Germany
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It is difficult to determine which crimes committed during the Holocaust were the most horrific, but the Action T4 program and Action 14f13 stand out as particularly chilling. While not necessarily more appalling than other atrocities of that dark period, these programs are especially alarming because elements of their ideology and methods appear to be…
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Albert Speer must have been one of the biggest cowards of the Third Reich. He refused to take responsibility for his actions and kept claiming he wasn’t aware of the Holocaust. However, he was instrumental in getting the concentration camps built, and he kept the war machine going. Albert Speer is said to have prolonged…
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In the dying embers of the Third Reich, when the skies above Germany burned red and the cities lay in ruins, the last defenders of Adolf Hitler’s empire were not seasoned soldiers—but children.Boys who only months earlier had drilled with wooden rifles now faced tanks and artillery. Their voices had barely deepened, yet they screamed…
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On 16 October 1946, some of the most notorious German war leaders were hanged in Nuremberg. Their executions came after a landmark trial in which 23 of the highest-ranking figures of the Third Reich faced charges of crimes against humanity. The final statements of the condemned were broadcast widely, drawing intense public attention and extensive…
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After the liberation of Germany in May 1945 the Allied Powers initiated a comprehensive denazification program. Its purpose was to eradicate National Socialist thought from political, economic as well as intellectual and cultural life. As a first step the NSDAP and its subdivisions were prohibited, Nazi laws were abolished and the external signs and symbols…
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A question people often ask me is “Why did so many Germans believe Hitler and the NSDAP?” Hitler did not keep his hate for Jews and other groups he deemed unworthy a secret. In fact he wrote about it in Mein Kampf and other political publications.So why did so many Germans endorse him and his…
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Alois Brunner was one of the most feared and ruthless Nazi war criminals during the Holocaust. As a senior SS officer and a close associate of Adolf Eichmann, Brunner played a pivotal role in the deportation of tens of thousands of Jews to concentration and extermination camps. Known for his cold-blooded efficiency and unrelenting cruelty,…
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On October, 1 1944, the first of two sets of medical experiments involving castration were performed on homosexuals at the Buchenwald concentration camp, near Weimar, Germany. Buchenwald was one of the first concentration camps established by the Nazi regime. Constructed in 1937, it was a complement to camps north (Sachsenhausen) and south (Dachau), and was…
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People sometimes tell me that the pictures of the piles of corpses, in the concentration camps are the most disturbing ones from the Holocaust. However, I am not in total agreement because I found the photo above much more disturbing. It shows the cause of the Holocaust. Hitler understood for the Nazi ideology to work…