Did You Know 3
Go to: Did You Know 1 – Did You Know 2 – Did You Know 3
* Adolf Hitler had three brothers and two sisters and four of them died very young, Gustav, born 17-05-1885 (2), sister Ida, born 25-09-1886 (1), Otto, born 1887 (1) and Edmund, born 24-03-1894, (5). His sister Paula 
died age 64, on 01-06-1960 in Berchtesgaden. Half sister Angela Hitler 
died age 66 on 30-10-1949 in Hanover and, half brother Alois Hitler died age 74 on 20-05-1956 in Hamburg and had changed his name in Alois Hiller.
a Jewish doctor. Dr. Bloch. The sixty-six year old Bloch wrote a letter to Hitler asking for help and was as a consequence put under special protection by the Gestapo. He was the only Jew in Linz with this status. He and his family got the opportunity to leave the country in time, with permission of Hitler, before the coming events against the Jewish people. In 1940 Bloch, the “Noble Jew”, emigrated and lived in the Bronx, 2755 Creston Avenue, New York City but no longer practiced medicine because his medical degree was not recognized. He didn’t enjoy life not very long anymore as he died of stomach cancer at the age of 73 on 01-06-1945, barely a month after Hitler’s death. He is buried in Beth David Cemetery, Section D, Block 3, Elmont, New York.
On the morning of 03-01-1903, Alois Hitler went to the Gasthaus Wiesinger (No.1 Michaelsbergstrasse, Leonding) and
he died on this sofa, as usual to drink his morning glass of wine. He was offered the newspaper and promptly collapsed. He was taken to an adjoining room and a doctor was summoned, but Alois Hitler died at the inn, probably from a pleural hemorrhage Adolf Hitler, who was 13 when his father died, says in Mein Kampf that he died of a “stroke of apoplexy”. (see Hitler parents).
* In the last ten months of the war , July 1944 to Mai 1945, 2.600.000 German soldiers were killed, as much as in the five years before, about an average of 350.000 every month???
* The first killed German General. Friedrich Kussin, during Operation Market Garden, in Oosterbeek, near Arnhem, was killed in his staff car, pulled out and scalped by the British Airborne’s.
* Hitler designed the Nazi flag. Red stood for the social idea of Nazism, white for nationalism, and the black swastika for the struggle of the Aryan man.
* Because the Norway leader Vidkun Quisling 
(1887-1945) actively collaborated with Germany after its occupation, his name has entered the Norwegian language as word for “traitor.
* The Russians were the first to have paratroopers, which they exhibited in 1935. A very dangerous job as they had to crawl on the wing and slip down. The Allies did not catch up until 1940, when the Central Landing School opened near Manchester. The 82nd and 101st Airborne divisions were raised.
* WWII casualties totaled between 50 and 70 million people. More than 80% of this total came from four countries: Russia, China, Germany, and Poland. More than half of these casualties were civilians, most of whom were women and children.
*Was a plane carrying Winston Churchill almost shot down during World War 2?
On January 17, 1942 Winston Churchill 
was nearly shot down twice, once by the enemy and once by his own airforce. During a return trip from the United States, his flying boat navigated off course and came close to German anti-aircraft guns in France, after this error was noticed and corrected, the aircraft then appeared on British radar as an enemy bomber. Several RAF fighters were assigned to shoot him down, but luckily for Churchill they never found him.
* At the time of Pearl Harbor, the top US Navy command was called CINCUS (pronounced “sink us”), CINCUS stands for Commander-in-Chief, US Fleet (US Navy), 
the shoulder patch of the US Army’s 45th Infantry division was the swastika 
, and Hitler’s private train was named “Amerika”. 
All three were soon changed for PR purposes.
* G.I. RAPIST HANGED
The first Allied soldier to be hanged after D-Day was Private Clarence Whitfield,
a black US soldier of the 494th Port Battalion. He was convicted of the brutal rape of Aniela Skrzyniarz, a Polish farm girl working on a farm at Vierville Sur Mer, just behind Omaha Beach, on June 14, 1944. On August 14, Private Whitfield was hanged on a gallows that was erected in the garden of the Chateau at Canisy, five kilometres south of Saint Lo.
* Goerings VERMEER.
In 1944, Hermann Goering paid £165.000 for the painting ‘Woman Taken in Adultery’ by the rarest of all Dutch painters, Vermeer. The painting was found in Emma Göring’s home in Austria. It was later proved to be a forgery by Hans Van Meegeren.
In 1945, Van Meegeren was arrested by Dutch authorities and sentenced to one year in jail. He died just nineteen days after his jail sentence began. Today, Göring’s fake Vermeer is hidden away in the strong room of the Dutch State Collection in the Hague, never to be shown to the public or sold.
