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History tours: Third Reich, WW2WW2 category: Nazi Leaders, Axis high ranks :: Latest WWII news reviews.
See also 'Hermann Goering', 'Heinrich Himmler', 'Famous Descendants', 'Assassination of Heydrich', 'Martin Bormann', 'SS Daggers', 'Watches Hitler gave to nazi leaders'.
Dentist of the Devil by Menevse Deprem-Hennen -- Johannes Blaschke treated Nazi leaders dailymail.co.uk :: 2009-12-11
Adolf Hitler portrayed himself as a fearless ruler who was afraid of no-one. But behind closed doors, the Nazi leader was scared of going to the dentist. His personal dentist Johannes Blaschke - a Major General in the Waffen SS - revealed how Hitler once insisted simple root-canal work was spread over 8 days because he "couldn't stand the pain." The book, "Dentist of the Devil" by Menevse Deprem-Hennen, she chronicles the work of Blaschke, who was in charge of the Fuehrer's teeth for almost 20 years. Deprem-Hennen gained access to Blaschke's unseen medical files on Hitler and other Nazi leaders who were his patients in the 1930s and 1940s.
Adolf Hitler's favourite thug: Sturmabteilung (SA) commander Ernst Roehm express.co.uk :: 2009-07-04
The SS men in black uniforms walked into the cell, placing a pistol and a single bullet on the table: "You've got 10 minutes," said one. The man in the cell, Ernst Roehm, had lived by violence all his life: He had killed in WWI trenches, on the streets of Germany, and taught killing to his men. But what troubled him was the fact that his end had been ordered by his friend Adolf Hitler - Roehm was one of the few people who addressed Hitler as "Adolf". When the time was up Theodor Eicke and SS captain Michael Lippert returned. Roehm refused to commit suicide, so the SS officers shot him. The days of Ernst Roehm's SA were over: Heinrich Himmler's SS took over.
Reichsleiter Dr. Robert Ley - thread at Axis History Forum forum.axishistory.com :: 2009-03-13
This Axis History Forum -thread features dozens of pictures of Reichsleiter Dr. Robert Ley - head of the German Labour Front 1933-1945.
Photos of children of Nazi leaders - thread at AxisHistory forum forum.axishistory.com :: 2008-08-04 :: Famous Nazi Descendants: Reich ancestry
Photographs of the children of the Nazi leaders, including Gudrun Himmler, Edda Goering, children of Martin Bormann, children of Magda and Joseph Goebbels and Rudolf v. Ribbentrop.
The Quandt family trying to explore the Nazi past dw-world.de :: 2008-08-02 :: Nazi Leaders, Axis high ranks
In addition to being one of the most important German arms producers during World War II, the Quandt family also had a private link to the Nazis: Guenther Quandt's first wife Magda Ritschel married Joseph Goebbels. After tv documentary "The Silence of the Quandt Family" recounted the use of Nazi prisoners helped the Quandt family make its fortune, Stefan Quandt explained: "The allegation that the family's assets can be traced back to the time of the Third Reich defrauds 50 years of ... success ... before the year 1933." The family hired historian Joachim Scholtyseck to research the family history - findings may lead the Quandts to face the skeletons in the family closet.
Tale of Heinrich Hoffmann, Hitler's favourite photographer, can finally be told scotsman :: 2008-03-27
The recollections of Adolf Hitler's favourite photographer Heinrich Hoffmann have been published in book "The Hitler Picture". He made a small fortune from photographing the Führer, but his saving were seized by the Allies and he died in poverty in 1957. Before his death, he gave a series of interviews to Joe Heydecker, who died 10 years ago with instructions that the conversations were not to be published until now. Hoffmann, more than any other, helped creating the myth of the "Führer Superman". Hoffmann recounts how he first met Hitler in 1929 and was one of few who knew of his relationship with Eva Braun.
