Sweethearts Candy Blog's

A German messenger dies on the tracks. Seems like the eastern front. Russia has the muddy slush.

Dead German soldiers in Stalingrad. Seems like a massacre. The Russians were ruthless.

Dead soldiers, destroyed tank

The dead at Stalingrad. Wonder how they dies. Aerial bombardment? Or Russians spraying bullets from heavy machine guns?

The vanquished: German POW. Sad state of an once proud and aggressive army.

Two emaciated American civilians, Lee Rogers left and John C. Todd, sit outside a gym which had been used as a Japanese prison camp following their release by Allied forces liberating the city.Philippines,1945

German soldiers prepare for an execution of partisans. Chilling.

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• Amazing Second World War Pictures: Part 1
• Amazing Second World War Pictures: Part 2
• Amazing Second World War Pictures: Part 3
• Amazing Second World War pictures: Part 4
• Some amazing facts about the Second World War

Hitler with his dog (bitch) Blondi. The dog and Eva Braun died from cyanide.

What is surprising, then, is that Hitler never visited a single concentration camp, let alone death camp. He kept himself aloof from the dirtiest work of his regime. He did not speak about the "Final Solution", even to his closest entourage, other than in vague terms.
He spoke publicly, and in the most vicious way, about the persecution of the Jews, but he never associated himself in plain language with their killing, as Himmler did. In October 1943 the Reichsführer addressed SS leaders about what it was like to see 1,000 corpses lying side by side, describing "the extermination of the Jewish people" as a "glorious page in our history that has never been written and is never to be written".

By Professor Ian Kershaw, The Telegraph

Hitler as a soldier during the First World war. Can you spot him?

Most writers (even on the Internet) rubbish Hitler's hatred for Jews as irrational. Was it? Did Jews exploit Germany when it was in the doldrums after the humiliation at Versailles? Any answers?

Hitler's girlfriend/wife Eva Braun in happier times. Hitler married her shortly before their death.



LIFE AND DEATH OF EVA BRAUN



EVA BRAUN

The existence of Eva Braun - Adolph Hitler's mistress for more than 12 years and, in the end, his wife - was one of the most successfully guarded secrets of Nazi Germany.

According to Hitler's chauffeur Erich Kempka Eva Braun was "the unhappiest woman in Germany. She spent most of her time waiting for Hitler." He had always kept her out of sight - as soon as guests arrived, he almost invariably banished her to her room. Joachim Fest tells in his biography of Hitler how Eva Braun continued to be kept in semi concealment during the years, stealing in by side entrances and using rear staircases, contenting herself with a photograph of Hitler when he left her alone at mealtimes. But gradually she accepted her frustrating role - content to be sole woman companion of the great man.

Hitler's personal valet, Heinz Linge, later recalled how the staff used to call her the "girl in a gilded cage". But Hitler became genuinely fond of Eva and found relaxation in her company. "Fraulein Braun is a young girl," Hitler once said to Linge, "too young to be the wife of one in my position. But she is the only girl for me. So we live as we do. But one day I shall give up the leadership of the Reich. I shall cease to be the Fuhrer and retire to Linz to a house that can be managed by a small staff. Then I will marry Fraulein Braun ..."

Playing with Goebbels' little girl. Goebbels killed his family, then consumed cyanide and shot himself as the Russians were at the doorstep.

Goebbels in a happy mood with Hitler.

The joy at the fall of France. Hitler does a little jig.

Posing before the Eiffel Tower.

Meeting the top aces of the German air force Luftwaffe

Hitler's study



The bad news starts pouring in. A grim Hitler visits a spot bombed by the Allied planes. The end was near.

Hitler at his parents' grave.

The last photo taken of Hitler.

Last film pictures of Hitler (22 March 1945)



After it all ended. Russians examine the blood stains on the sofa. Hitler consumed poison and shot himself on the head.

