SECOND WORLD WAR: Dramatic moments: A PICTURE ALBUM

Nothing is worse than war? Dishonor is worse than war. Slavery is worse than war.
—Winston Churchill

GERMAN INVASION OF POLAND, 1939

Advertisement

VIDEO: INVASION OF POLAND: Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

GERMAN INVASION OF FRANCE, 1940

EVACUATION FROM DUNKIRK, 1940

VIDEO: DUNKIRK

HITLER IN PARIS

LONDON BLITZ, 1940

ST. PAULS CATHEDRAL DURING THE BLITZ, 1940

AFRIKA CORPS: ROMMEL IN AFRICA

GERMAN INVASION OF RUSSIA, JUNE, 1941

PANZERS IN RUSSIA

GERMAN CAVALRY IN RUSSIA

German Army relied On Horses

Despite highly ballyhooed emphasis on employment of mechanized forces and on rapid movement, the bulk of German combat divisions were horse drawn throughout World War II. Early in the war it was the common belief of the American public that the German Siegfrieds of Hitler's Blitz rode forth to battle on swift tanks and motor vehicles. But the notion of the mechanized might of the German Wehrmacht was largely a glamorized myth born in the fertile brains of newspapermen. Actually, the lowly horse played a most important part in enabling the German Army to move about Europe.

Public opinion to the contrary, so great was the dependence of the Nazi Blitzkrieg upon the horse that the numerical strength of German Army horses maintained during the entire war period averaged around 1,100,000. Of the 322 German Army and SS divisions extant in November 1943, only 52 were armored or motorized. Of the November 1944 total of 264 combat divisions, only 42 were armored or motorized. The great bulk of the German combat strength—the old-type infantry divisions—marched into battle on foot, with their weapons and supply trains propelled almost entirely by four-legged horsepower. The light and mountain divisions had an even greater proportion of animals, and the cavalry divisions were naturally mainly dependent on the horse. 

Source

WAR IN THE WINTER IN RUSSIA

BATTLE FOR STALINGRAD

ENTRANCE TO AUSCHWITZ-BIRKENAU

DACHAU LIBERATED, 1945

BUCHENWALD CONCENTRATION CAMP

D-DAY BEGINS, JUNE 6, 1944

LIBERATION OF PARIS, AUGUST 1944

DRESDEN AFTER THE BOMBING 

VIDEO: DRESDEN BOMBING

AMERICANS CROSS THE SIEGFRIED LINE, 1945

GERMAN SURRENDER, 1945. JODL SIGNS

VICTORY PARADE IN MOSCOW BY THE RUSSIANS

ART HIDDEN BY THE NAZIS

TREASURES HIDDEN BY THE NAZIS

It is no idle statement that when the Third Reich began to crumble in 1945, many German fanatics went about their task as advised by Hitler in December of 1944: the hiding of vast Nazi riches for future use by Fourth Reich posterity. The statement that the bulk of this huge treasure hoard came from concentration camp inmates seems to be a safe bet...that billions of dollars worth of jewelry, gold, and money was taken from the hapless Nazi victims is a gruesome, but true, fact of history.
Read More

AXIS POWERS CASUALTIES

ALLIED CASUALTIES

THE NUREMBERG TRIALS

Video: Nuremberg Trials

The trial of Hermann Goering

Goering was captured shortly after the end of the war with large quantities of his looted artworks. He thought he could negotiate with the Allies as Germany's most senior politician, but he found himself under arrest, stripped of everything, and held in an improvised prison camp before his transfer to Nuremberg to stand trial.

He was a big personality in every sense. The guards nicknamed him 'Fat Stuff' and bantered with him. He was charming, aloof and confident, and from the start was determined to dominate the other prisoners and make them follow his line of defence.

Goering insisted that everything that they had done was the result of their German patriotism. To defy the court was to protect Germany's reputation and to maintain their loyalty to their dead leader.

From the start Goering was determined to dominate the other prisoners and make them follow his line of defence.

With the start of the trial, Goering assumed at once the informal role as leader and spokesman for the whole cohort of prisoners. He was given the most prominent position in the dock.

When it came to his cross-examination he prepared carefully and in the opening exchanges with the American chief prosecutor Robert Jackson he emerged an easy winner.

So frustrated did Jackson become with Goering's clever, mocking but evasive responses that at the end of the session he threw down the headphones he had been wearing to hear the translated answers and refused to continue.