The Reichstag fire conviction of Marinus van der Lubbe overturned dailymail.co.uk :: 2008-01-11 :: Reichstag: Fire of 1933 and History
Prosecutors have annulled the conviction of Dutch communist Marinus van der Lubbe, accused of burning down the Reichstag building in 1933. He was convicted of arson and high treason and executed on Jan. 10, 1934. It said that the conviction was overturned automatically under a 1998 law enabling the rehabilitation of people convicted of crimes under the Nazis. Historians still argue whether van der Lubbe set the Feb. 27, 1933, fire, which came just a month after Adolf Hitler's rise to power and was followed by the suspension of civil liberties. Some think the Nazis set it themselves to give Hitler an excuse for his crackdown against a "communist conspiracy."
Hitler's Fixer - Martin Bormann documentary smh :: 2007-12-05 :: Martin Bormann
As Adolf Hitler's deputy and friend, Martin Bormann was one of the most powerful men in the Third Reich, controlling access to the Fuhrer and managing his life. Hitler singled Martin Bormann out as "my most faithful party comrade" and selected him the next leader of the Nazi Party. He was found guilty of war crimes by the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg in 1946 and condemned to death in absentia. Did Martin Bormann find safety in Paraguay or was one of two skeletons excavated in Berlin in 1972 that of this man of mystery?
Prince Charles Edwards: The Nazi relative that british Royals renounced dailymail :: 2007-12-02
At a P-o-W camp in Germany, after the death of Adolf Hitler and the fall of the Third Reich, a 60-year-old man, crippled by arthritis, walked unsteadily round a rubbish dump and found an old tin can. Starving, he pulled up grass to add to the thin soup his American captors allowed him for living. No one looking at him would have believed that this hopeless figure had once been one of the richest and highest-ranking men in Britain, a royal duke, the grandson of Queen Victoria, a Knight of the Garter, and the first cousin of kings and emperors -- all that before he was ostracised, labeled a 'traitor peer' in Britain.
Top Nazis brought to a secret Camp 165 in Scotland for brainwashing scotsman.com :: 2007-12-02
Newly unveiled documents have revealed that a Caithness POW camp had a secret role as a place where some key figures in Adolf Hitler's Third Reich were questioned and subjected to "de-Nazification". While the existence of Camp 165 at Watten, near Wick, is known, historian Valerie Campbell has come into possession of files which reveal the existence of an inner compound called "Little Belsen". Inmates included Paul Werner Hoppe: the commandant of Stutthof camp, Dr Paul Schroder: the man behind the Nazi's V2 project, Hitler's adjutant and SS commander Max Wunsche, Nazi propagandist Gunter d'Alquen, and U-boat captain Otto Kretschmer.
Rechnitz massacre: Debate over a party by a "Thyssen countess" signandsight :: 2007-10-30 :: Nazi Leaders, Axis high ranks
Historian Stefan Klemp investigates the role of the postwar criminal justice system system in aiding the perpetrators of the Rechnitz massacre. The murder of 200 persons in the night of March 24-25, 1945, in the Austrian village of Rechnitz is the subject of a debate, focussing on the question whether the murder occurred at a party thrown by a "Thyssen countess" (heiress of a German industrialist family). In 1998 historian Eva Holpfer published her findings on the "Rechnitz Massacre": The mass murder did take place that night, and was carried out by guests at a party at Schloss Rechnitz. More interesting is the question: what happened to the murderers.
Reconsidering Mussolini - Fascist past: movies and memorabilia msnbc :: 2007-04-28
A slew of new films and memorabilia are prompting Italians to take a closer look at their Fascist past. Dictator Benito Mussolini lived in the Villa Torlonia 1925-1943. The decision to restore it in the image of a pro-Nazi Fascist reflects a growing fascination with Il Duce. Visitors are snapping up uniforms and flags with Fascist insignias from the Villa Mussolini Museum. Souvenir stores are opening offering DVDs of his most famous speeches. In Predappio, where 400 volunteers have long taken turns standing as honor guards at his tomb, the number of black-shirted Fascist sympathizers who turned out to celebrate the March on Rome rose to 6,000.
