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 »

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 »

Eva Mozes Kor and her twin sister, Miriam  , grew up in a small village in Romania in the 1940s. Theirs was the only Jewish family in the region. “My father said as long as you say your prayers, did the good deeds that God wanted you to do, and lived so far away from… Read more »

Brigitte Hamann says her book  is based on a diary given to her by relatives of Dr. Eduard Bloch , who lived in Hitler’s home town of Linz in Austria. Hitler regarded him as an “edeljude” – a noble Jew – and never forgot the kindness he showed his mother Klara  when he treated her for… Read more »

The Afrika Korps was formed February 19, 1941, after the German Armed Forces High Command had decided to send an expeditionary force to Libya to support the Italian army, which had been routed by an Allied counteroffensive, Operation Compass. The German expeditionary force, commanded by Erwin Rommel, at first consisted only of the 5th Panzer… Read more »

Margarete “Marga” Boden was born, 09-09-1893  in Goncerzewo near Bromberg. the daughter of landowner Hans Boden and his wife Elfriede, whose maiden name was Popp. Margarete had four brothers and a sister. In 1909, she attended the Höhere Töchterschule (Higher Girls School) in Bromberg, a city in northern Poland. Margarete trained and worked as a nurse during the First World War followed by a stint at… Read more »