launch unsuccessful bombing raids on "Tirpitz" while she was stationed in Kiel.


title: German battleship Tirpitz

text: Grand Admiral Erich Raeder, the commander of the "Kriegsmarine", proposed on 13 November that "Tirpitz" be deployed to Norway. The ship would be able to attack convoys bound for the Soviet Union, and act as a fleet in being to tie down British naval assets and deter an Allied invasion of Norway. Hitler, who had forbidden an Atlantic sortie after the loss of "Bismarck", agreed to the proposal. The ship was taken into dock for modifications for the deployment. The ship's anti-aircraft battery was strengthened, and the 10.5 cm guns on the superstructure next to the catapult were moved outboard to increase their field of fire. The two quadruple 53.3 cm torpedo tube mounts were also installed during this refit. The ship's commander, "Kapitän zur See (KzS–Captain at Sea)" Karl Topp, pronounced the ship ready for combat operations on 10 January 1942. The following day, "Tirpitz" left for Wilhelmshaven, a move designed to conceal her actual destination.


title: German battleship Tirpitz

text: The ship left Wilhelmshaven at 23:00 on 14 January and made for Trondheim. British military intelligence, which was capable of decrypting the Enigma messages sent by the German navy, detected the departure of the vessel, but poor weather in Britain prevented action by the RAF. Admiral John Tovey, the commander in chief of the British Home Fleet, was not made aware of "Tirpitz"s activities until 17 January, well after the ship had arrived in Norway. On 16 January, British aerial reconnaissance located the ship in Trondheim. "Tirpitz" then moved to the Fættenfjord, just north-east of Trondheim. The movement was codenamed Operation Polarnacht (Polar Night); the battleship was escorted by the destroyers , , and for the voyage. The Norwegian resistance movement transmitted the location to London. She was moored next to a cliff, which protected the ship from air attacks from the southwest. The ship's crew cut down trees and placed them aboard "Tirpitz" to camouflage her. The crew also frequently hid the entire ship from aerial reconnaissance and attacks inside a cloud of artificial fog, created using water and chlorosulfuric acid. Additional anti-aircraft batteries were installed around the fjord, as were anti-torpedo nets and heavy booms in the entrance to the anchorage. "Tirpitz" was known as the "Lonely Queen of the North" because she was so rarely deployed, and life for her crew was very monotonous. Frequent fuel shortages curtailed training and kept the battleship and her escorts moored behind their protective netting. The crew was primarily occupied with maintaining the ship and continuously manning anti-aircraft defences. Sports activities were organised to keep the crew occupied and physically fit.


title: German battleship Tirpitz

text: Several factors hindered "Tirpitz"s freedom of operation in Norway. The most pressing were shortages of fuel and the withdrawal of the German destroyer forces to support Operation Cerberus, the movement of the battleships and and the heavy cruiser through the English Channel. These caused a planned attack against the outbound convoy PQ 8 at the end of January to be abandoned. A planned British air attack at the end of January by four-engined heavy bombers was disrupted by poor weather over the target, which prevented the aircraft from finding the ship. In early February, "Tirpitz" took part in the deceptions that distracted the British in the run-up to Operation Cerberus. These included steaming out of the fjord and the appearance of preparations for a sortie into the North Sea. Later that month, the ship was reinforced by the heavy cruisers "Admiral Scheer" and "Prinz Eugen" and several destroyers. "Prinz Eugen" had been torpedoed by a British submarine at the entrance to the Fættenfjord, and was temporarily out of action.


title: German battleship Tirpitz

text: In March 1942 "Tirpitz" and "Admiral Scheer", along with the destroyers , "Z5 Paul Jakobi", and and a pair of torpedo boats, were intended to attack the homebound convoy QP 8 and the outbound Convoy PQ 12 as part of "Unternehmen Sportpalast" (Operation Sports Palace). "Admiral Scheer", with a design speed of , was too slow to operate with "Tirpitz" and was left in port, as was the destroyer "Paul Jakobi". The two torpedo boats were also released from the operation. On 5 March, Luftwaffe reconnaissance aircraft spotted PQ 12 near Jan Mayen Island; the reconnaissance failed to note the battleship or the battlecruiser , both of which were escorting the convoy, along with four destroyers.