LAST DAYS OF ADOLPH HITLER

Hitler took up residence in the Führerbunker on 16 January 1945 where he presided over a rapidly disintegrating Third Reich as the Allies advanced from both east and west. By late April Soviet forces had entered Berlin and were battling their way to the centre of the city where the Chancellery was located.

On 22 April Hitler had what some historians later described as a nervous breakdown during one of his military situation conferences, admitting defeat was imminent and Germany would lose the war. He expressed his intent to kill himself and later asked physician Werner Haase to recommend a reliable method of suicide. Haase suggested combining a dose of cyanide with a gunshot to the head.

Hitler had a supply of cyanide capsules which he had obtained through the SS. Meanwhile, on 28 April Hitler learned of Heinrich Himmler's attempt to independently negotiate a peace treaty. Hitler considered this treason and began to show signs of paranoia, expressing worries the cyanide capsules he had received through Himmler's SS were fake. He also learned of the execution of his ally Benito Mussolini and vowed not to share a similar fate. To verify the capsules' potency he ordered Dr. Haase to try them on his dog Blondi and the animal died as a result.

After midnight on 29 April, Hitler married Eva Braun in a small civil ceremony in a map room within the bunker complex. Antony Beevor states that after hosting a modest wedding breakfast with his new wife Hitler took secretary Traudl Junge to another room and dictated his last will and testament. He signed these documents at 04:00 and then retired to bed (some sources say Hitler dictated the last will and testament immediately before the wedding, but all sources agree on the timing of the signing).

Hitler and Braun lived together as husband and wife in the bunker for less than 40 hours. Late in the morning of 30 April, with the Soviets less than 500 metres from the bunker, Hitler had a meeting with General Helmuth Weidling, commander of the Berlin Defence Area, who informed Hitler the Berlin garrison would probably run out of ammunition that night. Weidling asked Hitler for permission to break out, a request he had made unsuccessfully before. Hitler did not answer at first and Weidling went back to his headquarters in the Bendlerblock where at about 13:00 he got Hitler's permission to try a breakout that night. Hitler, two secretaries and his personal cook then had lunch consisting of spaghetti with a light sauce, after which Hitler and Eva Braun said their personal farewells to members of the Führerbunker staff and fellow occupants, including the Goebbels family, Bormann, the secretaries and several military officers. At around 14:30 Adolf and Eva Hitler went into Hitler's personal study.

Some witnesses later reported hearing a loud gunshot at around 15:30. After waiting a few minutes, Hitler's valet, Heinz Linge, with Bormann at his side, opened the door to the small study. Linge later stated he immediately noted a scent of burnt almonds, a common observation made in the presence of prussic acid, the gaseous form of cyanide. Hitler's SS adjutant, Otto Günsche, entered the study to inspect the bodies, which were found seated on a small sofa, Eva's to Hitler's left and slumped away from him. Owing to an exit wound towards the top, left side of his head Hitler appeared to have shot himself in the right temple with a Walther PPK 7.65 mm pistol which lay at his feet. According to Hitler's bodyguard, Rochus Misch, Hitler's head was lying on the table in front of him Blood dripping from his temple and chin had made a large stain on the right arm of the sofa and was pooling on the floor/carpet. Eva's body had no visible physical wounds and Linge assumed she had poisoned herself.

Günsche exited the study and announced that the Führer was dead. Immediately afterwards, several people in the bunker began smoking cigarettes (which had been forbidden, given Hitler's strong dislike for smoking). Several witnesses said the two bodies were carried up to ground level and through the bunker's emergency exit to a small, bombed-out garden behind the Chancellery where they were doused with petrol and set alight by Linge and members of Hitler's personal SS bodyguard. Someone was heard to shout: 'Hurry upstairs, they're burning the boss!' The SS guards and Linge later noted the fire did not completely destroy the corpses but Soviet shelling of the bunker compound made further cremation attempts impossible and the remains were later covered up in a shallow bomb crater after 18:00.

