Posts By: Rob Hopmans

Suicide pilots, Kamikaze. The Kamikaze divine” or “spirit wind”), officially Tokubetsu Kōgekitai  “Special Attack Unit” abbreviated as Tokkō Tai, and used as a verb as Tokkō “special attack“, were suicide attacks by military aviators from the Empire of Japan against Allied naval vessels in the closing stages of the Pacific campaign of World War II, designed to destroy warships more effectively than was possible with conventional attacks. During World War II, about 3.860 kamikaze pilots were… Read more »

Geertruida (Truus) Wijsmuller-Meijer, born in Alkmaar, April 21, 1896 , was a Dutch war hero and resistance fighter and probably after Raoul Wallenberg,  the greatest savior of Jews in the world. She has been appointed to Justice among the Peoples by the Yad Vashem Institute in Israel . In all probability, together with her helpers… Read more »

Hedwig (Häschen) Potthast, the daughter of a sergeant-major in the German Army, was born in Cologne on 5th February, 1912. After high school she left home and trained in Mannheim as a bilingual secretary. Potthast  worked for SS Brigadeführer  Kurt von Schröder  before being employed by the Schutzstaffel (SS) in Berlin. After the war, Schröder was arrested and… Read more »

Angela Maria “Geli” Raubal was born in Linz 04-06-1908, where she grew up with her brother, Leo, and a sister, Elfriede. Her father died at the age of 31, when Geli was two. She and Elfriede accompanied their mother when she became Hitler’s housekeeper in 1925; Raubal was 17  at the time and spent the next six… Read more »

There were German resistance groups in opposition against The Third Reich, how they weren’t in the same vein as the more centralised resistance groups scattered throughout Europe. The most prominent pre-war group was the circle of political resisters that formed within the German Intelligence network, the Abwehr. The main nucleus formed around Colonel Hans Oster,… Read more »