Lutz Becker was born in Berlin, he says, "during the anno diabolo, 1941. Mine was the generation that was sent into a dark pit." Meeting this survivor of the Third Reich, now in his 70s and living in Bayswater, London, it's hard to suppress the thought that Becker, a distinguished artist and film historian, has conducted most of his life in a circle of hell.

Becker's childhood passed in the fetid, terrifying atmosphere of Berlin's air-raid shelters as the Allied raids intensified and the city was reduced to burning rubble. He recalls the radio announcements – "Achtung, achtung, ende ende, über Deutschland sinfe bender. Achtung, achtung"– followed by the helter-skelter rush downstairs. When the bombs fell – even far off – "the change in the air pressure was enormous, and extraordinary," he says. "People used to bleed from the ears, the nose and the eyes. I came out deaf, with tinnitus." Today, Becker adds, "I envy children who grow up without fear."

When the war ended in 1945, Becker and his family found "a world in ruins. The bodies of soldiers lay in the streets. When you passed a bombed-out building you could hear the buzzing of bluebottles in the darkness. Death was still underneath the ruins," he remembers. The devastated, malodorous aftermath of the Third Reich left a deep psychological scar. "As a child I had been forbidden to use dirty words. Now I would stand in front of the mirror in my mother's bedroom and repeat 'shit' and 'arsehole'." He laughs at the memory. "But I was thinking of Hitler."

In some ways, Becker has been thinking about Hitler ever since, and what the Führer did to the German people. "I was raised in a world of lies," he declares. As the Second World War morphed into the Cold War, the terrible truth about one of the most evil regimes in history began to leak out. Poignantly, the first Germans to come to terms with the reality of the Third Reich were those children who had somehow survived the fall of Berlin – young men like Lutz Becker.

A gifted abstract German artist and film-maker, Becker discovered his vocation as an artist in the 1950s, when he also acquired a passion for film. In 1965, he won the Gropius prize for art and chose to spend it by transferring to the Slade, first coming to London in 1966 to study under William Coldstream. His contemporaries included the artist and filmmaker Derek Jarman. While researching his thesis, his troubled relationship with his childhood under the Third Reich found a new outlet. "It was in the Bundesarchiv," Becker recalls, "that I first unearthed a photograph of Eva Braun holding a 16mm Siemens cine-camera."

Eva Braun still exerts a strange fascination. Today, 80 years after Hitler became chancellor, Braun is both a symbol of Nordic simplicity, and also a tragic figure whose ordinariness provides a window on to the banality of evil. Postwar fascination with the Nazis means that Eva Braun still has a remarkable grip on our imagination – the little girl in the fairytale who takes us to the horror in the woods.

The woman who holds the key to the domestic face of Adolf Hitler was 17 when she was first introduced to the Führer, who was only identified as "Herr Wolff". This blind date had been set up by Hitler's personal photographer Heinrich Hoffman, for whom Eva Braun worked as an assistant.

Hoffman, who ran a photographic studio in Munich, had been instrumental in the making of Hitler's image. He ensured that Hitler was always seen as a determined, defiant and heroic figure, a man of iron. From the 1920s, Hoffman's photographs were duplicated by the million in the German press, and sold as postcards to the party faithful. When Hitler's mistress, Geli Raubal, committed suicide on 18 September 1931 in the apartment they shared in Munich, there was an urgent need to hush up a potential scandal, and give the Führer's private life the semblance of normality. Hoffman stepped in. Eva Braun bore a striking similarity to the dead woman, and Hitler took comfort in her company after Raubal's suicide. By the end of 1932, they had become lovers.

Braun continued to work for Hoffman, a position that enabled her to travel with Hitler's entourage, as a photographer for the NSDAP (Nazi Party). Her relationship with the Führer was troubled. Twice, in August 1932 and May 1935, she attempted suicide. But by 1936 she was fully established as the Führer's companion. Hitler was ambivalent about her. He wanted to present himself as a chaste hero. In Nazi ideology, men were leaders and warriors, women were housewives. So Adolf and Eva never appeared as a couple in public, and the German people were unaware of their relationship until after the war. According to Albert Speer's memoirs, Fräulein Braun never slept in the same room as Hitler, and always had her own quarters. Speer later said, "Eva Braun will prove a great disappointment to historians." But Speer was wrong. He had overlooked Eva's gifts as a photographer.

Once he found the photograph of Eva with her cine-camera, Becker began to speculate about the possibility of Braun's home movies. If there was a camera there must have been some film, and if there was film, it must have been stored somewhere. The Nazis were nothing if not meticulous record keepers. In the late 1940s there had been reports circulating of a collection of home movies. Becker had heard these stories, but had never pursued them. No one had ever confirmed where such films might be hidden, or even if they existed at all.

Now in London, Becker began to make inquiries. He searched the records of the Imperial War Museum and the National Film Archive. "In those days," he recalls, "there was no great interest in film as historical evidence. Most historians believed that newspapers were more important than film, as testimony. But I had a very sharp need to sort out my own past." Becker would look at anything that helped with decrypting the terrible conundrum of Nazism.

Perhaps only a child of Nazi Berlin could have felt both the need and the determination to do this. It's hard, now, to appreciate how little was known of Hitler's mistress in the 1950s and 60s. It was Becker's research that would change the world's perception of the Führer and the Aryan wife (Braun married Hitler the day before their suicide) who died at his side in the bunker.

Becker's quest took him to the heart of a strange, postwar – predominantly American – society of Nazi obsessives: former veterans, trophy hunters, amateur cineastes and right-wing Aryan fantasists. In April 1970, Becker found himself in Phoenix, Arizona, at a gathering of film buffs, when he was introduced to a retired member of the US army unit responsible for the liberation of Hitler's chalet at Obersalzberg in April 1945. This veteran marine told Becker that, so far as he could recall, he had indeed noticed piles of film canisters in Hitler's mountain lair, but had not understood their significance. This material, he remembered, had been taken away by the US Signal Corps, the division of the American army responsible for the films and photographs retrieved from the ruins of the Third Reich.

Becker's curiosity was roused. Assuming they existed, these film canisters, he reasoned, must eventually have been taken to the National Archives and Records Administration in Washington DC. This was the home of such treasures as, for example, the original Declaration of Independence. With some anticipation, Becker trawled through the National Archive's catalogue, but in vain. He could find nothing that answered to the description of Eva Braun's home movies. For a while, the trail went cold but, he says, "I still had this instinct that there would be some films."

Becker continued to pursue his career as an artist in London, but he could not shake off his reputation as the film historian of the Third Reich. In 1971, he was approached by the producer David Puttnam and Sandy Lieberson, co-founders of the documentary unit Visual Programme Systems. They asked him to act as a consultant on a documentary series about the nazification of Germany in the 1920s and 30s. With some misgivings, Becker signed on, not least because "as a private person, I could not finance my research into Eva Braun's films". Working for Puttnam and Lieberson, Becker now had full responsibility for researching the US National Archives in depth. He could still find no trace of Eva Braun's fabled home movies, but at least he was in conversation with the curators who might be able to help.

Part of Becker's problem in these early days was that his search was for 16mm footage. To the world's film archives, 16mm film was inferior to 35mm, the regular film stock used for official propaganda. The curatorial priority for most film archives at that time was to preserve nitrate footage shot on 35mm film before it disintegrated or disappeared; 16mm film was a lesser priority. Nonetheless, on his visits to Washington, Becker did turn up new information about a National Archives vault of uncatalogued 16mm film held in an old aircraft hangar in a forgotten part of Maryland, just outside Washington DC.

One fine day, in the spring of 1972, Becker drove out of DC to this vault and began searching through a rusting and discarded heap of old film canisters. It was, apparently, a fruitless quest. Most of the material seemed to be Japanese. None of it was 16mm stock. But then, as he turned over these uncatalogued cans, he spotted something no one had noticed before – a set of cans with German labels. With rising excitement, he opened the first can and drew out a few frames of film to hold them up to the light.

Amazingly, it was colour film, and – even more astounding – there was Adolf Hitler with several senior Nazis (Albert Speer, Joseph Goebbels, Joachim von Ribbentrop), relaxing in the sunshine on the terrace of the Obersalzberg. These were indeed Eva Braun's home movies. Here, finally, were the overlords of the Third Reich at home, and at play.

Braun's home movies, mostly shot in Hitler's fortified chalet in Berchtesgaden, in the Bavarian Alps, have a naive innocence. She captures in the private life of the Nazi high command what Hannah Arendt called "the banality of evil". In Braun's footage, we see Hitler and his cronies relaxing on the terrace of his chalet. They drink coffee and take cakes; they joke and pose for the camera. Hitler talks to the children of his associates, or caresses his Alsatian, Blondi. The camera (in Eva Braun's hands) approaches Hitler in rare and intimate close-up. Occasionally, when a visitor from outside the party elite appears, the camera retreats to a more respectful distance. Mostly, however, Braun's cine-camera is among the party circle, at Hitler's side, and at his table. Most of the footage is in colour, with an extraordinary immediacy. Braun's films offer a remarkably unmediated view of the Nazi leadership and of Hitler himself. This was not the image presented by his propaganda team, or by Leni Riefenstahl, "Hitler's favourite film-maker", but the man as he actually was.

Braun's films chart the Führer's career up to the zenith of Nazi success, the summer of 1941. At that moment, with the eastern divisions of the Wehrmacht racing into the heart of the Soviet Union, it was reasonable to conclude, as many did, that Germany would win the war. But then came Pearl Harbor in December 1941, followed by Stalingrad and the defeat of Rommel in North Africa. Once Russia was fighting back, undefeated, and once America was committed to the Allied cause, the Third Reich was doomed, and Eva Braun ceased filming.

In the apocalyptic chaos of Hitler's downfall, the final days in the bunker and the dramatic suicides of Adolf and Eva, Braun's home movies, never widely known, became forgotten. Until Becker came on the scene.

"I asked for a Steenbeck [editing machine]," he recalls, "and began to watch. In my excitement, it was as if my life had a sense of purpose. I had been very angry about those Nazis. Now I could channel that anger in a positive way."

In film-history terms, the moment Becker opened those first canisters was the equivalent of peering into the tomb of Tutankhamun. He had finally identified the treasure that many had spoken about but none had found. Adolf Hitler's image would never be the same again.