US Navy Lieutenant Stephen Decatur Jr. becomes the first American military hero since the Revolutionary War when he leads a force of US Marines in the capture of Tripoli and the destruction of a portion of the Tripolitan fleet. Note: This action will be memorialized in the Marines' Hymn: 'On the shores of Tripoli.'



The Barbary States that hassled the newly formed United States

Tripolitan War 1800-1815, conflict between the United States and the Barbary States. Piracy had become a normal source of income in the N African Barbary States long before the United States came into existence. The new republic adopted the common European practice of paying tribute to buy immunity from raids. Difficulties began in 1800 when William Bainbridge, the officer who took tribute to the dey of Algiers, was compelled to go under the Ottoman flag to Constantinople. When the pasha of Tripoli demanded (1800) more tribute than previously agreed upon, the United States refused payment.

Angered by delayed and undersized payments the Barbary State regents demanded more. The escalating situation was finally brought to a head by the Pasha of Tripolitania, Yusuf Karamanli. On May 14, 1801, he ordered the flag staff (flying the 'Stars and Stripes') standing in front of the US consulate to be cut down. This symbolic act was taken as a declaration of war against America.

Desperate conflict of the American seamen under Decatur, on boarding a Tripolitan corsair.

Hostilities broke out in 1801, but Commodore Richard Dale's blockade of Tripoli failed to daunt the pirates. President Thomas Jefferson then decided to settle the affair by negotiation, but his envoy Richard Valentine Morris could not reach an agreement with the pasha. The war continued. Tunis was more or less drawn into the struggle because of ill feeling between the bey's court and William Eaton, the U.S. consul there.

The burning of the American frigate the Philadelphia in the harbor of Tripoli.

After Eaton and Morris quarreled over the campaign, the blockade of Tripoli was lifted, and the U.S. government considered resuming tribute payments. Edward Preble then succeeded Morris as the U.S. commander in the Mediterranean. Preble dispatched the frigate Philadelphia under Bainbridge to resume the blockade. A storm drove the ship aground. It was captured, and Bainbridge and his crew were imprisoned. Stephen Decatur and a small group of men were sent (Feb., 1804) into the harbor. They set fire to the Philadelphia and destroyed her.

On the 16th of February, 1804, Lieutenant Stephen Decatur led a raid on the harbour in a previously captured ketch, renamed Intrepid. Although the main aim of the raid was to retake the Philadelphia, Decatur had to settle with burning the frigate to the water line. The raiding party escaped before an alarm was sounded. The British Admiral, Lord Nelson, described the raid as "the most daring act of the age."

Barbary Coast Muslims capture US Navy Vessel

Despite this exploit Preble was still unable to take Tripoli, and, in Sept., 1804, he was succeeded by Samuel Barron. Meanwhile William Eaton had convinced the U.S. government of his plan for supporting a rival claimant for the rule of Tripoli by a land expedition. Eaton landed in Egypt and after an arduous march took the port of Derna. Before he could advance farther, the war was ended. John Rodgers, sent out with a strong force in May, 1805, negotiated a settlement in June. The U.S. prisoners were ransomed, and Tripoli renounced all rights to halt or to levy tribute on American ships.

ATTACK ON DERNA

Eaton and Hull, based in Alexandria, recruited around 400 mercenaries, including Europeans (mainly Greeks), Arab cavalry, Turks, and a caravan of camels. They were promised supplies and money on arrival at their first target, the Tripolitan port of Derna. Eaton, now styling himself 'General', led the "motley" army on a fifty day trek across 500 miles of desert. He was not, however, confident about the relationship between his men (specifically Midshipman Peck and the seven naval marines led by Lieutenant Presley Neville O'Bannon) and the 200 odd Muslim mercenaries he had recruited:

"We find it almost impossible to inspire these wild bigots with confidence in us or to persuade them that, being Christians, we can be otherwise than enemies to Musselmen [Muslims]. We have a difficult undertaking." (Eaton's personal journal, April 8, 1805)

