At 11:00 in the morning on January 7, 1945, Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery walked to a small wooden lectern inside a canvas briefing tent near Zonhoven, Belgium. Roughly 60 Allied war correspondents sat on folding chairs in front of him, greatcoats buttoned against the cold. Twenty-eight days earlier, he had been given command of two … Read more
Die historische Aufarbeitung der nationalsozialistischen Verbrechen hat einen weiteren, tief beunruhigenden Fall in den Fokus gerückt: Egon Gustav Adolf Zill, ein Mann, dessen Name untrennbar mit den grauenhaftesten Kapiteln der deutschen Geschichte verbunden ist, steht im Zentrum einer umfassenden Dokumentation über die Schreckensherrschaft in den Konzentrationslagern Natzweiler-Struthof, Flossenbürg, Dachau, Hinzert und Ravensbrück. Zill, geboren am … Read more
Eva Braun died alongside Adolf Hitler in a Berlin bunker in April 1945, marrying him in their final hours before taking her own life. Her name has become forever linked with the darkest chapter of human history. Yet far less attention has been paid to those who shared her bloodline. What became of Eva Braun's … Read more
Die Geschichte des Nationalsozialismus ist reich an Tätern, deren Grausamkeit jedes menschliche Vorstellungsvermögen übersteigt. Doch nur wenige erreichten jene Stufe entmenschlichter Brutalität, die den SS-Unterscharführer Martin Sommer auszeichnete – einen Mann, den selbst seine eigenen Kameraden als sadistisches Monster fürchteten und den die Nachwelt zu Recht als den „Henker von Buchenwald” kennt. Walter Gerhard Martin … Read more
A controversial biography of Chicago mob boss Sam Giancana, titled "Double Cross," makes explosive claims about two of the most scrutinized deaths in American history: those of Marilyn Monroe and President John F. Kennedy. Written by Giancana's brother Chuck and his godson Sam, the book alleges that the mob and the CIA worked together on … Read more
In the summer of 1945, an American guard walked past a barbed-wire compound in Bavaria and saw something that stopped him cold. A row of captured German officers stood at attention in the morning cold, their right arms raised in the salute of a dead führer. The war had been over for weeks. Their country … Read more
When Japan surrendered on August 15, 1945, more than 6 million Japanese soldiers faced an uncertain future. They were scattered from the jungles of Burma to remote Pacific islands thousands of miles from home, while others stood on Japanese soil as American forces occupied their homeland for the first time in history. The emperor's voice … Read more
World War II was horrific, and as the tide of the war turned against Germany, a deep sense of desperation took hold. Elderly men were pulled into cities and handed whatever weapons were available to fight Soviet tanks and an enemy that, in many accounts, took no prisoners at all. Anyone said to have failed … Read more
On May 8, 1945, the world celebrated the end of the war in Europe. In Paris, crowds flooded the streets. In London, half a million people gathered outside Buckingham Palace. In New York, ticker tape fell on a million upturned faces. On that same morning, somewhere in Soviet-controlled Poland, an American soldier woke up behind … Read more
On July 11, 1968, Harlem stopped for a funeral. The rest of the country was already reeling from a year of fire and blood. Martin Luther King Jr. had been assassinated in Memphis, Robert Kennedy was dead in Los Angeles, and cities across America were burning. But in Harlem, on that humid, gray Thursday morning, … Read more