WORLD HISTORY AND FACTS

LIFE Photographer Margaret Bourke-White poses in flight gear in front of a B-17 with USAAF Capt Hazen J. Payette, Intelligence Officer, 97th Bomb Group, 12th Air Force in North Africa - 1943 Hazen Joseph Payette, Born Oct 9, 1898, was a WW1 Naval Reserve Veteran who later obtained his law degree and worked for the City of Detroit and later in Private Practice until April 14 1942 when he joined the USAAF with a commission into Air Combat Intelligence. While serving in North Africa he advanced in rank to Captain and then Major.  Rotating back to the USA in September 1944, Lt Col Hazen Payette was sent to Tinian, Mariana Islands in May 1945 as the Intelligence Officer (S-2) of the USAAF 509th Composite Group.  The 509th CG was the Boeing B-29 Superfortress Unit which conducted the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, in August 1945. After the Japanese surrender, Hazen was honorably discharged on January 26, 1946, He returned to the Detroit area and continued his law ...

As covered in earlier posts, at the end of January 1941 British forces launched concurrent offensives from Sudan and Kenya into Italian East Africa.  In the northern portion of this offensive, British forces made initial good progress but then quickly bogged down in a protracted fight at Keren in Eritrea. On 27 March the British finally broke through the Italian defences at Keren thus culminating an eight-week battle that had cost them 536 dead and 3,229 wounded.  During the same struggle the Italians lost at least 3,000 killed, 4,500 wounded and over 3,000 taken prisoner. Now with their main defensive line broken and many of their best units severely depleted from the recent heavy fighting, the Italians were thoroughly demoralized and hard pressed to offer further coordinated resistance against the advancing British units.  As such, the British made good progress and in less than a month completed their conquest of Eritrea taking many thousands of prisoners in the ...

“I felt crippled emotionally for a very, very long time."  Miriam Steiner was just five years old when Nazi Germany and its Axis partners invaded her native Yugoslavia On This Day in 1941.  Eventually, Miriam and her parents were arrested. While her father managed to escape, Miriam and her mother, Zora, were forced onto trains bound for Stara Gradiška, a concentration camp administered by Nazi-allied Croatian authorities. Zora was pushed in another direction as Miriam was forced onto a freight car designated for children.  "I start screaming, Mama. Mama. And she turned around, and she saw me, and I saw her. But the next moment, she was gone," Miriam remembered. For four days, Miriam and the other children were trapped in the dark car unaware of their destination. Not knowing that her mother was unable to reach her, Miriam wondered, "Where is my mother? … Why is she not with me?" When the two eventually reunited at the camp, Miriam barely recognized her mother. ...

Evil Experiment Carried Out In History Of World War Ll–world History And Facts. In the early to mid 1940s, during World War II and the Holocaust, the Nazi’s experimented on thousands of men, women and children. Their major target populations included Romani, Sinti, ethnic Poles, Soviet POWs, disabled Germans, and Jews from across Europe. At Auschwitz and other camps, under the direction of Eduard Wirths, selected inmates were subjected to various hazardous experiments that were designed to help German military personnel in combat situations, develop new weapons, aid in the recovery of military personnel who had been injured, and to advance the Nazi racial ideology. Experiments on twins Experiments on twin children in concentration camps were created to show the similarities and differences in the genetics of twins, as well as to see if the human body can be unnaturally manipulated.  The central leader of the experiments was Josef Mengele, who from 1943 to 1944 performed experiments...

Rudolf Höss–world history and facts Rudolf Franz Ferdinand Höss  German : 25 November 1901 – 16 April 1947) was a German SS officer during the Nazi era who, after the defeat of Nazi Germany, was convicted for war crimes. Höss was the longest-serving commandant of Auschwitz concentration and extermination camp (from 4 May 1940 to November 1943, and again from 8 May 1944 to 18 January 1945). He tested and implemented means to accelerate Hitler's order to systematically exterminate the Jewish population of Nazi-occupied Europe, known as the Final Solution. On the initiative of one of his subordinates, Karl Fritzsch, Höss introduced the pesticide Zyklon B to be used in gas chambers, where more than a million people were killed. Höss was hanged in 1947 following a trial before the Polish Supreme National Tribunal. During his imprisonment, at the request of the Polish authorities...

Eye-opening photos of executions torturers from Nazi camp The Holocaust is a dark chapter in human history, and the atrocities committed during that time are almost incomprehensible. However, one aspect that is often overlooked is the punishment meted out to the perpetrators of those crimes. A recently discovered collection of photographs provides a glimpse into the executions of Nazi war criminals, many of whom were responsible for running the concentration camps where millions of innocent people were murdered. The images in this collection are not for the faint of heart. They depict men and women who committed unspeakable acts of cruelty, receiving their just deserts. These photographs serve as a reminder that even in the darkest of times, justice will be served. They also serve as a warning to all those who would engage in similar conduct in the future that there will be consequences for their actions. The release of these photographs is also a call to action. It is important ...