By chance, Becker's discovery – soon after viewed at the National Archives in Washington with great excitement – coincided with the making of one of television's greatest documentary series, The World At War, a project produced and masterminded by Jeremy Isaacs at Thames TV in London. In keeping with the spirit of the age, the TV history of the Second World War would not just be a military history, featuring admirals, generals and air marshals. It was to include the common man and woman: Berlin housewives, London Blitz survivors, Russian peasants and Japanese civilians. Isaacs wanted not only to describe the victory of the west, but also to tell the story of how the whole planet had become engulfed in conflict.

Becker, meanwhile, was discovering the limits to the public's appetite for the home life of Adolf Hitler. Taking the best of the Eva Braun footage, the documentary he worked on for Puttnam, entitled Swastika, was premiered at the Cannes Film festival in May 1973. The audience was outraged, booing and whistling at the screen, with cries of "Assassins!" The presentation of the Führer as a friendly uncle, a petit bourgeois figure in a suit and tie, popping in and out of a family gathering, was intolerable. The iron-clad image of Hitler so carefully shaped by Heinrich Hoffman still exerted a fierce grip on the public imagination.

The production team for The World At War soon heard about Becker's material, and wove it into the series in a manner less contentious than in Swastika. Now British and American television audiences could have a new perspective on the Third Reich and its leaders. Initial outrage softened into a more mature understanding. It became easier to come to terms with the horrors of the past if its demonic protagonists were seen not as monsters but as ordinary – sinister emissaries from humanity's dark side, but recognisably human.

Becker is still tormented by the first reactions to Eva Braun's films. "I was punished for puncturing a negative myth. People saw something that was banal in action, and banal in its colour." He believes that many had become comfortable with the carefully composed, black-and-white propaganda images of the Nazis. "People hate it when you tinker with their mythologies," he says. Over a generation, however, perceptions have changed.

Today, Becker's research, inspired by the need to make peace with the past, has, paradoxically, had the effect of historicising it. There were many equally evil 20th-century regimes – Stalin, Mao, Idi Amin, Pol Pot – but none of these exert quite the same cultural and psychological charge as Nazism. Becker himself finds it painful to review Braun's home movies. He says, looking back, he has learned "to develop a sense of responsibility, and to see that [my research] could not be a howling triumph, but at best an armistice. I was able to see the ghosts of the past put into the history books. The Nazis were no longer spooking my psyche. My journey was over."

Taylor Downing's book,The World At War, is published by BFI/Palgrave Macmillan, priced £14.99. To order a copy for £11.99 with free UK p&p, go toguardian.co.uk/bookshopor call 0330 333 6846

Reading this on mobile? Please visit the desktop site to view the videos

This article originally appeared on guardian.co.uk

Please follow Military & Defense on Twitter and Facebook.

Join the conversation about this story »

The step-grandchildren of Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels are billionaires, although their wealth comes mostly from their biological relatives, Bloomberg's David de Jong reports.

Here's how the relationship works:

• In 1931, Goebbels married Magda Quandt, who'd previously been married to industrialist Guenther Quandt (as well as another man before).
• Harald Quandt (actually the son of Magda's first husband) wound up living with Goebbels after the marriage.
• When Guenther — himself implicated as a Nazi follower though not involved in the regime’s crimes — died, Harald and his half-brother Herbert Quandt inherited his fortune.

That included ownership of two large manufacturing firms as well as stakes in Daimler-Benz and potash miner Wintershall AG.

Today, Herbert's widow Johanna Quandt, 86, and their children Susanne Klatten and Stefan Quandt remain BMW’s dominant shareholders, de Jong says. Meanwhile, he writes, "the billionaire daughters of Harald Quandt -- Katarina Geller-Herr, 61, Gabriele Quandt, 60, Anette-Angelika May-Thies, 58, and 50-year-old Colleen-Bettina Rosenblat-Mo -- have kept a lower profile."

Goebbels poisoned himself and his biological children as the war was ending.

Click here to read the full story from de Jong >

Please follow Clusterstock on Twitter and Facebook.

Join the conversation about this story »

The Nazi Holocaust may have claimed up to 20 million lives, a figure far greater than previous estimates, new research has revealed.

The millions disappeared into a Nazi imprisonment and killing machine that covered a bloody swathe of Europe and appears to have been far more deadly than has been thought.

Up until now, the Holocaust is thought to have consumed between five and six million Jews, with an estimated further six million other people also murdered by the Nazi regime.

The new figures of 15 to 20 million, which have astonished some Holocaust historians, come after thirteen years of painstaking study at Washington's Holocaust Memorial Museum . Historians at the museum brought together and studied the huge amount, and often disparate, files and research on the Holocaust.

"The results of our research are shocking," Geoffrey Megargee, the director of the study, told The Independent newspaper. "We are putting together numbers that no one ever compiled before, even for camp systems that have been fairly well researched - and many of them have not been."

While Auschwitz and the Warsaw Ghetto became infamous names linked to the system of mass killing, the museum found that they were just part of a extensive network that imprisoned and obliterated millions of lives.

The research covered some 42,400 camps and ghettos across Europe, and also included forced-labour camps and Nazi "care" centres where pregnant women were forced to have an abortion or had their child killed right after giving birth. It also drew in camps, prisons and killing grounds used by Nazi puppet regimes in countries such as France and Romania.

The number of locations is almost double previous estimates made by the same institution and, all told, they may have imprisoned and killed between 15 to 20 million people.

"The numbers are so much higher than what we originally thought," Hartmut Berghoff, director of the German Historical Institute in America, said in an interview after learning of the new data. "We knew before how horrible life in the camps and ghettos was but the numbers are unbelievable.

Please follow Military & Defense on Twitter and Facebook.

Join the conversation about this story »

Greek soccer player Giorgos Katidis banned from national team for life over Nazi salute

ATHENS, Greece (AP) — Greek soccer player Giorgos Katidis has been banned from his national team for life after giving a Nazi salute while celebrating a goal in the topflight league.

Greece's soccer federation said Sunday in a statement that the AEK Athens midfielder's gesture "is a deep insult to all victims of Nazi brutality."

The 20-year-old Katidis gave a Nazi salute after scoring the go-ahead goal Saturday in AEK's 2-1 victory over Veria in the Greek league. He pleaded ignorance of the meaning of his gesture — right arm extended and hand straightened. He claimed on his Twitter account that he detests fascism.

AEK and the Greek league are considering separate sanctions. AEK fans have demanded Katidis' dismissal from the team.

Katidis has played for Greek national junior teams but not the senior side.

Please follow Sports Page on Twitter and Facebook.

Join the conversation about this story »

"All that he wants" is to set the record straight.

Ace of Base's Ulf Ekberg has faced criticism lately after a photo of the Swedish musician allegedly doing the Nazi salute hit the web.

In his younger, pre-Ace of Base days, Ekberg was part of a band named Commit Suicide — a New Wave music band creating and performing electronic music on synthesizers.

While Ekberg tells E! Online the band has been misconstrued as "skinhead music with very racist lyrics," he admits "our potential association with such groups is a matter I truly regret."

An alleged Commit Suicide demo tape of six songs with such content has been floating around the web, but Ekberg explains that only "two of the songs on this demo where written and performed by us."

He adds, "These songs have absolutely nothing to do with Commit Suicide. We did not write or perform those songs that were attributed to us."

But, he does admit that "some of my thoughts from those days" are "nauseating."

According to music site Noisey.com, one of the songs includes these controversial lyrics: "Men in white hoods march down the road, we enjoy ourselves when we're sawing off n-----s' heads / Immigrant, we hate you! Out, out, out, out! Nordic people, wake up now! Shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot!"

Today, Ekberg tells E! "I have always been deeply regretful of that period in my life, as I strive to bring happiness to people, and during that period I did not live up to that standard. I have not been involved in violence or political activism in the past 25 years. However, I find some of my thoughts from those days nauseating to myself today."

And although he admits to having had such ideas as a teenager, Ekberg also says that "those opinions where based on poor judgment and ignorance."

SEE ALSO: L.L. Cool J and Brad Paisley cause controversy with "Accidental Racist" song >

Please follow The Wire on Twitter and Facebook.

Join the conversation about this story »

When your enemy is sworn to exterminate every one of you, is it worth trying to cut a deal with him to save at least some lives?

The question lies at the heart of a new documentary by Claude Lanzmann, author of "Shoah," the hugely-acclaimed tableau of the Holocaust.

"The Last of the Unjust," premiering at Cannes on Sunday, explores a moral dilemma that Lanzmann briefly touches on his 1985 masterpiece.

For three and a half hours, the viewer is taken through an exploration of Benjamin Murmelstein, the last president of the Jewish Council in the "model ghetto" of Theresienstadt in Nazi-annexed Czechoslovakia.

Set up by SS colonel Adolf Eichmann as a bogus town run by Jews themselves -- a Potemkin village designed to dupe the world -- Theresienstadt was one of the grimmest chapters in the long record of Nazi atrocities.

It housed 50,000 Jews at its peak periods. Over four years, more than 150,000 inhabitants were killed, many of them shipped to the gas chambers of Auschwitz.

"It was the peak of Nazi cruelty and perversity... a unique combination of lies and naked violence," Lanzmann, 87, said in an interview with AFP in February.

To run Theresienstadt, the Nazis formed a Jewish Council, comprising 12 members and a leader, "the Elder of the Jews," or Judenaeltester in German. Those who refused the appointment were killed.

The first Elder was sent to Auschwitz in 1943 and killed six months later; the second was executed in Theresienstadt in 1944.

The documentary describes the extraordinary and controversial tale of Benjamin Murmelstein, a former Grand Rabbi of Vienna who became the third and final Elder in Theresienstadt and the only one in all of eastern Europe to survive the war.

Survival meant that he became a target. In the early 1960s, Murmelstein was bitterly attacked by some Holocaust survivors, who accused him of collaboration. There were even calls for him to be hanged, like Eichmann, whom Murmelstein knew intimately from Vienna.

The documentary is based on hours of filmed interviews that Lanzmann had with Murmelstein in 1975, 14 years before his death.

In it, Murmelstein comes across as hugely compelling, a man fiercely intelligent, courageous and ironic, harsh with others but also with himself.

