In March 1945, the Rhine River was the last significant natural barrier between the western Allied forces and the industrial heart of Germany. The war in Europe was in its final months. Germany was contracting, pressed from the east by the Soviets and from the west by the Allies. The Germans had spent months fortifying … Read more
Die amerikanischen Truppen, die am 11. April 1945 das Konzentrationslager Buchenwald bei Weimar erreichten, fanden nicht nur Berge von Leichen und ausgemergelte Überlebende vor – sie stießen in den Offiziersunterkünften auf Beweise eines Grauens, das die Welt bis heute erschaudern lässt. Tätowierte menschliche Haut, geschrumpfte Köpfe und menschliche Überreste, auf Tischen wie Ausstellungsstücke präsentiert, zeugten … Read more
On October 1, 1946, judges from the United States, the Soviet Union, Britain, and France delivered their verdicts at the Palace of Justice in Nuremberg, Germany, against the most prominent figures of Nazi Germany. Most of the accused were present in the courtroom, but one seat remained empty. The man who should have been there … Read more
In the autumn of 1915, a crew of laborers digging new foundations on the DuPont estate in northern Delaware struck something they could not explain. Their shovels did not hit rock or clay. They hit a flat surface of cut stone, buried more than twelve feet below the ground, in a place where no building … Read more
In 1881, a 73-year-old woman named Clara Whitmore died in a small Massachusetts hospital. Her last words were recorded by a night nurse who assumed she was delirious. "The sky wasn't always this color," Clara whispered. "I remember when it changed. I was 7 years old. They told us to forget, but I never did." … Read more
Danzig – Am 4. Juli 1946 wurde die 24-jährige Jenny-Wanda Barkmann, eine der berüchtigtsten Aufseherinnen des Konzentrationslagers Stutthof, vor den Toren Danzigs öffentlich durch den Strang hingerichtet. Vor rund 200. 000 Zuschauern auf dem Hügel Biskupia Górka endete damit das Leben einer Frau, die von Überlebenden wegen ihrer außergewöhnlichen Grausamkeit und ihrer auffälligen Erscheinung nur … Read more
Henriette von Schirach was born Henriette Hoffmann on February 2, 1913, in Munich, then part of the German Empire. Her father, Heinrich Hoffmann, was a photographer, and her mother, Therese Baumann, was a former singer and actress who died suddenly in 1928, when Henriette was only 15. In 1919, Henriette's father met Adolf Hitler, and … Read more
At Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas, a floral circlet now marks the space the hospital calls trauma room number one. It was here that President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was rushed on November 22, 1963, and here that he was pronounced dead at 1:00 p.m. despite the efforts of the physicians who fought to save him. … Read more
In April 1945, in Bavaria, Germany, General George S. Patton walked into an interrogation room. He had been briefed on the prisoner waiting inside: Major General Heinrich Kessler, commander of the 19th Panzer Division, captured three days earlier outside Nuremberg. What the briefing had not mentioned was what Kessler was doing at the moment Patton … Read more
Heinrich Hoffmann built a career as Adolf Hitler's personal photographer and used that privileged access to amass a fortune, partly through art looted from Jewish owners and occupied territories. He later portrayed himself as a naive companion of Hitler rather than an active profiteer of Nazi policies. Hoffmann was born on September 12, 1885, in … Read more