wwii

  • On January 14,1942  U123 surfaced so close to New York Harbor that the rides at Coney Island could be seen silhouetted against the evening sky. Captain Reinhard Hardegen expected the U.S. east coast to be blacked out after more than a month at war and was surprised to see the glow in the sky from

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  • It is well known that the Nazis made no distinction in age when deporting Jews in the Netherlands. The result was that even venerable elderly people were murdered in Auschwitz and Sobibor, and other camps. Among the victims listed on the Joods Monument(Jewish Monument) site, Klara Borstel-Engelsman is the oldest, at the remarkable age of

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  • Evil Games

    Over the past few days, I’ve been watching the second season of Squid Game. For those unfamiliar with the series, Squid Game is a South Korean thriller where financially desperate individuals are invited to compete in deadly childhood games for a massive cash prize. As the games progress, contestants face moral dilemmas, form alliances, and

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  • The Battle of Ortona, fought in December 1943, stands as one of the most brutal and consequential engagements involving Canadian forces during the Second World War. Often overshadowed by larger operations in Normandy or the Eastern Front, Ortona nonetheless occupies a central place in Canadian military history. The battle was not merely a contest for

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  • Patton-the Death of a Legend

    Although he was a highly controversial character  there are two things that no one can deny.1. He was a hero,2. he was and is a legend. The commander of the U.S. Third Army, General George S. Patton, Jr., took no great pleasure in the end of the war in Europe; he already knew that despite

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  • “Who do you think you are kidding Mr Hitler” is the first line of the theme of the British sitcom Dad’s Army. A truly hilarious show. I remember one episode where Capt Mainwaring is telling a story how he met an Australian soldier. He had asked him “Did you come here to die?” whereupon the

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  • For 10 years I worked for Philips and was not aware of this bit of the company’s history, although I worked in a different plant in another city, the links to Eindhoven were substantial because HQ was located there. On 6th December 1942, the RAF mounted Operation Oyster, a daylight low-level bombing raid on the

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  • Margard (Marga) Kaufmann, born in Gronau, Germany 10 November 1928. Murdered in Auschwitz on 3 September 1943, reached the age of 14 years. Marga’s parents were married in 1923 in Gronau, where her mother, Adele, had taken over her grandmother’s grocery store in 1918. Marga never knew her grandparents, Zilversmit. Her mother had four brothers,

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  • On December 7, 1941, Japanese planes attacked the United States Naval Base at Pearl Harbor in the Hawaii Territory, killing more than 2,300 Americans. The U.S.S. Arizona was completely destroyed, and the U.S.S. Oklahoma capsized. In total, twelve ships were sunk or beached, and nine additional vessels were damaged. More than 160 aircraft were destroyed

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  • Flight 19-The Lost squadron

    The Bermuda Triangle’s reputation as a boat and plane-devouring chasm was first sealed in December 1945, when a group of five U.S. Navy Avenger torpedo bombers known as “Flight 19” vanished in the Atlantic off the coast of Florida. No sign of the Avengers was ever found, and a Navy seaplane sent to rescue them

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