World War 2
-
Alexander Woollcott, in full Alexander Humphreys Woollcott, (born January 19, 1887, Phalanx, New Jersey, U.S.—died January 23, 1943, New York City, New York), American author, critic, and actor known for his acerbic wit. A large, portly man, he was the self-appointed leader of the Algonquin Round Table, an informal luncheon club at New York City’s Algonquin Hotel in the 1920s and…
-
On 23 January 1920, the government of the Netherlands refused to extradite the former Kaiser of Germany, Wilhelm II. His aggressive foreign policy and support for Austro-Hungary in 1914 led to the first world war. After the signing of the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, he was charged with “a supreme offence against international morality…
-
The most destructive war in all of history, its exact cost in human lives is unknown, but casualties in World War II may have totaled over 60 million service personnel and civilians killed. As the saying goes ‘ a picture paints a thousand words’ even though it may paint a thousand words it doesn’t always…
-
In the Netherlands, the only pre-war group that immediately started resistance against the German occupation was the communist party. During the first two war years, it was by far the biggest resistance organization, much bigger than all other organizations put together. A major act of resistance was the organisation of the February strike in 1941, in protest against anti-Jewish measures. (Leaflet…
-
Walther Funk, (born August 18, 1890, Trakehnen, East Prussia, Germany [now Yasnaya Polyana, Russia]—died May 31, 1960, Düsseldorf, West Germany), German Nazi and economist who was economics minister of the Third Reich from 1938 to 1945 and president of the Reichsbank from 1939. He was tried and convicted as a major war criminal by the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg. Sentenced to life in prison, he remained incarcerated until he was…
-
This is Margot Jany, eight-years-old when she was murdered in Auschwitz-Birenk. This is Ernest Frydman, age nine from Paris, France deported and murdered in Auschwitz on August 1942. This is Mina and Joseph Kiszelewski, murdered in the gas chamber on August 26, 1942, at ages nine and six. This is Bernard Gutman, age eight, from…
-
Hugo Jaeger was one of Hitler’s personal photographers who has been granted special access to the Third Reich and Hitler’s personal space. He is famous for being one of few photographers from that period who used colour photographs, which makes people assume that these photos have been “colourized” from black and white originals when in…
-
On this day in 1951, Ilse Koch, wife of the commandant of the Buchenwald concentration camp, was sentenced to life imprisonment in a court in West Germany. Ilse Koch was nicknamed the “Witch of Buchenwald” for her extraordinary sadism. Koch was born in Dresden, Germany, the daughter of a factory foreman. She was known as a…
-
The T4 program AKA Aktion T4 was a postwar name for mass murder through involuntary euthanasia in Nazi Germany.The name T4 is an abbreviation of Tiergartenstraße 4, a street address of the Chancellery department set up in the spring of 1940, in the Berlin borough of Tiergarten, which recruited and paid personnel associated with T4. Certain German physicians were authorized to select patients “deemed incurably…
History of Sorts 
You must be logged in to post a comment.