WW2HANGAR.NET

As France prepares to mark the 70th anniversary next week of Charles de Gaulle’s call to arms against the Nazis, one village is trying to forget the darker side of the wartime resistance.

After furious protests, Coussay-les-Bois, in the rolling green farmland of Poitou, has decided it is too early to allow a German man to put up a memorial to his father and 16 other Wehrmacht prisoners who were executed there in September 1944.

The quarrel testifies to lingering bitterness over the Nazi occupation in a part of France that suffered multiple atrocities, and to a reluctance to touch the heroic image of the young insurgents who fought them.

“If they put a plaque there, it will be smashed within a day,” said Jean Herault, who was a 16-year-old fighter in the bloody summer of 1944. Mr Herault, a retired blacksmith, recalled the day in June that year when the Germans took 120 villagers to roadside ditches and prepared to shoot them in reprisal for an attack from the Maquis underground movement.

They were spared after the intervention of a priest, but Mr Herault was forced to watch later that evening as three of his young comrades were executed. One was 17.

They are commemorated at a memorial to the French Forces of the Interior (FFI) but no-one wants to be reminded of the night of September 9 when the German prisoners were machine-gunned against the school wall.

Officially, the massacre never happened. It figures in no histories, only in local memory. It came to light because of the dogged effort by Rudolph Greuel, 67, to find out what happened to his father, a sergeant-major with a Wehrmacht construction battalion. Mr Greuel, a former editor of the Kolnische Rundschau newspaper, unearthed the truth with the help of a German survivor and a French journalist.

Andreas Greuel was an unusually old 47 when he fled the coastal defences at St Malo, riding bicycles and horses ahead of the advancing Allies. A French SAS unit parachuted in from Britain captured his group as it crossed Poitou, still behind German lines.

The Maquis at Coussay put the men to work in the fields for a few days before tying them up and taking them to the village to be shot. Local women persuaded “Lieutenant Pierre”, the maquisard in charge, to spare a few of them. The 17 bodies were dumped in unmarked graves and in 1961 were reburied in a German cemetery at Mont Saint Michel. In 2003 the school wall which bore the impacts from the firing squad was demolished…

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Nazi memorabilia collectors are expected to push the price for the diary and letters of the “Angel of Death” responsible for thousands of murders at Auschwitz to at least £40,000.

Infamous as Hitler’s “Angel of Death”, Mengele experimented on prisoners at the death camp without anaesthetic and became obsessed with twins, hoping to be able to clone perfect specimens of the Aryan race. His diary’s eclectic and often mundane contents include praise for British rule in India and his love of Boris Pasternak’s novel Dr Zhivago. But he also makes chilling references to his wartime atoricities. Unless the world adopts the breeding programmes of the kind he pursued in Auschwitz, he wrote, “mankind is doomed”.

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FUJAIRAH : The Gulf of Oman’s pithy-black deeps have finally surrendered secrets of the mystery sinking of Nazi submarine U-533 during the Second World War, XPRESS has learnt.

Several years after the discovery of the U-boat on the seabed 108 metres below by Dubai shipwreck hunter and diver William Leeman, a new deep-sea mission in October to the U-boat’s final resting place has confirmed a fatal blast hole was ripped into her rear port side, dooming the twin-screwed 76.8-metre-long vessel and 52 crew members to a watery grave.

Clear waters

Capitalising on clear waters and armed with electric underwater scooters and high-powered spotlights, Leeman and his team of recreational divers discovered the two-metre gash near her propellers, confirming reports by RAF (Royal Air Force) Squadron 244 that a British light bomber aircraft had scored a direct strike on the submarine on October 16, 1943.

“This is where she was hit by a depth charge by a British Blenheim that struck from the air,” said Leeman, 52, an electrical engineer. “During our last dive, we could see the jagged edges of the hole where she was blown up. That was the moment of truth – the ship then sank to the bottom in a forward motion marking the epic death of 52 German mariners.”…

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A German court sentenced a 90-year-old former Nazi army commander to life in prison on Tuesday for murdering 10 Italian civilians and attempting to kill another in Tuscany in 1944.

After an 11-month trial, the Munich court found German Josef Scheungraber guilty of ordering the murder of the civilians in Falzano di Cortona, near the Tuscan town of Arezzo, as a reprisal for attacks by Italian partisans.

“As the only officer present, the accused led and supervised the execution of the reprisal orders,” said the court in a statement.

“The act of revenge, directed exclusively at civilians, was driven first and foremost by revenge but also by anger and hatred,” the court added.

Four Italian civilians, including a 74-year-old woman, were shot dead in the street before German soldiers rounded up a further 11 people and herded them into a house and blew it up.

