The death of 87-year-old President Paul von Hindenburg on August 2, 1934, removed the final obstacle to Adolf Hitler obtaining absolute power over Germany. Even with the passage of the Enable Act and the banning of all political parties apart from the Nazi Party, Hindenburg still had the right to remove Hitler as Chancellor, and was hence the only check on… Read more »

Søren Kam was a Danish commander, SS Obersturmführer, in the Waffen SS of Nazi Germany.. He was wanted for murder in Denmark and listed by the Simon Wiesenthal Center as one of the most wanted Nazi war criminal. Kam was born on 2 November 1921 in Copenhagen, Denmark as the second of six children to agent Rasmus Hansen… Read more »

The Wewelsburg Casle in central Germany was, in its current form, completed in 1609. It was seriously damaged in the subsequent 300 years, by both wars and natural disasters, and after a fire caused by lightning in 1832, the castle remained in poor shape for the next 100 years. In 1924, the castle became the… Read more »

The bombing of Hamburg in World War II (1943) was among the most devastating attacks on Germany during the war. Dubbed Operation Gomorrah, this was an 8-day, 7-night, U.S. and British all-out aerial assault on the German city that was intended to cripple Germany’s industrial strength. The amount of bombs dropped on the city was greater… Read more »

Operation Market Garden was set for 17 September 1944, and the 101st, along with the 82d Airborne Division, the British 1st Airborne Division and 52d Lowland Division (Airportable), and the 1st Polish Parachute Brigade were set to jump. Unlike the Normandy jumps, this operation, by order of Lieutenant General Lewis Brereton  commander of the First… Read more »

Operation Market Garden from 17–25 September 1944, was an unsuccessful Allied military operation, fought in the Netherlands and Germany in the World War II. It was the largest airborne operation up to that time. Delivering over 34.600 men of the 101st  under General Maxwell Davenport Taylor,  82nd  under General James “Slim Jim” Gavin  and 1st Airborne Division  Major-General Roy Urqhart  who died on 13 December… Read more »

Dunkirk evacuation, in 1940, the evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF)  and other Allied troops from the French seaport of Dunkirk (Dunkerque) to England. Naval vessels and hundreds of civilian boats were used in the evacuation, which began on May 26 1940. When it ended on June 4, about 198,000 British and 140,000 French and Belgian and… Read more »

The Hadamar Euthanasia Centre ( NS-Tötungsanstalt Hadamar) was located at a psychiatric hospital in the German town of Hadamar, near Limburg in Hesse, from 1941 to 1945.   Gas chamber in Hadamar hospital Beginning in 1939, the Nazis used this site as one of six for the T-4 Euthanasia Programme, which performed mass sterilizations and mass murder of “undesirable” members of German society, specifically those with physical and… Read more »

The SS-Totenkopfverbände or SS-TV (SS skull units)  was an organization from Nazi Germany. The organization was part of the SS and aimed at guarding the concentration camps. After the establishment of the Waffen-SS  a large number of the members of the Totenkopfverbände transferred to the SS-Totenkopfdivision, one of the strongest Waffen-SS units during World War… Read more »

The John Frost Bridge is the road bridge over the Lower Rhine at Arnhem, in the Netherlands. The bridge is named after Major-General John Dutton Frost    (1912–1993), who commanded the British forces that reached and defended the bridge during the Battle of Arnhem in September 1944. There had been a floating bridge at Arnhem since 1603 but as the city grew in the… Read more »