Photos of the Netherlands in World War II
May 4 is Memorial Day in the Netherlands. One of the activities that was run this year to commemorate the Second World War was a photo competition. People from all twelve provinces plus the Netherlands’ (former) overseas territories could nominate and vote for pictures they felt best represented the war.
You can find the 100 winners on the official website. (It’s in Dutch, but easy to…
Mapping the Second World War in Africa #ww2 #history
Following the Nazi conquest of Europe, the focus of the Second World War in the West shifted to Africa. Commonwealth forces joined with the Free French under Charles de Gaulle to drive the Italians out of East Africa and Cyrenaica. The war went so poorly for the Italians that Adolf Hitler had to send in Erwin Rommel, who managed to push the British halfway into Egypt before he was stopped.
The…
The Nazi conquest of Europe in #maps
World War II started in 1939, when Germany invaded Poland and Britain and France declared war. But the Nazi conquest of Europe started years earlier.
In 1935, the coal-rich Saarland rejoined the Reich. The following year, Hitler remilitarized the Rhineland in violation of the Versailles Treaty. Austria and what is now the Czech Republic were annexed in 1938.
At the height of his power,…
Unsinkable British aircraft carrier – on ice!
In 1942, the War in the Atlantic was not going well for the Allies. German submarines, operating in “wolf packs” just out of aircraft range, wrecked havoc on Allied supply lines. In the first half of the year, the Allies managed to sink just one U-boat for every forty merchant ships lost. At this rate, Britain would soon run out of matériel to sustain the war.
Lord Louis Mountbatten, as chief…
Nazis surviving the fall of the Third Reich is a common trope in #dieselpunk and #atompunk fiction
Rumors that the Nazis survived the fall of the Third Reich started to circulate almost as soon as the war in Europe ended in May 1945. There were stories that Adolf Hitler had escaped to Spain or South America. Some of his top lieutenants, notably Martin Bormann, were missing.
The speculation had some basis in reality. There really were efforts to smuggle Nazis out of Europe, but not on the…
Want to change the outcome of World War II? Here are 22 ways to do it #althistory #dieselpunk
Alternate World War II histories typically either kill Hitler, to end the war quickly or avoid it altogether, or correct one of his many strategic mistakes (invade Russia in winter, needlessly declare war on the United States), to enable an Axis victory.
There were many more inflection points, however, any one of which could have steered history in another direction. If you want to change…
Hemisphere Defense or Sea Command: America’s Choice in 1940 #ww2 #history
On the eve of America’s entry into World War II, George Fielding Eliot reported for Life magazine that the country essentially had three ways to defend itself against an Axis invasion.
He rejected the first option, a purely defensive strategy, out of hand. Protecting just the United States, the Caribbean, the Panama Canal and Samoa, but not Canada, Greenland, Newfoundland and South America,…
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