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WW2 blog with personal views, events, museums, memorials

Articles about the second world war

In-depth WW2 blog

Veterans, Holocaust, Events, Museums and Memorials

In-depth WW2 blog

Personal blog page on WWII

Welcome to the D-Day, Normand and Beyond blog about the history of WW2. Articles about the second world war, Holocaust, personal views and interesting posts about worth while exhibitions and war museums. WW2 related books and other points of interest can also be found on this blog. If you want your museum, event, tourguide business, book or other items to be listed please contact me.

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Auschwitz Tours from Warsaw

A thoughtful journey to the past guided day trips from Poland’s capital I was asked to make a blog post about this Polish touroperator that offers guided tours in the former Nazi concentration and e…

Nazi artifacts discovered in Argentina after 80 years

In a remarkable historical discovery on May 11 in Beunos Aires, Argentina, 83 boxes of Nazi-related materials confiscated by Argentine authorities during World War II have been unearthed in the basem…

The truth about the German surrender in Wageningen on May 5, 1945

On May 5, 1945, the small Dutch town of Wageningen became the site of a turning point in World War II history. After years of occupation and hardship, the official German surrender in the Nethe…

31 October 2024

Haven for Military Scale Model Enthusiasts and History Buffs

ScaleCrafted.com is an absolute gem for anyone passionate about military vehicles, aircraft, and scale modeling. Whether you’re a seasoned model builder or new to the craft, ScaleCrafted offers an ou…

The Crete Fleet

The Crete Fleet is a free on-line encyclopaedia of Concrete Ships, Concrete Barges and Mulberry Harbour components. The website is a result of a five year research collaboration between Richard Lewis…

30 January 2024

Frank Gubbels Battlefield Guide

Frank Gubbles was motivated by Dr. Stephen Ambrose's acclaimed book and the hit HBO series Band of Brothers, numerous individuals embark on journeys across the globe to trace the path of Easy Company…

19 January 2024

Berlins Darkest Years Tour

Embarking on a journey through Berlin's poignant World War 2 sites isn't just about exploring history; it's about connecting with the profound stories etched into the city's landscapes. As a private…

20 December 2023

Irish lady whose forecast saved D-Day, dies at 100

Maureen Sweeney, the remarkable Irish woman whose pivotal weather forecast altered the course of the D-Day landings, has passed away at the age of 100. Back in 1944, Maureen and her husband Ted were…

Léon Gautier, last survivor Kieffer commando dies (100)

Léon Gautier was the last survivor of the 177 French who landed in Normandy on June 6, 1944. "To you, to your brothers in arms with whom you landed on the beaches of Normandy on June 6, 1944, 79 yea…

Holocaust Histories podcasts

My name is Jonathan Bonder. I'm the producer of Holocaust Histories a new podcast series. Each episode in the first season features a boxer with a different nationality and unique experience during t…

Benjamin Ferencz, last surviving Nuremberg prosecutor, dies at 103

Benjamin Berell Ferencz (March 11, 1920 - Boynton Beach Florida, April 7, 2023) was an American lawyer. He was an investigator of Nazi war crimes after World War II and the chief prosecutor for the U…

23 December 2022

In the four-part series WO2 IN COLOR colourist Jakob Lagerweij brings the Second World War to life in a masterful way. Part 1 begins with the horrors of the First World War, the ominous outcome…

06 November 2022

Stumbling block challenge

On November 9th 1938 was the peak of the so called November pogroms in Nazi Germany. A series of massive riots against the Jewish population. At the end over 7.000 Jewish business were either plunder…

28 October 2022

Hannah Pick-Goslar dies 93

Hannah Pick-Goslar passed away on October 28 at age 93. Hannah, or Hanneli as Anne called her in her diary, was one of Anne Frank's best friends, they had known each other since kindergarten. On June…

Remains of 8.000 Nazi victims found in Polish mass grave

In Poland, a mass grave containing the burnt remains of about 8.000 people has been found near the former German concentration camp Soldau. Researchers at the Institute of National Remembrance suspec…

Verzetsmuseum Amsterdam

On April 24, 1984, the first meeting of the incoming board of a foundation with the aim of “creating and maintaining a museum dedicated to resistance to National Socialism and Fascism” was held. At t…

The Walter Frentz Collection

The Walter Frentz Collection is a website displaying over 5.000 images and photographs of the vast collection of German cameraman Walter Frentz. We must not forget that the photographs were taken wit…

Band of Brothers Tour

The Band of Brothers Tour is an unforgettable 11-day journey from the shores of Normandy to Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest, hitting all of the highlights of the American WWII war effort in the footsteps of th…

