Anna Elisabeth Henkell, born 12-01-1896 in Mainz, known as “Annelies” to her friends was the daughter of wealthy champagne producer Otto Henkell and his aristocratic wife Katharina. Annelies was intelligent but her health problems throughout her life. She had a temporary engagement to Herman Hommel in her early twenties, but when met Joachim von Ribbentrop… Read more »

Fritz Bracht, nicknamed the Beast of Auschwitz, was born in Heiden on the 18th January 1899. After school he trained to become a gardener and when World War I broke out he joined the military, only to be captured by the British and held as a prisoner of war until 1919. After the war he  worked… Read more »

Walter Blume was born into a Protestant family in Dortmund, Germany. His father was a schoolteacher and held a doctorate in law. Walter also studied law at the Universities of Bonn, Jena, and the University of Münster,  passing the bar examination and receiving his doctorate in law from the University of Erlangen in April 1933. He was hired as a police inspector in his hometown of Dortmund on 1 March 1933,… Read more »

Anneliese Kohlmann was born March 1, 1921 in Hamburg to Margret and Georg Kohlmann, a Masonic leader. On April 1, 1940, she  became a member of the NSDAP  but until November 1944 worked as a streetcar conductor. On 4 November 1944, Kohlmann joined the SS Women’s Auxiliary  and was appointed as Aufseherin at the Neugraben subcamp of the notorious Neuengamme concentration camp system… Read more »

Franz Ziereis, born 13 August 1905 in Munich, was the commandant of the Mauthausen concentration camp  After attending commercial school in Munich, he signed up as a career military officer in Germany’s Reichswehr (army)  on April 1, 1924, for 12 years. On September 30, 1936, he left the army with the rank of sergeant and joined the… Read more »

The Reserve Infantry Regiment No. 16 was set up as an infantry regiment of the Bavarian Army at the beginning of the war in 1914 and during the First World War as part of the 6th Bay. Reserve Division on the Western Front, initially used in front of Ypres. In this First Flemish Battle on… Read more »

Theodor Gilbert Morell was the second son of a school teacher. He eventually went on to study medicine in Grenoble and Paris then was trained in obstetrics and gynecology in Munich. By 1913 he was licensed as a medical doctor, and went on to establish his own practice by 1915. During World War I, he… Read more »

Operation Hannibal was the naval evacuation of German troops and civilians from Courland, East Prussia, and Danzig-West Prussia as the Red Army advanced. The MV Wilhelm Gustloff‍ ‘s final voyage was to evacuate German refugees and military personnel as well as technicians who worked at advanced weapon bases in the Baltic from Gdynia, then known to the Germans as Gotenhafen, to Kiel.   The… Read more »

December 1944, Adolf Hitler attempted to split the Allied armies in northwest Europe by means of a surprise blitzkrieg thrust through the Ardennes to Antwerp. Caught off-guard, American units fought desperate battles to stem the German advance at St.-Vith, Elsenborn Ridge, Houffalize and Bastogne. As the Germans, under command of SS Standartenführer Peiper, Joachim “Jochen”… Read more »

In Nazi Germany, attempts were made to bring the celebration of  Christmas in line with Nazi ideology. The Jewish origins of Jesus and the commemoration of his birth as the Jewish Messiah was troubling for Nazi racial beliefs. Between 1933 and 1945, government officials attempted to remove these aspects of Christmas from civil celebrations and concentrate on the… Read more »