The OT “Organization Todt” after Minister for armament and munitions Fritz Todt was not given an official name until Hitler, in a rather careless manner, did so shortly after coming to power in 1933. In 1938 Todt founded the Organisation Todt proper as a consortium of the administrative offices which Todt had personally set up… Read more »
The Waffen-SS, Armed SS) was the armed wing of the Nazi Party’s SS organisation. Its formations included men from Nazi Germany, along with volunteers and conscripts from both occupied and un-occupied lands. The Waffen-SS grew from three regiments to over 38 divisions during World War Ii, and served alongside the Heer (regular army), Ordnungspolizei (uniformed police) and other security… Read more »
About 265,000 German, Romanian, and Italian soldiers, the 369th (Croatian) Reinforced Infantry Regiment, and other volunteer subsidiary troops including some 40,000 Soviet conscripts and volunteers fighting for the Germans (Beevor states that one quarter of the Sixth Army’s front line strength were Hiwis collaborationists recruited from the ranks of Soviet POWs were called) were surrounded. A Hiwi… Read more »
Istvan Reiner stares straight into the camera with his big, dark eyes- he looks happy, playing with card and a hole-punch. Not long after the photo was taken, he was deported to Auschwitz, and sent with his grandmother into the gas chambers and murdered. I wonder what kind of a child he was; shy and… Read more »
Einsatzgruppen, “task forces” “deployment groups”; singular Einsatzgruppe; official full name Einsatzgruppen der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD) were Schutzstaffel SS paramilitary death squads of Nazi Germany that were responsible for mass killings, primarily by shooting, during World War II . The Einsatzgruppen were involved in the murder of much of the intelligentsia and cultural elite of Poland, and had an integral role in the… Read more »