t1703 Prague — In the early hours of 15 March 1939, columns of German Wehrmacht troops crossed into Bohemia and Moravia without meeting organized resistance, and by dawn armored vehicles had entered Prague, sealing the fate of the Czechoslovak state and opening a chapter of occupation that would culminate three years later in the annihilation of … Read more
Declassified testimony and archival records have 𝓮𝔁𝓹𝓸𝓼𝓮𝓭 the horrific “entertainments” that SS and Wehrmacht units pursued across occupied Soviet and Baltic territories during World War II — pastimes that began as ordinary soldierly recreation but curdled into industrial-scale sadism, mass rape, and ritualized murder that investigators say defies conventional understanding of human behavior. The accounts, … Read more
Beim Abendessen mit der Familie ihres Mannes machte seine Schwester Lena einen Witz: „Wenn du morgen verschwindest, würde es niemandem auffallen. “ Alle lachten, nur Elisa nicht. In derselben Nacht packte sie ihre Sachen und zog aus. Sie brach jeden Kontakt ab, und innerhalb eines Jahres ging die Firma, für die sie sich aufgerieben hatte, … Read more
Declassified testimony and archival records have 𝓮𝔁𝓹𝓸𝓼𝓮𝓭 the horrific “entertainments” that SS and Wehrmacht units pursued across occupied Soviet and Baltic territories during World War II — pastimes that began as ordinary soldierly recreation but curdled into industrial-scale sadism, mass rape, and ritualized murder that investigators say defies conventional understanding of human behavior. The accounts, … Read more
MUNICH, Germany — In a requisitioned Wehrmacht barracks outside Munich on May 9, 1945, the day after Nazi Germany’s unconditional surrender, a routine flag ceremony erupted into one of the most explosive confrontations of the Allied occupation when 41 of 53 high-ranking German officers responded to the American national anthem by snapping their arms into … Read more
Das Kinderzimmer war dunkel, aber ich brauchte kein Licht, um mich zurechtzufinden. Ich kannte jeden Umriss, jede Ecke dieses Raumes, der mein ganzes Leben verschlungen hatte. Seit drei Jahren war dieser Raum mein Bühnenbild, mein Publikum, mein ganzes Universum. Die Wand war frisch gestrichen, ein helles Blau, das ich selbst ausgesucht hatte. An der einen … Read more
Thirty-two German prisoners of war dropped their shovels and refused a direct order at a U. S. Army camp in the Third Army sector, triggering a disciplinary crisis that reached Gen. George S. Patton’s headquarters within hours and ended with the transfer of the camp’s most defiant prisoner before the week was out. The standoff … Read more
LÜNEBURG, Germany — Three women who served as guards at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp were hanged at Hamelin Prison on December 13, 1945, becoming the first women executed under British military law in the aftermath of World War II, as the world received its first unfiltered glimpse into the industrialized horror of the Holocaust. The … Read more
Five former female guards of the Stutthof concentration camp were hanged together before a crowd estimated at 200,000 people on a hill overlooking Gdansk, bringing to a close one of the most closely watched war crimes proceedings to emerge from the ashes of the Second World War. The executions, carried out at Biskupia Górka on … Read more
The men of Easy Company, the celebrated paratroopers of World War II immortalized in the HBO miniseries “Band of Brothers,” did not ride off into a simple sunset after the guns fell silent in 1945. Their lives after the war were as varied, complicated, and at times as tragic as the combat they endured, and … Read more