t1703

Canadian military engineers achieved one of the most extraordinary victories of the Second World War by drowning a seemingly impregnable German fortress rather than destroying it, a tactic that saved hundreds of lives and opened the critical port of Antwerp to Allied supply lines. The operation, carried out in October 1944 at the Scheldt Estuary … Read more

HELSINKI — A hidden microphone secretly planted inside a private Finnish railway car captured Adolf Hitler speaking with uncharacteristic candor for eleven minutes in June 1942, producing the only known audio recording of the Nazi dictator in unguarded private conversation, and the tape reveals as much about the man who said almost nothing as it … Read more

LOS ANGELES — The starship Enterprise was almost commanded by a different captain, the Vulcan science officer was nearly painted the color of a demon, and one of the most famous catchphrases in television history was never actually spoken on air, according to a newly circulating examination of the production secrets behind “Star Trek,” the … Read more

The children of Albert Speer, Hitler’s favored architect and one of the most enigmatic figures of the Nazi regime, gathered in the Bavarian Alps in 1945 watching Mickey Mouse cartoons at the Führer’s mountain retreat, unaware that within two years their father would be convicted as a war criminal and they would not see him … Read more

Third Army headquarters, Germany — A captured SS commander who threatened to hunt American soldiers “one by one” from the forests and ruins of occupied Germany found himself facing not fear, but a four-star general who turned his own words into a weapon. The confrontation, which spread through every unit of Patton’s Third Army within … Read more

A 22-year-old former SS guard was hanged before a crowd of roughly 20,000 people in the heart of Gdansk on July 4, 1946, a public spectacle designed to demonstrate that justice had been done for the horrors committed at the Stutthof concentration camp during the Nazi occupation of Poland. Elisabeth Becker, an ethnic German born … Read more

BAVARIA, Germany — A German nurse who refused to treat a wounded Black American soldier at a liberated hospital in May 1945 was given a stark ultimatum by Gen. George S. Patton: treat every patient regardless of race, or clean latrines for the duration of the occupation. The confrontation, recounted by witnesses and preserved in … Read more

General Omar Bradley sat in his headquarters in Luxembourg on January 6, 1945, reading an urgent message from Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery that would trigger the most dangerous command crisis of the Allied war effort in Europe. The message requested a meeting with Supreme Commander Dwight Eisenhower to discuss command arrangements for future operations. Montgomery … Read more

Krakau – Am 13. September 1946 wurde der frühere SS-Hauptsturmführer und Kommandant des Konzentrationslagers Płaszów, Amon Leopold Göth, im Gefängnis Montelupich in Krakau durch den Strang hingerichtet. Der 37-jährige Österreicher, den Überlebende nur den „Schlächter von Płaszów” nannten, starb nur wenige Kilometer von jenem Ort entfernt, an dem er während der deutschen Besatzung Polens für … Read more