Conflict-Series: A highly rated strategy game series for Android
If you love classic PC war games and legendary strategy board games make sure to check out the highly rated Conflict-series for Android. Some of the WWII Campaigns include D-Day 1944, Operation Barbarossa, Invasion of Poland 1939, France 1940, Kursk 1943, Market Garden, Iwo Jima, Okinawa, Rommel's North African campaign, the Battle of Bulge, and the Battle of Berlin 1945. In addition there are American Civil War, First World War and American Revolutionary War scenarios available.
(available on Google Play & Amazon App Store)
Nazi Hermann Goering`s cigar box sells for £3,200
A cigar box once owned by Nazi number two Hermann Goering has sold for £3,200, nearly the auctioneers` estimate of £800 to £1,200.
It was given to the Luftwaffe commander-in-chief for his 50th birthday by Erhard Milch in 1943. Field Marshal Milch, who was half-Jewish and received Goering`s protection, was found guilty of war crimes after World War Two. The box was sold to an anonymous phone bidder by J P Humbert Auctioneers.
(bbc.com)
A controversial museum is forcing Italy to talk about its fascist past
The shops that line the main street of Predappio, a small town in Italy`s countryside, seem innocent enough—the biggest one is simply called `Predappio Souvenirs.` But it`s what`s inside that makes them remarkable: a vast collection of fascist memorabilia, including statuettes, towels, books, posters, and postcards covered in fascist symbols; and images and busts of fascism`s founder, Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. The window displays feature batons bearing Mussolini`s name or quotes, while pink and pale blue baby rompers are adorned with the dictator`s portrait and most famous slogans. I decided to visit Predappio for the first time to learn about the Museum of Fascism that the town`s mayor, Giorgio Frassineti, wants to build here, to counter the strain of nostalgia for fascism he feels has infested his town.
(qz.com)
Colorado Is Home To One Of America`s Last World War II Fighter Aces
On Memorial Day we have stories of the very best wartime pilots, America`s fighter aces. To earn that distinction, they had to have destroyed at least five enemy planes. Some 60,000 combat pilots served between World War I and the Vietnam War -- only 1,447 became aces. Captain David Wilhelm is one of them. He flew the agile P-51 Mustang in World War II. Wilhelm, now 98, says the P-51 was the best plane to be in when he fought the Germans. "When our bombers would head to bomb their oil facilities or factories they were attacked by a horde of German 109 airplanes so our mission was to keep those Nazi airplanes from shooting down our bombers," he says.
(cpr.org)
Try Hitler`s `unbreakable` cipher: Germany`s WWII Lorenz crypto machine is now online
An online version of Hitler`s "unbreakable" messaging encryption machine is now available for anyone to try. The UK`s National Museum of Computing (TNMC) has unveiled the Virtual Lorenz machine to commemorate the centenary of Bill Tutte, the Bletchley Park mathematician who reverse-engineered the German High Command`s Lorenz SZ42 cipher system, allowing the Allies to unscramble top-secret messages. "Tutte`s work, often regarded as the greatest intellectual feat of the war, shortened the conflict by enabling the decryption of the enemy`s strategic messages on a regular basis - and very rapidly with the help of Colossus computers," The National Museum of Computing says.
(zdnet.com)
Time running out to save the last WW2 55-foot Coastal Motor Boat
There are just days left to save the last surviving Thornycroft 55-foot Coastal Motor Boat from World War Two. The National Museum of the Royal Navy in Portsmouth has launched a fundraising campaign to raise £6,000 so it can buy and preserve CMB 331. So far, more than £4,500 has been raised. The Thornycroft 55-foot Coastal Motor Boat was designed during the First World War by John Thorneycroft and built all over the country, including at Camper and Nicholson`s Yard in Gosport. It came following a suggestion by three junior officers that small, fast torpedo-carrying craft might be able to pass over German minefields and attack the High Seas Fleet at its base in Wilhelmshaven.
(ybw.com)
Nazis looted 200 million books - unlike art theft, it wasn`t for profit
The scale of book theft during the World War II is immense, far dwarfing the already boggling numbers of Nazi art theft. While some have estimated the 5 million art objects changed hands inappropriately during the World War II, most of them stolen or appropriated by the Nazis, few have discussed the Nazi practice of looting books, rare and otherwise, from the libraries of conquered Europe. `The Book Thieves,` a new book by Swedish journalist Anders Rydell, focuses on just this. Beyond the book burnings, book theft was engaged in on an unimaginable scale.
