In the Second World War, after the Battle of France in May 1940 the north and west of France and the whole of Belgium were occupied by the German Army. British and French troops had made a fighting withdrawal through this part of Flanders in south-west Belgium to the ports of Dunkirk and Calais, passing… Read more »
The eastern front was a hard place to be in. If the SS and Gestapo did evil things in Russia, the Russian soldiers were no angels too. Here are some instances where German soldiers were massacred by the Russians. The Russians killed soldiers of other nations too. And we do not mention here the mass… Read more »
Rear Admiral Isaac Campbell Kidd (U.S Navy), Commander, Battleship Division One. Killed, age 57, December 7, 1941 aboard USS ARIZONA (BB-39) Kidd was killed on the bridge during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions. Rear Admiral Daniel Judson Callaghan (U.S. Navy) Commander, Task Group 67.4. Killed, age 52, November… Read more »
Welthauptstadt Germania, “World Capital Germania” refers to the projected renewal of the German capital Berlin during the Nazi period, part of Adolf Hitler’s vision for the future of Germany after the planned victory in World War II. Three years before the end of WWII, in 1942, Hitler said, “Berlin will be comparable as a world capital only to Egypt, Babylon or Rome.”… Read more »
On 6 February 1941 Stahlecker was promoted to SS-Brigadeführer and Generalmajor der Polizei and took over as commanding officer of Einsatzgruppe A, in hopes of furthering his career with the Reich Main Security Office (RSHA), Nazi Germany’s security police and intelligence organization. In June 1941, Einsatzgruppe A followed Army Group North and operated in the Baltic states and areas of Russia up to Leningrad.Its mission was to hunt down and murder the Jews, Gypsies, Communists,… Read more »
Viktors Bernhard Arājs was born on 13 January 1910 in the town of Baldone, then part of the Russian Empire His father was a Latvian blacksmith and his mother came from a wealthy family of Baltic Germans. Arājs attended Jelgava Gymnasium, which he left in 1930 for mandatory national defense service in the Latvian Army. In 1932, Arājs studied law at the University of Latvia in Riga,… Read more »
Yakov Dzhugashvili had married Yulia Meltzer, a well-known Jewish dancer from Odessa. After meeting Yulia at a reception, Yakov fought with her second husband, NKVD officer Nikolai Bessarab, and arranged her divorce. Yakov became her third husband and was survived by two children. His son, Yevgeni, gave many interviews about his grandfather. He also had a daughter,… Read more »
ERICH HARTMANN, the world’s top-scoring fighter pilot, shot down the equivalent of almost 15 Allied squadrons in aerial combat. The Russian pilots both feared and hated him, and called him the “Black Devil of Ukraine”. Flying 1,425 missions over the Caucasus, southern Russia, Romantica, Hungary and Czechoslovakia, Hartmann engaged in over 800 dogfights and suffered… Read more »
On 1 August 1944, Dietrich von Choltitz was promoted to General der Infanterie, and on 7 August was appointed military governor of Paris. At a meeting in Germany the following day, Hitler instructed him to be prepared to leave no Parisian religious building or historical monument standing. After von Choltitz’s arrival in Paris on 9 August, Hitler confirmed… Read more »
Private Robert Wildsmith and Alfred Tombs of the Royal Warwickshire Regiment were captured during the battle of Wormhoudt, Tombs a mortar man in the 2nd Battalion had been holding a line in front of the village when he and his company were overrun by tanks. The nine survivors, led by captain James Lynn-Allen and the… Read more »