title: German battleship Tirpitz

text: Unknown to the Germans, Admiral Tovey was providing distant support to the convoys with the battleship , the aircraft carrier , the heavy cruiser , and six destroyers. Enigma intercepts again forewarned the British of "Tirpitz"s attack, which allowed them to reroute the convoys. Admiral Tovey attempted to pursue "Tirpitz" on 9 March, but Admiral Otto Ciliax, the commander of the German squadron, had decided to return to port the previous evening. An air attack was launched early on the 9th; twelve Fairey Albacore torpedo bombers attacked the ship in three groups, and "Tirpitz" successfully evaded the torpedoes. Only three men were wounded in the attack. "Tirpitz"s anti-aircraft gunners shot down two of the British aircraft. After the conclusion of the attack, "Tirpitz" made for Vestfjord, and from there to Trondheim, arriving on the evening of 13 March. On 30 March, thirty-three Halifax bombers attacked the ship; they scored no hits, and five aircraft were shot down. The RAF launched a pair of unsuccessful strikes in late April. On the night of 27–28 April, thirty-one Halifaxes and twelve Lancasters attacked; five of the bombers were shot down. Another raid, composed of twenty-three Halifaxes and eleven Lancasters, took place the following night. Two of the bombers were shot down by the German anti-aircraft defences.


title: German battleship Tirpitz

text: The actions of "Tirpitz" and her escorting destroyers in March used up of fuel oil, which greatly reduced the available fuel supply. It took the Germans three months to replenish the fuel spent in the attempt to intercept the two Allied convoys. Convoy PQ 17, which left Iceland on 27 June bound for the Soviet Union, was the next convoy targeted by "Tirpitz" and the rest of the German fleet stationed in Norway, during "Unternehmen Rösselsprung" (Operation Knight's Move). Escorting the convoy were the battleships "Duke of York" and and the carrier "Victorious". "Tirpitz", , and six destroyers sortied from Trondheim, while a second task force consisting of , "Admiral Scheer", and six destroyers operated from Narvik and Bogenfjord. "Lützow" and three of the destroyers struck uncharted rocks while en route to the rendezvous and had to return to port. Shortly after "Tirpitz" left Norway, the Soviet submarine "K-21" fired two or four torpedoes at the ship, all of which missed. The Soviets claimed two hits on the battleship. Swedish intelligence had meanwhile reported the German departures to the British Admiralty, which ordered the convoy to disperse. Aware that they had been detected, the Germans aborted the operation and turned over the attack to U-boats and the Luftwaffe. The scattered vessels could no longer be protected by the convoy escorts, and the Germans sank 21 of the 34 isolated transports. "Tirpitz" returned to Altafjord via the Lofoten Islands.


title: German battleship Tirpitz

text: Following "Rösselsprung", the Germans moved "Tirpitz" to Bogenfjord near Narvik. By this time, the ship needed a major overhaul. Hitler had forbidden the ship to make the dangerous return to Germany, and so the overhaul was conducted in Trondheim. On 23 October, the ship left Bogenfjord and returned to Fættenfjord outside Trondheim. The defences of the anchorage were further strengthened; additional anti-aircraft guns were installed, and double anti-torpedo nets were laid around the vessel. The repairs were conducted in limited phases, so "Tirpitz" would remain partially operational for the majority of the overhaul. A caisson was built around the stern to allow the replacement of the ship's rudders. During the repair process, the British attempted to attack the battleship with two Chariot human torpedoes, but before they could be launched, rough seas caused them to break away from the fishing vessel which was towing them. By 28 December, the overhaul had been completed, and "Tirpitz" began sea trials. She conducted gunnery trials on 4 January 1943 in Trondheim Fjord. On 21 February, Topp was promoted to Rear Admiral and was replaced by Captain Hans Meyer; five days later the battleship "Scharnhorst" was ordered to reinforce the fleet in Norway. Vice Admiral Oskar Kummetz was given command of the warships stationed in Norway.


title: German battleship Tirpitz

text: By the time "Scharnhorst" arrived in Norway in March 1943, Allied convoys to the Soviet Union had temporarily ceased. To give the ships an opportunity to work together, Admiral Karl Dönitz, who had replaced Raeder in the aftermath of the Battle of the Barents Sea on 31 December 1942, ordered an attack on Spitzbergen, which housed a British weather station and refuelling base. Spitzbergen was defended by a garrison of 152 men from the Norwegian Armed Forces in exile. The two battleships, escorted by ten destroyers, left port on 6 September; in a "ruse de guerre", "Tirpitz" flew the white ensign on the approach to the island the following day. During the bombardment, "Tirpitz" fired 52 main-battery shells and 82 rounds from her 15 cm secondaries. This was the first and only time the ship fired her main battery at an enemy surface target. An assault force destroyed shore installations and captured 74 prisoners. By 11:00, the battleships had destroyed their targets and headed back to their Norwegian ports.


