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A few days after the declaration of war, in August 1914, a small group of British Naval vessels set off on an unusual but vitally important mission. Using grappling hooks,…

This short, award winning, documentary takes us back to World War 2  and the pilots who flew unarmed and alone over Germany to take reconnaissance photographs.

Otto Franz Rudolf Feyerabend was born on August 28, 1876, at Bönkeim in East Prussia. His parents were farmers and, as a young man, he followed in their footsteps. In…

In 1956, Kevin Brownlow, a 17-year-old trainee editor with World Wide Films, was carrying cans of film, from their offices in Soho Square, when he saw something that was to…

‘Overnight the streets seemed to have turned Nazi,’ British journalist Michael Davidson, reported from Berlin in 1933. ‘Overnight the air, which before had been soft and warm and human, had…

  The ‘Twenty Minuters’, a term made famous in Britain by the comedy series Black Adder, was nothing to laugh about. The phrase was first coined, probably in April 1917,…

On Friday April 7th, 1933, a farm worker named Mathias Hummel stumbled across a shoe attached to an ankle sticking from the ground in a small wood some twenty miles…

On 26 February, 1933, as the Weimar Republic entered its final days and Hitler was on the verge of seizing absolute power in Germany, Hanussen held an opening night gala…

  These were compiled by historian Colonel D. G. Swinford, USMC, retired.  Many thanks to my US friend Robb Lamb for forwarding them to me. 1. The first German serviceman killed in…

Eric Jan Hanussen was a magician, clairvoyant, astrologer, illusionist, hypnotist, opportunist and charlatan. A multimillionaire businessman, he became Hitler’s personal Svengali, coaching him in showmanship, teaching him to hypnotise the…