It was the female branch of the overall Nazi Party youth movement, the Hitler Youth. At first, the League consisted of two sections: the Jungmädel, or Young Girls League, for girls ages 10 to 14, and the League proper for girls ages 14 to 18. In 1938, a third section was introduced, the Belief and Beauty Society (BDM-Werk Glaube und… Read more »

Franz Stangl, the son of a night-watchman, was born in Altmünster, Austria, on 26-03-1908. After working as a weaver, Stangl joined the Austrian police in 1931 and soon afterwards the then illegal Nazi Party.  After Anschluss, Stangl was quickly promoted through the ranks. In 1940, Stangl became superintendent of the T-4 Euthansia Program at the… Read more »

Italian Fascists took as their symbol the “fasces,” a bundle of bound rods that symbolized the power of ancient Rome. The Nazis killed millions of Poles. But they thought that some Polish babies and children looked German and kidnapped about 50,000 of them to be adopted by German parents to become “Germanized.”  Special units run… Read more »

The Lvivprogroms were the consecutive massacres of Jews living in the city of Lwów (now Liviv, Ukraine), which took place from 30 June to 2 July 1941, and from 25 to 29 July 1941 in occupied Poland, during World War II. The German historian Peter Longerich and the Holocaust Encyclopedia estimate that the first one cost at least 4,000 lives.    It was followed by… Read more »

The involvement of the Netherlands in World War II began with the cowardly invasion by Nazi Germany on 10 May 1940. The Netherlands had proclaimed neutrality when war broke out in September 1939, just as it had in World War I, but Adolf Hitler ordered it invaded anyway. On 15 May 1940, one day after the bombing on Rotterdam  with 600 death, the… Read more »

Winston Churchill was the British Prime Minister during World War II and played a key role in the Allied victory over Nazi Germany and the Axis powers. Before World War II, Churchill spoke publicly that he believed another War was inevitable, setting himself in opposition to then Prime-Minister Neville Chamberlain, who favored a strategy of… Read more »

British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s policy of appeasement toward Hitler is generally thought to have been a mistake, but his defenders claimed that it bought Britain time to prepare for war.  In the 1928 elections, less than 3% of Germans voted for the Nazi party. In 1938, Hitler wasTime magazine’s man of the year.  That Nazi… Read more »

Estimates of the total German war dead range from 5.5 to 6.9 million persons. A study by German historian Rüdiger Overmans puts the number of German military dead and missing at 5.3 million, including 900.000 men conscripted from outside of Germany’s 1937 borders, in Austria, and in east-central Europe. Overmans estimated in 2014 that in all about 353.000… Read more »

Kurt Daluege was born in Kreuzburg on September 15, 1897. He joined the German Army and during the First World War he was decorated for bravery. After the war, Daluege  worked as an engineer. He was also active in the Freikorps before joining the National Socialist German Workers Party, the NSDAP in 1922. He formed the… Read more »

Jürgen Wagner, born 9 September 1901 in Strasbourg, was the son of Ernst Wagner, a German physicist, professor at the University of Munich. He was known for his work on X-rays and the absolute value of the high pressure. Jürgen in his youth, attended several schools, including in Wesel, Muenster and Erfurt. In 1915 he joined the Cadet… Read more »