(salon.com)
WW2 grenades bought at a German flea market start exploding after man stored them in his hot garage
This was the scene after Second World War grenades bought from a flea market and stored in a private garage started exploding in hot weather. Emergency services in Hennef, east of Bonn, were called amid reports of explosions and arrived to find the building in flames. As grenades and other munitions inside the garage continued to detonate, police cleared a wide area and evacuated homes nearby.
(dailymail.co.uk)
Video: Russians recover lend-leased U.S. tank from river it fell in 75 years ago
Specialists from the Russian Defence Ministry pulled a U.S. tank from the bottom of the Don River where has been since the summer of 1942.The Russian Defense Ministry announced the recovery of the tank, an M3 Stuart, along with a host of unexploded munitions. While the tank`s turret was missing, its hull was still filled with live 37mm shells for its M6 main gun and several intact M1919A4 light machine guns. From the markings on the vehicle, it appears the tank was part of the Soviet Red Army`s famous 24th Tank Corps, which at the time was fighting the Germans near the town of Ostrogozhsk during World War II.
(guns.com)
The Secret Deal The Associated Press Made With The Nazis During World War II
At the height of World War II, the Associated Press made secret arrangements with an SS officer to obtain pictures taken by Nazi photographers that were distributed to American newspapers - a deal authorized by senior U.S. officials. The extraordinary arrangement, which began in 1941 and ended with Hitler`s fall, is detailed in a lengthy internal report the AP plans to release early Wednesday morning. It comes several months after Norman Domeier, a German historian, discovered a letter describing the deal in the papers of AP`s then-bureau chief.
(ndtv.com)
Eva Braun: The lover Germany never knew Hitler had
At the age of 17, Eva Braun took a job in the studios of Nazi photographer Heinrich Hoffmann in Munich, where she occasionally also modelled in front of the camera. It was in that studio that she first met Hitler, at that time a radical, fringe politician. During the early years of their relationship, Braun twice attempted suicide. In 1932 she shot herself in the chest, while in 1935 she took an overdose of pills. Both attempts seem to have been a protest that Hitler wasn`t paying enough attention to her, and on both occasions it seems to have worked. In 1935 Hitler moved Braun and her sister Margarete into an apartment in Munich. Braun`s relationship with Hitler was very complicated.
(thelocal.de)
Nazis lost the war through spectacular inefficiency, new account claims
Germany lost the Second World War because it was `spectacularly inefficient` and its tanks kept breaking down, according to a new history. Britain and America, by contrast, were able to manufacture tanks and warplanes at a far quicker rate, and the equipment was more reliable when used in action. The controversial new thesis, which seeks to challenge the `myth` of an efficient and well equipped Nazi war machine versus the make-do-and-mend British, is propounded in a new book by historian James Holland.
(telegraph.co.uk)
The P26/40 Tank Was the Italian T-34
Italy was not renown in World War II for its tanks, which tended to be light and poorly used on the battlefield. But the Italian arms industry did produce interesting designs, some quite formidable. The Carro Armato P26/40 was a rare example of an Italian medium tank—the Italian army referred to it as a heavy tank, as it was heavy in comparison to Italy`s other vehicles, but it was roughly similar to America`s M4 Sherman, the Soviet T-34 and the German Panzer IV medium tanks.
(warisboring.com)
Olga Benario, the Communist That Nazi Gestapo Hounded Most Vehemently
Olga Benario was a German-Brazilian Communist activist who was executed by the Nazis in Ravensbruck concentration camp in 1942. Seventy-five years on, Sputnik Mundo met with her daughter, Anita Prestes, whose book of memoirs about her mother will come out in Brazil later this month.
(sputniknews.com)
MI5 sent British housewife to infiltrate Hitler`s inner circle on eve of Second World War
MI5 managed to get a British spy to infiltrate Adolf Hitler`s inner circle just days before the outbreak of the Second World War, a new book has revealed. The story of the agent, codenamed M/T, has been told for the first time in a book about Maxwell Knight – a senior MI5 spymaster during the 1930s. Kathleen Tesch, the agent selected to get close to the Nazi leader, was not the likeliest of choices. She was a Home Counties housewife and a lover of dogs who was known among friends for the inventive costumes she wore at the local village fete.
(independent.co.uk)
Krystyna Skarbek, Britain`s first female second world war spy, to get overdue recognition
She was a glamorous countess and British spy whose extraordinary wartime heroics included skiing out of Nazi-occupied Poland with the first evidence of Operation Barbarossa – the Nazi plans to invade Soviet Russia. Later in the war she played a role in the liberation of France as first contact between the French Resistance and Italian Partisans, and single-handedly secured the defection of a strategically important German garrison. But the name and achievements of Krystyna Skarbek (Christine Granville), the first and longest-serving female special agent in the second world war, are still little known. Now a bronze bust of her will stand in the Polish Hearth Club in London.
