Some German Jews escaped the Holocaust by fleeing the country, others hid and some battled to stay alive long enough to be freed from the Nazi death camps. But Ernst Moritz Hess  owed his survival to the personal intervention of Adolf Hitler.  The Fuhrer ordered his SS thugs to leave the Jewish judge alone because Hess… Read more »

In 1933, Harris was appointed as Deputy Director of Plans in the Air Ministry – a post he held until 1937. During this time, relations with Germany became strained and Arthur Harris produced a document on what part the RAF could play in a war against Germany. By September 1939, Harris was an Air Vice… Read more »

The Warsaw Uprising was a major World War Ii operation by the Polish resistance Home Army to liberate Warsaw from Nazi Germany. The Uprising was timed to coincide with the Soviet Union’s Red Army approaching the eastern suburbs of the city and the retreat of German forces. However, the Soviet advance stopped short, enabling the Germans to regroup and demolish the city while defeating the… Read more »

Shortly before 8 a.m. on December 7, 1941, the skies over the naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii filled with the drone of more than 350 Japanese fighter planes and bombers. During a two-hour ambush, the Japanese strike force rained fire on the unprepared Pacific Fleet, damaging or destroying some 20 ships and 200 aircraft… 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 »

Blondi (1941 – 29 April 1945) was Adolf Hitler’s German Shepherd dog, given to him as a gift in 1941 by Martin Bormann.  Blondi stayed with Hitler even after his move into the Führerbunker located underneath the garden of the Reichs Chancellery on 16-01-1945. In March or in early April, she had a litter of five puppies with Gerdy Troost  German Shepherd, Harras. Hitler named one of the… Read more »

Tinus Osendarp was a football player and started training in sprint for fun. His first international success came at the 1934 European Championships where he won bronze medals in the 200 m and 4 × 100 m relay . He won another two bronze medals at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, in the 100 m and 200 m sprint events and… Read more »

When we hear the name Adolf Hitler, we don’t often think about his cavities. Given the towering history of World War II, it’s odd to consider its architects as real human beings, with bad breath and stomach trouble, shoes that hurt, compressed spines, and artificial teeth. Hitler, for all that he was portrayed as an… Read more »

The Beer Hall Putsch of November 1923, or the Munich Putsch, was Hitler’s attempt to overthrow the Weimar government of Friedrich Ebert    and establish a right wing nationalistic one in its place. Friedrich Eberth died of septic shock 28-02-1925 age 54. In September 1923, the Chancellor Gustav Stresemann    and President Ebert had decided that the only… Read more »

He has gone down as one of the world’s bloodiest dictators, responsible for the deaths of tens of millions of people. Adolf Hitler portrayed himself as a fearless ruler who was afraid of no-one. But behind closed doors, the Nazi leader was terrified of one thing – going to the dentist. His personal dentist Johannes… Read more »