Operation Hannibal was the naval evacuation of German troops and civilians from Courland, East Prussia, and Danzig-West Prussia as the Red Army advanced. The MV Wilhelm Gustloff ‘s final voyage was to evacuate German refugees and military personnel as well as technicians who worked at advanced weapon bases in the Baltic from Gdynia, then known to the Germans as Gotenhafen, to Kiel. The Gustloff… Read more »
Eyewitness Account of Einsatz Executions. On October 5, 1942, by accident, Hermann Friedrich Graebe a German engineer and manager of a German construction firm in the Ukraine, and his foreman, came upon an Einsatz execution squad killing Jews from the small town of Dubno in the Ukraine. He gave the following eyewitness account: “My foreman and… Read more »
Snipers of the Soviet Union played an important role mainly on the Eastern Front of World War II, apart from other preceding and subsequent conflicts. In World War II, Soviet snipers used the 7.62x54R rifle cartridge with light, heavy, armour-piercing (B-30), armour-piercing-incendiary (B-32), zeroing-and-incendiary (P3), and tracer bullets. Most Soviet World War II snipers carried a combat load of 120 rifle cartridges in the field. Unlike… Read more »
The organizers of the Nazi Euthanasia Programme, later known as Action T4, Karl Brandt and Victor Brack, ordered that the killing of patients could only be carried out by clinicians, because the letter of authorization from Adolf Hitler dated 1 September 1939 only referred to doctors. The operation of the gas tap was therefore the job of… Read more »
MILAN, April 29, 1945, Italian Patriots executed Benito Mussolini. Saturday, and Sunday a howling mob is kicking and spitting on his remains lying in the center of this city where Italian Fascism was born. Mussolini’s face wears a disdainful snarl. He died shouting “No! No!” to a firing squad which took his life, and that… Read more »