Every day, he faced demands from the Nazis that he was obliged to comply with -- but he did his utmost to delay or subvert them, and in the process enabled some to avoid the death marches ordered by Hitler, yet knowing that others were doomed.

He is far from being a stooge or power-mesmerised monster, as other Elders in the eastern European ghettos were and as he himself was later portrayed.

"By taking huge risks (in Vienna), he managed to get 120,000 Austrian Jews out of the clutches of their persecutors, and what he recounts is a magisterial lesson in history," said Lanzmann.

"(...) One of the lessons of 'The Last of the Unjust,' in my view, is that at a certain point you no longer have any other choice than to comply and obey, that all resistance becomes impossible.

"That said, Benjamin Murmelstein fought tirelessly right to the end against the killers. As he said, the Nazis wanted to make him into a puppet, but the puppet had learned to pull the strings."

As the holder of a diplomatic passport issued by the Red Cross, Murmelstein could have fled abroad after the war.

Instead, he voluntarily put himself forward for arrest by the Czechoslovak authorities after a number of Jews accused him of collaborating with the enemy.

He spent 18 months in prison before being acquitted of all charges. He went into exile in Rome, where he found life tough, but he never went to Israel.

Murmelstein's recollections, said Lanzmann, are doubly precious, as they prompt a new interpretation of Eichmann, who was kidnapped by Mossad agents in Argentina and hauled to Israel for trial, culminating in his execution in 1962.

German philosopher Hannah Arendt, in her account of the trial, described Eichmann as the stereotypical bureaucrat, embodying "the banality of evil".

But Murmelstein portrays Eichmann as a "demon," fanatical in his anti-Semitism, violent and corrupt.

Please follow Military & Defense on Twitter and Facebook.

Join the conversation about this story »

BERLIN (AP) — A top commander of a Nazi SS-led unit accused of burning villages filled with women and children lied to American immigration officials to get into the United States and has been living in Minnesota since shortly after World War II, according to evidence uncovered by The Associated Press.

Michael Karkoc, 94, told American authorities in 1949 that he had performed no military service during World War II, concealing his work as an officer and founding member of the SS-led Ukrainian Self Defense Legion and later as an officer in the SS Galician Division, according to records obtained by the AP through a Freedom of Information Act request.

The Galician Division and a Ukrainian nationalist organization he served in were both on a secret American government blacklist of organizations whose members were forbidden from entering the United States at the time.

Though records do not show that Karkoc had a direct hand in war crimes, statements from men in his unit and other documentation confirm the Ukrainian company he commanded massacred civilians, and suggest that Karkoc was at the scene of these atrocities as the company leader.

Nazi SS files say he and his unit were also involved in the 1944 Warsaw Uprising, in which the Nazis brutally suppressed a Polish rebellion against German occupation.

The U.S. Department of Justice has used lies about wartime service made in immigration papers to deport dozens of suspected Nazi war criminals.

The evidence of Karkoc's wartime activities uncovered by AP has prompted German authorities to express interest in exploring whether there is enough to prosecute. In Germany, Nazis with "command responsibility" can be charged with war crimes even if their direct involvement in atrocities cannot be proven.

Karkoc refused to discuss his wartime past at his home in Minneapolis, and repeated efforts to set up an interview, using his son as an intermediary, were unsuccessful.

Efraim Zuroff, the lead Nazi hunter at the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Jerusalem, said that based on his decades of experience pursuing Nazi war criminals, he expects that the evidence showing Karkoc lied to American officials and that his unit carried out atrocities is strong enough for deportation and war-crimes prosecution in Germany or Poland.

"In America this is a relatively easy case: If he was the commander of a unit that carried out atrocities, that's a no brainer," Zuroff said. "Even in Germany ... if the guy was the commander of the unit, then even if they can't show he personally pulled the trigger, he bears responsibility."

Former German army officer Josef Scheungraber — a lieutenant like Karkoc — was convicted in Germany in 2009 on charges of murder based on circumstantial evidence that put him on the scene of a Nazi wartime massacre in Italy as the ranking officer.

German prosecutors are obligated to open an investigation if there is enough "initial suspicion" of possible involvement in war crimes, said Thomas Walther, a former prosecutor with the special German office that investigates Nazi war crimes.

The current deputy head of that office, Thomas Will, said there is no indication that Karkoc had ever been investigated by Germany. Based on the AP's evidence, he said he is now interested in gathering information that could possibly result in prosecution.

Prosecution in Poland may also be a possibility because most of the unit's alleged crimes were against Poles on Polish territory. But Karkoc would be unlikely to be tried in his native Ukraine, where such men are today largely seen as national heroes who fought for the country against the Soviet Union.

Karkoc now lives in a modest house in northeast Minneapolis in an area with a significant Ukrainian population. Even at his advanced age, he came to the door without help of a cane or a walker. He would not comment on his wartime service for Nazi Germany.

"I don't think I can explain," he said.

Members of his unit and other witnesses have told stories of brutal attacks on civilians.

One of Karkoc's men, Vasyl Malazhenski, told Soviet investigators that in 1944 the unit was directed to "liquidate all the residents" of the village of Chlaniow in a reprisal attack for the killing of a German SS officer, though he did not say who gave the order.

"It was all like a trance: setting the fires, the shooting, the destroying," Malazhenski recalled, according to the 1967 statement found by the AP in the archives of Warsaw's state-run Institute of National Remembrance, which investigates and prosecutes German and Soviet crimes on Poles during and after World War II.

"Later, when we were passing in file through the destroyed village," Malazhenski said, "I could see the dead bodies of the killed residents: men, women, children."

In a background check by U.S. officials on April 14, 1949, Karkoc said he had never performed any military service, telling investigators that he "worked for father until 1944. Worked in labor camp from 1944 until 1945."

However, in a Ukrainian-language memoir published in 1995, Karkoc states that he helped found the Ukrainian Self Defense Legion in 1943 in collaboration with the Nazis' feared SS intelligence agency, the SD, to fight on the side of Germany — and served as a company commander in the unit, which received orders directly from the SS, through the end of the war.

It was not clear why Karkoc felt safe publishing his memoir, which is available at the U.S. Library of Congress and the British Library and which the AP located online in an electronic Ukrainian libary.

Karkoc's name surfaced when a retired clinical pharmacologist who took up Nazi war crimes research in his free time came across it while looking into members of the SS Galician Division who emigrated to Britain. He tipped off AP when an Internet search showed an address for Karkoc in Minnesota.

"Here was a chance to publicly confront a man who commanded a company alleged to be involved in the cruel murder of innocent people," said Stephen Ankier, who is based in London.

The AP located Karkoc's U.S. Army intelligence file, and got it declassified by the National Archives in Maryland through a FOIA request. The Army was responsible for processing visa applications after the war under the Displaced Persons Act.

The intelligence file said standard background checks with seven different agencies found no red flags that would disqualify him from entering the United States.

But it also noted that it lacked key information from the Soviet side: "Verification of identity and complete establishment of applicant's reliability is not possible due to the inaccessibility of records and geographic area of applicant's former residence."

Wartime documents located by the AP also confirm Karkoc's membership in the Self Defense Legion. They include a Nazi payroll sheet found in Polish archives, signed by an SS officer on Jan. 8, 1945 — only four months before the war's end — confirming that Karkoc was present in Krakow, Poland, to collect his salary as a member of the Self Defense Legion. Karkoc signed the document using Cyrillic letters.

Karkoc, an ethnic Ukrainian, was born in the city of Lutsk in 1919, according to details he provided American officials. At the time, the area was being fought over by Ukraine, Poland and others; it ended up part of Poland until World War II.Several wartime Nazi documents note the same birth date, but say he was born in Horodok, a town in the same region.

He joined the regular German army after the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 and fought on the Eastern Front in Ukraine and Russia, according to his memoirs, which say he was awarded an Iron Cross, a Nazi award for bravery.

He was also a member of the Ukrainian nationalist organization OUN; in 1943, he helped negotiate with the Nazis to have men drawn from its membership form the Self Defense Legion, according to his account. Initially small, it eventually numbered some 600 soldiers. The legion was dissolved and folded into the SS Galician Division in 1945; Karkoc wrote that he remained with it until the end of the war.

Policy at the time of Karkoc's immigration application — according to a declassified secret U.S. government document obtained by the AP from the National Archives — was to deny a visa to anyone who had served in either the SS Galician Division or the OUN. The U.S. does not typically have jurisdiction to prosecute Nazi war crimes but has won more than 100 "denaturalization and removal actions" against people suspected of them.

Department of Justice spokesman Michael Passman would not comment on whether Karkoc had ever come to the department's attention, citing a policy not to confirm or deny the existence of investigations.

Though Karkoc talks in his memoirs about fighting anti-Nazi Polish resistance fighters, he makes no mention of attacks on civilians. He does indicate he was with his company in the summer of 1944 when the Self Defense Legion's commander — Siegfried Assmuss, whose SS rank was equivalent to major — was killed.

"We lost an irreplaceable commander, Assmuss," he wrote about the partisan attack near Chlaniow.

He did not mention the retaliatory massacre that followed, which was described in detail by Malazhenski in his 1967 statement used to help convict platoon leader Teodozy Dak of war crimes in Poland in 1972. An SS administrative list obtained by AP shows that Karkoc commanded both Malazhenski and Dak, who died in prison in 1974.

Malazhenski said the Ukrainian unit was ordered to liquidate Chlaniow in reprisal for Assmuss' death, and moved in the next day, machine-gunning people and torching homes. More than 40 people died.

"The village was on fire," Malazhenski said.

Villagers offered chilling testimony about the brutality of the attack.

In 1948, Chlaniow villager Stanislawa Lipska told a communist-era commission that she heard shots at about 7 a.m., then saw "the Ukrainian SS force" entering the town, calling out in Ukrainian and Polish for people to come out of their homes.

"The Ukrainians were setting fire to the buildings," Lipska said in a statement, also used in the Dak trial. "You could hear machine-gun shots and grenade explosions. Shots could be heard inside the village and on the outskirts. They were making sure no one escaped."

Witness statements and other documentation also link the unit circumstantially to a 1943 massacre in Pidhaitsi, on the outskirts of Lutsk —today part of Ukraine — where the Self Defense Legion was once based. A total of 21 villagers, mostly women and children, were slaughtered.