(theguardian.com)
The restoration of a Kubelwagen at Forest-Scott County Career & Technology
Students at the Forest Scott County Career and Technology Center are learning the skills they need to get a good job. Now, thanks to a creative idea from a substitute teacher, they are also getting a thorough history lesson. Long before Americans knew the meaning of farfegnugen, or even laid eyes on a Volkswagen Beetle, there was the Kubelwagen. The German Army used them as staff cars in World War II. A Kubelwagen has made its way to Scott County, and students are working to restore it.
(wjtv.com)
Ireland and the Nazis: a troubled history
As a neutral leader, de Valera trod a fine line between Nazi Germany and Britain, not helped by a pro-Nazi envoy in Berlin and his controversial condolences on Hitler`s death
(irishtimes.com)
Roza Shanina: The first Soviet female sniper to be awarded the Order of Glory
Roza Georgiyevna Shanina was one of the first women to join the Soviet army during World War II and was the first Soviet female sniper to be awarded the Order of Glory, also becoming the first servicewoman of the 3rd Belorussian Front to receive it. She is credited with 59 confirmed kills among which were twelve soldiers in the Battle of Vilnius. Shanina`s talents as a sniper were praised and a Canadian newspaper in 1944 described her as `the unseen terror of East Prussia.` She was capable of precisely hitting enemy personnel and making doublets (two target hits by two rounds fired in quick succession). The reason she volunteered in the military was the death of her brother in 1941.
(thevintagenews.com)
How Different Originally Were Each of the Allies Own Plans to Defeat Hitler?
Today May 8th, 2017 is the 72nd anniversary of Victory in Europe Day. The very day the guns fell silent in Europe, and the world rejoiced in the defeat of Nazism. Yet in the popular narrative of the Second World War, the cooperation between the Allies is taken for granted. The reality of the Alliance full of growing pains and family squabbles as they learned to fight as an effective coalition is often glossed over in favor of representing a monolithic force of Allied `good` verses Hitler/Axis `evil`.
(tgnreview.com)
4 Rifles Used by Snipers in World War II
World War II sniper rifles were often updated World War I models made better with new telescopic sights and upgrades to make them more easily employed in combat.
These relatively minor improvements to the weapons made the snipers much more dangerous in combat, and sharpshooters were able to make an outsized impact on the conflict, tying down enemy units and picking off key players. Here are four of the weapons used by the major powers in Europe:
(scout.com)
Why were 101 Uzbeks killed in the Netherlands in 1942?
They left their homes in Central Asia to fight against the German army. Then, dressed in rags, they were taken as prisoners to a concentration camp in the Netherlands. Few now alive remember the 101 mostly Uzbek men who were killed in a forest near Amersfoort in 1942 - and they may well have been forgotten entirely if it had not been for a curious Dutch journalist.
(bbc.com)
What Ben Ferencz, the last Nuremberg prosecutor alive, wants the world to know
Ben Ferencz is 97 years old and he served as prosecutor of what`s been called the biggest murder trial ever. The courtroom was Nuremberg; the crime, genocide; the defendants, a group of German SS officers accused of committing the largest number of Nazi killings outside the concentration camps -- more than a million men, women, and children shot down in their own towns and villages in cold blood. Ferencz is the last Nuremberg prosecutor alive today. But he isn`t content just to be part of 20th century history -- he believes he has something important to offer the world right now.
(cbsnews.com)
Why I Hate My Uncle by William Hitler
William Patrick Hitler was born in Liverpool in the UK in 1911. His father was Adolf Hitler`s brother Alois Hitler. William moved to Germany in 1933 in an attempt to benefit from his uncle`s position of power. It appears William, who was familiar with Adolf`s family background, was an embarrassing thorn in Adolf`s side during the 1930s. Moving to the United States in 1939, William served in the US Navy in World War II. After the war, William Hitler changed his last name to Stuart-Houston.
(boingboing.net)
Huge Japanese Carrier Shinano Was Sunk by Tiny Sub
The Imperial Japanese Navy aircraft carrier Shinano was, at the time of its completion, the largest aircraft carrier in history to that point. It was heavily armored for a carrier, a 72,000-ton behemoth.
A behemoth that sank not only without sinking an enemy ship or engaging in a major battle, but that never even launched a plane.
(scout.com)