Germany
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The Great War, Cause and Effect
On this, the 102nd anniversary of the outbreak of the Great War, I thought I would offer a quick synopsis of the political climate and so forth that led to the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife the Duchess Sophia, and the ensuing declaration of war. I also wanted to add a few details as to the aftermath, when the guns finally fell silent over four years later. Following a series of deaths in his family, including his son Crown Prince Rudolf in 1889 in a double murder/suicide, and the execution of his brother Maximillian in Mexico after his failed attempts at establishing a monarchy with Napoleon…
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The White Rose Movement
Like the Edelweiss Pirates, not all of the youth of Germany was on board with the Nazi agenda. Several students at the University of Munich were appalled by the stories that they were hearing and were determined to do something about it. (Please see this post for more on the Edelweiss Pirates: http://www.historynaked.com/edelweiss-pirates-kids-alright/) In June 1942, a group of students at the University of Munich founded the “White Rose” movement. The name came from a Spanish novel “Rosa Blanca”. One member, Hans Scholl, had been a soldier on the eastern front and saw first hand the mistreatment of Jews as well as other Poles, and the forced internment in concentration…
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The Edelweiss Pirates- The Kids are Alright
When the Nazi’s came to power, one of the things they did was begin to indoctrinate the youth. In 1936, children of both sexes under the age of fourteen were required to be in the Hitler Youth movement. The Hitler Youth emphasized Nazi ideals and clean living through sports, hiking and approved artistic pursuits. Then military service would follow at fourteen. As the war geared up, recruitment and military activities increased. Sports and nature walks were replaced with marching, drilling on the proper use of bayonets, grenades, and pistols, and maneuvering through dugouts, trenches and barbed wire. Members were also taught and encouraged to steal, vandalize, fight and bully. Any…
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D-Day Landings
In 1943, Allied commanders began planning for a full-frontal attack on German coastal defenses of the Normandy region of France. Operation Bodyguard, a highly strategic and minutely planned deceptive prequel to the invasion was put into action to fool deceive the Germans who were aware an invasion was planned. This deception was broken down into several small staged plans of attacks, all bogus, designed to feed information to broadcasts fed to German airwaves. As a result of incorrect prediction of bad weather by their meteorological office in Paris, many of the senior commanders of the Nazi force, despite knowing there was a possible invasion planned, took the chance that it…
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Nuremberg’s Secret Vault
Walter W. Horn was exactly the kind of man the Nazis wanted to recruit- good looking, educated, athletic and descended from five generations of Germans. However, Walter Horn wanted no part of them. As a professor of art history at the University of Heidelberg, he watched the rise of the Nazis with horror. As a historian, he was being called upon to declare the superiority of the German race. He hedged. Academics at that time were being forced into a special branch of the SS to dedicate themselves to proving German superiority. Horn was on their list to press gang next. In 1934, he took the chance and attempted to…