Ten of the 11 died but a 15-year-old boy, Gino Massetti, survived with serious injuries. He gave evidence at the trial…

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The National Geographic Channel describes it as one of the best-kept secrets of Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich.

Toward the end of World War II, a mysterious, futuristic-looking aircraft was discovered by American troops in a top-secret German facility. The prototype jet, which resembled a massive bat wing, and other advanced German aircraft were brought to the United States in the military project “Operation Seahorse.” In the early 1960s, the prototype jet was transferred to a Smithsonian facility in Maryland that is off-limits to the public. It remains there today.

“There have been no documents released on it, and the public has no access to it,” said Michael Jorgensen, a documentary filmmaker who secured National Geographic Channel backing to assemble a team of Northrop Grumman aeronautical engineers to study the craft and build a full-size replica from original plans.

The completed model, which has a 55-foot wingspan, was quietly trucked to San Diego last week to join the San Diego Air & Space Museum’s permanent collection. It will be unveiled there tomorrow…

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Germans are looking to the prospect of the last major Nazi trial, that of accused death camp guard John Demjanjuk, with weary resignation more than 60 years after a war few experienced first hand.

Few Germans believe that Demjanjuk’s advanced age — he is 89 — should spare him a trial and there is still a fascination with the Nazi era, illustrated by an endless stream of documentaries, books and articles.

But more than 60 years after World War Two and the Holocaust, Germans see Demjanjuk as just one actor in the enormous horror of their past.

“There’s a widely held view we should draw a line under this chapter of the past,” said Bernd Wagner from Berlin’s Center for Democratic Culture.

Munich prosecutors want Ukrainian-born Demjanjuk to face charges he helped kill 29,000 Jews in 1943 but a U.S. court halted his deportation at the last minute on Tuesday.

It is unclear how long the stay will last and whether Demjanjuk would be fit to stand trial if he ever gets to Munich.

The sober coverage in German papers has sparked little debate so far, indicating young Germans are less emotional about the past than their parents were, say experts…

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The US has deported to Austria a former Nazi death camp guard, Josias Kumpf. The move sheds light on the continuing search – in some countries, at least – for World War II war criminals. Mario Cacciottolo examines a hunt now entering its final phase.”Looking for Nazi war criminals is the ultimate law enforcement race against the clock.”

Eli Rosenbaum, director of the Office of Special Investigations (OSI) in the United States, has a list of thousands of suspects.

But working out whether any of them are alive and in the US is a laborious job.

A full check could take 100 years at current rates, he says – but in 10 years “the World War II biological clock will come to an end”.

Contrary to popular belief, most former Nazis did not go into hiding after the war. Most did not even change their name.

There were some – such as Adolf Eichmann, who planned the transport of Jews to death camps, and Dr Joseph Mengele, Auschwitz’s “Angel of Death” – who slipped away amid the post-war chaos and assumed false identities….

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An Austrian man who participated in a Nazi massacre of Jews during World War II and later gained U.S. citizenship has been deported to Austria, U.S. officials said. Josias Krumpf, 83, lived for years after the war in Racine, Wisconsin. The United States revoked his citizenship in 2005 after the Criminal Division of the U.S. Department of Justice sought to denaturalize him.

Acting Assistant Attorney General Rita Glavin announced Krumpf’s deportation Thursday. It was not clear when he arrived in Austria, and representatives of the Austrian Justice Ministry were not immediately available for comment.

“His court-ordered removal from the United States to Austria is another milestone in the government’s long-running effort to ensure that individuals who participated in crimes against humanity do not find sanctuary in this country,” Glavin said.

The United States removed Krumpf because of his participation in that and other Nazi-sponsored acts of persecution during the war, Glavin said…

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About 300 Latvians marched through the capital on Monday to commemorate countrymen who fought in a Waffen SS unit during World War II, defying a ban by city officials.

Dozens of protesters — mainly ethnic Russians — jeered at the participants as they carried flowers to the base of the Freedom Monument in downtown Riga. Fearing clashes, police had set up barricades to keep the two sides apart at the annual event.

No violence was reported, though police spokeswoman Ieva Reksna authorities said four people were detained for unruly behavior.

Unlike previous years, Riga city officials had prohibited World War II veterans and patriotic organizations from holding demonstrations, fearing they would increase tensions in the crisis-hit Baltic nation. Two months ago, anti-government protesters clashed with police outside Parliament in Latvia’s worst riots since it regained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.

However, police allowed individuals to lay wreaths at the Freedom Monument and didn’t stop the procession of aging veterans and their supporters as they marched from an Old Town cathedral…

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The restored Neues Museum was unveiled Thursday after six years of painstaking work to repair World War II bomb damage that ruined much of the renowned building.

