Battle of Britain ace Wallace Cunningham passes away at 94
Wallace Cunningham was among Churchill's famous "few" who took part in the Battle of Britain. During the summer of 1940 he shot down five Luftwaffe aircraft and was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. In 1941 his Spitfire was shot down and he crash landed on Rotterdam beach in the Netherlands, spending three and a half years as a POW.
(bbc.co.uk)
Surviving Hitler's War: Family Life in Germany, 1939-48 by Hester Vaizey
18 million German men left their families from 1939 to serve in the armed forces. 5 million never came back and 11 million were held in POW camps after 1945. Forced to be self-reliant, did German wives enjoy opportunity to claim, then build on, a new sense of empowerment? Hester Vaizey will have none of it. She argues that because conditions were so extremely burdensome for the wives, one way of keeping their strength up was to dream of one day giving up every one of the new responsibilities they had been forced to take on.
(independent.co.uk)
Bill Moule recalls how his entire family ended up - and survived - in WWII Japanese concentration camp
Bill Moule's father replanted his family from Grass Valley to a mining operation in the Philippines in 1940, just as war clouds were building in Asia. When the Japanese invaded the Philippines on Dec. 8, 1941, the family would start an 18-month cat-and-mouse game with the Japanese Imperial Army in the mountains. It lasted until malaria took its toll on their health and they were captured. The family spent the next 18 months under Japanese guard – either behind barbed wire at a compound near the mountain city of Baguio or, later, in a converted Manila prison.
(auburnjournal.com)
Restoration starts on rusting WW2 submarine HMS Alliance in Gosport, UK (video)
The £6.5 million overhaul of HMS Alliance, the only World War II submarine open to the public in Britain, has been launched at the Royal Navy Submarine Museum in Gosport. The rusting icon, which was built in 1945, was given a £3.4 million Heritage Lottery Fund boost amid fears its corroded outer structure might fall into the sea.
(bbc.co.uk)
Military orders survey for explosives at World War II wrecks off Newfoundland, Canada
The military has ordered a detailed survey of two WWII shipwrecks off Newfoundland for fear divers might trigger leftover explosives. The two wrecks are among four sunk by torpedoes fired from Nazi U-boats prowling the waters off Bell Island, N.L., in 1942. The iron-ore transports SS Saganaga and P.L.M. 27 each carried arms to counter such attacks as they travelled to and from the steel mills in Cape Breton. Since the sinkings 69 years ago, divers have flocked to the two well-preserved wreck sites, located in relatively shallow waters. A previous survey in 2005 suggested the ships may still have live ammunition scattered on the decks.
(winnipegfreepress.com)
Sanford H. Winston, wounded in the hand and both knees, grasped an automatic rifle and charged the enemy
Sanford H. "Sandy" Winston, a retired Army lieutenant colonel who was a highly decorated WWII hero and later served as a spokesman for the old Department of Health, Education and Welfare, has passed away at 90. On May 12, 1945, Col. Winston - then 1st Lt. Sanford Weinstein - was ordered to lead two rifle platoons in a frontal assault on a fortified hill on a formation known as Skyline Ridge. Japanese forces opened fire at close range with mortars, rifles and machine guns. Despite being wounded in the hand and both knees, Winston threw aside his carbine and "grasped an automatic rifle from one of the dead and dashed forward through intense hostile fire to close with the enemy. Firing from the hip as he ran, he reached a point 25 yards from the attackers and, standing upright despite the withering enemy fire which tore his helmet from his head and cut his canteen from his belt, killed at least ten of the enemy including the crew of a machine gun which he destroyed with a grenade."
(washingtonpost.com)
Ian Fleming's Commandos: The Story of the Legendary 30 Assault Unit by Nicholas Rankin (book review)
In Ian Fleming's Commandos, author Nicholas Rankin tells the story of a secret intelligence outfit conceived and organized during the Second World War by the James Bond author Ian Fleming. Named 30 Assault Unit, the group was expected to seize Nazi codebooks, cipher machines, and documents in high-stakes operations. They went ashore on D-Day, heading for rocket-sites and radar-stations. They helped liberate Paris and then set out to steal scientific and industrial secrets from the heart of Nazi Germany. Their final amazing coup was to seize the entire archives of the German Navy - three hundred tons of documents. Ian Fleming flew out in person to accompany the loot back to Britain.
