Peenemünde is a peninsula in northern Germany on the Baltic coast. It was here from 1936 that the Nazi regime opened the Peenemünde Army Research Centre and under Wernher von Braun it was where the development of the first rockets took place: the V1 ‘Doodlebug’ and latterly the V2 rocket. The site was heavily bombed once the Allies realised…
Tag: Germany
Battle Damage: Munich
When you explore Second World War sites across Europe you look at the landscape differently from other visitors: you always have one eye out for visible traces of conflict. In cities this means looking for buildings damaged and repaired or which still bear the scars of war: battle damage. Munich was at the spiritual heartland…
Hürtgenwald Museum, Germany
The Hürtgenwald was a forested area beyond the Siegfried Line, or Westwall, in Germany close to the city of Aachen. It was fought over in November 1944 as American troops fought their way through the area. Ernest Hemingway, who reported on the battle, called it “Passchendaele with tree-bursts”. The Hürtgenwald Museum is a private museum…
Remagen Bridge
The story of Remagen Bridge is one of the iconic moments of the last months of the Second World War. By March 1945 the German Army was in full retreat with American and British forces pushing from the West and Russian troops advancing in the East. As the final advance on the river Rhine began…
Remembering VE Day
Today is the 70th Anniversary of Victory in Europe Day – VE Day – when the war in Europe came to an end. German troops had first surrendered to Field Marshall Montgomery at Lüneburg Heath on 4th May 1945. This though only concerned German units facing 21st Army Group, so the fighting in the…
Lūneburg Heath Memorial
On this day in 1945 Field Marshall Bernard Law Montgomery signed the declaration of surrender of German troops in Holland, Northern Germany and in Denmark bringing to an end the fighting for his 21st Army Group. Monty was the first Allied commander to bring the Germans to the table for an unconditional surrender, and events…
Exploring The Hürtgenwald
The Hürtgenwald was a forested area just inside the German border and east of the city of Aachen. It was protected to the south and west by the Siegfried Line but was reached by American troops in September 1944. The fighting in the Battle of the Hürtgenwald lasted well into December 1944, and the final breakout…
WW2 Book Review: Colditz – The Full Story
The Colditz Story by Major P.R.Reid (Folio Society 2015, 408pp, illustrated, £39.95) Growing up in 1970s anyone of my generation enjoyed a childhood obsessed with the Second World War: it was in our comics, on our bubblegum cards, in our toys and on our TV screens. One name rises above them all in this respect,…
Siegfried Line, Aachen
The Siegfried Line, or Westwall as the Germans called it, was a 390 mile long defensive wall built in the 1930s to screen Nazi Germany in from an attack from the West and was partially built in reaction to the construction of the French Maginot Line. During the Phoney War in 1939.40 it inspired the famous song…
Bergen-Belsen
On International Women’s Day it is fitting to be sitting writing this at Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp where arguably one of the most famous female voices of the Twentieth Century died in 1945: Anne Frank. Her diaries have helped to define our knowledge and understanding of the Holocaust, and for me personally they remain as…
Seelow Heights Battlefield
Today we spent the day looking round the Seelow Heights battlefield which saw fighting from January through to April 1945 when the position finally fell and the road was open to Berlin for the advancing Soviet forces. Like the Oderfront we visited the other day, this is not an area for the casual visitor as…
Treptower Murals
Today we looked at the Battle of Berlin itself visiting a number of locations in and around the city where evidence of the 1945 fighting took place. Inevitably such a journey takes the battlefield visitor to Treptower Park, where the massive Soviet Memorial site is located. The site commemorates more than 80,000 Soviet soldiers who…
Oderfront Battlefields
Today we crossed into Poland and had a look at the battlefields along the river Oder on what was known as the Oderfront. This marks the old boundary between Brandenburg and Prussia and today the border between Germany and Poland. Soviet forces reached this area in January 1945 have pushed the Germans back since Operation Bagration…
Elbe Meeting Memorial, Torgau
On Day 5 of our Last Days of WW2 battlefield recce myself and my fellow battlefield guides ended the day on the Elbe River at Torgau where American forces meet with Soviet troops on 25th April 1945, a day that was later known as ‘Elbe Day’. A contemporary newsreel report is found here. It had…
Zeppelinfeld, Nuremberg
Arguably one of the most iconic structures that remains from the Third Reich period in Germany are the Nazi Party Rally Grounds around the Zeppelinfeld in Nürnberg or Nuremberg. The area was the scene of many Nazi Party rallies and in April 1945 the scene of stiff fighting as US troops spent five days fighting for…
World War 2 Revisited 