History

General history issues, although a lot will be about WW2

  • I was struggling with the title but to be honest I can’t think of another way of describing it. An estimated 1.5 to 2 million children were killed during the Holocaust. How many were killed in Auschwitz is not clear but if you consider that for example on October 10,1944 800 gypsy children were gassed,…

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  • The 4 From Breda

    The title is The 4 from Breda, but there are only 3 men pictured. There is a reason for that which I shall explain a bit later. After the Second World War, 241 Germans were tried in the Netherlands for war crimes. Among them, the quartet Willi Lages, Ferdinand aus der Fünten, Franz Fischer and Joseph Kotälla,…

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  • Massacre of Kondomari

    The Massacre of Kondomari  refers to the execution of male civilians from the village of Kondomari in Crete by an ad hoc firing squad consisting of German paratroopers on 2 June 1941 during World War II.The shooting was the first of a series of reprisals in Crete. It was orchestrated by Generaloberst Kurt Student, in…

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  • Battle of Santiago

    No this is not a piece on World War 2 or any other war for that matter,although it is often said that football is war. The Battle of Santiago  is the name given to a particularly infamous football match during the 1962 FIFA World Cup. It was a game played between host Chile and Italy…

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  • BOAC Flight 777

    On June 1,1943 the BOAC Flight 777,a scheduled British Overseas Airways Corporation civilian airline flight from Portela Airport in Lisbon, Portugal to Whitchurch Airport near Bristol, England.The Douglas DC-3 serving the flight was attacked by eight German Junkers Ju 88 fighter planes and crashed into the Bay of Biscay, killing all 17 on board. BOAC…

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  • The one thing that always puzzled me is why did the Nazi’s insist in having such a thorough administration? If you are planning to eradicate millions, why document it? I just don’t understand the psyche of it. Of course the Nazi’s didn’t see “the final solution” as a crime but only a method of getting…

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  • Philipp Rupprecht was a German artist and cartoonist known by his artist name Flips. He was the chief cartoonist for Der Stuermer,a weekly German tabloid-format newspaper published by Julius Streicher.It played  a significant role in the Nazi propaganda and was vehemently anti-Semitic. Born in Nuremberg, Philipp Rupprecht immigrated to Argentina in 1920 following World War…

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  • When we think of the Holocaust and the Nazi camp system, names like Auschwitz or Dachau immediately come to mind. But to truly understand how the machinery of the Third Reich was built, we have to look at a lesser-known but historically pivotal site: Oranienburg concentration camp. Established 21 March 1933, just two months after…

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  • In April 1945 the allied troops forced the citizens of Neunburg,Germany to face up to some of the atrocities ordered and  committed by their elected government. They were made to look at bodies of Jewish  and other slave laborers in woods outside Neunberg, where they were marched from a Nazi Gestapo camp and where thy…

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  • What did you see when shot me? Did you see a threat to your life? Did you see a Monster? Did you see someone who insulted your mother or wife? Did you see a sadistic murderer? Did you feel like a hero when you pulled that trigger? Did you feel good when you saw my…

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