More than any other event in this century, World War II transformed the United States from an isolationist country with a small military establishment designed primarily for self-defense into a leading military power with forces stationed around the globe. In the process, the US Armed Forces were transformed from essentially all-male to mixed-gender forces.  Almost… Read more »

28 year old Vera Salvequart was born on the 26th of November 1919 in Wonotsch in Czechoslovakia and had trained as a nurse.  She  had also served several periods in prison for having relationships with Jewish men. She had not been an SS guard, but rather a prisoner herself in Ravensbrück.  She was sent to Konzentration… Read more »

The 102nd Infantry Division,  nicknamed “Special Designation” soldiers, under command of 2* Major General Frank Augustus Keating  , had arrived in Gardelegen on the evening of April 14th and had accepted the surrender of the Luftwaffe air base. The German troops were most anxious to surrender to the Americans, rather than to the Russians who were only a… Read more »

Stalag Luft III   was a Luftwaffe-run prisoner of war camp during World War Ii that housed captured air force servicemen. It was in the German province of Lower Silesia near the town of Sagan, 100 miles (160 km) southeast of Berlin. The site was selected because it would be difficult to escape by tunneling. For sheer planning, risk, and scale,… Read more »

  Douglas Bader   was born in London in 1910. Douglas won a scholarship to St Edward’s School in Oxford. Followed by a place to the RAF College in Cranwell where he captained the Rugby team and was a champion boxer. Douglas was commissioned as an officer in the Royal Air Force in 1930 but… Read more »

Throughout the entire Second World War, the Kriegsmarine had only one U-boat commander convicted of war crimes. Kapitän Leutnant Heinz Wilhelm Eck  of U-852  was indicted and sentenced to death by firing squad at the Nuremberg Tribunal on November 30 1945. Heinz-Wilhelm Eck was born in Hamburg on March 27 1916, and was raised in… Read more »

The People’s Court was a Sondergericht (“special court”) of Nazi Germany, set up outside the operations of the constitutional frame of law. Its headquarters were originally located in the former Prussian House of Lords in Berlin,  later moved to the former Königliches Wilhelms Gymnasium at Bellevuestrasse 15 in Potzdamer Platz; a marker is located on the sidewalk nearby)…. Read more »

Mitsuo Fuchida  , born 03-12-1902, Nara Prefecture, was the air-strike leader of the Japanese carrier force that attacked Pearl Harbor. Considered one of Japan’s most skillful fliers, he had gained combat experience during air operations over China in the late 1930s. At 6 a.m. on December 7, 1941, then-Commander Fuchida took off from the carrier-flagship Akagi… Read more »

On 25 October 1944, during the Battle of the Leyte Gulf, the Japanese deploy kamikaze (“divine wind”) suicide bombers against American warships for the first time. It will prove costly–to both sides. This decision to employ suicide bombers against the American fleet at Leyte, an island of the Philippines, was based on the failure of… Read more »

The Graf Spee never sank,    The scuttling attempt failed and the ship was bought by the British. On board was Germany’s newest radar system. One of Japan’s methods of destroying tanks was to bury a very large artillery shell with on ly the nose exposed. When a tank came near the enough a soldier… Read more »