* INACCURATE BOMBING
December 6, 1942. Operation ‘Oyster’ The RAF daylight bombing raid on the Philips Radio Works at Eindhoven, Holland, now under Nazi control. Fourteen planes were lost but sadly 148 Dutch civilians lost their lives.
March 13, 1944. In a raid on Le Mans, France, by RAF Bomber Command, some of the bombs were dropped short of the mark, killing some 100 civilians. Fifteen locomotives and around 800 railway freight cars were destroyed. The killing of innocent civilians during raids on specific targets became an increasingly severe problem for bomber crews.
April 9/10, 1944. The attack by 186 RAF bombers on the rail yards at Lille-Deliverance, France, killed 456 civilians and destroyed over a thousand homes. At the rail yards around 2,000 freight cars were destroyed.
April 10/11, 1944. One hundred and twenty-two Royal Canadian Air force Halifax’s dropped 600 tons of bombs on the Merelbeke-Melle rail yards atGhent, Belgium. Unfortunately, the rail yards being located in a built-up area, 438 Belgian civilians were killed.
April 19/20, 1944. Around 200 bombers, mostly Canadian Halifaxes from 46 Group, attacked the rail yards at Noisy-le-sec near Paris. Many bombs fell on a built-up area of the town destroying over 700 houses and killing 464 civilians. Some 370 were injured.
March 3, 1945. Over 500 inhabitants of the suburb of Bezuidenhout, a suburb of The Hague, Holland, were killed when Allied bombers missed their intended target, the V-2 launching sites in the Hague Forest and dropped their bombs on Bezuidenhout.
*How were dogs used by the Soviets to destroy tanks during World War 2?
The Soviet Red Army once trained dogs to destroy enemy tanks. The dogs were trained to associate the underside of tanks with food and were fitted with a 26lb explosive device strapped to their backs. Once the dogs crawled under the tanks, the device was triggered and exploded destroying the tank, and of killing the dog. Unfortunately this didn’t always work as planned as the dogs were trained using Soviet tanks so were more likely to run under these than the German tanks. As many as 25 German tanks were put out of action this way during the battles for Stalingrad and Kursk.
* Hitler had many different adjutants for a variety of different functions. His chief adjutant was SA Obergruppenfuhrer, Wilhelm Brückner,
he died age 69, on 18-08-1954, in Herbsdorf and who held this title from around 1922-1940. He was dismissed over a very petty incident involving another adjutant SS Standartenführer, Max Wünsche. Brückner was replaced by Hitler’s other main adjutants SS Obergruppenfuhrer, Julius Schaub. Schaub acted as Hitler Factotum in just about every aspect of his private life, he burnt Hitler’s privat administration in Berchtesgaden. All adjutant technically were under his control although that was not always the case. SS Ordenance Officers and SS Adjutants were,
Ludwig Bahls,
1938-39,
Hans George Schulze 1940-41,SS Hauptsturmführer,
Hans Pfeiffer
1941-1942, SS Obersturmbannführer,
Richard Schulze-Kossens
1942-44, Schulze died age 73, on 03-07-1988,
SS Standartenführer,
SS Obersturmbannführer, Fritz Darges
1943-44, Darges died very old age of 96, on 25-10-2009. Shortly before his death, Darges stated that he found Hitler to be a “genius” and that “I served him and would do it all again now. On 18-07-1944, during a strategy conference in the Wolfsschanze, a fly began buzzing around the room, allegedly landing on Hitler’s shoulder and on the surface of a map several times. Irritated, Hitler ordered Darges to dispatch the nuisance. Darges suggested that, as it was an airborne pest, the job should go to the Luftwaffe adjutant,
Nicolaus von Below
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He died age 76, on 24-07-1983, in Dermold. Enraged, Hitler dismissed Darges on the spot and had him banished to the Eastern Front. Another version of this story claims Darges was merely snickering as Hitler looked up from the map. Yet another version of Darges’ dismissal and banishment by Hitler involves his refusal to marry Eva Braun’s sister Gretl Braun, who married Hitler’s adjutant SS Gruppenführer,
Hermann Fegelein
who was pregnant at the moment, The drunken Fegelein was executed age 38, on 29-04-1945 in the Führerbunker garden. Last adjutant was SS Obergruppenführer, Otto Günsche 1944-45, he would bring the bodies of Hitler and Eva up to the garden and burn them with petrol, after their suicide. There were military adjutants such as Von Below Hitler’s Luftwaffe Adjutant, General der Artillerie, Rudolf Schmundt, his army and chief military adjutant, Konteradmiral, Karl Jesco Von Puttkamer, Naval adjutant. SS Gruppenführer,bert Bormann,
brother of Martin Bormann, Albert died age 86, on 08-04-1889, in Munich, Personal adjutant assigned to Hitler’s personal office. And the list goes on, SS Obersturmbannführer,
Bruno Gesche
Head of his SS Fuhrerbegleitkommando, who died old age 85, in 1980, SS Obersturmbannführer, Erich Kempka Hitler’s SS chauffer, SS Hauptsturmführer, Karl Wilhelm Krause
head SS valet and SS Obersturmbannführer,
Heinz Linge
Head SS valet, who died age 67, on 09-03-1980, in Bremen.