Germany: full state honour burial for former Nazi Filbinger indymedia :: 2007-04-17
The black forest city of Freiburg held a burial with full state honors for the former Nazi navy judge Hans Filbinger. A no-protest zone was declared around the cathedral. Filbinger was responsible for revising cases of WW2 German Navy deserters, demanding the death penalty for sailors instead of 8 years of jail and disohonorable discharge. Executions ordered by Filbinger continued right up until the last days of the war, demonstrating his fascist fanaticism. Filbinger was the only german nazi-judge who brought death penalty upon a german navy deserteur in a British camp for german POW - with the support of the British Forces, in the last days of WW2.
American fascist movement leader Lawrence Dennis was black guardian :: 2007-04-05
Lawrence Dennis was a leading light in the American fascist movement of the 1930s. He was a fan of Adolf Hitler and a self-avowed anti-semite. Now a book "The Colour of Fascism" by Gerald Horne reveals that he was black - although even his wife didn't know. Lawrence Dennis was the brains behind American fascism. He attended the Nuremberg rallies, had an audience with Mussolini, and met Nazi leaders; throughout the 1930s he provided the intellectual ballast for America's pro-fascist movement. But though his work was well known by the elite on both sides of the Atlantic, there was one fact about him that has never emerged until now: he was black.
Letter proves Albert Speer knew of extermination plans guardian :: 2007-03-13
A letter by Adolf Hitler's architect and armaments minister Albert Speer offers proof that he knew about the extermination plans, despite his claims to the contrary in his book Inside the Third Reich. Writing in 1971 to Hélène Jeanty, the widow of a Belgian resistance leader, Speer admitted that he had been at a conference where Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS and Gestapo, had unveiled extermination plans in what is known as the Posen speech. Speer's insistence that he had left before the end of the meeting, and had therefore known nothing, probably spared him from execution after the Nuremberg trials.
Dictators’ Downfall - Hearts of Darkness: Adolf Hilter, Mussolini vision :: 2007-02-21
"Hearts of Darkness Part 7a" focused on the rise of two of the most notorious figures in the 20th century. While Adolf Hitler’s and Benito Mussolini’s regimes differed in the speed with which each achieved total power, the two leaders had exuded similar messianic pretensions. Once in control, they accepted the divinity their adoring publics granted them. What had taken Benito Mussolini 3 years took Adolf Hitler a mere 3 months. The Führer’s regime seemed to arrive fully developed early in 1933. Historian Fritz Stern: "In 90 days, a one-party state had been established." The Duce had only gradually achieved his totalitarian state.
Private diaries show fascist dictator Mussolini opposed going to war reuters :: 2007-02-12 :: Benito Mussolini
Five volumes of private diaries kept by Benito Mussolini in the run up to World War II show the fascist dictator was against going to war. "They were kept in a house by someone who has recently died. He was a partisan who arrested Mussolini and took possession of some of the things the Duce was carrying." The diaries contain daily entries by Mussolini 1935-1939 in the run-up to the war which Mussolini joined on the side of Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany. "We cannot and we must not take up arms, which in any case we don't have," Mussolini is quoted as writing. Several historians doubts over the authenticity of the diaries.
Royal relic fights for future of Romania - King Michael I scotsman.com :: 2007-02-04 :: Nazi Leaders, Axis high ranks
King Michael I, the last living head of state from World War II, is locked in a battle to restore the power of history's forgotten monarchy. He has already won permission to return from exile but he still has an uphill struggle to achieve the full restoration of royal property. Michael lunched with Adolf Hitler, shook Winston Churchill's hand and lived briefly under Stalin's thumb. He is a quiet, an undemanding and, inevitably, a disappointed man. "Unfortunately, I had 4 years with the Nazis and 3 years with the Soviets, and you get to the point - how should I say - you have radar in your nose."
Royals and the Reich - Adolf Hitler's Blue-Blooded Servants bloomberg :: 2007-01-26
"Royals and the Reich: The Princes von Hessen in Nazi Germany" by Jonathan Petropoulos lays to rest the myth of anti-Nazi resistance in high places. His book focuses on two blue-blooded servants of the Nazi regime: Princes Philipp and Christoph von Hessen. Christoph was a senior SS man, whose role in intelligence involved him in the Night of the Long Knives in 1934. He later received the Iron Cross. It was only in 1944, when the fascist adventure looked doomed, that upper-class began to distance themselves from Nazis. After WW2, Philipp became part of a circle that gathered around the Duke and Duchess of Windsor and British fascist leader Oswald Mosley.
