If travelers from the Federal Republic of Germany in the Soviet Union want to visit German soldiers cemeteries from the time of World War II or individual graves of fallen soldiers of the former German Wehrmacht, they usually have little luck. The mass of German cemeteries and individual graves was leveled long ago. Their traces… Read more »

On June 6, 1944, the carefully planned invasion of the Allies, carried out with superior forces on men and material, began under the command of the American General Dwight Delano Eisenhower   in the Normandy, which initiated the German defeat in the West and thus – as did Stalingrad in the East – The decisive turn… Read more »

Among the highest ranking German soldiers of World War II were particularly well-known and popular , the “Desert Fox” General Marshal Erwin Rommel,  and the “Hero of Narvik,” Generaloberst Eduard Dietl.  It’s not just their above-average popularity that these two men had in common. Rather, it is not difficult to draw more similar parallels with… Read more »

In the German War of 1866 came to 5,500 fallen soldiers (officers, NCOs and crews) one dead General. 1870 / 71- in the Franco-German war the ratio was 1 to 5,900. In World War I, 1548 Generals of the Reichswehr and Admirals of the Imperial Navy did not experience the war. A dead soldier in… Read more »

Aleksandra Grigoryevna Samusenko, born 1922 in Chita, began her tour of duty as a private in aninfantry platoon.  Later she successfully finished the tank academy. Samusenko received her Order of the Red Star  when her tank crew defeated three German Tiger tanks. Later Samusenko participated in the Lvov-Sandomierz Offensive.  World War II veteran and writer Fabian Garin, in… Read more »

Women in Nazi Germany were to have a very specific role. Hitler was very clear about this. This role was that they should be good mothers bringing up children at home while their husbands worked. Outside of certain specialist fields, Adolf Hitler saw no reason why a woman should work. Education taught girls from the earliest of years that this was the lifestyle… Read more »

Walter Gerhard Martin Sommer (Schkolen, February 8, 1915 – Schwarzenbruck, June 7, 1988), nicknamed the “Buchenwald Hangman”, was a German SS sub officer with the rank of Hauptscharführer in the Nazi concentration camps Sachsenburg and Buchenwald. Sommer  was the son of a farmer in Schkölen. He lived at primary school and became, like his father,… Read more »

Landsberg Prison is a penal facility located in the town of Landsberg in the southwest of the German state of Bavaria, about 65 kilometres (40 mi) west of Munich and 35 kilometres (22 mi) south of Augsburg.   The prison was used by Allied power during the occupation of Germany for holding Nazi War Criminals. In 1946 General Joseph Taggart McNarney , Commander in Chief, U.S. Forces of Occupation… Read more »

The SA was founded in Munich by Hitler in 1921 out of various roughneck elements that had attached themselves to the fledgling Nazi movement. It drew its early membership largely from the Freikorps (Free Corps), armed freebooter groups, made up largely of ex-soldiers, that battled leftists in the streets in the early days of the Weimar Republic… Read more »

The Ardenne Abbey massacre occurred during the Battle of Normandy at the Ardenne Abbey, a Premonstratensian monastery in Saint-Germain-la-Blanche-Herbe, near Caen, France. In June 1944, 20 Canadian soldiers were massacred in a garden at the abbey  by members of the 12th SS Panzer Division Hitlerjugend over the course of several days and weeks. During the course of the Normandy Campaign an estimated “156 Canadian prisoners of war… Read more »