(telegraph.co.uk)
Reading glasses Hitler tried to keep secret part of a large cache of Hitler memorabilia going under the hammer
They were made for him as his eyesight began to fail as WWII dragged on. But few photos of Adolf Hitler in his reading glasses exist because he regarded them as a weakness and thought it would undermine his authority. From 1933 onwards Hitler had all his speeches and documents written on a special typewriter with large print. The glasses come in their original black leather case with dark blue velvet embossed with the name of the Ruhnke opticians in Berlin which made them under great secrecy. The spectacles are part of a large cache of Hitler memorabilia to be auctioned off. Most serious collectors have their eyes on a gold watch that was given to Hitler as a gift in 1929 and which was found on his body in the Fuehrerbunker after he committed suicide in 1945.
(dailymail.co.uk)
Demjanjuk case sparks hundreds of new investigations about Nazi guards
Thousands of dormant investigations into former Nazi death camp guards have been reopened because of the conviction of John Demjanjuk. Even the narrowest probe into guards at the four death camps used only for killings - Belzec, Sobibor, Chelmno and Treblinka - could lead to scores more prosecutions. Nazi hunter Efraim Zuroff explained: "We're talking about an estimated 4,000 people, to round it off. Even if only 2% of those people are alive, we're talking 80 people."
(sky.com)
Forest plan reveals WWII-era "starfish" bunker in Dumbarton, Scotland
A project to plant a new forest on moorland near Dumbarton, Scotland, has unexpectedly revealed a WWII-era secret. The Woodland Trust has unearthed a concrete two-room bunker in the centre of the Lang Craigs site that controlled decoy lights. These lights - spread out on the ground simulating the outline of a town or industrial complex - tricked Luftwaffe crews into dropping their bombs away from population and industrial centres. It was part of a successful campaign of subterfuge which, led to many lives being saved in the Blitz.
(bbc.co.uk)
Chinese American WWII veterans reunite to recall serving with Flying Tigers (photos)
Recently, Chinese American World War II veterans of the Flying Tigers reunited for their 68th Anniversary in New York City. Their all-Chinese American units served a special mission: to assist American Flying Tigers pilots and train Chinese Air Force ground crews to defend against Japanese invasion. They flew the "Hump", drove the legendary Burma Road, performed troop transport, repaired planes, and did crash recovery. It's been all but forgotten that 20,000 Chinese Americans served in the Second World War.
(huffingtonpost.com)
A new book shows previously unpublished photos of French women frolicking with Nazis (new source w photos)
Erotic Years, as the coffee-table volume is provocatively entitled, shocks France - a country still struggling to come to terms with its Nazi collaboration. The photographs, many of which were taken by German soldiers and acquired in car-boot sales and flea markets in Germany, show French women making eyes at the enemy as enthusiastically as they welcomed the allies who liberated them. Such images - collected by historian Patrick Buisson - are at odds with the collective French memory of hunger, fear and resistance. Up to 200,000 children were born to Franco-German couples during the Second World War.
(dailymail.co.uk)
German foreign intel agency BND misdirected authorities searching for Nazi fugitive Alois Brunner
Declassified documents reveal that Germany's foreign intelligence agency, the BND, helped Nazi fugitive Alois Brunner avoid capture following WWII by misdirected authorities. The BND shredded more than 500 pages of documents related to Brunner in the 1990s, fueling speculation that he worked for the BND after the war and was being protected by senior German officials. A deputy to Adolf Eichmann, Brunner assisted in carrying out the Final Solution and is held directly responsible for the deaths of at least 130,000 Jews.
(jpost.com)
SAS soldier recalls his epic 110 mile desert trek after Rommel's Afrika Korps captured the rest of his group
Major Willis Michael Sadler's epic journey is part of the series of heroic exploits that have been revealed in the SAS War Diary. One of a handful of surviving original SAS men, Maj Sadler, was navigator for the regiment's raiding columns. In 1943, he was driven to the brink of death when a column led by Stirling set out to link up with the American forces in Tunisia. Driving for hundreds of miles a day and night, the exhausted column got through the Gabès Gap on the Tunisian coast and hid in a narrow wadi. But the men had been seen by Afrika Korps troops, who waited for nightfall then sealed off the wadi entrance with an armoured car and moved in. Somehow, Sadler and another SAS soldier, managed to get away only to face an extreme desert trek to safety.
(telegraph.co.uk)
Captain George Hunt, Britain's deadliest WWII submarine commander, sank 28 enemy vessels
Tributes have been paid to one of the greatest WWII submariners. Captain George Hunt, who sunk more enemy ships than any other Briton in the Second World War, has passed away. Rammed twice, sunk once and bombarded with hundreds of depth charges, the unstoppable captain sunk 28 enemy vessels. In 1942 he took command of the submarine with which he would cement his reputation: the Ultor. He and his crew accounted for a 20 enemy vessels sunk by torpedo and 8 by gunfire, as well as damaging another 4 ships. He was awarded two Distinguished Service Crosses (DSC) and two Distinguished Service Orders (DSO), and was twice mentioned in dispatches. His story is told in a book called "Diving Stations – The Story of Captain George Hunt and the Ultor".