title: German battleship Tirpitz

text: The British were determined to neutralise "Tirpitz" and remove the threat she posed to the Allied arctic convoys. Following the repeated, ineffectual bombing attacks and the failed torpedo attack in October 1942, the British turned to the newly designed X Craft midget submarines. The planned attack, Operation Source, included attacks on "Tirpitz", "Scharnhorst", and "Lützow". The X Craft were towed by large submarines to their destinations, where they could slip under anti-torpedo nets and each drop two powerful two-tonne mines onto the sea bed under the target. Ten vessels were assigned to the operation, scheduled for 20–25 September 1943. Only eight of them reached Kåfjord in Norway for the attack, which began early on 22 September. Three of the vessels, "X5", "X6", and "X7", successfully breached "Tirpitz"s defences, two of which—"X6" and "X7"—managed to lay their mines. "X5" was detected from the nets and sunk by a combination of gunfire and depth charges.


title: German battleship Tirpitz

text: The mines damaged the ship extensively. The first exploded abreast of turret Caesar, and the second detonated off the port bow. A fuel oil tank was ruptured, shell plating was torn, a large indentation was formed in the bottom of the ship, and bulkheads in the double bottom buckled. Some of water flooded the ship in fuel tanks and void spaces in the double bottom of the port side, which caused a list of one to two degrees, which was balanced by counter-flooding on the starboard side. The flooding damaged all of the turbo-generators in generator room No. 2, and all apart from one generator in generator room No. 1 were disabled by broken steam lines or severed power cables. Turret Dora was thrown from its bearings and could not be rotated; this was particularly significant, as there were no heavy-lift cranes in Norway powerful enough to lift the turret and place it back on its bearings. The ship's two Arado Ar 196 floatplanes were completely destroyed. Repairs were conducted by the repair ship ; historians William Garzke and Robert Dulin remarked that the successful repair effort was "one of the most notable feats of naval engineering during the Second World War". Repairs lasted until 2 April 1944; full speed trials were scheduled for the following day in Altafjord.


title: German battleship Tirpitz

text: The British were aware that "Neumark" and the repair crews left in March, which intimated "Tirpitz" was nearly operational. A major air strike—Operation Tungsten—involving the fleet carriers "Victorious" and and the escort carriers , , , and , was set for 4 April 1944, but rescheduled a day earlier when Enigma decrypts revealed that "Tirpitz" was to depart at 05:29 on 3 April for sea trials. The attack consisted of 40 Barracuda dive-bombers carrying , and armour-piercing bombs and 40 escorting fighters in two waves, scoring fifteen direct hits and two near misses. The aircraft achieved surprise, and only one was lost in the first wave; it took twelve to fourteen minutes for all of "Tirpitz"s anti-aircraft batteries to be fully manned. The first wave struck at 05:29, as tugs were preparing to assist the ship out of her mooring. The second wave arrived over the target an hour later, shortly after 06:30. Despite the alertness of the German anti-aircraft gunners, only one other bomber was shot down.


title: German battleship Tirpitz

text: The air strikes did not penetrate the main armour but nonetheless caused significant damage to the ship's superstructure and inflicted serious casualties. William Garzke and Robert Dulin report the attack killed 122 men and wounded 316 others, while Hildebrand, Röhr, & Steinmetz report 132 fatalities and 270 wounded men, including the ship's commander, "KzS" Hans Meyer. Two of the 15 cm turrets were destroyed by bombs, and both Ar 196 floatplanes were destroyed. Several of the bomb hits caused serious fires aboard the ship. Concussive shock disabled the starboard turbine engine, and saltwater used to fight the fires reached the boilers and contaminated the feed water. Some of water flooded the ship, primarily through the two holes in the side shell created by shell splinters from near misses. Water used to fight the fires also contributed to the flooding. Dönitz ordered the ship be repaired, regardless of the cost, despite the fact that he understood "Tirpitz" could no longer be used in a surface action because of insufficient fighter support. Repair work began in early May; destroyers ferried important equipment and workers from Kiel to Altafjord over the span of three days. By 2 June, the ship was again able to steam under her own power, and by the end of the month gunnery trials were possible. During the repair process, the 15 cm guns were modified to allow their use against aircraft, and specially-fuzed 38 cm shells for barrage anti-aircraft fire were supplied.