After the war Engel lived in Starnberg and died there at the age 70, on 09-12-1976.
Gerhard Engel is buried with his wife Karin, born Franck, who died on 31-02-2009, on the Stadtfriedhof of Starnberg.
* Iwo Jima was the only U.S. Marine battle where the American overall casualties exceeded the Japanese, although Japanese combat deaths numbered 3 times that of Americans. Of the more than 18.000 Japanese soldiers present at the beginning of the battle, only 216 were taken prisoner. The rest were killed or missing and assumed dead.
* Heinrich Himmler the former chicken farmer could’nt see blood and fainted during the execution of a group of Jews.? He never wanted to join a massacre anymore.
* The Joseph Goebbels couple worshiped Adolf Hitler so much that all their children had a name with H, Helga, Hilde, Hellmut, Holde, Hedda and Heide. Magda’s first child was Harald Harald and (Günther Quandt) was his father. When the end of the Nazis neared they killed all the children with poisoned candy. The doctor who helped her was SS Obersturmbannführer Dr. Ludwig Stumpfegger.
* The dummy of the airborne paratrooper John Steele is hanging on the wrong tower of the church in St Mère Eglise.
* The two resistance brothers of my godmother Annie Looymans, Leo, 19 and Martin, 25, were killed by, the SS, coming back from a action, they blow up a railway near their village, on September 3th 1944, just two weeks before Operation Market Garden started and the village was liberated.
* The last commander of the bridge of Remagen, Major Hans Scheller, is sentanced by a Flying Court and executed, age 22, with twentyother, one hundred miles behind the bridge, in Birnbach.
* My wife and me, searching for graves, sometimes drove hundreds of miles without result and lost seven sun glasses.
* Herman Goering exchanged his pistol with his American guard Herbert Stivers for a poisson pill and committed suicide before they could could hang him, in Nuremberg. The metalworker Stivers died age 78, in California.
The highest commander of the Wehrmacht (Wilhelm Keitel) was such a nodding donkey that they called him Lakeitel, “Footman”.
* Hitler had a strange relation with the daughter of his half sister Angela, ( see Geli Raubal) and Adolf Hitler was madly jealous and gave her no privacy or freedom, but while he was away so often, Geli still managed to spend nights with men, including Hitler’s driver Emil Maurice. Hitler was zo possessory and dominant that she, age 23, shot herself throught the head with Hitler’s pistol, in his apartment in Berlin. Nobody was allowed to enter that room for years.
* Winifred Wagner the hostess of the Wagnerspielen in Bayreuth and pro Nazi was after the war not allowed to say the the name of Adolf, unrepentant of her relationship with Hitler and when she talked about him she called him USA, “Unser Saliger Adolf”—“Our Blessed Adolf”
* The boxing legend Joe “Barrow”Louis‘s funeral was paid for in part by former competitor and friend, German paratrooper and boxing champ Max Schmeling, who also acted as a pallbearer.
* Austria and Vienna survived the war undamaged and Austrian people after the war “decided” not to talk about the war anymore, no guild and only Germany was blamed. But on an individual level, however, some 800.000 Austrians were drafted into the army (the German Wehrmacht), and another 150.000 served in the Waffen SS, an elite Nazi military unit, even more fanatic and aggresive as their German colleques. Austrians who rose to high rank in the German Army in WW2 include: Generalfeldmarschal Eduard von Böhm-Ermolli (honorary), SS–Obergruppenführer Ernst Kaltenbrunner, General der Panzertruppe Alfred Ritter von Hubicki, SS-Obergruppenführer Odilo Globocnik, SS Obergruppenführer Hanns Rauter, Generaloberst Alexander Löhr (Luftwaffe), General der Gebirgstruppe Franz Böhme and Generaloberst Dr. Lothar Rendulic. Austrian people, in 1938 Austria had 7 million inhabitants, voted 99.9% for Hitler as the Great Führer, but many were real war criminals.
