On August 9, 1944, in Edinburgh, Indiana, the temperature reached 91 degrees in the shade. In the cornfields, there was no shade at all. A truck was due to turn off Highway 31 carrying eleven German prisoners of war, men who had recently arrived by troop transport from Normandy. They were being brought to detassel … Read more
Lenny Briggs, a 25-year-old heavyweight boxer whose career had stalled, walked into the Blue Lantern Social Club in Harlem with a single purpose: to confront the man he blamed for ruining his life. He found Calvin Marrow, a longtime associate of the crime boss Bumpy Johnson, and beat him brutally in front of dozens of … Read more
On July 20, 1944, just hours after German military officers attempted to assassinate Adolf Hitler at the Wolf's Lair, his East Prussian headquarters near Rastenburg, the Führer kept his appointments, including a meeting with Italy's fascist leader Benito Mussolini. The plot was the culmination of efforts by several groups in the German resistance who hoped … Read more
Klaus Barbie was born Nikolaus Klaus Barbie on October 25, 1913, in Godesberg, then part of the German Empire. His parents, Nicolaus Barbie and Anna Hess, were both teachers and married one year after Klaus was born. His father was conscripted into the German Army during World War I, wounded in the neck at Verdun, … Read more
In April 1945, in a small German town somewhere east of the Rhine, the Third Army took control that morning after brief and largely one-sided resistance. By midday, organized fighting in the area had ended. The usual procedures began at once. Every major building had to be cleared before civilians could move freely again. The … Read more
The envelope sat on the table for 18 minutes. Bumpy Johnson did not touch it. On January 15, 1961, a Genovese family lieutenant named Caruso delivered a sealed manila envelope to Ellsworth “Bumpy” Johnson, the man who controlled Harlem’s numbers operation. The envelope contained a proposal from Vito Genovese, then serving a federal narcotics sentence … Read more
In April 1945, three weeks before the end of the war in Europe, forces under General George S. Patton liberated a satellite camp outside the German city of Gotha. The facility was attached to a larger network of forced labor camps scattered across the region. The prisoners inside were starving. Most had not eaten a … Read more
Odilo Globocnik was one of the most fanatical Austrian Nazis and became a key figure in the implementation of the Final Solution. Born on April 21, 1904, in Trieste, then part of Austria-Hungary, he came from an Austrian-Croat family of low-ranking officials. Globocnik trained as a builder and worked in the 1920s as a technician … Read more
Edmund Heines was born on July 21, 1897, in Munich, then part of the German Empire. He was the illegitimate child of Helena Marta Heines, whose father was Lieutenant Edmund von Parish, a member of a Hamburg merchant family in whose service his mother worked as a nanny. When World War I began on July … Read more
Im Mai 1945 hatte Deutschland kapituliert, und der Krieg in Europa war vorbei. Doch für Tausende amerikanische Soldaten war der Krieg noch nicht zu Ende. Sie waren Kriegsgefangene gewesen, befreit von sowjetischen Truppen aus deutschen Lagern. Nach dem Abkommen von Jalta hätten sie unverzüglich an amerikanische Stellen übergeben werden müssen. Aber das geschah nicht. Die … Read more