The first German serviceman killed in the war was killed by the Japanese (China, 1937) The first American serviceman killed was killed by the Russians (Finland 1940). 80% of Soviet males born in 1923 didn’t survive World War 2 The highest ranking American killed was Lieutenant Genral Lesley McNair,  killed by the US Army Air… Read more »

Fritz Kuhn was born 15-05-1896, in Munich, the son of Georg Kuhn and Julia Jystina Kuhn (born Beuth). His brother was Max Kuhn   who later became a Supreme Court judge in National Socialist Germany. During the first war, Fritz Kuhn  earned an Iron Cross  as an infantry leutnant and fought along the French-Italian-Serbian-Rumanian frontier. He… Read more »

On August 8 1938, SS Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler  ordered a couple of hundred prisoners from the Dachau camp to be transported to the little town of Mauthausen just outside Linz. The plan was to build a new camp in order to supply slave labor for the Wiener Graben stone quarry. Until 1939, most of the… Read more »

Joachim Schepke began his naval career in April 1930. He spent two years on the ‘pocket battleship’ Deutschland before, as Günther Prien  also had, transferring to the U-boat force in October 1935. Later he spent 18 months as an instructor at the Torpedo School at Flensburg, but in 1938 he became commander of the training… Read more »

Despite being neutral at the start of World War I, Belgium its colonial possessions found themselves at war after the country was invaded by German forces, Operation Yellow, on 10 May 1940. After 18 days of fighting in which Belgian forces were pushed back into a small pocket in the north-east of the country, the… Read more »

America’s first military stealth aircraft – the Waco CG-4A combat glider – silently soared into World War II history 70 years ago, powered only by the prevailing winds and the guts of the men who flew them.  Under veil of darkness on D-Day and other major Allied airborne assaults, the Waco glider carried troops and… Read more »

Utah Beach was the furthest west of the five beaches designated for the D-Day landings in June 1944. Located at the base of the Cotentin Peninsula, it was added by General Dwight “Ike”Eisenhower commander of Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force,  SHAEF  to the original D-Day plan to ensure the early capture of the vital port of… Read more »

The landing area code-named Gold Beach was more than 8 km (5 miles) wide and included the coastal towns of La Rivière and Le Hamel. On the western end of the beach was the small port of Arromanches , and slightly west of that port was the town of Longues-sur-Mer.  The defending German forces consisted… Read more »

The assault on Sword Beach was assigned to the British 3rd Infantry Division, nicknamed “Iron Sides”  placed under Major General Thomas “Tom” Rennie  British 2nd Army  commanded by General Miles Dempsey  and to French and British Commandos placed under the command of Lord Lovat,  and supported by armour regiments. The 3rd Division’s objective was to take… Read more »

Juno Beach, the secondbeach from the east among the five landing areas of the Normandy Invasion. It was assaulted on June 6, 1944  , by units of the, Canadian 3rd Infantry Division  under command of Major General Rodney Frederick Leopold Keller   : who took heavy casualties in the first wave but by the end of the day succeeded in wresting control… Read more »