the Netherlands

  • Operation Blackcock was a World War II military operation carried out by the 7th Armoured Division, the 43rd Wessex Division, and the 52nd Lowland Division, from the British 2nd Army, to clear the Roer Triangle formed by the towns of Roermond, Sittard and Heinsberg, near the Roer River, on the border between the Netherlands  and Germany, from January…

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  •   Returning from a bombing raid of Germany’s Ruhr Valley in 1944, American pilot James M. Hansen’s fighter plane ran into trouble and crashed. James was killed instantly. The Allies, who buried him in the temporary American military cemetery in the village of Molenhoek near the Dutch city of Nijmegen, placed this wooden cross on…

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  • The Henneike Column was a Group of more than 50 people, under the leadership of Willem Christiaan Heinrich Henneicke, which was specialised in hunting down Jews. Jewish people that were trying to hide or were violating one of the many anti-Jewish regulations could fall in the hands of one of the members of this Column.…

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  • The photo was shot during wartime, 6 December 1944 (Sinterklaas, St-Nicholas in the Netherlands and Belgium, arrives in Rucphen, a town near Roosendaal (The Netherlands). Normally Sinterklaas arrives on a white horse but this he uses a Sherman-tank.) Sinterklaas or Sint-Nicolaas is a mythical figure with legendary, historical and folkloric origins based on Saint Nicholas(He is…

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  • Anton Mussert-Dutch Fascist

    Anton Adriaan Mussert ( 11 May 1894 – 7 May 1946) was one of the founders of the National Socialist Movement in the Netherlands (NSB) and its formal leader. As such, he was the most prominent Dutch fascist before and during World War II. During the war, he was able to keep this position, due to…

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  • Marinus van der Lubbe was born in Leiden, on 13th January, 1909. His father, Franciscus Cornelis van der Lubbe, was a heavy drinker who left the family when he was seven years old. His mother died five years later. He was then raised by an older half sister and was brought up in extreme poverty.…

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  • The Liberation of Breda

    Breda was liberated on 29 October 1944 by the 1st Polish Armoured Division. led by General Stanislav Maczek. A picture sometimes tells a thousand words, therefore below some pictures of that day 29 October 1944. Dutch Resistance fighters armed with captured German weapons celebrate the liberation of Breda by the Polish 1st Armored Division Honouring…

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  • Unusual WWII Facts:Part 14

    During World War II, the now-legendary VIII Bomber Command (often referred to as the Eighth Air Force) served as the principal American force assembled to attack Germany from the air. For several critical years in the early and mid-1940s, B-24 and B-17 bombers—the Flying Fortresses—from the “The Mighty 8th”, often in tandem with Royal Air…

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  • With all the horrible stories we have heard about Auschwitz it does happen that every once in a while we come across a more ‘lighthearted’ tale. By chance I came across the story of Roosje Glaser. Even before Nazi racial laws turned her into a wanted person in her native Netherlands, Roosje Glaser had limited…

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  •   Although the Netherlands was liberated on the 5th of May and VE day was on the 8th of May. It took more then a month after the official liberation of Europe for this Island at the north of the country to be liberated. It was on the 11th of June 1945 before Schiermonnikoog was…

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