Karkoc says in his memoir that his unit was founded and headquartered there in 1943 and later mentions that Pidhaitsi was still the unit's base in January 1944.

Another legion member, Kost Hirniak, said in his own 1977 memoir that the unit, while away on a mission, was suddenly ordered back to Pidhaitsi after a German soldier was killed in the area; it arrived on Dec. 2, 1943.

The next day, though Hirniak does not mention it, nearly two dozen civilians, primarily women and children, were slaughtered in Pidhaitsi. There is no indication any other units were in the area at the time.

Heorhiy Syvyi was a 9-year-old boy when troops swarmed into town on Dec. 3 and managed to flee with his father and hide in a shelter covered with branches. His mother and 4-year-old brother were killed.

"When we came out we saw the smoldering ashes of the burned house and our neighbors searching for the dead. My mother had my brother clasped to her chest. This is how she was found — black and burned," said Syvyi, 78, sitting on a bench outside his home.

Villagers today blame the attack generically on "the Nazis"— something that experts say is not unusual in Ukraine because of the exalted status former Ukrainian nationalist troops enjoy.

However, Pidhaitsi schoolteacher Galyna Sydorchuk told the AP that "there is a version" of the story in the village that the Ukrainian troops were involved in the December massacre.

"There were many in Pidhaitsi who were involved in the Self Defense Legion," she said. "But they obviously keep it secret."

Ivan Katchanovski, a Ukrainian political scientist who has done extensive research on the Self Defense Legion, said its members have been careful to cultivate the myth that their service to Nazi Germany was solely a fight against Soviet communism. But he said its actions — fighting partisans and reprisal attacks on civilians — tell a different story.

"Under the pretext of anti-partisan action they acted as a kind of police unit to suppress and kill or punish the local populations. This became their main mission," said Katchanovski, who went to high school in Pidhaitsi and now teaches at the University of Ottawa in Canada. "There is evidence of clashes with Polish partisans, but most of their clashes were small, and their most visible actions were mass killings of civilians."

There is evidence that the unit took part in the brutal suppression of the Warsaw Uprising, fighting the nationalist Polish Home Army as it sought to rid the city of its Nazi occupiers and take control of the city ahead of the advancing Soviet Army.

The uprising, which started in August 1944, was put down by the Nazis by the beginning of October in a house-to-house fight characterized by its ferocity.

The Self Defense Legion's exact role is not known, but Nazi documents indicate that Karkoc and his unit were there.

An SS payroll document, dated Oct. 12, 1944, says 10 members of the Self Defense Legion "fell while deployed to Warsaw" and more than 30 others were injured. Karkoc is listed as the highest-ranking commander of 2 Company — a lieutenant — on a pay sheet that also lists Dak as one of his officers.

Another Nazi accounting document uncovered by the AP in the Polish National Archives in Krakow lists Karkoc by name — including his rank, birthdate and hometown — as one of 219 "members of the S.M.d.S.-Batl 31 who were in Warsaw," using the German abbreviation for the Self Defense Legion.

In early 1945, the Self Defense Legion was integrated into the SS Galicia Division, and Karkoc said in his memoirs that he served as a deputy company commander until the end of the war.

Following the war, Karkoc ended up in a camp for displaced people in Neu Ulm, Germany, according to documents obtained from the International Tracing Service in Bad Arolsen, Germany. The documents indicate that his wife died in 1948, a year before he and their two young boys — born in 1945 and 1946 — emigrated to the U.S.

After he arrived in Minneapolis, he remarried and had four more children, the last born in 1966.

Karkoc told American officials he was a carpenter, and records indicate he worked for a nationwide construction company that has an office in Minneapolis.

A longtime member of the Ukrainian National Association, Karkoc has been closely involved in community affairs over the past decades and was identified in a 2002 article in a Ukrainian-American publication as a "longtime UNA activist."

___

Herschaft reported from New York and Scislowska from Warsaw; Doug Glass and Amy Forliti in Minneapolis, Minnesota; Maria Danilova in Kiev, Ukraine; Efrem Lukatsky in Pidhaitsi, and Svetlana Fedas in Lviv, Ukraine, contributed to this story.

___

David Rising can be reached at http://www.twitter.com/davidrising ; Randy Herschaft at http://www.twitter.com/HerschaftAP

Join the conversation about this story »

Russell Brand got kicked out of a party for making jokes about Hugo Boss' involvement the Nazi party. 

The brand was a sponsor at GQ's "Man Of The Year" party, Mail Online reported. Brand was a presenter.

"If anyone knows a bit about history and fashion, you know it was Hugo Boss who made uniforms for the Nazis," Brand allegedly said while on stage. "But they looked f---ing fantastic, let’s face it, while they were killing people on the basis of their religion and sexuality."

Magazine editor Dylan Jones then asked Brand to leave, according to Mail Online. 

Brand described their conversation on Twitter: 

#GQAwards#nazitailor

— Russell Brand (@rustyrockets) September 4, 2013

Hugo Boss manufactured Nazi uniforms during World War II. The brand's founder reportedly had a framed photograph of himself with Adolf Hitler. 

Mail Online notes that Brand was photographed wearing a Hugo Boss jacket at an Oscar party six months ago. 

Join the conversation about this story »

BERLIN (Reuters) - German prosecutors on Thursday charged a 93-year-old alleged former guard at the Auschwitz death camp as an accessory to murder, part of a renewed drive to bring lower-level Nazi collaborators to justice before they die.

The prosecution service in the city of Stuttgart said the accused worked as a guard at Auschwitz in Nazi-occupied Poland from 1941 to 1943, a period in which 12 prisoner convoys arrived at the death camp.

More than 10,000 of those prisoners were determined unfit for work and sent to the gas chamber immediately upon arrival.

Prosecutors did not name the man but German media identified him as Hans Lipschis, who was arrested by German police in May and ranks fourth on the Nazi-hunting group Simon Wiesenthal's list of most wanted Nazi criminals.

Lipschis's arrest was made possible by the 2011 conviction in Munich of Ivan Demjanjuk, who was found to have been an accessory to the murder of almost 28,000 Jews in Sobibor by virtue of having served as a guard at a death camp. He was the first ex-Nazi convicted in Germany without evidence of a specific crime or a specific victim.

Lipschis told the German newspaper Die Welt this year that he had been a cook at Auschwitz and had later left the camp to fight on the Eastern Front, although he could not remember which unit he had been in.

The head of the German agency that probes Nazi war crimes, Kurt Schrimm, told Reuters the accused was on a list of 30 former Auschwitz guards it wants to prosecute for their role in facilitating mass murder.

"The investigation was short but intensive. We looked for documents that showed that (the accused) was on duty on particular days when the transports came in," said Claudia Krauth, state prosecutor for the Stuttgart court.

"If we have proof that someone has committed a crime, we are required to prosecute that person."

The Stuttgart prosecutors said the accused had lived in the United States for 26 years after World War Two but had had his U.S. citizenship revoked after his involvement with the Nazis came to light. He moved back to Germany in 1982.

German officials are trying to track down other low-level collaborators in a "last chance" hunt for ageing perpetrators of the Holocaust, in which some 6 million Jews were murdered.

Some 1.5 million people perished at Auschwitz, mostly Jews but also Roma, Poles and others, between 1940 and 1945.

(Reporting by Sophie Duvernoy; Editing by Gareth Jones and Kevin Liffey)

Join the conversation about this story »

Earlier this month, German officials revealed they'd discovered a trove of more than 1,400 masterpieces, many believed looted by the Nazis.

The story is rife with controversy, not least because authorities kept the findings secret for about three years and have still not published a list of the works or located a single rightful owner, according to AFP.

The story gets even stranger when you learn about the guy who'd been keeping them all these years.

Cornelius Gurlitt, 81, says never had any intention of giving the works up, according a blockbuster interview with Der Spiegel published this weekend. Authorities only learned of him after he was detained with an unusually large amount of cash at the Swiss border in 2010. He'd maintained a bank account there after selling a work to a Swiss dealer.  

Since inheriting the works from his father Hildebrand Gurlitt, an art-world mogul who started doing business with the Nazis in 1933, Gurlitt has lived the life of an eccentric recluse. 

Here are some of the bizarre details recorded by Spiegel's Õzlem Gezer...

Gurlitt hasn't watched TV in 50 years:

"He stopped...when Germany's second public television network was launched, the "new station" with its trademark Mainzelmännchen cartoon characters. That was in 1963." 

But he's aware of modern celebrities:

"I'm not Boris Becker," he says. "What do these people want from me? I'm just a very quiet person. All I wanted to do was live with my pictures. Why are they photographing me for these newspapers, which normally only feature photos of shady characters?"

Traveling has its rituals. On his regular visits to his doctor, hundreds of kilometers away from Munich...:

"Gurlitt normally sits in the open coach car, to avoid being put in the embarrassing situation of having to look into other people's eyes. On this afternoon, however, there are no seats available in the open coach car, and Gurlitt has to sit in a compartment, which makes him anxious. He sits next to the glass door, so that the compartment looks full. He keeps his suitcase right next to him. It contains his red-and-white checked nightshirt, bread, cold cuts and his favorite carbonated drink. He needs the food for evenings in the hotel."

And he painstakingly reserves all his hotel rooms via snail mail:

"He books his hotel rooms months in advance by post, with letters written on a typewriter and signed with a fountain pen, which include the request to send a taxi to pick him up from the train station." 

Still, tech in 2013 dazzles him:

"He is amazed by telephones that display the caller's phone number. He knows that it's possible to search for things on the Internet, but he has never done it." 

There are more profound opinions. He thinks Munich, where Hitler launched his political career, and where, for now, Gurlitt lives, remains haunted:

"Munich is the 'source of all evil,' says Gurlitt. 'This is where the movement was founded...' He keeps repeating the same sentence, and when he does his quivering voice becomes louder...In Gurlitt's opinion, evil still appears to reside in the city."

Mostly Gurlitt comes off as a sad loner. He says he regrets having even lived this long, admitting he was not made out for the investigation, and that the works and the responsibility for them should have fallen to his sister, who died last year.

