During World War II Nazi Germany primarily encoded its messages through the use of what was known as the "Enigma" machine. Enigma’s use by the Wehrmacht stretched back to the early 1930s and originated from a design created by Hugo Alexander Koch in the Netherlands.
Although heavily modified prior to the Second World War’s onset, the Enigma machines used in 1939-1945 remained similar to Koch’s prototypes from two decades prior. For a variety of reasons the Enigma machine was extraordinarily difficult to crack.
This final part in our series on the human cost of the Second World War in Europe will look at the nation most responsible for plunging humanity into global warfare: Germany. Though in the United States of America the Second World War is often cast today as the last "good war", in reality there were few nation's that participated in the war, willingly or not, and emerged from the war with entirely clean hands.
I make this observation because the people of Germany were both the perpetrators and, in some cases, victims of the violence Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime unleashed across all of
This is the second in a series of posts detailing the human cost of the Second World War in Europe. Today we take a closer look at the toll in Eastern Europe.
In spite of the staggering human loss and destruction across all of Western and Southern Europe it could barely compare to the horror of Eastern Europe’s devastation. For example, Romania lost 500,000 people, 200,000 of which were civilians, or more people than the United States lost during the entire war but with a population a fraction of the American's size.
Thinking they had spotted some amber, two women suffered second and third degree burns this past weekend from coming into contact with what is believed to be WWII era white phosphorus they found at a beach on the island of Usedom along Germany's Baltic Coast.
One of the unfortunate outcomes of the Baltic Sea's significance as one of history's more fiercely contested regions is the immense quantities of unexploded munitions littering the seabed, contaminating the sea, or washing ashore as their metal casings rust out.
World War Two Vehicles has posted some production figures for German aircraft. Though well known, in perusing through them once more one of the items that stands out is, of course, the sheer size of the JU-88 production program - with roughly 15,000-16,000 such aircraft produced by the Third Reich.
During the spring of 1944 the Red Army finally began wrapping up its enormously expensive eight month campaign to evict German forces from the Ukraine. The linchpin of this effort came against Army Group South's left wing - defended by its First and Fourth Panzer Armies. On March 4th Marshal of the Soviet Union Georgy Zhukov's 1st Ukrainian Front, spearheaded by the 3rd Guards Tank Army and 4th Tank Army, attacked German Army Group South's left wing. Zhukov's men forged numerous penetrations in German defensive lines already heavily weakened following the battle for the Korsun pocket.
On February 6, 1941 Adolf Hitler ordered Lieutenant General Erwin Rommel to Africa in command of Germany’s nascent Afrika Corps. Consisting of the 15th Panzer Division, and a motorized division, the 5th Light Division, the Afrika Corps was meant to stabilize the Axis position in North Africa against British Commonwealth forces that had spent the winter of 1940-41 decimating Italian forces in the region.
Rommel wasted little time upon his arrival at Tripoli on February 11, 1941. On February 16th Rommel dispatched to the front the only German forces he possessed and immediately available for
Just over one week ago construction workers found a one ton bomb at the port of Marseille, France. The bomb dates back to the Second World War and is believed to be German. On Sunday, March 18, 2012 the bomb was removed as can be seen in this picture.
The bomb is not thought to have been air delivered, but, instead have been left behind by German soldiers who, prior to retreating, sought to demolish the excellent port facilties at Marseille.
The Center For Strategic and Budgetary Assessments(CSBA) gave a presentation on Tuesday detailing major trends in ground combat that will impact ground vehicle modernization. Buried in the slides was an interesting info-graphic on the accelerated cost of force protection - meaning the price paid to equip the average combat rifleman in the U.S. Military. These costs have risen dramatically. According to the CSBA the average cost of clothing and equipping:
Holocaust survivor Ernie Gross, age 83, and U.S. Army WWII veteran Don Greenbaum, age 87, were able to meet late last year in Philadelphia some 66 years after they unwittingly shared a day at a place and time in history that few people would ever want to be; Dachau concentration camp in April of 1945.
On April 29, 1945 Greenbaum was a G.I. in U.S. General George S. Patton's Third Army when the Third Army reached Dachau and its surviving victims.