The attack on Derna

On the 25th of April they received limited supplies (they were particularly short of munitions) and funds (not enough to pay the mercenaries) at a rendezvous with the ships just down the coast from Derna. Two days later, April 27, they attacked.
Recorded as the first land engagement of American troops outside the American continent, the battle at Derna has a particular place in the memory of the United States Marine Corps. The trek across the desert is commemorated in the first verse of the Marines' Hymn: "to the shores of Tripoli".
While Hamet and the Muslim mercenaries were supposedly attacking the castle at Derna, Lt. O'Bannon and his marines led the attack on the harbour fortress. At 2:45 pm, backed up by a large number of European mercenaries, and following an offshore bombardment, O'Bannon bravely rushed the harbour defences. The defenders turned and ran - leaving cannon loaded and ready to fire. After raising the 'Stars and Stripes', O'Bannon turned the guns towards the town. By 4 pm the entire town had fallen.
Tradition has it that Hamet was so impressed by O'Bannon's bravery that he presented him with his own sword - an honour commemorated by the presentation of a 'Mameluke' sword, engraved with the legend "The Shores of Tripoli", to every US Marine Officer on graduation or direct commission.

Though the most favorable agreement yet made with a Barbary power, the treaty was not a brilliant triumph and did not end the threat of piracy to U.S. shipping. During the later Napoleonic Wars and the War of 1812, the pirates increased their raids on American commerce. Algiers actually declared war on the United States. In 1815 a squadron under Decatur forced the dey of Algiers to sign a treaty renouncing U.S. tribute, and the so-called Algerine War was ended. After 1815 the United States no longer paid tribute to any Barbary State.

Hitler looking at his dream being realised?

Lebensborn was introduced into Nazi Germany in December 1935. Lebensborn was part of the Nazi belief in a ‘Master Race’ – the creation of a superior race that would dominate Europe as part of Hitler’s ‘Thousand Year Reich’. The initial success experienced by the Germans in World War Two gave the regime the opportunity to expand Lebensborn throughout Nazi-occupied Europe.

HEINRICH HIMMLER was the creator of the Lebensborn program. With his daughter Gudrun at a sporting event on 6 März 1938 in Berlin. March 1938 in Berlin. Source : Der Spiegel

The idea of creating a ‘Master Race’ was supported by Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS and one of Hitler’s closest confidantes. Lebensborn was Himmler’s idea. Lebensborn – meaning the ‘Fountain of Life’ – was meant to provide Nazi Germany with elite generations for decades and centuries to come. Between 1935 and 1939, Lebensborn was restricted only to Nazi Germany.

Blonde hair, pure blue eyes: Grade A candidate

If a woman wanted to participate she had to prove her Aryan background as far back as her grandfathers and only 40% of those who applied to join Lebensborn passed this racial purity test. Lebensborn enabled women to get pregnant though they were not married and the Lebensborn clinics also acted as adoption centres and they ran homes for children born as a result of Lebensborn. By 1940, about 70% of those women involved in Lebensborn were unmarried.

The would be master race mothers: A 'school for brides' in Berlin

In total, ten Lebensborn homes were created in Nazi Germany with the first built just outside of Munich.

However, it was World War Two that gave Himmler the real opportunity to expand Lebensborn. The SS invariably followed the German military into a war zone. The SS had a variety of roles to fulfil after an area had been overrun. Its participation in the ‘Final Solution’ has been well documented. However, another role given to it by Himmler was to search out for young children who fitted his idea of Aryan supremacy.