He says he's never loved anyone in his life, and that the paintings, which he would unpack and admire every evening, were all he had:

"Gurlitt has experienced many goodbyes in his lifetime: his father's death in a car accident, his mother's death, his sister's cancer. 'Saying goodbye to my pictures was the most painful of all,' he says. 'I hope everything will be cleared up quickly, so I can finally have my pictures back.' " 

There is a chance that could happen. German newspaper Focus, which first broke the story about the years-long investigation, says only 590 of the works are considered looted by the Nazis, and that at this point authorities are looking to make a deal with Gurlitt.

You can read the entire Der Spiegel interview here.

SEE ALSO: Why Someone Just Paid $142 Million For A Painting

Join the conversation about this story »

On the spectrum of European countries known for causing their Jewish citizens headaches, France is on the relatively low end. They have electedtwo Jewish Prime Ministers, after all.

Yet occasionally, you get reminders that France has a complicated history with its Jewish population. 

The latest instance has to do with the spreading popularity of an apparent Nazi gesture frequently used by one of France's most popular comedians, Dieudonné M'bala M'bala, who goes by Dieudonné. 

Dieudonné is a known anti-Zionist who frequently incorporates offensive remarks about Jews in his act. In 2009, he used the gesture, called "la quenelle," in a poster advertising a list of anti-Zionist political candidates ("quenelle"is a culinary term for dumpling). It basically looks like a low-key Nazi salute. Dieudonné denies it is an antisemitic gesture, instead claiming it is merely "anti-system."But there's a blog compiling instances of people demonstrating la quenelle that clearly shows its antisemitic connotations. 

Despite this, lots of famous French folks, including  Tony Parker, have been photographed performing the gesture alongside Dieudonné, though most later say they were unwittingly "trapped" into doing it. But others, including a prominent French journalist, have been photographed doing it by themselves.

Dieudonné has been repeatedly charged with defamation and inciting racial hatred, and is now under investigation again, after a report surfaced of him saying that a Jewish journalist with whom he's been at odds may have to "grab his belongings," and that it was "too bad" that there wasn't an opportunity for him to be sent to the gas chambers.   

This weekend, French soccer star Nicolas Anelka displayed the gesture after scoring a goal, in solidarity with Dieudonné. Anelka swiftly took to Twitter to also deny it meant anything other than support for Dieudonné. But Anelka, who plays for West Bromwich, is himself now under investigation by Britian's football authority and could face a heavy sanction that LeMonde says may endanger his career in the UK. 

Dieudonné has a huge following in France, and Jean-Yves Camus, a French pundit, told French daily Libération that la quenelle has become "a means for expressing one's identity, one which has taken on a real popularity among youth. It's hard to say whether they all possess awareness of what it means." 

Perhaps as a result, France's interior minister is now considering a petition to ban Dieudonné from performing. 

Meanwhile, Dieudonné continues to support "master quenellers," and a Polo shirt is now for sale online that advertises one's quenelling abilities.  

It's worth noting that more than 20% of French said in a recent poll that they would not want "people of another race" as neighbors, among the highest in all of Europe.

SEE ALSO: Bob Dylan Got Charged With Inciting Hate

Join the conversation about this story »

Where would we be without Godwin’s Law? This law, formulated for the internet, dictates that as a discussion progresses, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1. And, as we have seen, Godwin’s applicability is not confined to the internet but crops up time and time again in common parlance.

The most recent example is the spat between George Clooney and Boris Johnson about what should happen to the Elgin Marbles. Johnson, to belittle his opponent, accused Clooney of “advocating a Hitlerian agenda” becaue the actor suggested it might be time to consider restoring the plundered antiquities to Greece.

Clooney, no babe in arms when it comes to the cut-and-thrust of debate on the celebrity-political stage, must nonetheless have been somewhat taken aback when his polite suggestion that returning the marbles to Greece: “wouldn’t be a bad thing” was met with a force-10 Johnsonism.

“Someone urgently needs to restore George Clooney’s marbles,” thundered Boris. “Here he is plugging a film about looted Nazi art without realising that Göring himself had plans to plunder the British Museum. This Clooney is advocating nothing less than the Hitlerian agenda for London’s cultural treasures.”

Third Reich revisited

Why do we, as a nation, seem to relish every opportunity to drag out a reference to Hitler and Nazi Germany? Ten years ago, Ian Kershaw, author of several books on the subject, wrote on the 70th anniversary of the Nazi leader’s rise to power:

It seems as if scarcely a day goes by without Hitler and the Nazis in one way or another – in newspapers, films, books, on radio and television – entering into our public consciousness.

A full decade after Kershaw’s assertion (which doesn’t even mention the internet) the peculiar British fascination with the Führer and Nazi culture continues to flourish. Late summer saw a glut of stories and I report here only a few of the many that have caught my eye. In August the Daily Mirror told us of the discovery of “the must-have toy for kids in Nazi Germany” (the Adolf Hitler play figures with an adjustable arm for seig heil salutes have now been sold at auction in Bristol).

The Daily Telegraph told us about the Nazi’s sinister “bride schools” and even the normally sober-sided and aloof Guardian got in on the act with a puppy that looks like the German leader (presumably because it allowed them to introduce the rather cute catchphrase: “Heel Hitler”).

Russell Brand instinctively knew that he could score Brownie points for being controversial (even offensive) when he was thrown out of the GQ awards for highlighting that Hugo Boss, the event’s sponsor, had links to the Third Reich. “If anyone knows a bit about history and fashion, you know it was Hugo Boss who made uniforms for the Nazis … But they looked f***ing fantastic, let’s face it, while they were killing people on the basis of their religion and sexuality.”

No shortage of ‘Nazi treasure’

The fact is, there is simply so much material available upon which to draw. Unlike the regimes of Stalin, Pol Pot or Mao Tse-tung, the Nazis left behind troves of documentary evidence and, to this day, further proof of the depravity and strangeness of their time in power continues to emerge and be lapped up by Fleet Street.

The defeat of Hitler and the liberation of Europe from tyranny represents a golden period in British history. In times of hardship or austerity we can look back at a time when the reputation and capability of Britain on the world stage was tangible and effective. The war against Nazi Germany was simple to understand for the populace in the sense that the battle was against an identifiable evil intent on invasion and subjugation. The war needed to be fought and the country came together in a variety of shared experiences, from rationing and conscription to the threat of the Luftwaffe. Generally speaking, the war united people of all classes and Hitler, with his curious, ludicrous appearance and behaviour was clearly the anti Briton, the savage threat to our civilisation. The embodiment of iniquity.

So reading about the Hitler toys and the swastikas on Christmas trees not only highlights the degeneracy of the Nazis, it also reinforces our sense of superiority about the strangeness of foreigners and Germans in particular. We can implicitly relive the victory of 1945 while marvelling at how an industrial, educated democratic country such as Germany allowed itself to be so completely corrupted in 12 short years.

Hitler is a recognisable reference point for all generations of Britons that history’s other tyrant simply don’t provide. In 2006 there were concerns over schools' “Nazi obsessions” and there is the view, popular among university admissions tutors, and discussed by Niall Ferguson, that there is significant over-emphasis on the Nazis.

Benchmark of horror

But the relationship that we have with Hitler, Nazism and fascism is multi-dimensional. On one hand we can recognise the need to combat the rise of neo-fascism and the need to communicate the horrors of the Holocaust. On the other, we can open the Daily Mail and laugh at a house in Swansea which looks like Hitler, “complete with naff side parting”.

It’s no coincidence that Hitler and Nazi Germany still provides the benchmark against which to measure other despotic regimes, which is what US secretary of state, John Kerry did when he said last year about the Assad regime’s alleged use of chemical weapons against Syrian civilians: “In times of war the only people who have used them are Adolf Hitler and Saddam Hussein. Until Bashar al Assad.”

This is a provably untrue statement (Britain used mustard gas, for example, in World War I at the Battle of Loos and Mussolini deployed it against the Ethiopians in the 1930s). But it serves a purpose: it moves Assad into the premier league of history’s tyrants. By doing this it becomes – almost – justification for taking action against him. Certainly it provides all the justification Kerry needs for insisting that he be removed as Syria’s head of state.

John Jewell does not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has no relevant affiliations.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Join the conversation about this story »

As World War Two drew to a close, the United States rushed to collect as many former Nazi scientists as possible through a secret mission called Operation Paperclip. As some had been branded war criminals at Nuremberg, the U.S. military whitewashed the backgrounds of many scientists in an attempt to justify hiring them.

Knowing that trouble was brewing already with the Soviet Union, these scientists were employed by the U.S. in a wide variety of roles — including, at times, experimenting with LSD.

Below are some of the most influential former Nazis who played unquestionably large roles in America's emerging technological dominance during the Cold War.

Wernher von Braun

Wernher von Braun was a member of various German political organizations, including the SS. He was the chief developer of the V-2 rocket. This rocket was the first ballistic missile ever created.

After Operation Paperclip, Braun became the director of the Development Operations Division of the Army Ballistic Missile Agency. While there, he developed the Jupiter-C rocket, which was used to launch America's first satellite. He was also credited as being instrumental in leading the moon mission.

Werner Dahm

To his credit, Dahm opposed the Nazis and resisted joining the party until given no other option. His research helped lead to the development of supersonic wind tunnels for the German rocket program, as well as major advancements in the understanding of aerodynamics.

After Paperclip, Dahm made huge contributions to the U.S. space race. He worked on the Saturn V booster rocket, aerothermodynamics, and liquid hydrogen propellant systems. For his work, he became Chief of the Aerophysics Division at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center before becoming Chief Aerodynamicist at the NASA Center.

Hermann H. Kurzweg 

Kurzweg was a chief researcher and deputy director for the V-2 rocket program. He also helped design supersonic wind tunnels, as well as carrying out aerodynamic research on the anti-aircraft rocket, Wasserfall. 

After Paperclip, Kurzweg became a technical director at the Naval Ordinance Laboratory in Maryland, where he continued his aerodynamics and aeroballistics research. Later, he became a chief researcher at NASA, investigating aerodynamics and flight mechanics.

Konrad Dannenberg

Dannenberg worked closely with von Braun, helping to develop the V-2 rocket. He also helped organize and launch the first object ever to be sent into space by humans.

After Paperclip, Dannenberg continued to work closely on his former subjects. He helped the United States to produce rocket engines and missiles. Eventually, he also became deputy manager of the Saturn Program, which focused on creating engines for launching both satellites and space shuttles into space. 