Royals and the Reich: The Princes von Hessen in Nazi Germany bloomberg :: 2007-01-09
The prince often dined with Hermann Goering. Adolf Hitler brightened at his sight. Extending his charm into the southern realms of Mussolini was wife Mafalda, daughter of the Italian king Vittorio Emmanuele III. Then their friends turned on them. In 1943, Philipp of Hessen was imprisoned in Flossenbuerg; Mafalda died in Buchenwald. Philipp's brother Christoph died in a mysterious plane crash. Their stories are told in the book by Jonathan Petropoulos, including a photo of Christoph, looking smart in his SS uniform. Nobles who looked like Aryans might be useful to the Nazi elite. But what did the princes get out of the Nazis?
The fates of dictators sptimes :: 2007-01-03
Nazi leaders: The Military Tribunal at Nuremberg sentenced 12 members of the Nazi inner circle to death in 1946. All were hanged on Oct. 16, except for Hermann Goering, who committed suicide before his execution, and Martin Bormann who was tried and convicted in absentia. 7 Japanese leaders, including PM Hideki Tojo, were executed in Dec 1948 after being found guilty by the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal of numerous atrocities during World War II. Adolf Eichmann: Top Gestapo official who helped orchestrate the mass killing, Eichmann was executed in May 1962 after being convicted by an Israeli court.
Ernst Hanfstaengl worked for both Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Adolf Hitler opinioneditorials :: 2006-09-27
Ernst Hanfstaengl created the "Heil Hitler" chant, he spread America's straight-arm salute in Germany, and he taught the Nazi Party leader to use swastika-style symbolism in signatures. He was the only person known to have worked directly for both Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Adolf Hitler -- Both promoted national socialism, both enlarged government massively. By the time he was in the U.S., the straight-arm salute was used for various purposes, including the National Anthem the Star Spangled Banner, for flags and as a general greeting. About 1921, he travelled back to Germany and heard for the first time a speech by Adolf Hitler.
The Führer's Photographer -- The Eye of the Third Reich spiegel :: 2006-09-15
On his 34th birthday Walter Frentz was accorded a special honor. Adolf Hitler's preferred photographer was allowed to sit next to the Nazi dictator in 1941. Although he never became a member of the Nazi party, Frentz played a unique role in Adolf Hitler's entourage during the Third Reich. For years he was trusted to film Hitler for the weekly newsreels and other Nazi propaganda. Wherever the Führer was, he was too. But most of the photographs he took were never meant for the public. A new biography, The Eye of the Third Reich, shows unpublished shots of Hitler and other top Nazis, like SS leader Heinrich Himmler.
Film portraying "human" Emperor Hirohito to open in Japan chinadaily :: 2006-07-29
A film painting a "human" portrait of Emperor Hirohito, in whose name Japanese soldiers fought in World War II, is set to be shown in Japan for the first time despite fears of right-wing anger. Revered as a god until Japan's defeat in 1945, Hirohito is still such a sensitive topic in ultra-conservative circles that the identity of the actor was kept secret before the movie's release. Hirohito's role in wartime decision-making has never been fully pursued in Japan due to a decision by U.S. occupation regime to keep him on the throne and turn the emperor into a symbol of a newly democratic Japan.
Nazi hero: Member of the Nazi party who saved 250,000 independent :: 2006-07-25 :: Nanjing: Massacre of Nanking
There was chaos on the streets of Nanjing in December 1937 when Japanese troops stormed the capital of China, bent on the slaughter still known as the "Rape of Nanking." For some a saviour was at hand: a member of the Nazi party who offered refuge and helped save the lives of more than 250,000 people. With his swastika armband, John Rabe seems an unlikely hero, but his courage and the selfless way he administered the safety zone means for many people here he remains the hero of Nanjing. Rabe's account of the Nanjing in his 1,200-page diary is detailed, and it has become a key account of the time. His story is soon to be turned into a Hollywood movie.
