Dachau concentration camp  was the first of the Nazi concentration camps opened in Germany, intended to hold political prisoners, organized by Hermann Goering. It is located on the grounds of an abandoned munitions factory southeast of the medieval town of Dachau, about 16 km (10 mi) northwest of Munich in the state of Bavaria, in southern Germany.  Opened in… Read more »

The Nazis murdered approximately 12 million people, nearly 6 million of those being Jews killed in the Holocaust (“whole burnt”). During WWII, the Japanese launched 9,000 “wind ship weapons” of paper and rubberized-silk balloons that carried incendiary and anti-personnel bombs to the S. More than 1,000 balloons hit their targets and they reached as far… Read more »

The longest battle of WWII was the Battle of the Atlantic, which lasted from 1939-1945. The original abbreviation of the National Socialist Party was Nasos. The word “Nazi” derives from a Bavarian word that means “simple minded” and was first used as a term of derision by journalist Konrad Heiden (1901-1966). The swastika is an ancient… Read more »

The Chortiatis massacre was a World War II mass murder of 146 civilians by the Wehrmacht, at the end of the occupation of Greece of Greeece by the Axis powers on 2 September 1944. After the capture of three German soldiers by the Greek People’s Liberation Army (ELAS) on mount Chortiatis, the German occupation authorities decided to react immediately with a reprisal operation against the civilian population… Read more »

As the rays of early evening sun lingered over the giant wooden mast that protruded through the pine forest, two cars passed through the gates of the German radio station and stopped outside the three-storey transmission building.  Forty-three-year-old unmarried Catholic farmer, Franz Honiok  In the following minutes, seven SS officers posing as Polish partisans, would carry… Read more »

The Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army was the name given to the Soviet Forces that served in World War Two. It was established in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution of 1917, and honed its fierce and brutal qualities in the Russian Civil War. After this, the Soviet Union engaged in a series of conflicts… Read more »

Code talkers are people in the 20th century who used obscure languages as a means of secret communication during wartime. The term is now usually associated with the United States soldiers during the world wars who used their knowledge of Native American languages as a basis to transmit coded messages. In particular, there were approximately 400–500 Native Americans in the United… Read more »

The Dieppe Raid, also known as the Battle of Dieppe, Operation Rutter and, later, Operation Jubilee, was an Allied attack on the German-occupied port of Dieppe during World War II. The raid took place on the northern coast of France on 19 August 1942. The assault began at 5:00 a.m. and by 10:50 a.m. the Allied commanders were forced to call a retreat. Over 6,000 infantrymen, predominantly… Read more »

The Liberation of Paris (also known as the Battle for Paris) was a military combat that took place during World War II from 19 August 1944 until the German garrison surrendered the French capital on 25-08-1944. Paris had been ruled by Nazi Germany since the signing of the Second Compiègne Armistice on 22-06-1940, after which the Wehrmacht occupied northern and western France. The liberation began when the French Forces… Read more »

Like eleven other Virginia communities, Bedford provided a company of soldiers (Company A) to the 29th Infantry Division, nickname “Blue and Gray”  when the National Guard’s 116th Infantry Regiment, nickname “Stonewall Brigade”  was activated on 03-02-1941. Some thirty Bedford soldiers were still in that company on D-Day; several more from Bedford were in other D-Day… Read more »