On 20 July 1944, an attempt was made to assassinate Adolf Hitler, Führer of Nazi Germany, perpetrated by Claus Graf Schenk von Stauffenberg   and other conspirators, inside his Wolf’s Lair field headquarters near Rastenburg, East Prussia. The name Operation Valkyrie, originally referring to a component part of the conspirators’ overall plot, has become associated with the event. The apparent purpose of the assassination… Read more »

From the Beginning… Canada entered the 1939-1945 War on 10th September 1939. Within two months the first contingents of Canadian troops arrived in the United Kingdom to supplement the British Expeditionary Forces (BEF). Forestalled by the evacuation of the British Army from Dunkirk and the Channel ports, Canada’s role became one of defence of the… Read more »

Heinrich Hoffmann was born in Fürth, Bavaria, Germany in 1885. His father, who owned a photographic shop in Munich, Bavaria, introduced him to photography. Beginning in 1908, he worked in his father’s shop as a photographer. In 1911, he married Therese “Lelly” Baumann ; they would later have two children, Henriette “Henny”  in 1913 and Heinrich in… Read more »

Ilse Hirsch, born in 1922 in Hamm, was a Nazi resistance fighter who played a key role in the assassination of Franz Oppenhof the mayor of Aachen in the later days of World War Two. Born in 1922, Ilse Hirsch  joined the League of German Girl s  , part of the Hitler Youth movement , when she… Read more »

The Battle of Berlin, designated the Berlin Strategic Offensive Operation by the Soviet Union, was the final major offensive of the European theatre of World War II. Beginning on 12 January 1945, the Red Army breached the German front as a result of the Vistula-Oder Offensive  and advanced westward as much as 40 kilometres (25 miles) a day through East Prussia, Lower Silesia , East Pomeria,… Read more »

Hitler’s retreat in the mountains of Bavaria was one of the most important centers of government in the Third Reich. Hitler spent more time in the Berghof than in his Berlin office. The Berghof began as a much smaller chalet called Haus Wachenfeld, a holiday home built in 1916 (or 1917) by Kommerzienrat Otto Winter,… Read more »

Eight women, all the same types, that are thought, possibly, to have been intimate with Hitler, attempted suicide: Maria ” Mimi” Reiter   his first love, the thirty-seven-year-old Adolf became infatuated with Mitzi, a sixteen-year-old Munich shop girl. He proposed marriage but said his “duty and mission” consumed him and she would have to wait for… Read more »

The Wewelsburg castle was not built by the Nazi regime; its history started several centuries before the National Socialists came to power in 1933. In its current form, the castle was built from 1603 to 1609, as a secondary residence for Fürstbischof Theodor von Fürstenberg, the prince-bishop of Paderborn, whose primary residence was the castle… Read more »

Heinrich Himmler adored his daughter Gudrun Margarete Elfriede Emma Anna “Püppi” Himmler Burwitz and had her regularly flown to his offices in Berlin from Munich where she lived with her mother   . When she was at home he telephoned her most days and wrote to her every week. He continued to call her by her childhood… Read more »

Not all Dutch offered active or passive resistance against the German occupation. Some Dutch men and women chose or were forced to collaborate with the German regime or joined the German army (which usually would mean being placed in the Waffen-SS). Others, like members of the 35 men of the  Henneicke Column, between March and… Read more »