World War 2

  •   Robert Capa (born Endre Friedmann;October 22, 1913 – May 25, 1954) was a Hungarian war photographer and photo journalist, arguably the greatest combat and adventure photographer in history. Capa was born into a Jewish family in Budapest, where his parents were tailors During his career he risked his life numerous times, most dramatically as the…

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  • Ernst Cahn, a German-Jewish refugee,son of Salomon Cahn and Rosa Katzenstein. He married in 1914 and had two children who survived the war. He lived with his family from 1924-1928 in Amsterdam. In 1936 he returned to the Netherlands, to Huizen, from Germany because of the persecution of the Jews. Ernst Cahn co-owned ice-cream parlour…

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  • Full military honors were granted by the Luftwaffe at the funerals of RAF sergeants Butlin and Holden who were shot down over Jersey, Channel Islands. It is thought this was to try to pacify the local population. The Luftwaffe behaved much differently than the SS or Wehrmacht. Much more chivalry. RAF Sergeants Butlin took off…

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  • Hitler maintained three residences during the Third Reich: the Old Chancellery in Berlin, his Munich apartment, and Haus Wachenfeld (later the Berghof), his mountain home on the Obersalzberg. Hitler asked his neighbor Karl Schuster, the owner of the Türken Inn, to sell him a piece of his adjacent property. Schuster refused on the grounds of…

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  • Many people think that the problems in the middle east are relatively new. But places like Iraq have been a troublesome areas  which have been in conflict for many decades. Führer Directive No. 30 (German: Weisung Nr. 30) was a directive issued by German dictator Adolf Hitler during World War II. It ordered German support…

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  • Bloody Sunday was a series of killings of members of the German minority that took place at the beginning of World War II. On September 3, 1939, two days after the beginning of the German invasion of Poland, highly controversial killings occurred in and around Bydgoszcz (German: Bromberg), a Polish city with a sizable German…

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  • During the war in Papua New Guinea, the local population who were sympathetic to the Australian troops would assist where they could. Notably they would help in transporting stores and equipment over the rough terrain. Teams carried seriously wounded and sick Australian soldiers all the way back to their bases. Their compassion and care of…

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  • The miracle of Saipan

    In a photo that somehow comprises both tenderness and horror, an American Marine cradles a near-dead infant pulled from under a rock while troops cleared Japanese fighters and civilians from caves on Saipan in the summer of 1944. The child was the only person found alive among hundreds of corpses in one cave. The battle…

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  • World War II brought momentous change to America’s Chinese community. For decades, Chinese were vilified in America, especially in California, the center of the U.S.’s anti-Chinese feelings. The Chinese had initially come to California for the Gold Rush and later the building of the Transcontinental Railroad, but public sentiment quickly turned against them. Competition for…

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  • Mohammed Amin al-Husseini  was a Palestinian Arab nationalist and Muslim leader in Mandatory Palestine. Al-Husseini used his influence and ties with the Germans to promote Arab nationalism in Iraq. He was among the key promoters of the pan-Arab Al-Muthanna Club, and supported the coup d’état by Rashid Ali in April 1941. The situation of Iraq’s…

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