OSS: The Forerunner of the CIA

    In 1940, the British set up an organization known as the Special Operations Executive or SOE. This was responsible for intelligence gathering and secretive operations throughout Europe. Come 1942 after some training from the British in the previous year, the Office of Strategic Services or OSS was created in the…

    Flak-Bait – The Bomber Plane that Survived a Total of 207 Missions

    The most impressive thing about the twin-engine bomber is the amount of flak it absorbed while still somehow staying in the sky. As it conducted flights across Belgium, France, Germany, and the Netherlands the aircraft was shot over a thousand times, twice the plane managed to return to base with…

    Dietrich von Choltitz – General who refused to burn Paris to the ground

    Hitler's Third Reich was rapidly crumbling before his very eyes; the vast empire that had once spanned from Tripoli to Rome to Kyiv was now shrinking, drawing ever so close to Berlin. Also, Paris was still under Nazi control, but not for long. By the summer of 1944, Allied forces…

    Operation Haudegen – The last German soldiers to surrender after World War 2

    On the 7th of May 1945, German General Alfred Jodl signed the unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany at the Allied headquarters in Reims, France. It meant the Second World War had come to an end, at least, in the European theater of war. But… the war didn’t end for a…

    Battle of Aachen – First German City to Fall in WW2

    Following D-Day and the Battle of Normandy in the summer of 1944. The German Army in the West collapsed and retreated towards the defenses of the Westwall, known more popularly in the West as the Siegfried Line. Westwall – Siegfried Line The Allied armies followed hot on their heels, hoping…

    Heinrich Severloh: The Beast of Omaha

    Heinrich Severloh was born into a farming family in northern Germany. At the age of 19, he was conscripted into the Wehrmacht in July 1942. He would initially serve in the 19th Light Artillery Replacement Division before being transferred to the 321st Artillery Regiment, he would train for a few…
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