The road to the standard French heavy tank was a complicated one. From the commissioning of the development to the entry into service took more than a decade. Several companies undertook the development during the 1920s, with Renault emerging as the winner, whose prototype was accepted into service in 1929 after modifications. In 1929, a…
The first mass-produced and then deployed light machine gun was not built by a Briton, German or American, but by a Danish engineer and captain Vilhelm Herman Oluf Madsen (1844-1917) in 1890. The weapon was then purchased by 34 armies in 13 modifications with cartridges in calibers from 6.5 to 8 mm. The successful weapon…
Nicolae Ceausescu, leader of the Romanian Communist Party, used to tease his foreign colleagues by always taking his food with him. And he loved stewed chicken, but the whole thing, including beak, claw and other parts. Tito, the head of Yugoslavia at the time, avoided solid food on principle and sipped his vegetable juices through…
Members of many European nations volunteered to serve in the Third Reich. But history is written by the victors, and so, unlike those who fought on the side of the Allies, their past is much less recorded in the popular consciousness. The exception is the Walloons, the francophone Belgians whose voluntary wartime involvement is best…
In 1977, a railroad worker from a small town in France named Jean-Marie Loret made the shocking claim that he was the son of Adolf Hitler. And while such a story may sound strange, and while history books claim Hitler died childless, Loret’s claims have a frightening trail of evidence behind them. In addition to…
The ladies from our photo gallery make you forget about the term „fair sex“. Hildegard Lächert (they called her Bloody Brigitta) She was born in 1920 and became a nurse after her studies. When she was 22 years old, she appeared in the concentration camp at Majdanek. She then worked at Auschwitz and Mauthausen. She…
The base of the Jagdtiger was the chassis of the heavy tank Tiger II (also called Königstiger), on which was placed a massive fixed superstructure that carried armour and a gun of truly extraordinary parameters. A mock-up was demonstrated in October 1943, two prototypes were tested in February 1944 and mass production began in the…
Rather than submit to Munich’s dictates, Sergeant Arnošt Hrad decided to commit suicide. He shot himself with his service pistol in a Czechoslovak fortification building. Arnošt Hrad was born in the Bohnice district of Prague as the youngest of four children. He studied at a municipal and civic school and then studied at a…
Unique wartime photograph shows that even in war, men did not lose their sense of humor and also reminds us that many black soldiers fought in the ranks of the U.S. Army. African-Americans had a very contradictory position in the U.S. military – they fought against the race war waged by Nazi Germany, even…
The order to execute Soviet political commissars caused the deaths of some 10,000 political servicemen A terrible chapter of the Soviet-German War (1941-1945) is represented by the fate of captured political commissars. On the basis of Hitler’s so-called order on the commissars (Richtlinien für die Behandlung politischer Kommissare) of 6 June 1941, the captured politruks…
The German army took great care to give due credit to the soldiers for the merits they had gained in hard battles. One of the most valuable decorations was the sleeve plate known as the „Narvikschild“. What did this atypical decoration look like and what was it awarded for? During the fierce Battle of…
Tomoyuki Yamashita was an outstanding Japanese military leader who devoted his entire life to the devoted service of the Emperor. His greatest claim to fame was his lightning campaign into Malaya, which culminated in the capture of the British colonial pride known as the „Gibraltar of the East“, the port of Singapore, in February 1942….
The rise of the architect of the Holocaust and the Prague executioner who was assassinated by Jozef Gabčík and Jan Kubiš. Reinhard Tristan Eugen Heydrich was born on 7 March 1904 in Halle am Saale into the family of composer and conservatory director Richard Bruno Heydrich. The first two first names were patriotic tributes…
The fighting at Sokolov was not only the first appearance of a Czechoslovak military unit in the Soviet Union, but also the first ever appearance of women in the ranks of the Czechoslovak army. army. One of them was the successful sniper Marie Ljalkova. Despite the fact that Colonel v. v. Marie Ljalkova-Lastovecká is…
The sad fate of the village of Lidice, which the Germans burned and its inhabitants murdered, has been described many times. Yet the stories of individuals still emerge, showing quiet heroism in the face of death. One such person was the parish priest Josef Štemberka. Josef Štemberka would probably be one of the thousands of…
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