It was the loneliness of the 12-year-old that first drew me, Emma Craigie, to Helga Goebbels. She was the oldest of the six children taken by their parents, Joseph and Magda Goebbels, into Hitler’s Berlin bunker on April 22 1945. Their tale had barely been written about and had never been the subject of a… Read more »
Over the following weeks after the bomb attack at the Wolfschanze, Himmler’s Gestapo, driven by a furious Hitler, rounded up nearly everyone who had the remotest connection with the plot. The discovery of letters and diaries in the homes and offices of those arrested revealed the plots of 1938, 1939, and 1943, and this led… Read more »
Operation Market Garden was set for 17 September 1944, and the 101st , along with the 82nd Airborne Division, the British 1st Airborne Division and 52d Lowland Division (Airportable), and the 1st Polish Parachute Brigade were set to jump. Unlike the Normandy jumps, this operation, by order of Lieutenant General Lewis Brereton commander of the… Read more »
Amid a dwindling supply of manpower, the existence of an entire generation of ideologically pure boys, raised as Nazis, eager to fight for the Fatherland and even die for the Führer, could not be ignored. The result was the formation of the 12th SS-Panzer Division Hitlerjugend. , the idea came from then SS Gruppenführer Gottlob Berger and… Read more »
Marinus van der Lubbe was born in Leiden, Holland on 13 January 1909. His father left home soon after he was born and he was brought up in extreme poverty. Lubbe worked as a bricklayer but after an industrial accident in 1925 he spent five months in hospital. He never fully recovered from his injuries… Read more »