The SS-Ehrenring, SS Honour Ring”, unofficially called Totenkopfring (“Death’s Head Ring”) , was an award of Heinrich Himmler;s Schutzstaffel SS). It was not a state decoration, but rather a personal gift bestowed by Himmler. The SS Honour Sword  and SS Honour Dagger  were similar awards. The ring was initially presented to senior officers of the Old Guard (of… 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 »

It was the loneliness of the 12-year-old that first drew me, Emma Craigie, to Helga Goebbels. She was the oldest of the six children taken by their parents, Joseph and Magda Goebbels,  into Hitler’s Berlin bunker on April 22 1945. Their tale had barely been written about and had never been the subject of a… Read more »

Over the following weeks after the bomb attack at the Wolfschanze, Himmler’s  Gestapo, driven by a furious Hitler, rounded up nearly everyone who had the remotest connection with the plot. The discovery of letters and diaries in the homes and offices of those arrested revealed the plots of 1938, 1939, and 1943, and this led… Read more »

Operation Market Garden  was set for 17 September 1944, and the 101st , along with the 82nd  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… Read more »

Amid a dwindling supply of manpower, the existence of an entire generation of ideologically pure boys, raised as Nazis, eager to fight for the Fatherland and even die for the Führer, could not be ignored. The result was the formation of the 12th SS-Panzer Division Hitlerjugend. , the idea came from then SS Gruppenführer Gottlob Berger and… Read more »

My name is Rob Hopmans , born in 1946 in Eindhoven, the Netherlands and I have four older brothers and one older sister   On 17th of September 1944 our parents lived at the Biesterweg 65 in Eindhoven, Holland, a street about 150 feet parallel to the march way of British General Brian Horrocks’s XXX Corps ,… Read more »

Marinus van der Lubbe was born in Leiden, Holland on 13 January 1909.  His father left home soon after he was born and he was brought up in extreme poverty. Lubbe worked as a bricklayer but after an industrial accident in 1925 he spent five months in hospital. He never fully recovered from his injuries… Read more »

Schroeder was born in the Baltimore suburb of Linthicum Heights, Maryland, on July 16, 1918. Although bullied as a child, Schroeder became an outstanding athlete in high school, graduating in 1937 from nearby Glen Burnie High School where he played soccer and baseball. While captain of his high school’s soccer team in 1936, they won… Read more »

Bedford, Virginia…Like eleven other Virginia communities, Bedford provided a company of soldiers (Company A) to the 29th Infantry Division, nickname “Blue and Gray”  when the National Guard’s 116th Infantry Regiment was activated on 3 February 1941. Some thirty Bedford soldiers were still in that company on D-Day; several more from Bedford were in other D-Day… Read more »