Kurt Heinrich Debus

Debus was another member of the SS who helped work on and produce V-2 rockets for the Nazis. He was closely associated with von Braun and was responsible for leading the testing of the V-2 rocket.

After the war, Debus became a prime asset for NASA. His accomplished work on a variety of programs, including launching satellites and the eventual moon mission, led to him becoming the first ever director of the Kennedy Space Center.

Walter Robert Dornberger

Dornberger was a Major-General in the army of the Third Reich. He was a Senior Artillery Commander and had personal contact with Hitler. His real passion and skill lay in engineering, and he was foundational in the development of rockets for the Nazis.

After the war, Dornberger continued his engineering research for the U.S. He spent time developing guided missile systems for the U.S. Military, before becoming the vice president of the Bell Aircraft Corporation. At Bell, he developed Bell's Rascal, the first guided nuclear air-to-surface missile.

Eberhard Friedrich Michael Rees

Rees was another researcher focused on the development of the V-2 rocket for the Third Reich. Although, reportedly, Rees' passion always lay with space.

After the war, Rees managed to follow his passions. He developed ablative heat shields for NASA, and became the Deputy Director of Development Operations for the Army Ballistic Missile Agency. He also directed the lunar roving vehicle program, before becoming the director of the Marshall Space Flight Center.

Ernst Stuhlinger

Stuhlinger started his career as a Nazi soldier. He fought in the Battle of Moscow and the Battle of Stalingrad, before being shifted into research. Eventually, he came to work on guidance systems under von Braun.

After Paperclip, Stuhlinger was brought in as director of the Advanced Research Projects Division of the Army Ballistic Missile Agency. He also contributed greatly to the space race, as he was one of the pioneers of electric propulsion. He also worked on the initial phases of the Hubble Telescope.

Hubertus Strughold

Strughold has been accused of participating in extensive human experimentation under the Third Reich, though it has never been proven. The experiments he allegedly oversaw included performing surgery without anesthetic and depriving people of oxygen in vacuum compartments, as well as human experiments related to hypothermia. These experiments were meant to determine the effects of high altitude and supersonic flights on human beings. 

After the war, Strughold helped to pioneer the field of space medicine. He was vital in the investigation into the effects of weightlessness on people, as well as overseeing the building of space cabin simulators. At NASA, Strughold also played a central role in designing the pressure suit and the onboard life support systems used by Gemini and Apollo astronauts.

SEE ALSO: A Commander In A Nazi SS-Led Unit Has Been Living In Minnesota Since 1949

Join the conversation about this story »

Never let it be said that the past won't catch up with you. Yesterday, Germany arrested three elderly men accused of being guards at Auschwitz and raided the homes of several more.

The men, aged 88, 92 and 94, are currently being held in a prison hospital because, again, they are 88, 92 and 94 years old. The arrests followed a renewed hunt for former Nazis after the 2011 conviction of John Demjanjuk for being a guard at the Sobibor concentration camp. Demjanjuk was in a nursing home while his lawyers appealed the conviction when he died in 2012 aged 91. Demjanjuk was the first person to be convicted without evidence showing that he personally committed any atrocities while guarding the camp, which meant other men known to be guards but not to have committed any atrocities could also be arrested and tried as accessories to murder.

The three men, whose names have not been released, may soon be joined by several more former guards. Last September, German officials said at least 30 former Auschwitz guards should be prosecuted, the oldest of which is 97. Several more homes were raided when the three were arrested, and "various records and documents from the Nazi era were seized," according to the AFP.

Over 1.1 million people were murdered in Auschwitz. Better late than never.

Join the conversation about this story »

North Korea's regime has committed crimes as chilling as those of the Nazis, South Africa's apartheid regime or Cambodia's Khmer Rouge and must be stopped, the head of a UN inquiry said on Monday.

"Contending with the great scourges of Nazism, apartheid, the Khmer Rouge and other affronts required courage by great nations and ordinary human beings alike," Michael Kirby told the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.

"It is now your solemn duty to address the scourge of human rights violations and crimes against humanity in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea," he said.

His comments followed a searing 400-page report, released last month, that documented a range of gross human rights abuses in the country, including extermination, enslavement and sexual violence.

"The gravity, scale, duration and nature of the unspeakable atrocities committed in the country reveal a totalitarian state that does not have any parallel in the contemporary world," said Kirby, a retired Australian judge.

The report insisted North Korea's leaders should answer for a litany of crimes against humanity before an international court.

"The world has ignored the evidence for too long," Kirby insisted, adding: "There is no excuse, because now we know."

'Shameless fabrications'

North Korea, which refused to cooperate with the commission, has "categorically" rejected the report.

Its representative to the UN, So Se Pyong, slammed the findings as "shameless fabrications" by "the United States and other hostile forces".

The commission, created in March 2013 by the Human Rights Council, was denied access to North Korea and relied on hearings in South Korea and Japan with 320 North Korean exiles.

The report condemned a widespread system of throwing generations of the same family into prison camps under guilt-by-association rules.

On Monday, Kirby showed footage from the hearings, including of survivor Shin Dong-hyuk who was born into a prison camp and spent his first 23 years there.

The 31-year-old says he was tortured, subjected to forced labour and compelled to witness the execution of his mother and brother at the age of 13.

Former prisoner Jee Heon-a can also be seen in the footage describing how she had witnessed a security guard beat a mother until she agreed to drown her new-born baby.

"The baby stopped crying (and) we saw bubbles rising up," she recalled.

North Korea is estimated to have 80,000 to 120,000 political prisoners, while hundreds of thousands more are believed to have perished in the camps over the past half century, "through deliberate starvation, forced labour, executions, torture," the report said.

"If this report does not give rise to action, it is difficult to imagine what will," Kirby insisted.

Around 100 Japanese abducted

The report also estimated 200,000 people from other countries had been abducted -- mostly South Koreans left stranded after the 1950-1953 Korean War, but also hundreds from around the world since then.

North Korean representative So marched out of the Human Rights Council in protest when Japan allowed Shigeo Iizuka, the chairman of the Japanese Association of Families of Victims Kidnapped by North Korea, to take the floor.

Pyongyang admitted in 2002 that it had abducted 13 Japanese nationals over two decades. It said eight had died, including Iizuka's sister Yaeko Taguchi, who was taken in 1978. Tokyo rejects the claims.

Kirby said his commission estimates around 100 Japanese have been abducted by North Korea.

Outside the council chambers, relatives of abductees brandished black and white photographs of their long-lost loved ones, demanding that Pyongyang finally come clean.

Many country representatives supported the call to refer North Korea to the International Criminal Court.

"The EU believes that it is imperative that there be no impunity for those responsible for human rights violations," EU representative to the UN in Geneva, Mariangela Zappia, told the council.

Along with Japan, the European Union is drafting a resolution on North Korea to be voted on by the council next week.

However, North Korea's key ally China, which has a veto at the UN Security Council, would likely reject any referral of North Korean rights abuse cases to the ICC.

On Monday, Chinese representative Chen Chuandong lamented to the council that many of the report's recommendations were "divorced from the realities on the peninsula and are highly politicized."

SEE ALSO: Video Reveals Horrifying Tales And Drawings From North Korea Prison Survivors

Join the conversation about this story »

Tabloid-style celebrity magazine "Zhuldyzdar Otbasy-Anyz Adam" ("The Family of Celebrities-Legendary People") has come under fire in Kazakhstan after devoting its latest issue to Adolf Hitler.

Kazakhstan's State Agency for Communications and Information said on April 18 that is investigating the magazine for possible violation of the country's constitution and the law against "inciting social, national, tribal, racial, or religious hatred."
 
While the 52-page Hitler issue provides the usual biographical information and photos from the Nazi leader's life, it appears to have stirred up authorities' ire by including some flattering assessments of Hitler and his role in history.
 
"Hitler Isn't A Fascist" reads the headline of an article by Kazakh civic activist Naghashybai Esmyrza.
 
"For me, Hitler is a great personality," Esmyrza writes.
 
"I accept that Hitler was a dictator but he fought for the future of his country. He wanted to make people's lives better.... Hitler was criticized for experimenting with people in concentration camps. It's true he did those experiments. But that was nothing compared with what the Bolsheviks did."
 
The magazine has not yet responded to criticism over its Hitler issue, which was published just a few days before the Nazi leader's 125th birthday.
 
However, chief editor Zharylkap Kalybay had previously announced on his Facebook page that he was going to devote one of the magazine's issues to Hitler, and asked for readers' comments and questions.
 
On his Facebook account, Kalybay drew comparisons between what he described as growing nationalism in Russia and similar sentiments in Germany under Hitler.
 
He also mentioned parallels being drawn between Hitler and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
 
"Are Putin and Hitler's activities similar in some ways?" he wrote. "We are trying to find the answer."
 
The private, Kazakh-language, 25,000-circulation magazine is popular across the country. 
 
Its success and survival is attributed to staying clear of politics and political families.
 
The magazine's previous cover photos included well-known Kazakh actor Asaneli Eshimov, French Emperor Napoleon, and characters from a Kazakh love poem, Kozy-Korpesh and Bayan Sulu.
 
While the magazine has always played it safe by distancing itself from politics, chief editor Kalybay is no stranger to controversy.
 
Kalybay was briefly arrested in 2013 over a row aboard a "Skat" airlines plane, where he demanded that stewardesses speak only Kazakh with him.
 
The editor was accused of hooliganism, and spent three days in jail.

Join the conversation about this story »

A senior Russian ambassador is to meet an official from the Foreign Office on Thursday after the Prince of Wales caused a diplomatic row by comparing Vladimir Putin to Adolf Hitler.

The Prince made his remark, in which he likened Russia’s annexation of Crimea to the actions of Nazi Germany, during a visit to a museum of immigration in Halifax, Canada.

He told a woman whose relations were murdered in the Holocaust: “And now Putin is doing just about the same as Hitler.”

Russian diplomats contacted the Foreign Office on Wednesday night seeking an urgent meeting to clarify whether Prince Charles’s provocative remarks amounted to an “official position”.

As a result, Russia’s deputy ambassador will meet a senior FCO official on Thursday, The Telegraph understands.

The comments are regarded as particularly offensive by Moscow as 20 million Russians were killed during the war, including members of Mr Putin’s family.