British architect David Chipperfield handed over the empty building’s key to city museum officials. The museum is one of five which make up the neoclassical Museum Island, the German capital’s best-known cultural complex.

The museum will open in October — housing, as it did before the war, Berlin’s Egyptian collection, complete with a famous 3,300-year-old bust of queen Nefertiti. That will mark the first time since 1939 that all the island’s five museums have been open to the public.

“The Neues Museum has finally awoken from its coma,” Mayor Klaus Wowereit said, describing the handover as “a great day for culture in the whole world.”

The euro200 million ($250 million) restoration incorporates the original material that survived wartime bombing and decades of exposure to the weather — including fluted stone columns and faux-Egyptian painted ceilings.

Entire wings were destroyed, including the central staircase. Chipperfield sought to restore their dimensions rather than imitating every detail, using plain concrete and brick in some of the rebuilt parts.

“There’s really one dominant idea, which is to hold on to the original material that we were given in 1997,” when he won the restoration job, Chipperfield told reporters…

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The grainy black and white photo is surely one of a kind. Seated at a table are two “Aryans” and three Asians, at least two of whom are clad in Wehrmacht uniforms of the German Third Reich, but with rising sun insignias on their upper right shoulders. (The image at left is a crop of the photo showing one of the Japanese.) If authentic, this would cast light on something that should stop scholars of World War II in their tracks.

Writing about his find in Jitsuwa Knuckles (April), Takeshi Tanaka notes that an estimated 2 million foreigners served in volunteer units augmented to the German army during the war, including Ukrainians, Latvians, Finns, Croatians and Indians.

The individuals in the photo are at this point unidentified, but the picture suggests Japanese may have served in German units. According to Tanaka, a note accompanying the photo states that the men in the picture “took part in the fighting against allied forces at (Poland’s) Vistula River.” Tanaka says he was unable to corroborate the photo with any historical evidence. Are we, perhaps, merely looking at some Photoshop mischief here? Or does this photo shed new light on Nippon’s heretofore unknown Nazis? Intriguing to say the least…

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BERLIN: German police say 15,000 residents were evacuated from their homes during the night in a northern town as experts defused a World War II-era bomb. Residents in part of Celle were evacuated on Monday evening after the bomb was found on the grounds of an industrial property.

Explosives experts defused the 2,000-pound (900-kilogram) American bomb early Tuesday in an operation that lasted 35 minutes. People were then allowed back into their homes.

Though World War II ended more than six decades ago, it is still relatively common for unexploded Allied bombs to be found in Germany…

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Blackpool was off-limits to the Luftwaffe during World War Two because Hitler wanted the seaside town as a “playground”, uncovered documents reportedly reveal.
The Fuhrer apparently wanted to hoist the Nazi flag up Blackpool Tower and base the headquarters for his paratroopers there.

Uncovered intelligence maps reportedly reveal Hitler’s intention to spare the Lancashire resort during his planned invasion of Great Britain.

York-based publisher Michael Cole brought the documents back from Germany about a year ago, he said.

The papers go toward explaining why the resort escaped unscathed during the Blitz – especially considering there were major British aircraft manufacturing factories situated there…

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(LONDON) The Nazis have long since gone and it may be time at last to pop the corks.

Bonhams auction house is selling 1,500 bottles of rare wine that were hidden from the Nazis when they occupied the Channel Islands during World War II.

The wine from the Guernsey-based Bucktrout & Co was tucked away in a secret chamber between the shop and a loading area. The chamber had been used to entertain clients privately, but was used to hide the rare vintages when the islands, between England and France, were occupied.

Bonhams said Friday the March 17th auction includes 1,500 bottles, including a Harvey’s 1897 Special Quality Port valued between 100 pounds ($142) and 200 pounds ($285).

The owners are selling the collection because they’re moving to smaller quarters…

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BERLIN (Reuters) – Germany attempted Wednesday to defuse a row with Poland over a museum highlighting the fate of Germans forced out of eastern Europe after World War Two by saying it had not yet decided who would run it.

Many Poles fear the museum will portray Germans as victims of a war they began and strongly object to the prospect of Erika Steinbach, head of the League of Expellees, being in charge.

Steinbach, from Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative party, is a figure of hate in Poland because of her work representing the interests of German expellees.

The subject of the 12.5 million Germans who were expelled from Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia after the defeat of the Nazis has strained relations between Germany and Poland since the war in which 6 million Poles died.

Merkel spoke this week to Wladyslaw Bartoszewski, a special Polish envoy charged with improving relations with Germany who had strongly criticized the nomination of Steinbach.

Government spokesman Thomas Steg said no decisions had been taken and the German cabinet had to approve the appointment. He stressed that the decision would not be rushed…

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