No One, Adolf Hitler
was an Austrian son and a dictator who started a crazy war, in which would die a number of 55 million people.
August Eigruber, Nazi Gauleiter of Reichsgau Oberdonau Landeshauptmann of Upper Austria,right after Germany’s unconditional was surrender in May 1945, Eigruber was arrested in the Salzkammergut by the United States Army, and he was questioned as a witness at the Nuremberg Trials. In the Mauthausen-Gusen camp trials, Eigruber was sentenced in March 1946 by the Dachau International Military Tribunal to death by hanging for his responsibility for crimes at Mauthausen concentration camp. The sentence was carried out in the prison yard at Landsberg Prison, Landsberg am Lech on 28-05-1947, age 39.
Lothar Rendulic was one of three Austrians who rose to the rank of Generaloberst in the Wehrmacht. He was tried at Nuremberg in 1948 and, though acquitted of deliberate scorched earth tactics in the Lapland war, was convicted of killing hostages in Yugoslavia and imprisoned. This sentence of twenty year was later reduced to ten years, and on 01-02-1951 Rendulic was released from the military prison in Landsberg am Lech in Bavaria. He died at Eferding, Austria, on 18-01-1971, age 83.
Johann Baptist Albin Rauter was a high-ranking Austrian-born Nazi war criminal. He was the highest SS and Police Leader in the occupied Netherlands and therefore the leading security and police officer there during the period of 1940-1945. He reported directly to the Nazi SS-chief, Heinrich Himmler, and in the second instance to the Nazi governor of the Netherlands, Arthur Seyss-Inquart. After World War II he was convicted in the Netherlands of crimes against humanity and executed by firing squad near Scheveningen on 24-03-1949, age 54. 
Arthur Seyss-Inquart was an Austrian National Socialist official who served as Chancellor of Austria for two days – 11–13 March 1938 – before the Anschluss that merged Austria with Nazi Germany. During World War II, he served the Third Reich in the General Government of occupied Poland and as Reichskommissar in the Netherlands. At the Nuremberg Trials, he was found guilty of crimes against humanity and sentenced to death by hanging at 16-10-1946, age 54.
Ernst Kaltenbrunner was an Austrian-born senior official of Nazi Germany during World War II. An Obergruppenführer in the Schutzstaffel (SS), between January 1943 and May 1945 he held the offices of Chief of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt, RSHA, Reich Main Security Office and President of Interpol. He was the highest-ranking member of the SS to face trial at the first Nuremberg Trials. He was found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity and sentenced to death by hanging on 01-10-1946, age 43. 
Franz Stangl was an Austrian-born SS commandant of the Sobibor and Treblinka extermination camps during the Operation Reinhard phase of the Holocaust. He was arrested in Brazil in 1967, extradited and tried in West Germany for the mass murder of 900.000 people, and in 1970 was found guilty and sentenced to the maximum penalty, life imprisonment. He died of heart failure six months later on 28-06-1971, age 63.
Franz Kutschera was an SS General and Gauleiter of Carinthia. As SS and Police Leader of the Poland’s Warsaw district, he was sentenced to death by Armia Krajowa ((AK) Polish Home Army) in agreement with the Polish government in exile and assassinated. The assassination, on 01-02-1944, code named Operation Kutschera a part of Operation Heads, was carried out in front of Kutschera’s Warsaw residency and near the Warsaw SS headquarters, Kutschera was 39 years old.
Gustav Wagner was an SS-Oberscharführer from Vienna, Austria. Wagner was a starter deputy commander of the Sobibor extermination camp in German-occupied Poland, where more than 200.000 Jews were gassed during Operation Reinhard. Due to his brutality, he was known as “The Beast” and “Wolf”. He lived in Brazil under the pseudonym Günther Mendel until he was exposed by Simon Wiesenthal () and arrested on 30-05-1978. Extradition requests from Israel, Austria and Poland were rejected by Brazil’s Attorney General. On 22-06-1979, the Brazilian Supreme Court also rejected a West German extradition request. In October 1980, Wagner was found with a knife in his chest in São Paulo. According to his attorney, Wagner committed suicide. His date of death was determined to be 03-10-1980, age 69.
* The Sullivan brothers were five siblings who were all killed in one action during or shortly after the sinking of the light cruiser Uss Junau, the vessel on which they all served, on 13-11-1942. George Thomas age 27, Francis “Frank” Henry age 26, Joseph “Joe” Eugene age 24, Madison “Matt” Abel age 23 and Albert “Al” Leo Sullivan age 19.