'If you all handle yourselves half as well as I did,' Goering boasted to the other prisoners, 'you will do all right.' Only after his cross-examination by the more experienced British barrister, Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe, was Goering at last cut down to size.

For the prosecution teams, Goering's domineering role among the prisoner body posed a problem. In mid-February 1946, on the recommendation of the psychologist who monitored prisoner behaviour, Goering was forced to exercise and take his meals on his own.

His isolation allowed the other prisoners to talk freely to each other and in the courtroom. The united front that Goering wanted soon collapsed.

During the long summer months, when he had to listen to the catalogue of crimes and atrocities laid at the door of the system he had served, he became less confident. But he maintained his loyalty to Hitler until the very end, when he finally confessed to the prison psychologist his realisation that in the eyes of the German people Hitler had 'condemned himself'.

Goering was found guilty on all the charges laid against him and condemned to death. He regarded the whole trial as simply a case of victors' justice and had not expected to escape with his life. At the very end he cheated his captors. On 14 October 1946, the night before he was to be executed, he committed suicide with a phial of cyanide either hidden in his cell or smuggled in by a sympathetic guard.

BBC

German brutality: NAZI medical experiments at Auschwitz

The book Nazi Medicine: Doctors, Victims and Medicine in Auschwitz by Howard Fertig explores the role of medicine and those affected by it in the Auschwitz concentration camp. The book is divided up into three parts: the experiments, the doctor’s stories, and the camps after the end of the war.

A quick biography on Dr. Helmuth Vetter tells that he was born on February 21, 1910 in Rastenburg, Turingen. He was camp physician in Auschwitz and was also an agent of the “Bayer” firm from the Hochst-Leverkusen laboratories. While in Auschwitz he conducted experiments in block 20 [the contagious diseases ward] from 1942 - 1944. More specifically he conducted research on Preparation 3582, Ruthenol and Periston for experimental purposes regarding typhus, typhoid fever, paratyphoid diseases, diarrhea, tuberculosis of the lungs, erysipelas, and scarlet fever.

Advertisement

****************************************

This six-part BBC documentary series, aired Stateside on PBS stations, delves into the terrifying history of Auschwitz, the largest of the concentration camps created by the Nazis during World War II for implementation of the "Final Solution" -- the extermination of millions of Jews -- from 1940-45. Using archival footage, dramatic reenactments, and computer-generated imagery, the series recounts the ominous beginnings of Hitler's rise to power, the formation of his Third Reich, and the overwhelming hatred for specific groups of people that led to the eventual murder of over 6 million Jews during the Holocaust, as well as Gypsies, homosexuals, political prisoners, and the handicapped. Writer-producer Laurence Rees and his team interviewed more than 100 survivors and eyewitnesses, including former Nazi perpetrators who speak on record for the first time. Narrated by actress Linda Hunt, this exhaustive examination of Auschwitz also includes a series of six follow-up discussions with scholars and historians hosted by journalist Linda Ellerbee, and an interview with Rees.

**********************************

Dramatic Second World War: NAZI ATLANTIC WALL

From spring 1942 to 1944, Nazi Germany built fortifications along 3,000 miles of French and Belgian coastline. Called the Atlantikwall (Atlantic Wall), the defense system was designed by engineer Fritz Todt. Under the direction of Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, the wall was intended to protect Europe against seaborne Allied invasions. Defenses included 14,000 concrete bunkers armed with mortars, machine guns, and larger gun emplacements, such as this Fernkampfbatterie (distant battle battery). The beach and waters below were protected by antitank obstacles, steel "Belgian Gates" intended to damage landing craft, and six million mines.

Advertisement


THE ATLANTIC WALL (militaryhistoryonline)
The "Atlantic Wall" really began in Spring of 1942 and involved the construction of minefields, concrete walls, concrete bunkers, barbed wire fences, and fortified artillery emplacements. In command of the more than 3,000 miles of coastline was Field Marshal Karl Gerd von Rundstedt - who, now at the age of 69, held mostly a figurehead position. At this earlier point in the war, the "Atlantic Wall" was woefully inadequate.

In 1943, Hitler appointed Field Marshal Erwin Rommel to command Army Group B and with it, the responsibility for the defense of Normandy. Rommel inspected the beach defenses and found them altogether inadequate. He immediately set to building improvements, laying minefields on the beaches and beach approaches and in the English Channel. Fortifications were strengthened, fields of fire were improved, and obstacles of all sorts were placed in the water at approaches to possible landing sites. In addition, flood plains were flooded and fields were positioned with poles to prevent their possible use as landing areas.

