Germany

Kidnap the Pope

Germany History 16 Min Read

SS general Karl Wolff, left, with Heinrich Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich. General Wolff was incensed, he told me, when the telephone rang in his lodging at Hitler’s headquarters, the Wolf’s Lair (Wolfsschanze) as it was called, near Rastenburg in East Prussia. It was early in the morning of September 13, 1943. Who would wake him up at this hour? A…

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Doctrine Germany 26 Min Read

The Blitzkrieg – Word and Concept

I never used the word Blitzkrieg because it is a very stupid word. Adolf Hitler, 8 November 1941 The Word “Blitzkrieg” In sober military language, there is hardly any other word that is so strikingly full of significance and at the same time so misleading and subject to misinterpretation as…

Battle Germany Poland 17 Min Read

Battle of Westerplatte

The Westerplatte was a low, mostly wooded, long peninsula with a length of around 2,000m and a maximum width of 600m. At the beginning of the 19th Century, the Poles and French secured the Westerplatte for defence against the advancing Russians. Shortly before World War I, Germany built a defence…

Germany Warship 4 Min Read

Admiral Graf Spee – German pocket battleship.

Admiral Graf Spee in Montevideo following the battle. The Admiral Graf Spee (usually known as the Graf Spee) and her sister Admiral Scheer were beamier versions of the prototype Deutschland and had less range. Popularly known as ‘pocket battleships’, they were actually known to the German navy as Panzerschiffe, or…

Doctrine France Germany 17 Min Read

Franco-Prussian War 1870-Analysis

The Battle of Bapaume (1871) took place from 2–3 January 1871, during the Franco-Prussian War in and around Biefvillers-lès-Bapaume and Bapaume. The Prussian advance was stopped by Genéral Louis Léon César Faidherbe at the head of the Armée du Nord. The “Rifle Battalion 9 from Lauenburg” at Gravelotte. Some three…

Fortification Germany 13 Min Read

The Atlantic Wall

Example of coastal defences (348 Inf. Div.), as at 1 May 1944 “Enemy forces that have succeeded in landing must be destroyed or thrown into the sea by immediate counterattacks.” Führer Directive No. 40, March 23, 1942. The completion of each static element in the German defence system naturally worked…

AFV German Units Germany 12 Min Read

Jagdtiger SdKfz 186

The heaviest armored vehicle fielded by the Germans in World War II was the Panzerjäger Tiger Ausf B. This was built on a slightly lengthened Tiger II chassis topped with a fixed casemate and a 12.8 cm PaK 44 L/55 antitank gun. It weighed seventy-nine tons. A few early versions…

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German Schnellboot (S-boat)

Schnellboot S-80 torpedo boat Camo Operations with the Kriegsmarine S-boats were often used to patrol…

Focke Wulf Fw 190D-9 Dora

Arguably, the Focke-Wulf Fw 190 evolved into wartime Germany’s most effective fighter, offering the Luftwaffe…

Flak towers: then and now

The construction of Flaktürme (Flak towers) in major cities began in response to the first…

Uniforms of Italian Wars (1494-1559)

A series of sharp but also intermittent conflicts broke out over control of Italy at…