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 »

Martin Gray, a survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto and the Treblinka extermination camp who fought with the Soviet Army, was best known for his best-seller For Those I Loved (1971),  written with Max Gallo. He died on the night between Sunday and Monday, two days before his 94th birthday. The Shoah Memorial pays him tribute…. Read more »

The Blutfahne or Blood Flag flag was that of the 5th SA Sturm, which was carried in the march towards the Feldherrnhalle . When the Munich police fired on the Nazis, the flag bearer Heinrich Trambauer was hit and dropped the flag. Andreas Bauriedl,  an SA man marching alongside the flag, was killed and fell onto it, staining the… Read more »

Franz Strasser, born in 1899  – 10 December 1945) was an Austrian-German former NSDAP Kreisleiter and convicted murderer. In December 1944, in Kaplitz in Czechoslovakia, Franz Strasser killed two American airmen of the USAAF  by shooting them with a  Thompson submachine gun.   They were members of a group of five who stayed with pilot Warren Woodruff when he landed… Read more »

Gerda Steinhoff was a Nazi prison camp overseer born in Danzig-Langfuhr, on January 29, 1922. She worked on a farm in Tygenhagen and later in a baker’s shop in Danzig until 1944. She married in January 1944 and had one child. She went to work for the SS at Stutthof concentration camp.   On October 1, 1944,… Read more »

Some aspects of life in Germany changed immediately upon the outbreak of war on 1 September 1939; others changed more slowly. Germany did not fully mobilise at first. In fact, it was not until 1943 that Germany focussed its economy on war production. Nazi policy was not to burden the people on the home front… Read more »