Memorial for SS Reichprotektor Reinhard Heydrich's assassins praguemonitor :: 2006-05-31 :: Nazi Leaders, Axis high ranks
Czechoslovak paratroopers Jan Kubis and Josef Gabcik who took part in the assassination of Nazi Reichprotektor Reinhard Heydrich in 1942 will have a memorial in Prague. It will be near a crossroads where the paratroopers fatally wounded Heydrich on June 4, 1942. After the assassination of Heydrich, Gabcik and Kubis, along with another five paratroopers, spent several weeks in hiding but their hide-out was disclosed and they were encircled by elite Nazi units. They either committed suicide or were killed in the fight. Nazis burnt down the villages of Lidice and Lezaky under the pretext of its inhabitants' cooperation with the paratroopers.
Nazi Propagandist Joseph Goebbels - The Man Behind Hitler documentary tbo :: 2006-05-22
In May 1945, as the Russian army descended on Berlin, Joseph and Magda Goebbels carried out a morbid footnote to World War II. They subdued their 6 children with morphine, then crushed a capsule of cyanide in their mouths. Afterward, the parents committed suicide, their bodies falling not far from the man who led them to rise and ruin: Adolf Hitler. He was educated (a Ph.D. in philosophy), well-versed in the arts and a skilled orator. Goebbels was instrumental in feeding the Nazi machine and kept the German people on a diet of falsehoods. He set up the "burning of the books" -event in 1933.
Profile of Third Reich propaganda minister Josef Goebbels oregonlive :: 2006-05-19
Documentary "The Man Behind Hitler" offers excerpts from the diary of propaganda minister Josef Goebbels. Parts of it were lost for decades in the Soviet Union. He admired Hitler early, joined his new political movement in 1924. He was soon calling Nazism a religion and expected it to conquer the world. Goebbels told his diary that he loved his new wife Magda more than anyone, but that the party still came first. He did not confide his fervent affair with movie star Lida Baarova, which Hitler ended in 1938. He hated many of his fellow Nazis, SA head Ernst Rohm, SS head Heinrich Himmler and the operatic fop Hermann Goering. But on film he smiles and shakes hands with them.
Hitler's adoring henchman in his own words - Joseph Goebbels azstarnet :: 2006-01-12
You could call it "The Prince of Darkness Diaries." Documentarian Lutz Hachmeister uses journals to form a chilling and often illuminating portrait of Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels. Film has nearly continuous narration of the diaries that Goebbels kept 1924-1945, illustrated by archive footage. Goebbels committed suicide in 1945 at age 47. In effect, Goebbels tells his own story in "The Goebbels Experiment." What emerges is an intimate look at the rise and fall of the Third Reich through the eyes of the pretentious, driven figure in charge of Nazi propaganda.
Heinrich Harrer - mountaineer and explorer The Times :: 2006-01-09
A Mountaineer and explorer whose youthful idealism coincided with the rise to power of Adolf Hitler and Nazism, Heinrich Harrer became a controversial figure, dogged into old age by his membership of the SS. Harrer made no secret of his sympathy for National Socialism, and when in the same year Austria was absorbed into the Third Reich he was photographed with Hitler and, before cheering crowds, was congratulated by him on the successful climb. As well as Seven Years in Tibet, Harrer wrote The White Spider, a history of the north face of the Eiger, and Tibet is My Country.
Berlin relives assassination of Reinhard Heydrich in Prague militaryphotos :: 2006-01-09
More than 60 years ago, a group of Czech and Slovak exiles parachuted into their Nazi-occupied homeland and assassinated SS-Obergruppenfuehrer Reinhard Heydrich, the man known as the "Butcher of Prague". For the first time since the end of the World War Two, a German museum is offering a close look at "Operation Anthropoid", the codename for the only successful assassination of a member of Adolf Hitler's inner circle.
Repost: Oil Baron Getty Revealed as Hitler Fan Deutsche Welle :: 2006-01-07 :: Allied World War II leaders
Newly released documents have revealed that oil billionaire and museum founder J. Paul Getty was a friend and admirer of Adolf Hitler and even lent his support to Nazi Germany in the early days of World War II. Getty appears to have been at the center of a shadowy group of financiers that provided support to Nazi Germany in the early days of WWII. The dossier says Getty sold one million barrels of oil to Germany. The fuel had to be delivered via Russia, a German ally at the time, because a British blockade was in place.
