While Adolf Hitler garnered much approval in his early days of leadership, many Germans soon began to see the folly of keeping such a man in power. As such, more than fifteen assassination attempts were made on his life. A few of these are more notable than others, but they all share one thing in common—they all… 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 »

Recruitment for the Wehrmacht was accomplished through voluntary enlistment (1933–45) and conscription (1935–45), with 1.3 million being drafted and 2.4 million volunteering in the period 1935–1939.[37] The total number of soldiers who served in the Wehrmacht during its existence from 1935 to 1945 is believed to have approached 18.2 million.[13] As World War II intensified, Kriegsmarine and Luftwaffe personnel were increasingly… Read more »

Adolf Hitler’s sexuality has long been a matter of historical and scholarly debate, as well as speculation and rumour. There is evidence that he had relationships with a number of women during his lifetime,    as well as evidence of his antipathy to homosexuality, and no evidence of homosexual encounters. His name has been linked to a… Read more »

On Aug. 1, 1944, less than two months after D-Day, Marine Major Pierre “Peter” Julien Ortiz,  five other Marines, and an Army Air Corps officer parachuted into France to assist a few hundred French resistance fighters known as the Maquis  in their fight against the Germans. Ortiz had already worked and trained with the Maquis… Read more »

On 23-05-1945, Heinrich Himmler,  chief of the SS, assistant chief of the Gestapo, and architect of Hitler’s program to exterminate European Jews, commits suicide one day after being arrested by the British. As head of the Waffen-Schutzstaffel (“Armed Black Shirts”), the military arm of the Nazi Party, and assistant chief of the Gestapo, the secret… Read more »

Japan attack on Pearl Harbour Just before 8 a.m. on December 7, 1941, hundreds of Japanese fighter planes attacked the American naval base at Pearl Harbor near Honolulu, Hawaii.  The barrage lasted just two hours, but it was devastating: The Japanese managed to destroy nearly 20 American naval vessels, including eight enormous battleships , and… Read more »

Gustav Adolf Nosske, born 29 December 1902 in Nosske, was a German lawyer and SS Obersturmbannführer In 1941 he commanded Einsatzkommando 12 within Einsatzgruppe D under the command of SS Gruppenführer Otto Ohlendorf .Otto Ohlendorf was convicted of crimes against humanity and war crimes committed during World War II. He was sentenced to death and hanged at the Landsberg… Read more »

Werner Goldberg was a German who was of half Jewish ancestry, or hald breed in Nazi terminology, who served briefly as a soldier during World War II and whose image appeared in the Berliner Tageblatt as “The Ideal German Soldier”, and his image was later used in recruitment posters for the Wehrmacht 1935 Nuremberg classed persons with three Jewish grandparents as Jewish; those with two Jewish… Read more »

Ernst Robert Grawitz was born 08-06-1899 in Charlottenburg in the western part of Berlin, Germany. As Reichsarzt SS und Polizei (Reich Physician SS and Police), Grawitz was also head of the German Red Cross.  His wife, Ilse, was the daughter of SS-Obergruppenführer und General der Waffen-SS Siegfried Taubert. Taubert survived the war and died age 65 on 13-02-1946 in… Read more »