title: German battleship Tirpitz

text: A series of carrier strikes was planned over the next three months, but bad weather forced their cancellation. A repeat of Operation Tungsten, codenamed Operation Planet, was scheduled for 24 April. Operation Brawn, which was to have been carried out by 27 bombers and 36 fighters from "Victorious" and "Furious", was to have taken place on 15 May, and Operation Tiger Claw was intended for 28 May. "Victorious" and "Furious" were joined by for Operation Mascot, which was to have been carried out on 17 July by 62 bombers and 30 fighters. In late August the weather improved, allowing the Goodwood series of attacks. Operations Goodwood I and II were launched on 22 August; a carrier force consisting of the fleet carriers "Furious", "Indefatigable" and and the escort carriers and launched a total of 38 bombers and 43 escort fighters between the two raids.


title: German battleship Tirpitz

text: The attacks failed to inflict any damage on "Tirpitz" and three of the attacking aircraft were shot down. Goodwood III followed on 24 August, composed of aircraft from the fleet carriers only. Forty-eight bombers and 29 fighters attacked the ship and scored two hits which caused minor damage. One, a 1,600-pound bomb, penetrated the upper and lower armour decks and came to rest in the No. 4 switchboard room. Its fuze had been damaged and the bomb did not detonate. The second, a bomb, exploded causing superficial damage. Six aircraft were shot down in the attack. Goodwood IV followed on 29 August, with 34 bombers and 25 fighters from "Formidable" and "Indefatigable". Heavy fog prevented any hits from being scored. "Tirpitz"s gunners shot down one Firefly and a Corsair. The battleship expended 54 rounds from her main guns, 161 from the 15 cm guns and up to 20 percent of her light anti-aircraft ammunition.


title: German battleship Tirpitz

text: The ineffectiveness of the great majority of the strikes launched by the Fleet Air Arm in mid-1944 led to the task of "Tirpitz"s destruction being transferred to the RAF's No. 5 Group. The RAF used Lancaster bombers to carry Tallboy bombs to penetrate the ship's heavy armour. The first attack, Operation Paravane, took place on 15 September 1944; operating from a forward base at Yagodnik in Russia, 23 Lancasters (17 each carrying one Tallboy and six each carrying twelve JW mines), scored a single hit on the ship's bow. The Tallboy penetrated the ship, exited the keel, and exploded in the bottom of the fjord. The bow was flooded with of water, causing a serious increase in trim forward. The ship was rendered unseaworthy and was limited to . Concussive shock caused severe damage to fire-control equipment. The damage persuaded the naval command to repair the ship for use only as a floating gun battery. Repair work was estimated to take nine months, but patching of the holes could be effected within a few weeks, allowing "Tirpitz" to be moved further south to Tromsø. On 15 October, the ship made the trip to Tromsø under her own power, the last voyage of her career.


title: German battleship Tirpitz

text: The RAF made a second attempt on 29 October, after the ship was moored off Håkøya Island outside Tromsø. Thirty-two Lancasters attacked the ship with Tallboys during Operation Obviate. As on Operation Paravane, No. 9 Squadron and No. 617 Squadron carried out the attack together, which resulted in only one near miss, partially the result of bad weather over the target. The underwater explosion damaged the port rudder and shaft and caused some flooding. "Tirpitz"s 38 cm fragmentation shells proved ineffective in countering the high-level bombers; one aircraft was damaged by ground-based anti-aircraft guns. Following the attack, the ship's anchorage was significantly improved. A large sandbank was constructed under and around the ship to prevent her from capsizing, and anti-torpedo nets were installed. "Tirpitz" retained a one-degree list to port from earlier damage, and this was not corrected by counter-flooding to retain as much reserve buoyancy as possible. The ship was also prepared for her role as a floating artillery platform: fuel was limited to what was necessary to power the turbo-generators, and the crew was reduced to 1,600 officers and enlisted men.