(kirkintilloch-herald.co.uk)
Catholic school parade featuring mostly Nazi uniforms and swastika flags causes outrage in Thailand (photos)
They had been planning their uniforms for quite some time. The annual summer sports day had a long tradition of fancy dress and, eager to impress, the pupils of Sacred Heart Catholic School in Chiang Mai, Thailand, kept their outfits under wraps for weeks. They wanted to surprise their parents and teachers as they made their entrance. With a flourish and a fanfare, they revealed their costumes - to outraged gasps from the crowd. The smiling pupils arrived dressed in full Nazi regalia and carrying large Swastika flags, leaving spectators open-mouthed. Leading the march into the sports ground was a girl dressed as Adolf Hitler, unaware of the offence she had caused. She was followed by a procession of SS guards - wearing plastic machine guns.
313 letters written by General Charles de Gaulle reveal he was "embattled, lonely and often angry"
A treasure trove of letters penned by French wartime leader Charles de Gaulle has been released to the public after 70 years in the dark. The 313 handwritten documents were found in a cupboard by typist Marie-Thérèse Desseignet in Algiers in 1944, after de Gaulle and his entourage had decamped to newly liberated France. The letters cover 2 years of the first half of the war, from December 11, 1940, to December 11, 1942. Gerard Lheritier, owner of the private "Musee des Lettres et des Manuscrits" in Paris, which bought the documents, said that the collection offers a unique look into the mind of an "embattled, lonely and often angry mind."
(france24.com)
Nazi Enigma machine sells for world record price ($208,137)
An Enigma machine has smashed auction estimates and sold for a world record price. The encoding device sparked a three-way bidding war when it went under the hammer at Christie's in London, selling for $208,137. The previous record for an Enigma machine was £67,250, at the same auction house, in November 2010. Vitally important to the Nazi war machine, the Enigma machine was used by the German military to encrypt messages into a form they believed was unbreakable. However, the code was cracked by a team of cryptologists at Bletchley Park in England - a breakthrough which shortened the war by at least two years.
(cnn.com)
Hitler's Hangman: The Life of Heydrich -- The first scholarly biography of Reinhard Heydrich
As the chair of the Wannsee Conference and head of the Reich Main Security Office (RSHA), Reinhard Heydrich was the personification of the cruelest aspects of Nazi Germany. But the first scholarly biography of him finds that a combination of shame, love and luck - rather than purely inherent evil - led him to pursue a path of Nazi terror. German historian Robert Gerwarth explains that at first Heydrich was more apolitical and insecure, and he didn't radicalize until joining the SS. Gerwarth thinks Heydrich became a part of Hitler's Nazi Party and annihilation machine in a bizarre way: through the influence of his fiancée Lina von Osten, an ardent National Socialist.
(spiegel.de)
Two WWII spy girls who worked for the OSS united in retirement
They can still keep their mouths shut, these two women who were among the females working in the spying Office of Strategic Services, The OSS, in World War Two. Ask what they did after the war, and 96-year-old Elizabeth, "Betty" McIntosh and 88-year-old Doris Bohrer will say they worked for the CIA, but that's about it.
"So, I went down to the station and waited around and some Chinese came up and nodded to me and held his hand out and I gave him this piece of coal. It had dynamite in it and the Chinese took it to a place where Japanese troops were going across a large lake, and there were a couple of hundred of them on this boat ... which exploded with all of the soldiers in it in the middle of the lake."
(wusa9.com)
Family dynasty behind BMW admits to using 50,000 slave labourers during Nazi era
The dynasty behind the BMW luxury car marker has finally admitted using slave labour, seizing Jewish firms ('Aryanisation') and doing business with the highest echelons of the Nazi party. Gabriele Quandt, whose grandfather Guenther employed 50,000 forced labourers in his arms factories, producing rifles, artillery and U-boat batteries, said it was 'wrong' for the family to ignore its Nazi past. He spoke out after an in-depth study by historian Joachim Scholtyseck, commissioned by the family, that concluded Guenther Quandt and his son Herbert were responsible for numerous Nazi injustices.
(dailymail.co.uk)
How unexploded World War II bombs are located and defused
A few years ago, construction for the 2012 Summer Olympics in London unearthed a gift from the Nazis: a 2,000-pound unexploded bomb. Such finds are common since London was pummeled with 19,000 tons of bombs during WWII. UK construction projects often begin with a call to an outfit like Zetica, a leader in locating subterranean munitions. Each year, Zetica finds more than 8,000 shells, bombs, and mortars in the UK alone. Here's how.
(wired.com)
