In June 1941, 24-year-old Pavlichenko was in her fourth year of studying history at the Kyiv University when Germany began its invasion of the Soviet Union. Pavlichenko was among the first round of volunteers at the recruiting office, where she requested to join the infantry and subsequently she was assigned to the Red Army’s 25th Rifle Division . Pavlichenko had the option… Read more »
During World War II, Rüsselsheim, an industrial town that housed many key targets, including the Opel plant, was bombed several times by the Royal Air Force (RAF) . The RAF followed a policy of “area bombing” of cities at night while the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) relied on “precision bombing” by day. On the… Read more »
D-Day– 6 June 1944, when Allied forces stormed into Hitler’s Fortress Europa in Normandy – is rightly celebrated for the valor of the American and British citizen soldiers who scaled the fearsome cliffs of Pointe-du-Hoc and other dug-in Wehrmacht concrete bunkers on Omaha, Utah, Sword, Gold and Juno beaches. Most of us have seen… Read more »
Ilse Koch born Margarete Ilse Köhler 22 September 1906 was the wife of Karl Otto Koch, commandant of the Nazi concentration camps Buchenwald (1937–1941) and Majdanek (1941–1943). She was one of the first prominent Nazi’s to be tried by the U.S military. After the trial received worldwide media attention, survivor accounts of her actions resulted in other authors describing her abuse of prisoners as… Read more »
A nice introduction to the SS. The SS (Stosstrupp Adolf Hitler) was a number of things–Hitler’s body guard, law enforcement duties, concentration camp controllers, and soldiers (the Waffen-SS). This volume examines the work of the SS from 1939-1945. Early on, there was competition between the SA and the SS (to be devoted to Hitler,… Read more »