title: German battleship Tirpitz

text: Operation Catechism, the final British attack on "Tirpitz", took place on 12 November 1944. The ship again used her 38 cm guns against the bombers, which approached the battleship at 09:35; "Tirpitz"s main guns forced the bombers to disperse temporarily, but could not break up the attack. A force of 32 Lancasters from Nos. 9 and 617 Squadrons dropped 29 Tallboys on the ship, landing two direct hits and one near miss. Several other bombs landed within the anti-torpedo net barrier and caused significant cratering of the seabed; this removed much of the sandbank that had been constructed to prevent the ship from capsizing. One bomb penetrated the ship's deck between turrets Anton and Bruno but failed to explode. A second hit amidships between the aircraft catapult and the funnel and caused severe damage. A very large hole was blown in the ship's side and bottom; the entire section of belt armour abreast of the bomb hit was completely destroyed. A third bomb may have struck the port side of turret Caesar.


title: German battleship Tirpitz

text: The amidships hit caused significant flooding and quickly increased the port list to between 15 and 20 degrees. In ten minutes the list increased to 30 to 40 degrees, and the captain issued the order to abandon ship. The list increased to 60 degrees by 09:50; this appeared to stabilise temporarily. Eight minutes later, a large explosion rocked turret Caesar. The turret roof and part of the rotating structure were thrown into the air and into a group of men swimming to shore, crushing them. "Tirpitz" rapidly rolled over and buried her superstructure in the sea floor. In the aftermath of the attack, 82 men trapped in the upturned hull were rescued by cutting through the exposed bottom. Figures for the death toll vary from approximately 950 to 1,204. Approximately 200 survivors of the sinking were transferred to the heavy cruiser "Lützow" in January 1945.


title: German battleship Tirpitz

text: The performance of the Luftwaffe in the defence of "Tirpitz" was heavily criticised after her loss. Major Heinrich Ehrler, the commander of III./Jagdgeschwader 5 (3rd Wing of the 5th Fighter Group), was blamed for the Luftwaffe's failure to intercept the British bombers. He was court-martialled in Oslo and threatened with the death penalty. Evidence was presented that his unit had failed to help the Kriegsmarine when requested. He was sentenced to three years in prison, but was released after a month, demoted, and reassigned to an Me 262 fighter squadron in Germany. Ehrler was exonerated by further investigations which concluded poor communication between the Kriegsmarine and the Luftwaffe had caused the fiasco; the aircrews had not been informed that "Tirpitz" had been moved off Håkøya two weeks before the attack. The wreck of "Tirpitz" remained in place until after the war, when a joint German-Norwegian company began salvage operations. Work lasted from 1948 until 1957; fragments of the ship were sold by a Norwegian company. Ludovic Kennedy wrote in his history of the vessel that she "lived an invalid's life and died a cripple's death".


title: Volkswagen Polo

text: The Volkswagen Polo is a supermini car (B-segment) produced by the German car manufacturer Volkswagen since 1975. It is sold in Europe and other markets worldwide in hatchback, saloon, and estate variants throughout its production run.


title: Volkswagen Polo

text: As of 2018, six separate generations of the Polo have been produced, usually identified by a "Series" or "Mark" number.


title: Volkswagen Polo

text: Some generations were facelifted midway through production, with the updated versions known unofficially by an addition of the letter F to the mark number, e.g. Mk2F. Some members of the automotive press and some enthusiasts consider the facelifts to be separate models, so have used the unofficial designations Polo Mk1 to Mk7 for previous generations. Each Polo model is also identified by a two- or three-character Volkswagen Group "Typ" number. Official VW Polo history describes Mark I to Mark IV using either Roman numerals or Arabic numerals, with facelifted variants known as "Phase II" models.


title: Volkswagen Polo

text: The body style has been varied through the life of the car, originally as a hatchback, which derived from the Audi 50. A saloon version was marketed as the Volkswagen Derby.


title: Volkswagen Polo

text: Volkswagen vehicles built on different platforms have carried the Polo nameplate. For example, the Volkswagen Polo Playa hatchback sold in Southern Africa in the late 1990s was a rebadged SEAT Ibiza, which has a different body shell from the Polo Mk3 sold in Europe at the same time. The current saloon is only available in China, Latin America, and South Africa and other Southern African countries.


title: Volkswagen Polo

text: Starting in 1982, Volkswagen sold the Polo in Japan initially through an agreement with Japanese dealership Yanase that specializes in European and North American vehicles. Of all Volkswagens imported into Japan, only the Polo (until 2017) and the Golf (until 1997), complied with Japanese government dimension regulations until the introduction of the VW Up! in 2012.