A senior Russian diplomatic source said: “We are seeking clarification [from the FCO] at a working level. It’s not clear if it is an official position. The response from Clarence House is it was a private talk. We hope there is nothing behind it. But it is unclear to us: what does it mean? He is the future king, after all.”

The source added: “It is very serious. Every family in our country lost someone in that war.”

After years of thaw, including the awarding of medals to the British veterans of the Second World War Arctic Convoys, British and Russian relations were put into “deep freeze” after the Russian occupation of Crimea.

The European Union and US responded with sanctions on Russian MPs and the suspension of defence deals.

The Russian president has sought to revive the memory of the “Great Patriotic War” in order to bolster his reputation as the leader of a resurgent Russia. Prince Charles and Mr Putin are due to appear together at the anniversary of the D-Day landings in France next month.

Nick Clegg has defended the Prince over his comparison, saying that the heir to the throne is “entitled to his views”.

The Deputy Prime Minister told BBC Breakfast: “I have never been of the view that if you are a member of the Royal family somehow you have to enter into some sort of Trappist vow of silence. I think he is entitled to his views.”

Not every MP was as sympathetic. Mike Gapes, the Labour MP and member of the Commons foreign affairs committee, said: “In a constitutional monarchy, policy and diplomacy should be conducted by Parliament and Government. Monarchy should be seen and not heard.” The Russian media took a stronger stance, warning that the Prince’s comment could “trigger an international scandal”.

The Moskovskij Komsomolets, a popular Russian daily, said that the Prince had risked complicating already “not unclouded” UK-Russian relations.

Mr Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, declined to comment on the issue. A spokesman for Clarence House said: “We do not comment on private conversations. But we would like to stress that the Prince of Wales would not seek to make a public political statement during a private conversation.”

Join the conversation about this story »

The success of the Allied D-Day Invasion caught the Nazis off guard and threw their war strategy to the dogs. Suddenly, Nazi Germany found itself fighting a two front war against foes that were making increasingly fast strides towards Berlin. 

Of course, the Nazis could not admit to as strategic defeat as what had occurred in Normandy. Within eight days of the invasion, Germany had put out Der Deutsche Wochenschau.  This propaganda video highlighted the bravery and skill of the Nazi forces, as well as insisting that the Allied invasions had failed. 

We have highlighted some of the most interesting scenes of the video below:

Below is an edited version of Der Deutsche Wochenschau. 

SEE ALSO: CBC is tweeting a blow-by-blow account of D-Day, and it's incredible

Join the conversation about this story »

While German propaganda claimed their military defeated the June 6, 1944 Allied invasion at Normandy, German military leaders recognized how much they had lost.

In November, 1944, Commander-in-Chief West, Field Marshal Karl R. Gerd von Rundstedt's issued the following report on the "[s]ystematic, almost scientifically conducted" invasion.

About the invasion, he wrote, four facts must be emphasized:

(1) The enemy's complete mastery in the air.

(2) The skillful and large-scale employment of enemy parachute and airborne troops,

(3) The flexible and well-directed support of the land troops by ships' artillery of strong English naval units ranging from battleship to gunboat.

(4) The rehearsal of the enemy invasion units for their task; most precise knowledge of the coast, of its obstacles and defense establishments, swift building up of superiority in numbers and  material on the bridgehead after just a few days.

Just how much the Germans were put on the defensive is clear in Rundstedt's recommendations.

Given the Allied air superiority, "marches by day are obviously excluded in good weather," he writes. "The troops must constantly be prepared for low flying attacks so that all means of protection for them against air attacks can be immediately put into effect." For the same reason, he writes, "[c]amouflage in all forms must be stressed again and again."

Given Allied naval power, "[t]he movement of tanks by day, in open country, within the range of these naval guns is hardly possible.

Rundstedt also expressed frustration that many German troops had not adapted to the new paradigm: "I have purposely had these experiences set down in detail, because many formations in the West, are newly arriving forces, still do not know the practice of battle, in spite of all previously received orders and instructions."

Still, he makes note of German heroics during the Normandy invasion: "By holding out to the last they helped their own leaders very much to gain time and to prevent a breakthrough of the enemy from the bridgehead."

The war in Europe ended with an invasion of Germany by the Western troops and the capture of Berlin by Soviet and Polish troops, leading to Germany's surrender on May 8, 1945.

Here's Rundstedt's full report:

H. Q., 20.6.1944. Commander-in-Chief West, (High Command, Army Group D) Operations 
Section No. 5050/44

Experiences from the Invasion Battles of Normandy

A. Preliminary Remarks

1. Experiences fulfill their purposes only when they are quickly brought to the attention of the 
troops. This happens from time to time through the medium of individual teletype messages.

2. The following experiences summarize what has happened so far. It is left to the duty stations 
named under "Distributor" to make the evaluation and to fill in details according to their own 
judgment.

B.

The following most recent battle experiences confirm in broad outlines all the experiences which 
were made known regarding Sicily, Salerno, Nottuno and those other heavy defensive battles in 
Italy.

The proximity of the English mother country and thus also of all the embarkation and supply 
bases afforded to the Anglo-Saxons in their first great land attack against the Western Bay of the 
Seine and against the peninsula of the Cotentin the opportunity of employment on the greatest 
scale so far of men, material and technical means. Systematic, almost scientifically conducted 
preparations in all fields for this attack were rendered more easy in every respect by a 
far-reaching network of agents in the occupied area of the west. The orders for the preparation 
and the carrying out of the landing are books with numerous enclosures

The following most important battle experiences are to be passed on as the subject of instruction 
and drill in all fronts not yet attacked for the attention of the troops and command authorities in 
the battle area and for the instruction of all duty stations, protective forces, etc., in the entire 
protecting area.

I

I--Four facts which must be emphasized:

(1) The enemy's complete mastery in the air.

(2) The skillful and large-scale employment of enemy parachute and airborne troops,

(3) The flexible and well-directed support of the land troops by ships' artillery of strong English 
naval units ranging from battleship to gunboat.

(4) The rehearsal of the enemy invasion units for their task; most precise knowledge of the coast, 
of its obstacles and defense establishments, swift building up of superiority in numbers and 
material on the bridgehead after just a few days.

Opposed to this stands the quality of the German soldier, his steadfastness and his unqualified 
will to fight to the fast with army, navy and air force.

All three branches of the service have given their best and will continue to give it.

II -- The Enemy Landing Procedure in Broad Outlines:

(a) The enemy had hoped to be able to surprise us. He did not succeed. The beginning of landings from the air on the Western Bay of the Seine and in the Cotentin was on June 6, 1944, at about 0100, under conditions of cloudy, overcast weather with a rather strong wind, intermittent showers and rough sea up to four degrees; at the same time at various sectors of the front strong enemy air formations delivered bombing attacks in the rear area. The enemy thereby wished to bring about an air raid alarm and make us take cover in order to be able to drop his parachute troops with as little risk of observation as possible. In several places parachutists turned out to be dummies (with boxes containing explosives). Purpose: Splitting up of local reserves and withdrawal from the decisive spot, involving loss of time for the defender.

Airborne troops in many transport gliders of various sizes cut loose, in accordance with a precisely worked out plan, over the sea or at widely separated points over land, and on the whole they found their designated landing spots accurately. Nevertheless, these landings from the air were no surprise, since our own command and troops had counted on them for weeks and were prepared. Thus the enemy parachute and airborne troops suffered heavy--and in parts even extremely bloody--losses, and were in. most, places annihilated in the course of the battle. They did not succeed in breaking up the coastal defense from the rear. Only in the American bridgehead north of Carentan--by our own attack on three sides--were the enemy airborne troops compressed in the direction of the coastal defense after tough fighting for days, and thus they could link up with their own land forces which had already broken in and in this way were able to get reinforcement and relief.

The technique and tactics of the enemy airborne forces are highly developed. Training for battle Was also on a high level--tough fighters, skilled in adapting themselves to the terrain!

We must reckon with the possibility that, apart from proper parachute troops, special troops with particular tasks will also be dropped (reconnaissance and reporting on command posts, munition depots, communications to the rear, etc., demolitions, disruptions and attacks, or detailed from the airborne forces upon landing. These troops keep themselves perfectly quiet in order not to be discovered or involved in the battle. We must reckon with their exact knowledge of places and with employment of all possible means of assistance.

(b) The actual landing from the sea began four or five hours after the airborne landing. The enemy had changed his landing plans for coming in with the rising tide--plans which had hitherto been regarded by us as likely--and had adapted his landing operations to low tide because of the strong underwater obstacles along the beach, about which he had information.

This was recognized weeks before the actual landing by trial landings carried out in England. The enemy could thus discover gaps in the rows of underwater obstacles along the beach, by-pass the obstacles with his tanks, and for the rest open up passages and overcome in part these beach obstacles by his own special troops.

Where these obstacles were not discovered because they were under water, heavy enemy losses in landing craft and in men resulted, But obstacles on the dry beaches also noticeably delayed the tempo of the landing and consequently increased the enemy's losses by our fire.

Time of the landings from the sea.--Starting from 0600 hours in the morning, fully visible. Before the landing there was a heavy bombardment of extraordinary intensity from the sea and the air, with weapons of all calibers. The consequence was that all field defenses were more or less knocked out and "ploughed down," so that for the most part only the solid fortifications remained intact. The enemy seeped in through the gaps without trying to attack the fortifications and big strong points. These strong points held out in cases for over a week and therefore split up enemy forces. By holding out to the last they helped their own leaders very much to gain time and to prevent a breakthrough of the enemy from the bridgehead.

(c) Enemy air force,--Almost unlimited in radius, it controls in numbers not only the main battlefield but also the approach and supply roads to a depth of 150 to 200 km. Moreover, the enemy carries the battle right into the home-battlefront with his tactical bombers, in order to destroy the large railway systems, especially railway junctions, marshalling yards, locomotive shops, bridges and important works connected with the war industry.

