N1104 On March 15, 1939, German mechanized columns rolled toward Prague through cold spring snow. There was no battle and no defense of the city. Six months earlier, the Munich Agreement had stripped Czechoslovakia of its border fortifications and handed the Sudetenland to the Third Reich. Now Adolf Hitler ordered the Wehrmacht to occupy what remained … Read more
On January 27, 1945, a prisoner in a Nazi maternity home gave birth to a daughter. The baby's father had been dead for six months, executed the night his plot to kill Hitler failed. She was Konstanze, the fifth child of Claus von Stauffenberg. The regime had already decided what to do with his family: … Read more
On March 26, 1945, US Army units advancing toward Central Germany liberated Hadamar, a psychiatric clinic that had served as one of six killing facilities in the Nazi so-called euthanasia program. What the soldiers found was catastrophic. More than 500 patients were starved and weakened by systematic neglect and targeted malnutrition. Although the US Army … Read more
When Adolf Hitler was appointed chancellor of Germany on January 30, 1933, the Nazi Party set out to lead what it called the German master race to victory in a racial struggle against those it deemed inferior, especially the Jews. The German medical profession played a central role in shaping and implementing Nazi policies, and … Read more
On June 3, 1944, Salzburg hosted a wedding unlike any other in the fifth year of the Second World War. Across Europe, millions had already perished, and the Allied invasion of Nazi-occupied Europe was only days away. Adolf Hitler presided over the ceremony at Mirabell Palace before moving the celebration to the Eagle's Nest high … Read more
High in the Bavarian Alps, Adolf Hitler's mountain retreat at Obersalzberg became the informal center of power in Nazi Germany. Party leaders, ministers, generals, and foreign visitors passed through its doors. Among the men with constant access to Hitler was Martin Bormann, the ambitious party official who steadily became one of the most powerful figures … Read more
The Battle of Stalingrad ended on February 2, 1943, when the German Sixth Army capitulated after five months of fierce fighting and heavy casualties. Exhausted of ammunition and food, it became the first of Hitler's field armies to surrender during World War II. The battle proved a decisive psychological turning point, ending a string of … Read more
On April 15, 1945, southwest of Bergen in Nazi Germany, the British 11th Armoured Division liberated Bergen-Belsen, one of the worst Nazi concentration camps. The camp embodied the true brutality of the regime and its extermination system. British troops found 13,000 unburied bodies and nearly 60,000 sick and starving prisoners. Thousands more would die in … Read more
Le dîner de la fête des mères avait commencé comme tous les autres, avec des effusions trop bruyantes et des regards qui se posaient sur moi un peu trop longtemps. J’aurais dû le savoir dès l’instant où j’ai franchi leur porte, ma tarte achetée dans une pâtisserie tenant lieu d’offrande de paix. Je n’avais pas … Read more
The Allied landings in Normandy on June 6, 1944, marked a turning point in World War II and the beginning of the end of the war in Europe. The following month, in July 1944, Soviet forces liberated Majdanek, the first major Nazi camp in German-occupied Poland to be uncovered. Only after the liberation of the … Read more