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 »
Written by Alistair MacLean in 1957, The Guns of Navarone was made into a movie in 1961 starring Gregory Peck . The story centers on attempts to destroy a German fortress on an island in the Aegean sea. While there is no island named Navarone, the story is based on the Battle of Leros, part… Read more »
Babi Yar is a ravine in the Ukrainian capital Kiev and a site of massacres carried out by German forces and by local Ukrainian collaborators during their campaign against the Soviet Union in World War II. The first, and best documented, of the massacres took place 29–30 September 1941, killing 33,771 Jews. The decision to kill all the Jews in Kiev was made by the military governor, Generalmajor Kurt Eberhard, … Read more »
Adolf Hitler was born at around 6:30 pm on 20-04-1889 at the Gasthof zum Pommer, in Braunau am Inn, Austria–Hungary, the fourth of six children to Alois Hitler, then 51 and Klara Pölzl then 24 years old (see Hitler parents). They had six children Gustav Hitler, born 10 May 1885, died of diphtheria on 08-12-1887 in Braunau am Inn,… Read more »
May 10th 1940, at 3.55 hrs Dutch time (05.35 German time) – as the first beams of light tickled the horizon – the German invasion of the west became a fact. A series of parallel events unfolded. We shall address them in an order from east to west, south to north for a country not… Read more »
