The Reichstag fire came amid “a campaign of unparalleled violence and bitterness” by then-Chancellor Adolf Hitler, in advance of an approaching German election, and it turned a building that was “as famous through Germany as is the dome of the Capitol in W…
Heinrich Himmler adored his daughter 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 childhoo…
General Anton Dostler was a general of the infantry in the regular German Army during World War II. In the first Allied war trial after the war, Dostler was found guilty of war crimes and executed by firing squad. He ordered and oversaw the unlawf…
This is troopship Queen Elisabeth. Queen Elizabeth and Queen Mary were used as troop transports during the Second World War. Their high speeds allowed them to outrun hazards, principally German U-boats, usually allowing them to travel without a convoy. …
Adolph Hitler put Field Marshall Rommel in charge of the French Atlantic wall and the defense of Europe from an Allies cross-channel invasion in 1944. Rommel arrived, looked over the situation, and immediately ordered a tremendous upgrading of the forti…
At 1:10 a.m. on May 9, 1945, night owls in the USSR heard a radio report that Nazi Germany had officially surrendered to the Soviet Union. Up to 30 million soldiers and civilians were dead, the Soviet Union had lost a third of its national wealth, citie…