Georg Nikolaus Lörner, born 18 February 1899 in Munich was an SS Gruppenführer and Generalleutnant of the Waffen SS, and Deputy Chief under SS Obergruppenführer Oswald Pohl  of the Wirtschaftsunternehmen in the Main SS Economic and Administrative Department, SS WVHA, chief of Amtsgruppe B, (Division B) of the WVHA, and deputy chief of Amtsgruppe W (Division… Read more »

During his years with Hitler, Gerhard Michael Engel   kept the diary in the form of six notebooks. With the unconditional surrender of Germany, he was held in American captivity and released in December 1947. After the war, he added material to shed further light on certain events, military and political decisions and Hitler’s attitude to particular… Read more »

Heinz Siegfried Heydrich  was the son of Richard Bruno Heydrich   and the younger brother of SS General Reinhard Heydrich.  After the death of his brother, Heinz Heydrich helped Jews escape the Holocaust. Heinz Heydrich   was born in Halle an der Saale to composer Richard Bruno Heydrich and his wife Elisabeth Anna Maria Amalia Krantz.    Her father… Read more »

Søren Kam was a Danish commander, SS Obersturmführer, in the Waffen SS of Nazi Germany.. He was wanted for murder in Denmark and listed by the Simon Wiesenthal Center as one of the most wanted Nazi war criminal. Kam was born on 2 November 1921 in Copenhagen, Denmark as the second of six children to agent Rasmus Hansen… Read more »

The Wewelsburg Casle in central Germany was, in its current form, completed in 1609. It was seriously damaged in the subsequent 300 years, by both wars and natural disasters, and after a fire caused by lightning in 1832, the castle remained in poor shape for the next 100 years. In 1924, the castle became the… Read more »

The bombing of Hamburg in World War II (1943) was among the most devastating attacks on Germany during the war. Dubbed Operation Gomorrah, this was an 8-day, 7-night, U.S. and British all-out aerial assault on the German city that was intended to cripple Germany’s industrial strength. The amount of bombs dropped on the city was greater… Read more »

Dunkirk evacuation, in 1940, the evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF)  and other Allied troops from the French seaport of Dunkirk (Dunkerque) to England. Naval vessels and hundreds of civilian boats were used in the evacuation, which began on May 26 1940. When it ended on June 4, about 198,000 British and 140,000 French and Belgian and… Read more »

The SS-Totenkopfverbände or SS-TV (SS skull units)  was an organization from Nazi Germany. The organization was part of the SS and aimed at guarding the concentration camps. After the establishment of the Waffen-SS  a large number of the members of the Totenkopfverbände transferred to the SS-Totenkopfdivision, one of the strongest Waffen-SS units during World War… Read more »

The John Frost Bridge is the road bridge over the Lower Rhine at Arnhem, in the Netherlands. The bridge is named after Major-General John Dutton Frost    (1912–1993), who commanded the British forces that reached and defended the bridge during the Battle of Arnhem in September 1944. There had been a floating bridge at Arnhem since 1603 but as the city grew in the… Read more »

The romantic notions that Heinrich Himmler   had about the Bosnian Muslims were probably significant in the division’s genesis. He was personally fascinated by the Islamic faith and believed that Islam created fearless soldiers. He envisioned the creation of a Bosnian SS division constituted solely of Bosnian Muslims in a manner similar to the Bosnian divisions… Read more »