Stichting Driel Polen

1.003 paratroopers of the 1st Polish Independent Parachute Brigade landed on September 21, 1944 in Driel and the surrounding area to take part in the Battle of Arnhem. A year after this date, a commi…

Mimi Reinhardt, dies at 107

Mimi Reinhardt, who compiled lists of names for German industrialist Oskar Schindler to help Jews during the Holocaust, has died aged 107. She wasn’t much of a typist, but she knew shorthand an…

WW2 victim identified after 77 years

77 years after World War II, a victim has been identified. It concerns Cornelis Pieter Kreukniet from The Hague. His remains were found after the war in a mass grave on the Waalsdorpervlakte. At the…

Harry Billinge: D-Day veteran dies aged 96

D-Day veteran Horace "Harry" Billinge has died aged 96 following a short illness, his family has confirmed. Mr Billinge, from St Austell, Cornwall, was 18 when he was a sapper attached to the 44 Roya…

Letters offer a look at youth Adolf Hitler

An Austrian historian has found 31 letters from Adolf Hitler's father. Roman Sandgruber used them to write the first biography of Alois Hitler and to sketch the childhood of the later dictator. "Ther…

German Holocaust denier (93) has to go to jail

Ursula Haverbeck a 93-year-old German woman has been jailed for a year for denying the Holocaust. She denied the Nazi genocide from WW2 at a 2017 rally and repeated it in an interview in 2020. Judges…

Resistance women who saved thousands of lives

They hid people in hiding in their own house, cycled through the country carrying weapons and food stamps, plotted attacks and smuggled Jewish children away to put them in a safe place. And all this…

A unique find of a Short Stirling BF396

Wreckage of a British World War II bomber that washed up on the beach at Camperduin in February has been identified. It turns out to be the remains of a Short Stirling MK1. The wreckage washed ashore…

WWII bomber on display in 2000 pieces

'Unique in the world'. More than 2000 fragments of a British bomber from the Second World War will soon be on display in the Overloon War Museum. Volunteers put the remains of the crashed plane toget…

14 February 2022

Eagles Over Husky by Alexander Fitzgerald-Black

The Allied Air Forces in the Sicilian Campaign, May 14 to August 17, 1943 In the summer of 1943, the United Nations began Operation HUSKY, the invasion of Sicily. The Eagles over HUSKY (the airmen o…

07 February 2022

Veteran Richard Overton still waiting for a headstone

Richard Overton, who was the oldest World War II veteran when he died in 2018 at 112, is still waiting on a headstone for his grave at Texas State Cemetery in Austin, Texas. Overton, who was also the…

17 November 2021

Badges on Battledress by Jon Mills

Badges on Batteldress with the subtitle 'An Illustrated History of the Cloth Insignia Worn on Khaki and Jungle Green by Britain's Armed Forces 1939 to 1967' by Jon Mills is one of the best documente…

11 November 2021

Veterans Day (11 November)

Veterans Day is an annual memorial in the United States that pays tribute to all those who served in the armed forces, especially living veterans. Veterans Day is a national holiday held on November…

09 November 2021

Fabric of War by Bill Alexander

Fabric of War is the first thoroughly researched and detailed history dealing with the Canadian army cloth shoulder titles as worn between 1900 and 1970. Drawing on extensive archival material, the n…

18 September 2021

Market Garden Commemoration

By September 1944, Allied forces had successfully broken out of their Normandy beachhead and pursued shattered German forces across Northern France and Belgium. Although Allied American commanders ge…

04 September 2021

Veteran books of WW2

A new part on my website: books written by veterans of WW2. Well known authors have enough exposure so therefor this part of my website is meant to give the veterans a spotlight and to present the bo…

Liberation of Camp Westerbork NL

On April 12, 1945, the Canadian army freed 876 Jewish prisoners in camp Westerbork. To the cry: "The Tommy's are here!", everyone rushed out to catch up with the liberators. Many jumped on top of the…

Jewish Virtual Library

Encyclopedia of Jewish and Israeli history, politics and culture, with biographies, statistics, articles and documents on topics from anti-Semitism to Zionism. The Library has 13 wings: Anti-Semitism…

Camp Vught National Memorial discovers unique photographs

Camp Vught National Memorial recently came into possession of three special photos, which were taken by a German soldier during one of the Jew transports from the station in Vught in May 1943. Direct…

Holocaust Memorial Center Zekelman Family Campus

The Holocaust Memorial Center Zekelman Family Campus (HMC) opened in 1984 on the campus of the Jewish Community Center in West Bloomfield, Michigan (in the Metropolitan Detroit Area). We were founded…