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* General Erwin Rommel was in his staff car on his way to the French headquarters, Chateu de Fontainbleau near the front. An RCAF Spitfire of 412 Squadron piloted by Charley Fox strafed the car near the village called Montgommery
Fox himself was killed in a car accident, old age 88, on 18-10-2008.
* The first visitors in the empty Führer Bunker, only the technical man Johannes Hentschel, stayed in the Bunker, were a group of exited Russian nurses who pounced upon the clothes and underwear of Eva Hitler.
* The massacres of Oradour sur Glane, France, on 10-06-1944, 642 victims, the men were shot, all women and children were burned in the church of the village.
and in Lidice,
Czechhslovakia, on 10-06-1942, 340 victims, 192 men, 60 women and 88 children were shot, were on the same day.
* Our small country of Holland, (see About) with 9 million inhabitants in 1940, had around 250.000 war victims, (see aunt Peters) (Jan Ackermans) and (the Looymans brothers), only 22.000 in the hungry winter of 1944/45. About 106.000 were Jewish people.
* The girl in the doorway of the train in Westerbork concentration camp, see above on 19-05-1944, is a Sinti girl from my hometown Eindhoven. Her name is Anne Maria “Settela” Steinbach and she and her father and mother were captured during a raid on 16-05-1944. She died, age 9 years, in the concentration camp Auschwitz on 03-08-1944.
* During April, 1945, a column of 2.000 Allied airmen were being evacuated from their prisoner-of-war camp at Fallingbostal in face of the advancing Russian army. Near the village of Gresse they stopped for a rest in a country lane. Six RAF Typhoons appeared and began strafing the helpless prisoners. Eight of their German guards were killed as were thirty of the airmen. There were over sixty injured. The injured were taken to the town of Boizemburg where they were operated on by German doctors and then transported to an airfield near Luneburg to await air-lifting to the UK. It is not known why the RAF pilots mistook the prisoners for Germans.
* From 1942, U.S. Marines in the Pacific used the Navajo language as their secret code. The language didn’t have the vocabulary for existing WWII technology, so existing words had to be given new meanings. For example, the word for “hummingbird” (da-he-ti-hi) became code for fighter plane. Around 400 Navajo Indians (Code Talkers) were trained to use the code, and the Japanese never cracked it.
* In 1974, a Japanese soldier named Hiroo Onoda (1922- ) came out of the jungle of the Pacific island of Lubang. He had been hiding there for 29 years, unaware that his country had surrendered.
* The main “success” of the Blitzkreig or “lightening war” was due to tank units supported from the air by dive-bombers, such as the Junkers Ju87 (Stuka divers). The Stukas were fitted with sirens, which sounded like screaming to terrify the population.
* Large, inflatable barrage balloons were used to protect major towns and cities in Britain from air raids. The balloons were launched before a raid and trailed a network of steel cables beneath them. Bombers had to fly high to avoid becoming tangled in the cables, thus reducing their accuracy.
* Twenty-three sets of brothers died aboard USS Arizona.
There were 37 confirmed pairs or trios of brothers assigned to USS Arizona on December 7, 1941. Of these 77 men, 62 were killed, and 23 sets of brothers died. Only one full set of brothers, Kenneth and Russell Warriner,
survived the attack; Kenneth was away at flight school in San Diego on that day and Russell was badly wounded but recovered. Both members of the ship’s only father-and-son pair, Thomas Augusta Free 
age 50 and his son 
William Thomas Free age 17, were killed in action.
Edward Heidt, F1c and Wesley Heidt, MM2c served and died as brothers aboard the USS Arizona.
John Anderson was born in 1917 with twin brother, Delbert “Jake” Anderson. Both served on the USS Arizona. 
John after the attack searched for his brother. He never found his brother, but would later learn that Jake almost certainly perished in the early moments of the attack. Jack was 24 and John died old age 98.
Thomas D. Murdock wasn’t at his post on the USS Arizona on the morning of Dec. 7, 1941 when waves of Japanese bombers decimated the fleet at Pearl Harbor in a surprise attack. His two brothers – Charles and Melvin – were.
.
* After the sneak attack at Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt searched for a bulletproof car. However, because government regulation prohibited spending more than $750 to buy a car, the only one they could find was Al Capone’s limo, which had been seized by the Treasury Department after he was arrested for tax evasion. FDR said, “I hope Mr. Capone won’t mind.
* The Nazis called their rule the Third Reich (1933-1945). The First Reich was the Holy Roman Empire (962-1806). The Second Reich was the German Empire of 1871-1918. The Weimar Republic was from 1919-1933.
