Operation Reinhard (German: Aktion Reinhard or Einsatz Reinhard) was the code name given to the Nazi plan to murder Polish Jews in the General Government, and marked the most deadly phase of the Holocaust, the use of extermination camps. During the operation, as many as two million people were murdered in Bełżec, Sobibor and Treblinka, almost all of whom were Jews.

Originally, when the concentration camps were established in 1933, they were used for forced labour, imprisonment, and for re-education purposes, not for mass murder. But as the National Socialist regime developed, so did camp brutality. By the time of WWII, people were dying from starvation, untreated disease and murder in Germany and Austria, at places such as Dachau, Bergen-Belsen and Mauthausen-Gusen.

By 1942, the Nazis had decided to undertake the Final Solution. This led to the establishment of the camps such as Bełżec, Sobibor and Treblinka which had the express purpose of killing thousands of people quickly and efficiently. These sites differed from those such as Auschwitz-Birkenau and Majdanek because these also operated as forced-labour camps.

 Reinhard Tristan Eugen Heydrich (help·info) (7 March 1904 – 4 June 1942) was a high-ranking German Nazi official during World War II, and one of the main architects of the Holocaust. He was SS-Obergruppenführer (General) and General der Polizei, chief of the Reich Main Security Office (including the Gestapo, and Kripo) and Stellvertretender Reichsprotektor (Deputy Reich-Protector) of Bohemia and Moravia. In August 1940 he was appointed and served as President of Interpol (the international law enforcement agency). Heydrich chaired the January 1942 Wannsee Conference, which laid out plans for the final solution to the Jewish Question—the deportation and extermination of all Jews in German-occupied territory.

Historians regard him as the darkest figure within the Nazi elite; Hitler christened him "the man with the iron heart". He was the founding head of the Sicherheitsdienst (SD), an intelligence organisation tasked with seeking out and neutralising resistance to the Nazi Party via arrests, deportations, and killings. He helped organize Kristallnacht, a series of co-ordinated attacks against Jews throughout Nazi Germany and parts of Austria on 9–10 November 1938. The attacks, which were carried out by SA stormtroopers and civilians, presaged the Holocaust. Upon his arrival in Prague, Heydrich sought to eliminate opposition to the Nazi occupation by suppressing Czech culture and deporting and executing members of the Czech resistance.

David John Cawdell Irving (born 24 March 1938) is an English writer, best known for his denial of the Holocaust, who specialises in the military and political history of World War II, with a focus on Nazi Germany. He is the author of 30 books on the subject, including The Destruction of Dresden (1963), Hitler's War (1977), Uprising! (1981), Churchill's War (1987), and Goebbels: Mastermind of the Third Reich (1996).

His work on Nazi Germany became controversial because of his sympathy for the Third Reich, antisemitism and racism. He has associated with far right and neo-Nazi causes, famously during his student days seconding British Union of Fascists founder Oswald Mosley in a University College London debate on immigration. He has been described as "the most skillful preacher of Holocaust denial in the world today".

Irving's reputation as an historian was widely discredited after he brought an unsuccessful libel case against the American historian Deborah Lipstadt and Penguin Books. The court found that Irving was an active Holocaust denier, antisemite, and racist, who "associates with right-wing extremists who promote neo-Nazism," and that he had "for his own ideological reasons persistently and deliberately misrepresented and manipulated historical evidence."

Reinhard Gehlen (3 April 1902 – 8 June 1979) was a General in the German Army during World War II, who served as chief of intelligence-gathering on the Eastern Front. During the emerging phases of the Cold War, he was recruited by the United States military to set up a spy ring directed against the Soviet Union (known as the Gehlen Organization) which employed numerous former SS, SD and Wehrmacht officers and eventually became head of the West German intelligence apparatus. He served as the first President of the Federal Intelligence Service until 1968. Gehlen is considered one of the most legendary Cold War spymasters.

Reinhard Gehlen was born into a Roman Catholic family in Erfurt, the son of a bookstore owner. He joined the Reichswehr in 1920. He attended the German Staff College, graduating in 1935, after which he was promoted to captain and attached to the Army General Staff.

While the Germany was ruled by the NSDAP, he was on the General Staff during 1935-1936. In 1939, Gehlen was promoted to Major. At the time of the 1939 German attack on Poland he was a staff officer of an infantry division. In 1940, Gehlen became liaison officer to Army Commander-in-Chief Field Marshal Walther von Brauchitsch. He was later transferred to the staff of Army Chief of Staff General Franz Halder.

The United States Marine Drum and Bugle Corps is the drum and bugle corps of the United States Marine Corps. The D&B is now the only full time active duty drum corps in the United States Armed Forces. As one of many United States military bands, the United States Marine Drum and Bugle Corps consists of 80 active-duty Marines dressed in ceremonial red and white uniforms. The D&B performs martial and popular music.

The United States Marine Drum and Bugle Corps has been officially designated as "The Commandant's Own" because of its historical connection with the Commandant of the Marine Corps. The D&B is entirely separate from its sister military band, the United States Marine Band "The President's Own" as well as the 12 active-duty United States Marine Corps field bands. The United States Marine Drum and Bugle Corps travels more than 50,000 miles (80,000 km) annually, performing in excess of 400 events across the United States and around the world.

During the summer months, the D&B performs in conjunction with "The President's Own" in the traditional Friday Evening Parades at the Marine Barracks Washington and in the Sunset Parades at the Marine Corps War Memorial (Iwo Jima Monument) in Arlington, Virginia, every Tuesday evening. The parades are not street parades, but military parades consisting of ceremonial pomp that are symbolic of Marine professionalism, discipline, and esprit de corps.