Nurses carry the Lebensborn babies Source: Lager.it

LEBENSBORN (Source: Jewishgen.org)

Lebensborn means "spring of life". The "Lebensborn" project was one of most secret and terrifying Nazi projects. Heinrich Himmler created The "Lebensborn" on December 12th, 1935. The goal of this society ("Registered Society Lebensborn - Lebensborn Eingetragener Verein") was to offer to young girls "racially pure" the possibility to give birth to a child in secret. The child was then given to the SS organization which took in charge his "education" and adoption.
In the beginning, the "Lebensborn" were SS nurseries. But in order to create a "super-race", the SS transformed these nurseries in "meeting places" for "racially pure" German women who wanted to meet and make children with SS officers. The children born in the Lebensborn were taken in charge by the SS and it is important to know that most of them were also victims of this race policy. Without any contact with their mothers, without any parental love, most of them became autistic.
From 1939, one of the most horrible side of the Lebensborn policy was the kidnapping of children "racially goods" in the eastern occupied countries. These kidnappings were organized by the SS in order to take by force children who matched the Nazi's racial criteria (blond hair, blue eyes, etc....). Thousands of children were transferred to the "Lebensborn" centers in order to be "Germanized". In these centers, everything was done to force the children to reject and forget their birth parents. As an example, the SS nurses tried to persuade the children that they were deliberately abandoned by their parents. The children who refused the Nazi education were often beaten. Most of them were finally transferred to concentration camps (most of the time Kalish in Poland) and exterminated. The others were adopted by SS families.
In 1942, in reprisals of the assassination of the SS governor Heydrich in Prague, a SS unit exterminated the entire male population of a small village called Lidice. During this "operation", some SS made a selection of the children. 91 of them were considered as good enough to be "Germanized" and sent to Germany. The others were sent to special children camps (i.e. Dzierzazna & Litzmannstadti) and later to the extermination canters.
It is nearly impossible to know how much children were kidnapped in the eastern occupied countries. In 1946, it was estimated that more than 250,000 were kidnapped and sent by force to Germany. Only 25,000 were retrieved after the war and sent back to their family. It is known that several German families refused to give back the children they had received from the Lebensborn centers. In some cases, the children themselves refused to come back in their original family: they were victims of the Nazi propaganda and believed that they were pure Germans. It is also known that thousand of children not "good enough" to be Germanized were simply exterminated.

Norway was occupied in 1940. This country especially interested Himmler because of its Viking past. Himmler had a great interest in the warriors the Vikings produced and their success as fighters. Norwegian women were encouraged or forced into sexual liaisons with SS officers regardless of whether they were married or not and nine Lebensborn homes were established in the country. Children born as a result of such liaisons were brought up in Germany by approved Nazi parents. They were baptised in a SS ceremony where their adoptive parents swore that the child would have a lifelong allegiance to Nazi beliefs. Other Lebensborn clinics were established in Western Europe – France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark and Luxemburg all had one home built.

Lebensborn babies at a Bavarian maternity hospital in 1945. Image: smh.com.au

The SS scoured occupied Eastern Europe in search of Himmler’s ideal young child – blonde hair and blue eyes. Here, children were literally taken from their parents and sent to Germany where they were brought up by approved Nazi parents who also had to fit the Nazi ideal. It is thought that as many as 250,000 children were taken from Eastern Europe but the actual figure is not known as much documentation was either lost or destroyed as the war in Europe reached its end. Effectively given a new identity, their past lives were all but destroyed and it is possible that some may not have even known that they had been forcibly taken from their birth parents. It is thought that as many as 12,000 children were born as a result of the SS campaign to produce as many Aryan children as was possible.

Ah! Balm to the eyes: The glorious Nazi future! Image

Children born as part of the Lebensborn programme faced many difficulties once the war in Europe ended in May 1945. The Norwegian government classed such children as “rats” and their mothers as “German whores”. Many feared that the children would continue believing in what their SS fathers had believed in as they had been genetically ‘programmed’ to do so. The treatment of the Lebensborn children born in Norway was such that in 2008 those still alive took their plight to the European Court of Human Rights, which ordered that each person should receive £2000 compensation.

A lebensborn home: A SS affair

The Nazi ritual: Baptism of a child born to a Lebensborn member, Germany

Baptism of a child born to a Lebensborn member, Germany

Infant room at a Lebensborn facility, Germany, 1936

Maternity room at a Lebensborn facility, Germany, 1936

Operating room at a Lebensborn facility, Germany, 1936