During World War II, United States military personnel mutilated dead Japanese service personnel in the Pacific theater of operations. The mutilation of Japanese service personnel included the taking of body parts as “war souvenirs” and “war trophies”. Teeth and skulls were the most commonly taken “trophies”, although other body parts were also collected.  “Japanese skulls… Read more »

The Sturmabteilung, SA ,  meaning Storm Detachment or Assault Division, in Nazi Germany, functioned as the original paramilitary wing of the Nazi Party. It played a significant key role in Adolf Hitler rise to power in the 1920s and 1930s.  Their primary purposes were providing protection for Nazi rallies and assemblies, disrupting the meetings of opposing parties, fighting against the paramilitary units of… Read more »

The National Socialist German Workers’ Party ( abbreviated NSDAP), was a political party in Germany that was active between 1920 and 1945 and practiced the ideology of Nazism . Its precursor, the German Workers’s Party (Deutsche Arbeiterpartei; DAP) , existed from 1919 to 1920. The party emerged from the German nationalist, racist and populist Freikorps  paramilitary culture, which… Read more »

In March 1945, with the bulge caused by the German Ardennes offensive effectively reduced, the US 1st Army  launched Operation Lumberjack. Designed to reach the west bank of the Rhine, US troops quickly advanced on the cities of Cologne, Bonn, and Remagen. Aware that the Rhine posed the last major geographic obstacle to Allied troops, Hitler ordered… Read more »

Plötzensee Prison or Justizvollzugsanstalt Plötzensee, is a men’s prison in the Charlottenburg-Nord locality of Berlin with a capacity for 577 prisoners, operated by the State of Berlin judicial administration. The detention centre established in 1868 has a long history; it became notorious during the Nazi era as one of the main sites of capital punishment, where about 3,000 inmates were executed. Famous inmates include East Germany’s last communist leader Egon… Read more »

On the Obersalzberg in Bavaria, Germany, are two teahouses. Both are specially made for Adolf Hitler, for relaxation and to impress visitors of the engineering power in the Nazi empire and the beauty of the Bavarian Mountains. The more remarkable of the two is the teahouse on top of the Obersalzberg, the Kehlsteinhouse. The building… Read more »

The Waffen-SS,  Armed SS, was created as the armed wing of the Nazi Party’ Schutzstaffel, SS, “Protective Squadron”, and gradually developed into a multi-ethnic and multi-national military force of Nazi Germany. The Waffen-SS grew from three regiments to over 38 divisions during World War II, and served alongside the Heer, regular army, but was never formally part of it…. Read more »

In 1933, a young Hans Jürgen Massaquoi stood in a schoolyard in Hamburg, wearing a swastika patch on his sweater, surrounded by the load of fair-haired, blue-eyed kids, that you see in the photo above. Young Hans-Jürgen, the son of a German nurse and a Liberian diplomat ,  the grandson of Momulu Massaquoi, the consul general of Liberia in… Read more »

In marked contrast to Volkssturmjunge Alfred Czech’s heroic story, the second vignette is about Hans-Georg Henke. a 16 year old soldier in an anti-aircraft detachment of the Luftwaffe. His father died in 1938 but when his mother died in 1944 leaving the family destitute, Hans-Georg had to find work in order to support the family. At… Read more »

The five Sullivan brothers were World War II sailors who, serving together on the USS. Juneau DD-537   , were all killed in action on its sinking around November 13, 1942. The U.S.S. Juneau sank after being hit by a Japanese torpedo near the South Pacific’s Solomon Islands. The five brothers, the sons of Thomas (1883–1965) and… Read more »