While the American Army had put war dogs to good use already,   mainly for sentry and guard duties, World War II was the first organized deployment of canine warriors by the Marine Corps, and the Marines intended to bring the dogs into the field, sniffing out enemy positions to warn of ambushes and ferrying messages… Read more »

A former soldier has revealed how a Nazi general spared him from the firing squad in World War Two. Roy Wooldridge, 95, from Hendy, Carmarthenshire, was seized while on a mission in France just before D-Day and taken to Erwin Rommel. The Royal Engineer  was brought before Rommel and asked if he needed anything. He… Read more »

The story begins in the 1970s when Kurt Götz looks through old documents after his mother’s death. There he also finds the letter with the news of the death of his father from October 1944. “Dear Mrs. Götz, I squeeze your hand at your most serious loss and can only give you the consolation that… Read more »

Feldgendarmerie  units,  (also known as “Kettenhunde” or “Chain Dogs”)   were generally given occupation duties in territories directly under the control of the Wehrmacht . Their duties policing the areas behind the front lines ranged from straightforward traffic control and population control to suppression and execution of partisans and the apprehension of enemy stragglers.  When combat units… Read more »

Lepa Svetozara Radić, was a Bosnian Serb member of the Yugoslav Partisans who was posthumously awarded the Order of the People’s Hero  on 20 December 1951, for her role in the resistance movement against the Axis powers—becoming the youngest recipient at the time. She was executed in February 1943 at the age of 17 for shooting at… Read more »

Léon Joseph Marie Ignace Degrelle, born 15 June 1906 was a Wallon Belgian politician and Nazi collaborator, who founded Rexism  and later joined the Waffen SS (becoming a leader of its Wallon contigent which were front-line troops in German combat operations against the Soviet Union. After World War II, he was a prominent figure in fascist movements. After studying… Read more »

Irma Ida Ilse Grese (7 October 1923 – 13 December 1945) was a female SS guard at the Nazi concentration camps of Ravensbrück and Auschwitz, and served as warden of the women’s section of Bergen Belsen where the Jewish girl Anne Frank died. Grese  was convicted for crimes against humanity committed at Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, and sentenced… Read more »

Adolf Hitler, one of the greatest mass murderers in history, is remembered by his secretary Traudl Humps-Junge as a kind and paternal man who ate little aside from mashed potato and passionately loved his dog. Traudl Junge, who died age 81 suffering from cancer    , was just 22-years-old when Hitler selected the slim blonde… Read more »

Once called by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt  “  more dangerous than 10.000 men,” a part-Jewish Austrian princess – well-known seductress and Mata Hari  type figure – was a spy before and during the Nazi rise to power in the 1930s, moving in the highest echelons of power. She became a facilitator between those in the U.K…. Read more »

The Siegfried Line was a series of fortifications on the western border of Germany, stretching more than 390 miles from Kleve, near the Dutch border, all the way to Weil am Rhein near the border of Switzerland. Called the Westwall by the Germans, it was built between 1938 and 1940 and is made of more… Read more »