On the morning of May 6th, 1950, roughly 3,000 fans gathered outside the Church of the Good Shepherd in Beverly Hills. They were waiting for an 18-year-old MGM contract player to step out of a studio limousine in a gown designed by Helen Rose, the same costume designer who would later make Grace Kelly’s wedding … Read more
Anne of Cleves is often remembered as the wife Henry VIII called ugly, the one he rejected on sight. But her story is more complicated and more tragic than the nickname suggests. While she was still his queen, Henry carried on an affair with a teenage girl in full view of the court. And Anne, … Read more
The sun was still shining over Munich on the afternoon of February 22, 1943, a cruel irony for a young woman about to be marched into the cold, brutal heart of the Nazi justice system. Sophie Scholl, just 21 years old, was led from her cell at Stadelheim Prison, her footsteps echoing against the stone … Read more
The brutal execution of Violette Morris, a former French sports icon who became one of the most feared Nazi collaborators in occupied Paris, sent shockwaves through the German military command and the Vichy government on April 26, 1944. The woman known throughout the capital as the “Hyena of the Gestapo” was ambushed and shot dead … Read more
The world learned today of the horrifying fate of Baroness Elizabeth de Rothschild, a member of one of history’s wealthiest dynasties, who was allegedly burned alive inside the crematoria of Ravensbrück concentration camp. The revelation, detailed in the memoirs of her estranged husband, Philippe de Rothschild, has cast a new and chilling light on the … Read more
On the evening of October 15, 1946, Hermann Göring sat on the edge of his cot in Nuremberg’s cell block C, eating black bread. In two hours, the International Military Tribunal would read his sentence. Everyone in courtroom 600 knew what it would be. Göring knew. The guards knew. The prosecutors had known since November … Read more
On the morning of April 8, 1945, as the Third Reich crumbled under the relentless advance of Allied forces, a desperate, crackling transmission pierced the static from deep inside the Buchenwald concentration camp. Using a secretly assembled shortwave transmitter and a small generator, prisoners sent an SOS in Morse code directly to General Patton’s Third … Read more
On the night of December 15, 1944, Field Marshal Walter Model stood alone in an operations room in western Germany, staring at a wall map of the Ardennes Forest. The next morning, a quarter-million German troops would launch Hitler’s final offensive in the West, the largest German attack since 1940. Model had just finished reviewing … Read more
Decades after the fall of the Third Reich, the grandchildren of its most prominent leaders still carry the weight of their family names. For some, that name is a curse. For others, it has been an advantage. Each descendant has had to decide what to do with a history that runs in their blood. Some … Read more
NUREMBERG, Germany — The trapdoor swung open at 1:52 a. m. on October 16, 1946, and the man who had orchestrated the military machinery of the Third Reich plunged into the darkness of the gymnasium gallows, but the snap that should have ended his life never came. Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, the 64-year-old former Chief … Read more