Richard Baer, born in Floss, Bavaria on 09-09-1911; originally a trained confectioner, who he became a guard in Dachau concentration camp after becoming unemployed in 1930. He  was a member of NSDAP  (no. 454991) and the SS  (no. 44225). In 1939, he joined the SS Totenkopfverbände,  and was appointed adjutant of Neugamme concentration camp in 1942 following spells in Oranienburg, Columbia… Read more »

The World War II Netherlands American Cemetery and Memorial is a war cemetery which lies in the village of Margraten 10 km (6 mi) east of Maastricht, in the most southern part of the Netherlands. It is administered by the AmericanBattle Monuments Commission.. The American Battle Monuments Commission (ABMC) is a small independent agency of the United States that administers, operates, and maintains… Read more »

The North African Campaign of the Second World War took place in North Africa from 10 June 1940 to 13 May 1943. It included campaigns fought in the Libyan and Egyptain deserts (Western Desert Campaign, also known as the Desert War) and in Morroco and Algeria (Operation Torch) and Tunisia (Tunisia Campaign). The campaign was fought between the Allies and Axis Powers, many of whom had colonial interests in Africa dating… Read more »

Willem Boger, born 19-12-1906 in Zuffenhausen near Stuttgart, Germany, as the son of a merchant Boger joined the Hitler Youth  in his teens. After finishing high school in 1922 he learned the trade of his father over the next 3 years and in 1925 took an office job in Stuttgart at the “Deutsch-Nationalen Handlungsgehilfenverband”. He  entered… Read more »

During World War II, most of the inmates sent to Flossenbürg, or to one of about 100 sub-camps, came from the German-occupied eastern territories. The inmates in Flossenbürg were housed in 16 huge wooden barracks, its crematorium was built in a valley straight outside the camp. In September 1939, the SS transferred 1,000 political prisoners to… Read more »

The Dora-Mittelbau (also known as Dora-Nordhausen or Nordhausen) camp was established in central Germany near the southern Harz Mountains, north of the town of Nordhausen.    It was originally a subcamp of Buchenwald. Prisoners from Buchenwald were sent to the area in 1943 to begin construction of a large industrial complex. In October 1944, the… Read more »

Günther Lützow, born 04-09-1912 in Kiel, was a German Luftwaffe aviator and fighter ace credited with 110 enemy aircraft shot down in over 300 combat missions. Apart from five victories during the Spanish Civil War , most of his claimed victories were over the Eastern Front  He also claimed 20 victories over the Western Front, including two victories—one… Read more »

On February 26, 1935, Adolf Hitler signs a secret decree authorizing the founding of the Reich Luftwaffe  as a third German military service to join the Reich army and navy. In the same decree, Hitler appointed Hermann Goering, a German air hero from World War I and high-ranking Nazi, as commander in chief of the… Read more »

The Austrian Elisabeth “Lisbeth” Kalhammer went to work at the Fuhrer’s retreat near Berchtesgaden in 1943 after answering an advert in her local paper: ‘Maid wanted. Location: The Berghof on the Obersalzberg.’  She did not know that her employer would be Hitler. Her mother had asked her not to take the job but the teenage Elisabeth… Read more »

Propaganda within Nazi Germany was taken to a new and frequently perverse level. Hitler was very aware of the value of good propaganda and he appointed Joseph Goebbels as head of propaganda.  Propaganda is the art of persuasion – persuading others that your ‘side of the story’ is correct. Propaganda might take the form of persuading others that… Read more »