Lee, John Clifford Hodges, born 01-08-1887, in Junction City, Kansas, the son of Charles Fenelon Lee and John Clifford born Hodges.Johne had two siblings: an older sister, Katherine, and a younger sister, Josephine. Known as Clifford Lee during his teenage years, he graduated from Junction City High School in 1905, ranked second in his… Read more »
Hitler boy, Gerhard Bartels
It was and is a place of rural and alpine idyll, a place of rest, a place of power in nature – and it was the place that Adolf Hitler had expanded into the second Reich Chancellery:on the Obersalzberg, the Bergof is a place that was ideally suited to Hitler to portray it as a… Read more »
Piotr Śmietański “The Butcher of Mokotow Prison”
Staff Sergeant Piotr Śmietański, born 27 June 1899 in Zawady village son of Anna and Władysła was a non-commissioned officer of the communist secret police Urząd Bezpieczeństwa and one of the main executioners in Stalinist Poland. Śmietański was stationed at the Mokotów Prison in the Warsaw borough of Mokotów located at 37 Rakowiecka Street. From World War II until the collapse of the Eastern Bloc in 1989, Mokotów Prison – where Śmietański… Read more »
Flying aces.
A flying ace, fighter ace or air ace is a military aviator credited with shooting down several enemy aircraft during aerial combat. The actual number of aerial victories required to officially qualify as an “ace” has varied, but is usually considered to be five or more. The few aces among combat aviators have historically accounted for the majority of air-to-air victories in military history. … Read more »
Casualties of Operation Market Garden.
Allies forces suffered more casualties in Market Garden than in the mammoth invasion of Normandy. Most historians agree that in the twenty four hours period of D-Day, June 6, 1944, total Allied losses reached an estimated 10.000-12.000. In the nine days of Market Garden combined losses-airborne and ground forces-in killed, wounded and missing amounted to… Read more »
The assassination of Reinhard Heydrich,
Operation Anthropoid was the code name for the assassination of Schutzstaffel (SS)-Obergruppenführer and General der Polizei Reinhard Heydrich, head of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (Reich Main Security Office, RSHA), the combined security services of Nazi Germany, and acting Reichsprotektor of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. Heydrich was one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany and an… Read more »
The Invasion of Crete: The Great Paratroop Invasion.
The age of the paratrooper arrived with the Second World War. For a brief yet significant period until the rise of the transport helicopter, paratroopers were the only effective way to launch airborne invasions, bypassing defensive lines on land and hostile fleets at sea. The first great paratroop invasion, and one which proved the decisive… Read more »
Herbert Floss or Herbert Floß commander of the Sobibor extermination camp during the Holocaust in Poland.
Herbert Floss or Herbert Floß (25 August 1912 – 22 October 1943) an SS functionary of Nazi Germany who served as acting commander of the Sobibor extermination camp during the Holocaust in Poland. He also served as cremation expert in Camp II Totenlager at the Treblinka extermination camp. Floss joined the NSDAP in 1930, the SA in 1931, and the SS in 1935. He served at Sobibor from its establishment in April 1942 until the… Read more »
SAS “Special Air Service”
The Special Air Service was a unit of the British Army during the Second World War that was formed in July 1941 by Sir David Stirling and originally called “L” Detachment, Special Air Service Brigade—the “L” designation and Air Service name being a tie-in to a British disinformation campaign, trying to deceive the Axis into thinking there… Read more »
The Third Reich.
The Nazi rise to power brought an end to the Weimar Republic, a parliamentary democracy established in Germany after World War I. Following the appointment of Adolf Hitler as chancellor on January 30, 1933, the Nazi state (also referred to as the Third Reich) quickly became a regime in which Germans enjoyed no guaranteed basic rights. After a suspicious… Read more »