Liberation

  • By mid-September 1944, the Allies had made substantial progress in their liberation of Western Europe following the successful Normandy landings in June. Operation Market Garden, launched on September 17, was a large-scale Allied offensive aimed at quickly advancing through the Netherlands, securing key bridges, and eventually entering Germany to end the war sooner. This operation

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  • The Liberation of Eindhoven

    On September 18, 1944, American paratroopers entered Eindhoven, liberating the city. Their mission was not only to free the population but also to secure the advance route and the bridges over the River Dommel, ensuring they remained open for the approaching British ground forces. Citizens of Eindhoven, many dressed proudly in orange, lined the streets

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  • Maastricht Liberated.

    Maastricht is one of the oldest cities in the Netherlands and one of the first settlements. It was also the first city to be liberated in World War 2. On 13 and 14 September 1944 it was the first Dutch city to be liberated by Allied forces of the US Old Hickory Division.. These are

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  • Liberation At Last

    On 4 May 1945, the German Admiral Von Friedeburg at Lüneburg surrendered to British Field Marshal Montgomery on behalf of the German troops in Northwest Germany, the Netherlands, Schleswig-Holstein, and Denmark. On 5 May, Canadian General Charles Foulkes summoned the German Supreme Commander Johannes Blaskowitz to Hotel De Wereld in Wageningen to discuss the effect

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  • s Allied forces closed in on Germany in early 1945, the SS began evacuating inmates from camps like Dachau in a series of forced marches, hoping to hide evidence of atrocities and prevent liberation by the Allies. Prisoners, already debilitated by starvation and disease, were forced to march dozens of miles in the brutal cold

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  • When the gates of Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen, Dachau, Mauthausen and other Nazi concentration camps were finally unshackled in 1945, the world watched as skeletal survivors stumbled out of hell. The war was ending, and freedom had come. But for thousands of victims, it came too late. These are the stories we don’t always hear—the stories of

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  • On April 15,1945 the 63rd Anti-tank Regiment and the 11th Armoured Division of the British army liberated about 60,000 prisoners at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. One of the soldiers, 21 year old Corporal Ian Forsyth, called it “A place of darkness and death.” What the British troops encountered was described by the BBC’s Richard Dimbleby,

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  • Edward R. Murrow was born on 25 April 1908. Although he is in uniform in the picture above, he was a journalist and broadcaster. I am not going to do a piece on his life as such. I will only go into one report. He was one of the first reporters to go into Buchenwald

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  • The liberation of the Ohrdruf concentration camp on April 4, 1945, marked a significant moment in the final months of World War II. Located near the German town of Gotha, Ohrdruf was a subcamp of the larger Buchenwald concentration camp. The camp’s discovery by the advancing United States Army not only revealed the atrocities committed

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  • The title of this blog is the opening lines of the song “Red Sector A” by the Canadian Rock band “Rush.” It is a song from their 1984 album, Grace Under Pressure. It’s one of Rush’s most emotionally charged songs, heavily influenced by Geddy Lee’s personal family history. The song’s poignant lyrics, written by drummer

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