Notwithstanding the highly developed railway system and the numerous good main and secondary roads, the enemy succeeded by attacking in force and uninterruptedly with his air force to interrupt supplies and replacements and cause so many casualties in rolling stock and motorized columns that supply and replacements have become a very serious problem. The nearer the battle area, the more frequently appear the fighters and bombers employed in "road-chasing," By their attacks they interrupt all major movements in good weather by day and by using flares at night. The emphasis of the enemy air attacks lay at first on the main highways. but now they are attacking every form of movement, covering an area of at least 20 km. behind the main line of resistance, as well as by-roads in the battlefield. Wherever the enemy's reconnaissance shows a disposition of troops, an attack by bomber formations follows within a short time. It is absolutely essential that motor vehicles keep long distances from each other within the columns.

Command posts are being given away by their wireless stations.-- Radio stations must therefore be at such a distance from the command post that the post is not covered in the bombsight or by sticks of bombs. Where the command posts are not fortified, they must be changed frequently. Planning reconnaissance is therefore essential; so is notification to the respective commanding authorities, so that the command post concerned can be found.

Within two and a half days, at a depth from the enemy bridgehead of about 65 miles, 29,000 enemy sorties were counted; of these, about 2,300 aircraft a day dive-bomb and strafe every movement on the ground, even a single soldier.

(4) Further Effects--Railroad transport which anyhow, because of the total traffic situation, has been reduced to a certain minimum, can scarcely be brought nearer than 200-250 kilometers from the front and this too, without any planned schedule. The sections of railway lines change hourly, according to the weather conditions; the trains may be in close succession (buffer to buffer) or they may travel only at night. Also, as was at once recognized, violent air attacks often lead to the blocking of transports within sections of railway lines. Railway terminals, and consequently the unloading of units or the setting up of supply bases, are constantly changing and require extraordinarily flexible leadership and mobile labor battalions for swift unloading the moment messages arrive.

Marches by day are obviously excluded in good weather. The short summer nights must be used from dusk to the morning shootinglight for exact reconnoitering of streets and crossings, for the preparation of smooth engagements, for quick marching in loose formation, for avoiding main streets and smoothly seeping into the rest areas where reconnoitering has been carried on. The troops must constantly be prepared for low flying attacks so that all means of protection for them against air attacks can be immediately put into effect. Long overland marches of half-track units and the bringing up of supplies in marches over long stretches lead also to losses though enemy action, to great wear and tear, and to technical defects. The elimination of these must be carefully organized in order that the calculations made by the command may be at least adhered to in some degree and that troops, supplies and replacements may be brought up to the appointed place in proper tine.

Our own systematically organized counter-measures must be applied to meet the methodical operational strategy of the enemy's warfare.

I--(a) In the safety belt, new units to be brought up on transports through all the designated transport duty stations must be instructed about the air situation, about their conduct when there is danger from the air and when an alert is sounded, and also about their actions during unloading.

Advance patrols cannot be sent ahead too soon. As it is, they will be held up by many circumstances. The Quartermaster of every advance patrol must regularly report to the High Command in the West or to the High Command of the Army.

According to the ruling of the General Commanding Troops in the West, great quantities of maps (small size) must be held ready at all unloading stations, which are to be given out by representatives of the transport commands to the incoming transports. (The same procedure to be followed in the case of quartermaster, High Command the Army, etc.)

On march, army patrols are to be detailed to provide guides familiar with the local areas and also other support to the relevant units. Reconnoitering of bridges to be carried on regularly in proper time, since in the interim new and unreported destructions may have taken place. The order of march and the guarding of the streets in the safety belt are the concern of the military commanders who have to be Informed in proper time by the appropriate command concerning the bringing up of units, concerning the march objectives and the march patrols, etc.

(b) In the battle area all the movements on the battlefield by day--the shifting of troop dispositions or the formation of new pivotal Positions--require much more time than was allocated originally even in a careful estimate, Therefore, movements and battles come into the foreground at dusk and during darkness in order to block out the effect of the enemy air force and the direct observation by enemy artillery.

The organization of the whole battle area (as a rule approximately the area of the "battle zone") requires the most rigid planning from the rear area up to the main battle line.

Street commanders are to be appointed to watch over all the traffic from and to the front, Circuitous routes around villages are to be mapped out and to be posted with signs. Signpost materials are to be prepared at destroyed crossings, roads in great danger from air attacks are to be provided with warning signs, and traffic shall pass through in very loose formation only in darkness or in weather conditions corresponding to darkness. Channels for the incoming and outgoing of supplies are to be fixed, as well as reconnoitered parking places for columns outside of the camps. At these places small intermediary supply depots, well dispersed, are to be set up at suitable places and to be made secure.

The employment of responsible officers (mostly from the fortress engineer staffs) are necessary for the continual repair of the streets; these officers along with our assigned units and with the help of the inhabitants must keep the streets in constant state of serviceability. Every light flak weapon not absolutely needed in the safety belt behind the battle zone--from objectives already destroyed or which now play a secondary role--is to be so used at supply bases in the battle area; low-flying aircraft will be warded off under all circumstances.

II--Camouflage in all forms must be stressed again and again.--Troop and column leaders must know that once a unit or column has been discovered by enemy aircraft it will be attacked from the air until put completely out of action, Therefore tank cover holes must be provided at irregular intervals to the right and left of the, road, under the direction of the officers who are responsible for the road columns, with the help of all available labor from the inhabitants and with the active, participation of the troops themselves, There is always need for camouflage adapted to the terrain. The roads should be cleared of damaged vehicles in the quickest possible time through the organized road clearance service.

III--The enemy had deployed very strong naval forces off the shores of the bridgehead. These can be used as quickly mobile, constantly available artillery, at points where they are necessary as defense against our attacks or as support for enemy attacks, During the day their fire is skillfully directed by observation balloons attached to the ships, by aircraft observers, and by advanced ground fire spotters. Because of the high rapid-fire capacity of naval guns they play an important part in the battle within their range. The movement of tanks by day, in open country, within the range of these naval guns is hardly possible.

IV--In one case the enemy broke into the attack of one of our own divisions which had gained good ground by employing airborne troops in such a manner that the supporting forces of the division were tied down in local fighting while moving up. This deprived the division of the success of its attack. We must reckon with the fact that the enemy will continue this practice, whenever our tanks are attacking. Therefore all units in the rear must be prepared for immediate defense in order to destroy airborne forces.

V--The enemy prepares smaller-scale attacks with barrage-like firing by using many trench mortars, which is followed by tank thrusts supported by motorized infantry.

VI--Strict control of the population must be exercised, especially of the "road bums" in the battle zone and in the rear areas. If every alarm unit is properly employed the road situation will soon become a different matter.

Suspicious persons, especially young men with "small suitcases," may have arrived secretly. Whoever does not belong in a particular place, whoever cannot give a clear account of the destination and the purpose of his wanderings, should be arrested and delivered to the labor forces.

VII--Means of Communications.--Wire connections in the battle area break down to the point of uselessness. Apart from radio, only the overland mechanical means of sending messages are left--the cyclist, the motorcycle messenger, the officer in the sidecar or in the light armored car, and for short distances the runner.

All troops and all commanders must strive to get a clear picture of all happenings and seek to establish contact with the higher and lower units, especially at times when the normal means of communications are lost. This is particularly important in the case of commanders who are receiving troops or larger formations. The commanders must be continually informed as to the position of the vanguard of such formations at any given time, and regarding the arrangements for rest and further marching. It is specially important for the command to be continually informed about the location of half-track units, which are a part of land movements.

Such formations or parts of formations are to be sought by detailed liaison officers, accompanied by them and when necessary have orders transmitted to them. The liaison officer knows where these formations will be during the next hours and can report it to his commander. He can also transmit the wishes of the troops in regard to provisions and supplies and attend to them.

During the first days of the big battle it follows of necessity that under certain conditions formations will be missed, or else in cases of need they may go into battle split up. This is only a passing emergency solution, As soon as conditions permit, clear formations and thereby clear orders are to be re-established.

I have purposely had these experiences set down in detail, because many formations in the West, are newly arriving forces, still do not know the practice of battle, in spite of all previously received orders and instructions.

Supreme Commander in the West,                     
(Signed) von Rundstedt,                     
Fieldmarshal.    

SEE ALSO: D-Day was a success because Allied meteorologists saw an opening that the Germans missed

Join the conversation about this story »

Germany is seeking extradition of an 89-year-old Pennsylvania man in connection with the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Jewish men, women, and children at the Auschwitz and Buchenwald Nazi concentration camps, a U.S. judge said on Wednesday.

Johann Breyer was arrested by U.S. authorities on Tuesday at his home in Philadelphia on allegations that he served as a Nazi SS guard at the concentration camps. The retired tool-and-die maker, born in then-Czechoslovakia, is accused of joining the Waffen SS at age 17.

Breyer immigrated to the United States in 1952. He was the subject of deportation proceedings in the 1990s when his attorneys argued he was a natural U.S. citizen because his mother was born in Philadelphia. They also argued that Breyer had been coerced into joining the SS.

Germany has issued a warrant for his arrest, U.S. Magistrate Judge Timothy Rice said at Breyer's court appearance in U.S. District Court in Philadelphia.

Newly discovered evidence has strengthened the case against Breyer, The New York Times reported. War-era records show he was at Auschwitz earlier than he has acknowledged and that he also served as a guard in a notorious subcamp, known as Birkenau, used exclusively to kill prisoners. In the past, Breyer has admitted he served as a guard at Auchswitz but asserted he was forced to do so and he played no part in the murders of Jews in gas chambers.

"I didn't kill anybody, I didn't rape anybody — and I don't even have a traffic ticket here. I didn't do anything wrong,"Breyer told the Associated Press in 2012.

Breyer now faces allegations that he was involved in the gassing deaths of 216,000 Jews transported to the concentration camp in 1944, according to The New York Times. He faces 158 counts of aiding and abetting in their murder — one for every trainload that arrived during a six-month period. 

Within the last 35 years, the U.S. Justice Department has charged more than 130 Nazi suspects, but the 89-year-old Breyer is the oldest and may become the last Nazi defendant in America, The Times reported.

Breyer has lived for years in a northeast Philadelphia townhouse with his wife. "He was a nice guy who fed my dog treats and talked to my parents when they came down," longtime neighbor Ken Perkins told The Times.

In court on Wednesday, Breyer's lawyers argued that he was not healthy enough to be held in federal detention while his case is being decided.

SEE ALSO: Here's A Nazi Propaganda Video Saying The D-Day Invasion Failed

Join the conversation about this story »