Elbe Day, April 25, 1945, is the day Soviet and American troops met at the River Elbe, near Torgau in Germany, marking an important step toward the end of World War II in Europe. This contact between the Soviets, advancing from the East, and the Americans, advancing from the West, meant that the two powers had effectively cut Germany in two…. Read more »
Nazi leader Adolf Hitler violates the Treaty of Versailles and the Locarno Pact by sending German military forces into the Rhineland, a demilitarized zone along the Rhine River in western Germany. The Treaty of Versailles, signed in July 1919–eight months after the guns fell silent in World War I–called for stiff war reparation payments… Read more »
The bombing of Dresden was a British/American aerial bombing attack on the city of Dresden, the capital of the German state of Saxony, that took place during the Second World War in the European Theatre. Germany would be forced to surrender three months later. Till February 1945 the beautiful city was never bombed and for the fugitives a “save” city. In four raids between… Read more »
The Dachau liberation reprisals: Upon the liberation of Dachau concentration camp, about a dozen guards in the camp were shot by a machine gunner who was guarding them. Other soldiers of the 3rd Battalion, 157th Infantry Regiment, of the US 45th (Thunderbird) Division , under command of Major General Robert Tryon Frederick killed other guards who resisted…. Read more »
Josef Stroop (he changed his first name to the more “Aryan”-sounding Jurgen in 1941) was born in Detmold, in central Germany on 26 September 1895. He joined the Schutz Staffel , SS . By 1939, he was an SS-Oberfuhrer and commander of a police unit. Stroop the destruction of the Warsaw ghetto volunteered to fight… Read more »