Wehrmacht infantrymen march through a Belgian town to occupy territory overrun by armored divisions.

Reinhard Heydrich

German Intelligence Chief Wilhelm Franz Canaris

by David Alan Johnson

In most popular spy thrillers, secret agents are tall, handsome, virile, and irresistible to women. Whether their name is Dirk Pitt, Jack Ryan, or James Bond, all are hard-drinking, well-tailored ladies’ men. Read more

War artist Gary Sheenhan captured the prisoners’ misery, fear, and deprivation at Buchenwald in 1945. The revolts in Sobibor and Treblinka were the last chance for the inmates to survive as the Nazis began to cover up their heinous deeds.

Reinhard Heydrich

Revolts in the Death Camps

By Jonathan F. Keiler

By the spring of 1943, the Nazi deaths camps in eastern Poland—Sobibor, Belzac, and Treblinka—were running out of victims. Read more

Reinhard Heydrich

Death of Himmler’s Henchman

By Richard Rule

In a desperate bid to avoid another war in Europe, both Britain and France signed the notorious Munich Agreement in 1938, which annexed the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia to the Nazis. Read more

Reinhard Heydrich

Commando Kidnapping: Capturing General Kreipe on Crete

By John W. Osborn Jr.

Several Allied operations targeted a single enemy commander: the unsuccessful raid on General Erwin Rommel’s headquarters in North Africa to kill the Desert Fox; the assassination of the Butcher of Prague, SS Reichsprotektor of Bohemia and Moravia Reinhard Heydrich; and the shooting down of Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto’s plane in the sky above Rabaul in 1943. Read more

Hungarian Jews arrive at Auschwitz in May 1944. Healthy young people were sent to work in the factory, while the aged, sick, and children went to their deaths in the gas chambers.

Reinhard Heydrich

The Wannsee Conference & Hitler’s ‘Final Solution’

By Blaine Taylor

It is, perhaps, not as well known as other prewar and wartime gatherings of the World War II era, but the quietly held meeting of top Nazi bureaucrats at a secluded villa on Lake Wannsee in the Berlin suburbs on January 20, 1942, was just as much a landmark event as others with higher profiles. Read more

Reinhard Heydrich

The Abwehr’s Man in Havana

By Peter Kross

In espionage fiction, there are three types of spies. The first is the suave, dapper James Bond, 007, license to kill, a hit with the ladies. Read more

Reinhard Heydrich

The Battle of France: Furor Teutonicus & Gallic Débâcle

By Blaine Taylor

The year 1939 was one of massive military parades across Europe. On April 20, the largest ever was held in Berlin to celebrate Adolf Hitler’s birthday, complete with the paratroopers, wheeled artillery, tanks, half-tracks for motorized infantry, and overhead Luftwaffe fly-bys that would mark the coming campaigns and revolutionize warfare forever. Read more

With her 16mm movie camera, Eva Braun captured Adolf Hitler and high-ranking Nazis during moments of leisure on the Obersalzberg in Bavaria.

Reinhard Heydrich

Eva Braun’s Home Movies

by Michael Haskew

In 1936, Adolf Hitler gave his mistress Eva Braun a 16mm movie camera. Fascinated with the gift and already an accomplished photographer, Eva filmed hours of footage during the next five years. Read more