Urbano Lazzaro - Man who captured Mussolini dies sundaymail :: 2006-01-05 :: Nazi Leaders, Axis high ranks
The World War II resistance fighter who captured Italy's fascist dictator Benito Mussolini as he tried to escape Allied forces died overnight. Urbano Lazzaro stormed into Italy's history books on April 27, 1945, when he halted a Nazi truck in the village of Dongo and discovered Il Duce disguised as a Nazi soldier inside. Lazzaro then found Mussolini's mistress, Clara Petacci, and high officials of his rump fascist republic hidden in the retreating column of Nazi troops headed for Switzerland.
The man who succeeded Hitler - Karl Doenitz bbc :: 2005-12-27
The man took over the Third Reich after Hitler committed suicide on 30 April, was not Field Marshal Hermann Goering, or SS chief Heinrich Himmler, but the head of the navy, Karl Doenitz. He did not last long. He authorised the German surrender one week later, and was arrested by British forces on 23 May. Hitler and Doenitz became particularly close from the beginning of 1945. This was partly because Doenitz promised Hitler a "revolution at sea" to be achieved by new U-boats capable of remaining submerged for long periods.
Book: The Mussolini syndrome Times-of-Malta :: 2005-11-25
Luigi Barzini: Mussolini was constantly shielded from anything negative by those around him so that he became the victim of make believe and illusion. The cities Mussolini visited had been carefully prepared a long time before his arrival: he was shown only the things and the people that would please and comfort him. He did not know that some of the new buildings he opened were abandoned and began decaying the following day, that some of the aqueducts never carried water. The technique was so smooth that it even deceived Hitler. Preparations for his visit in 1938 went on for six months.
Farewell To Francisco Franco - Dictator who survived WWII Time :: 2005-11-14
Unlike his allies Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini, Francisco Franco survived WWII, retaining his dictatorial grip on Spain for another 30 years. Even when he died, he avoided the fate of his fellow despots. Hitler's body was likely incinerated outside his bunker; Mussolini's corpse swung from a gas-station awning in Milan; but Franco still lies in a grand tomb funded and carefully maintained by the country he subjugated.
The Goebbels Experiment: Enthralling film of excerpts from Goebbels's diaries Boston :: 2005-11-11
Entries are spoken over montages of archival footage that span Goebbels's miserable childhood at the start of the 20th century to his ghastly family suicide in 1945. He loved Germany to death, and he remained a defiant nationalist even as the Allies invaded Berlin. The diary entries the film culls present a man teeming with schadenfreude for all things non-German.
Wartime reports debunk Albert Speer as the Good Nazi Telegraph :: 2005-05-11 :: Albert Speer
Albert Speer, Adolf Hitler's architect and munitions minister, was fully aware of and involved in the mass murder despite his lifelong claims to the contrary, new documents have revealed. Speer's reputation in Germany as the "Good Nazi" who stood by Hitler only because it enabled him to fulfil his dreams to become an architect of international acclaim, has been blackened by the disclosures that he was completely informed of the human destruction in Auschwitz, the largest of the Nazi's murder factories.
MI5 uncovered a secret Polish plot to kill Rudolf Hess scotsman :: 2005-02-04 :: MI5 during World War II
MI5 uncovered a secret Polish plot to assassinate Rudolf Hess after his landing by parachute in Scotland during the Second World War. The arrival of Adolf Hitler’s deputy in 1941 raised the question of whether British intelligence or members of the aristocracy were trying to broker a secret peace deal with the Nazi Germany. Although such theories later proved unfounded, some Polish soldiers feared Hess’s arrival showed their country was being sold. A group of Polish plotters were determined to prevent a deal between Britain and Nazi Germany, according to the diaries of Guy Liddell, the director of MI5 counter-espionage during the war.
See also:
'Hermann Goering'
'Heinrich Himmler'
'Famous Descendants'
'Assassination of Heydrich'
'Martin Bormann'
'SS Daggers'
'Watches Hitler gave to nazi leaders'.