Spectacular color footage

Spectacular HD-scanned footage of 1945 with narration by newsreel cameraman Jack Lieb. According to this source Lieb's voice had been recorded in 1976 by his son, Warren, one of his final lectures. L…

12 February 2021

Camp Gordon Johnston WWII Museum

The Mission of the Camp Gordon Johnston WWII Museum is to honor and preserve the heritage of the men who trained at Camp Gordon Johnston in Carrabelle during WWII. We share the real stories of the de…

11 February 2021

Remco Reiding, researcher, writer and WW2 project manager became known for his years of research into the forgotten Soviet Field of Honor in Leusden. He specialized in projects that keep the memory o…

02 February 2021

Captain Sir Tom Moore dies at 100

Captain Sir Tom Moore, the second world war veteran who raised almost £39 million for NHS charities during the first coronavirus lockdown in spring 2020, has died aged 100 after testing positive for…

02 February 2021

USHMM permission

I would like to thank the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum located at 100 Raoul Wallenberg Place, Washington, USA for their willingness to help with my ongoing project. The permission has allo…

29 January 2021

Karl Höcker's Auschwitz album (USHMM)

The Höcker Album (or Hoecker Album) is a collection of photographs believed to have been collected by Karl-Friedrich Höcker, an officer in the SS during the Nazi regime in Germany. It contains over o…

25 January 2021

Crowdsourcing: Every name counts!

On the upcoming 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp, which coincides with International Holocaust Memorial Day, the Arolsen Archives are launching a crowdsourcing p…

18 October 2020

The Juno Beach Centre

The Juno Beach Centre Association (JBCA) is a Canadian non-profit charitable corporation that is governed by a Board of Directors based in Burlington (Ontario), Canada. The JBCA owns and operates the…

U.S. Army Center of Military History

The Center Of Military History (CMH), which reports to the Administrative Assistant to the Secretary of the Army, is responsible for the appropriate use of history throughout the United States Army…

German Russian Museum Berlin

The Second World War ended in Europe with an act of unconditional surrender in our house. On 8 May 1945 the High Command of the German Wehrmacht signed a document of unconditional surrender in front…

Cigarette box found!

A small aluminum tin with an engraved portrait, a name in Cyrillic script and a date: it was accidentally excavated at the site of former Camp Amersfoort at the end of last month and is tangible evid…

Stephen Ambrose Tours

Live the memory of a lifetime on a historical or WWII tour by Stephen Ambrose Historical Tours! Our Founder Stephen E. Ambrose, author of the best-selling books, Band of Brothers, D-Day: Ju…

Liberation of The Netherlands

After the Allied landing in Normandy in June 1944, the western Allies rapidly advanced in the direction of the Dutch border. Tuesday 5 September is known as Dolle dinsdag ("mad Tuesday") the Du…

Wannsee Conference Memorial

I visited this memorial last year. The Wannsee Conference (German: Wannsee konferenz) was a meeting of senior government officials of Nazi Germany and Schutzstaffel (SS) leaders, held in the Berlin s…

Auschwitz, the Exhibition

Auschwitz was the largest and most lethal of all the German Nazi concentration and extermination camps. More than 1,100,000 people were murdered behind its barbed-wire fences between May 1940 and Jan…

Big Red One Assault Museum

On one of my many trips to Normandy I visited the The Big Red One Assault Museum in Colleville-sur-Mer. Owned by Pierre Louis Gosselin, this US 1st Infantry Division or “Big Red One” museum, is an im…

The SNAFU special C47

This mindboggling project lead by Patrick Elie (the man with the biggest knowledge of D-Day and the Invasion), is simply breathtaking! With a group of enthousiast and highly devoted people and volunt…

Dutch women from Ravensbrück

A Swedish count has rescued thousands of women from Ravensbrück concentration camp, including 200 from the Netherlands. White buses with a red cross on the roof brought the mostly severely weakened w…

The Arolsen Archives, Germany

The Arolsen Archives are an international center on Nazi persecution with the world’s most comprehensive archive on the victims and survivors of National Socialism. The collection has information on…

Musée Memoires 39-45

A stone‘s throw from the Pointe Saint Mathieu, step back in time in this exceptional German command post bunker. On 5 floors, discover a museum focused on personal accounts and anecdotes, illustrated…

25 January 2019

How it started...

In 1999, I drove down to Normandy with my wife Anyta for a weekend to visit my parents who were enjoying a two week holiday there. A visit to the local museum there changed my life forever. Sure a lo…