Franz Strasser, born in 1899  – 10 December 1945) was an Austrian-German former NSDAP Kreisleiter and convicted murderer. In December 1944, in Kaplitz in Czechoslovakia, Franz Strasser killed two American airmen of the USAAF  by shooting them with a  Thompson submachine gun.   They were members of a group of five who stayed with pilot Warren Woodruff when he landed… Read more »

Gerda Steinhoff was a Nazi prison camp overseer born in Danzig-Langfuhr, on January 29, 1922. She worked on a farm in Tygenhagen and later in a baker’s shop in Danzig until 1944. She married in January 1944 and had one child. She went to work for the SS at Stutthof concentration camp.   On October 1, 1944,… Read more »

Some aspects of life in Germany changed immediately upon the outbreak of war on 1 September 1939; others changed more slowly. Germany did not fully mobilise at first. In fact, it was not until 1943 that Germany focussed its economy on war production. Nazi policy was not to burden the people on the home front… Read more »

The Schutzstaffel, SS; also stylized as , literally “Protection Squadron” was a major paramilitary organization under Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP; Nazi Party) in Nazi Germany. It began with a small guard unit known as the Saal-Schutz (Hall-Protection) made up of NSDAP, SA streetfighter,  volunteers to provide security for party meetings in Munich. In 1925, Heinrich… Read more »

The Falaise Pocket or Battle of the Falaise Pocket (12–21 August 1944) was the decisive engagement of the Battle of Normandy. A pocket was formed around Falaise, Calvados,  in which the German Army Group B under Generalfeldmarschall Erwin Rommel  with the 7th Army  under SS Oberstgruppenführer Paul “Papa” Hausser  and the Fifth Panzer Army (formerly Panzergruppe West) under General of Panzer Troops Heinrich Eberbach were encircled by the Western… Read more »

The Nanking Massacre or Nanjing Massacre, also known as the Rape of Nanking or Rape of Nanjing, was an episode during the Second Sino Japanese War of mass murder and mass rape by Japanese troops against the residents of Nanjing, then capital of the Republic of China. The massacre occurred over six weeks starting December 13, 1937, the day… Read more »

Nobody escaped the regime of Hitler, even those who served under him. Hitler executed 84 German Generals for various reasons like: The commander of the German Home Army, General Friedrich Fromm,  is shot by a firing squad for his part in the July plot to assassinate the Fuhrer. Ludwig Beck  was in the custody of General… Read more »

Gesche joined the Nazi party in 1922 when he was only 17 and first met Hitler in Berlin a short time afterwards. The Führer remained devoted to him for the remainder of his life, despite the fact that Gesche had a heavy drinking problem. Gesche was known as a ruthless brawler and intimidating to Nazi opponents. Himmler intrigued… Read more »

Schleifstein was born 1941, Josef (Janek) Szlajfsztajn to Israel and Esther Szlajfsztajn (born Shvitzman) in the Jewish ghetto outside Sandomierz, Poland during the German occupation. Schleifstein and his parents lived in the Sandomierz ghetto until it was evacuated in June 1942, after which they were moved to the Czestochowa Ghetto, where his parents were likely put to work in the Hasag factory . Schleifstein’s parents kept him… Read more »

  Babi Yar is a ravine in the Ukrainian capital Kiev  and a site of massacres carried out by German forces and by local Ukrainian collaborators during their campaign against the Soviet Union in World War II. The first, and best documented, of the massacres took place 29–30 September 1941, killing 33,771 Jews. The decision to kill all the Jews in Kiev was made by the military governor, Generalmajor Kurt Eberhard, … Read more »