title: Volkswagen Polo

text: The first Polo was effectively a rebadged version of the Audi 50 hatchback launched in August 1974. The Audi 50 was discontinued in 1978, as Audi concentrated on larger luxury models. The Mk1 and Mk2 versions of the Polo were then standalone models in the Volkswagen range.


title: Volkswagen Polo

text: With the expansion of the Volkswagen Group: Audi (in the 1960s), SEAT (in the 1980s), and Škoda (in the 1990s) were acquired, and the platform used for the Polo was shared with other models.


title: Volkswagen Polo

text: The Polo shared its platform with the SEAT Ibiza Mk2. The Ibiza was actually launched before the Polo Mk3 and shared essentially all its mechanicals, the dashboard, and other interior components, although no body panels were shared between the two cars. The saloon and estate versions of the Polo Mk3 were actually rebadged SEAT Córdoba models and had no body panels in common with the Polo hatchback. The SEAT Inca and Volkswagen Caddy vans were also based on this model. The Volkswagen Lupo and SEAT Arosa were also based on a shortened version of the Polo Mk3 platform.


title: Volkswagen Polo

text: The Polo Mk4 continued this trend of platform sharing, with the SEAT Ibiza Mk3 and Škoda Fabia Mk1 and Mk2 both being developed on the same platform and featuring several of the same engines.


title: Volkswagen Polo

text: The 2009 Polo Mk5 is developed on the latest platform, known as the PQ25, the same platform used in the SEAT Ibiza Mk4 that was launched in 2008 and the Audi A1.


title: Volkswagen Polo

text: With the release of the Polo Mk2, the saloon was renamed the Volkswagen Polo Classic' and the "conventional"-styled hatchback (with a sloping tailgate) was renamed as a coupé, the Volkswagen Polo Coupé. Unusually, the third (and new) body that was "actually" marketed as the Volkswagen Polo Hatchback was closer in concept to a small estate, albeit with exactly the same wheelbase and floor pan as the coupé instead of the (longer) saloon. This latter version, also known as the squareback (in the original German brochures, "steilheck", literally "steep tail"), amongst other nicknames, was the most popular in virtually every country where the Polo was sold. Despite the differences in silhouette and target market segment, all body types were two- or three-door only.


title: Volkswagen Polo

text: From the Polo Mk3 onwards, the range was more straightforwardly conventional, including unambiguous "saloon", "hatchback", and "estate" models, with only the hatchback offering both five-door and slightly shorter three-door models (both still with quite vertical tailgates, the coupé variation having been retired), the others being four or five-door only and increasing in length from hatch to saloon to estate.


title: Volkswagen Polo

text: The Polo is a compact car, with a traditional transversely mounted engine and front-wheel drive. Mk1 Polos only came with four-cylinder petrol engines, but for the Mk2, a diesel engine was offered for the first time, although only in certain markets, others having to wait until the launch of the Mk3. The current range includes a variety of three- and four-cylinder petrol and diesel engines.


title: Volkswagen Polo

text: Early versions used a four-speed manual transmission, whilst the current car is available with either six-speed manual or seven-speed automatic transmission. The suspension system on all models uses a fully independent MacPherson strut front suspension, and a twist-beam rear suspension. Most models use disc brakes at the front and rear drum brakes, although some recent models have all-round disc brakes.


title: Volkswagen Polo

text: The first-generation Polo, a rebadged version of the Audi 50, was introduced in 1975 and was produced until October 1981. It is also called the Volkswagen Derby. By 1979, 500,000 Polos were produced worldwide. It shared the internal designation "Typ 86" with the Audi 50.


title: Volkswagen Polo

text: The differences between the Audi and Volkswagen models were minor, with the Polo being cheaper and much more basic. The two cars were initially sold alongside each other, but the Audi 50 never sold as well, and was withdrawn in 1978. The Polo was manufactured at the Volkswagen plant in Wolfsburg.


title: Volkswagen Polo

text: The manufacturer let it be known that Bertone had been involved in the styling of the Polo and its Audi sibling, although the car was essentially an in-house Audi design, with the Italian design studio's contribution restricted to the circular extractor vent cover at the base of the C pillar, and the small "flick-up" at the rear end of the waist line.