Rommel realized that the defenses he was in charge of constructing were not going to stop an invasion. The best he could hope for was that the defenses could delay the invasion and cause significant confusion among the invaders. He understood that the invasion force mustn't be allowed to establish a foothold, because if it did, it could bring in near limitless resources. Rommel believed that it was absolutely critical that any invasion must be met quickly by his troops and especially Armored units. His belief was that they must defeat the Allies on the beaches, before a foothold could be established.

German Armies in occupied France during WWII. In 1944, the German war machine was still very powerful despite But, Field Marshal Rundstedt remained above Rommel as Supreme Commander West in command of all of occupied France. This would later become a problem because even though Rommel commanded Army Group B, he needed permission to move units between his different Armies within the Army Group. This actually meant that Rundstedt would then need to send the request to Hitler.

In addition, Rundstedt's philosophy on the countering an invasion was to hold back the six panzer divisions in reserve in Northern France and deploy them in a crushing blow after the it was determined where the real invasion was taking place.
ATLANTIC WALL VIDEOS

PART 1


PART 2


PART 3


PART 4


PART 5

An Australian soldier being executed by the Japanese in Second World War

Naval civil service officer Chikao Yasuno prepares to decapitate Sergeant Leonard George Siffleet, an Australian Army radioman caught operating behind Japanese lines in New Guinea. Siffleet and two comrades were beheaded on October 24, 1943, at Aitape after natives betrayed them to the Japanese. American troops found this film on the body of a dead Japanese man during the invasion of Hollandia in 1944. The photo received wide publicity, reinforcing the perception that the Japanese were savages who gave no mercy and deserved none. Chikao was sentenced to hang after the war, but his sentence was later commuted to 10 years in prison.

Advertisement

Brutal Second World War: NAZI BESTIALITY: Auschwitz (Oswiecim)

A REPORTER'S ACCOUNT WHEN HE WENT TO A DEATH CAMP (eyewitnesstohistory)

"It looked singularly harmless."

The Maidanek camp was established by the Nazis in 1941 soon after their conquest of the then Russian occupied region of Poland. The primary purpose of the facility was the speedy extermination of new arrivals (mostly Jews) transported in from various countries including Czechoslovakia, France, Austria, and Holland. The majority of victims, however, came from the immediate area. It is estimated that 1.5 million died at the camp during its three years of operation.

Advertisement
Soviet troops entered the camp in July 1944. A week later, Alexander Werth joined a group of fellow reporters in a guided tour of the facility:

"My first reaction to Maidanek was a feeling of surprise. I had imagined something horrible and sinister beyond words. It was nothing like that. It looked singularly harmless from outside. 'Is that it?' was my first reaction when we stopped at what looked like a large workers' settlement. Behind us was the many towered skyline of Lublin. There was much dust on the road, and the grass as dull, greenish-grey colour. The camp was separated from the road by a couple of barbed-wire fences, but these did not look particularly sinister, and might have been put up outside any military or semi-military establishment. The place was large; like a whole town of barracks painted a pleasant soft green. There were many people around - soldiers and civilians. A Polish sentry opened the barbed-wire gate to let cars enter the central avenue, with large green barracks on either side. And we stopped outside a large barrack marked Bad und Desinfektion II. 'This,' somebody said, 'is where large numbers of those arriving at the camp were brought in.'

The inside of this barrack was made of concrete, and water taps came out of the wall, and around the room there were benches where the clothes were put down and afterwards collected. So this was the place into which they were driven. Or perhaps they were politely invited to 'Step this way, please?' Did any of them suspect, while washing themselves after a long journey, what would happen a few minutes later? Anyway, after the washing was over, they were asked to go into the next room; at this point even the most unsuspecting must have begun to wonder. For the "next room" was a series of large square concrete structures, each about one-quarter of the size the bath-house, and, unlike it, had no windows. The naked people (men one time, women another time, children the next) were driven or forced from the bath-house into these dark concrete boxes - about five yards square - and then, with 200 or 250 people packed into each box - and it was completely dark there, except for a small light in the ceiling and the spyhole in the door - the process of gassing began. First some hot air was pumped in from the ceiling and then the pretty pale-blue crystals of Cyclon were showered down on the people, and in the hot wet air they rapidly evaporated. In anything from two to ten minutes everybody was dead. . .

May 5, 1945
There were six concrete boxes - gas-chambers - side by side. 'Nearly two thousand people could be disposed of here simultaneously,' one of the guides said.

