Gestapo

The Hidden Freedom Trail

A few moments after his stricken Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress bomber tore apart, co-pilot Ralph Patton hurriedly put his bail-out plan into action. Read more

Gestapo

Cold War Spies: General Reinhard Gehlen

By 1944, many top generals in Adolf Hitler’s army understood the war was lost and that they had better make arrangements to ensure their safety. Read more

Gestapo

German Intelligence Chief Wilhelm Franz Canaris

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

Gestapo

Death of Himmler’s Henchman

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

Gestapo

Prisoner of the Gestapo: Freed by Words

With war comes untold stories of unbroken spirits. These are universal stories without bounds and sides, some of which remain buried deep in psyches. Read more

Gestapo

The Scholarly Spies

Early in June 1940, refugees from northern France and the low Countries who had flooded Paris in May fled with the residents of the city as the German advance neared. Read more

Gestapo

WWII Diary of a Boy Soldier: A Story of Youth and Resistance

Julian Kulski was only ten years old when he was introduced to war. As he hunted for mushrooms near Warsaw, Poland, he was struck by the unmistakable buzz of the German blitzkrieg:

“… we heard the sound of engines. Read more

Gestapo

Rampage on the Riviera: Operation Dragoon

Early in 1944, German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, the defeated hero of North Africa and now head of Army Group B in France, was tasked with strengthening the Atlantic Wall defenses against Allied invasion. Read more

Gestapo

The Bombing of Berlin by Doolittle’s Eighth Air Force

He was widely regarded as America’s best pilot, he was already a recipient of the Medal of Honor, he was commander of the Eighth Air Force caught up in 1,000-plane bombing missions deep into the Third Reich, and he was mad as hell. Read more

Gestapo

Heroic Stand at Hosingen

First Lieutenant Tom Flynn and his fellow POWs remained locked inside their boxcar prison on a Frankfurt railroad siding on Christmas Eve, 1944, as air raid sirens wailed and bombs exploded throughout the city. Read more

Gestapo

Leslie Howard: The Actor’s Mysterious Fate on BOAC Flight 777

By June 1, 1943, British actor Leslie Howard, 50, was one of the most famous actors in the world, one of the leading male stars of one the greatest box-office draw movies of all time, the 1939 blockbuster Gone with the Wind. Read more

Gestapo

Warsaw Uprising: The Story of Bogdan Mieczkowski

“This mission is suicidal,” thought Bogdan Mieczkowski. In the autumn of 1944, the 19-year-old Polish resistance fighter battled in the Warsaw Uprising. Read more

Gestapo

Colonel Bernt Balchen’s Secret Air Force

The Bug was in deep trouble. On a top-secret flight over occupied Norway, this ancient, war-weary C-47 Skytrain transport aircraft became the helpless target of German antiaircraft guns, all firing desperately to bring down the transport and its precious cargo. Read more

Gestapo

The Greco-Italian War: One of Benito Mussolini’s Biggest Failures

Twenty-four hours earlier, Grazzi had hosted a gala reception for Metaxas and Greece’s figurehead king, George II, at the Italian consulate following a performance of Giacomo Puccini’s opera, Madame Butterfly. Read more

Gestapo

German Military’s Emissary for Peace

Many accounts have been written about the peace mission flight of Deputy Führer Rudolf Hess and his parachute landing in a farm field in Scotland in May 1941 to discuss with the Duke of Hamilton a proposal to end hostilities. Read more

Gestapo

Operation Jericho: Mosquito Raid on Amiens Prison

Many of the prisoners knew this night was probably their last on earth. Amiens Prison had seen a great many judicial murders and much Gestapo torture and brutality, so except for those about to die, executions were routine. Read more

Gestapo

“Do You Recognize My Voice?”: The Question That Ended Operation Valkyrie

At 12:40 PM on a hot, sultry July 20, 1944, German Führer and Reich Chancellor Adolf Hitler, 55, was seated on a wicker stool in a conference hut at his principal Eastern Front headquarters at Wolf’s Lair, Rastenburg, East Prussia, for the mid-day wartime map meeting. Read more

Gestapo

The Nuremberg Tribunal: Otto Ohlendorf and the Einsatzgruppen Face Judgment

To plead Superior Orders one must show an inexcusable ignorance of their illegality. The sailor who voluntarily ships on a pirate craft may not be heard to answer that he was ignorant of the probability that he would be called upon to help in the robbing and sinking of other vessels … a man who sails under the flag of skull and crossbones cannot say that he never expected to fire a cannon against a merchantman,” wrote Judge John L. Read more

Gestapo

The S.S. Bremen: Last Voyage of a Luxury Liner

After docking in New York on August 28, 1939, only four days before the outbreak of World War II, Captain Adolf Ahrens of Germany’s North German Lloyd shipping line was faced with a decision. Read more

Gestapo

Martyr Village: Massacre at Oradour-sur-Glane

Upon visiting Oradour-sur-Glane, one finds a quiet, rural French village where the populace carries on about its business much like in any commune in France. Read more