PN1501 In March 1940, Nazi Germany approved the creation of a special combat unit made up exclusively of men serving prison sentences for poaching and related crimes. The decision followed consultations between Adolf Hitler and SS leader Heinrich Himmler. The unit was intended to fight partisans in mountainous areas. Before long, murderers, psychopaths, sexual deviants, and … Read more
Maria Antonia of Austria was born on January 18, 1669, in the Hofburg Palace in Vienna. Her father was Leopold I, Holy Roman Emperor and King of Hungary, Croatia, and Bohemia. Her mother was Margaret Theresa of Spain, daughter of King Philip IV of Spain and Mariana of Austria. Both of her parents came from … Read more
On the morning of April 30, 1942, at Royal Air Force Duxford in Cambridgeshire, a Rolls-Royce test pilot named Ronnie Harker stood on a damp concrete apron studying an aircraft he had never flown. It was American, shipped across the Atlantic in pieces in a wooden crate stamped with the address of a factory in … Read more
In March 1945, a captured German Panzer general was brought to Third Army headquarters. He was tall and rigid, the kind of Wehrmacht officer who still believed Germany could win. His uniform was immaculate despite days in captivity, and his Iron Cross was still pinned to his chest. Intelligence officers wanted to interrogate him about … Read more
Millions of Americans romanticize the Wild West as an era of rugged cowboys, untamed spirits, and trailblazing pioneers, but historians and health experts are now warning that the frontier’s legendary hygiene habits were far deadlier than any gunfight ever staged on a dusty main street. From whiskey consumed as a full meal to cocaine-based toothache … Read more
MINNESOTA TERRITORY, August 1862 — A survivor of the Dakota uprising has provided a harrowing first-person account of the violence that swept across southwestern Minnesota this summer, describing the murder of her family, her abduction by warriors, and the brutal sexual assaults she endured while held captive, in testimony that has now emerged from a … Read more
Colonel William Crawford, a veteran frontier commander leading a 465-man militia expedition against British-allied Indian towns along the Sandusky River, was burned alive at the stake, his bones reduced to “almost ashes,” according to the harrowing eyewitness account of Dr. John Knight, the expedition’s surgeon, who escaped captivity after bludgeoning his guard and walking nearly … Read more
Klockan var 16:47 när samtalet kom, och jag minns exakt den tiden eftersom jag precis hade tittat på klockan i instrumentbrädan och tänkt att vi skulle vara hemma före fem. Det var Declan som ringde, och jag kände på rösten att det inte var ett vanligt samtal. Han har arbetat på mitt företag i sju … Read more
Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, the legendary “Desert Fox” of the German Wehrmacht, privately conceded in the final months of his life that the American Third Army under Lieutenant General George S. Patton Jr. had achieved “the most astonishing achievements in mobile warfare” he had ever witnessed, according to his personal papers compiled nine years later … Read more
Tokyo’s most triumphant broadcast of the Pacific War was built on a lie so complete that the empire that told it would never recover from believing it. On October 16, 1944, Imperial Radio announced to a starving nation that Japanese aviators had destroyed 11 American aircraft carriers, two battleships and three cruisers in the waters … Read more