But what thoughts passed through these people's minds during those first few minutes while the crystals were falling; could anyone still believe that this humiliating process of being packed into a box and standing there naked, rubbing backs with other naked people, had anything to do with disinfection?

At first it was all very hard to take in, without an effort of the imagination. There were a number of very dull-looking concrete structures which, if their doors had been wider, might anywhere else have been mistaken for a row of nice little garages. But the doors - the doors! They were heavy steel doors, and each had a heavy steel bolt. And in the middle of the door was a spyhole, a circle, three inches in diameter composed of about a hundred small holes. Could the people in their death agony see the SS man's eye as he watched them? Anyway, the SS-man had nothing to fear: his eye was well protected by the steel netting over the spyhole...

...Then a touch of blue on the floor caught my eye. It was very faint, but still legible. In blue chalk someone had scribbled the word "vergast" and had drawn crudely above it a skull and crossbones. I had never seen this word before but it obviously meant" gassed" - and not merely "gassed" but: with, that eloquent little prefix ver, 'gassed out'. That's this job finished, and now for the next lot. The blue chalk came into motion when there was nothing but a heap of naked corpses inside. But what cries, what curses, what prayers perhaps, had been uttered inside that gas chamber only a few minutes before?..."

References:
Gutman, Israel (ed.), Encyclopedia of the Holocaust (1990); Werth, Alexander, Russia at War 1941-1945 (1964).

*******************************

Jews In Nazi Germany

SS Women Forced To Bury The Dead in Belsen by British soldiers

German Troops cut off a Jewish Mans Beard

Brutal Second World War: NAZI BESTIALITY: Buchenwald concentration camp

The "Walzkommando" in Ravensbrück: the punished women had to pull this roller until they died...

Found in the pathology block of Buchenwald: tattooed and tanned skin, two shrunken heads of russian POWs, a lampshade made of human skin...

A "souvenir" made by the SS: the shrunken head of a Russian POW...

Thousands of inmates, especially Soviet POWs, were murdered in the infirmary by lethal injections, whereas others were the victim of medical experiments, especially many who were contaminated by the typhus bacillus.

Advertisement

1945: THE WAR ENDS: German people confront the horrific reality

SS officer Eichelsdoerfer, the commandant of the Kaufering IV concentration camp, stands among the corpses of prisoners killed in his camp.

A German girl is overcome as she walks past the exhumed bodies of some of the 800 slave workers murdered by the SS guards near Namering, Germany, and laid here so that townspeople may view the work of their Nazi leaders.

DEATH TRAIN: American soldiers of the U.S. 7th Army force boys, believed to be Hitler youth, to examine boxcars containing bodies of prisoners starved to death by the SS.

German civilians under U.S. military escort are forced to see a wagon loaded with corpses in Buchenwald.

Under orders from the U.S. Army, Austrian civilians dig mass graves for corpses found in Gusen.

On orders from the U.S. Army, Austrian citizens remove corpses from the "Russian camp" section of Mauthausen for burial in a mass grave.

German civilians from the town of Nordhausen bury the corpses of prisoners found in the Nordhausen concentration camp in mass graves.

Advertisement

NAZI BRUTALITY: Dachau concentration camp

In 1933-34, this was the view of the moat and barbwire secured concentration camp in Dachau, Germany, in Upper Bavaria. The buildings are the barracks where the inmates slept.

Inmates in Dachau line up. This photograph was on the cover of the Munchen Illustierte Press edition on July 16, 1933.

The barbed-wire fence and a moat in Dachau.

Prisoners with their mess kits on their way to the camp kitchen. Three times a day the prisoners walked with their mess-tin outside the inner camp to the kitchen for their meals.

A prisoner who has been subjected to low pressure experimentation. For the benefit of the Luftwaffe, air pressure was created comparable to that found at 15,000 meters in altitude, in an effort to determine how high German pilots could fly and survive.

A prisoner in a special chamber responds to changing air pressure during high-altitude experiments. For the benefit of the Luftwaffe, conditions simulating those found at 15,000 meters in altitude were created in an effort to determine if German pilots might survive at that height.

A column of prisoners on a forced march from Dachau concentration camp passing through villages in the direction of Wolfratshausen, late April 1945. German civilians secretly photographed several death marches from Dachau as the prisoners slowly moved through the Bavarian towns of Grünwald, Wolfratshausen, and Herbertshausen.

Prisoners on a death march from Dachau pass through a village in April 1945.

The death train in Dachau, April 30, 1945.

Advertisement