Category Archives: Second world war

Remains found in search for crew of British bomber shot down by Nazis

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Salvage operation in Dutch waters finds remains presumed to be those of Arthur Smart, Charles Sprack and Raymond Moore

The remains of British airmen shot down by the Nazis over Dutch waters may have been discovered in a massive rescue operation.

With the help of a €15m national plane-wreck rescue fund, the Dutch have started to sift the wreckage of the British Lancaster ED603, which never returned from a mass bombing mission targeting Bochum in Germany on 13 June 1943. Instead this “Pathfinder”, that gave the lead to 503 bombers, was tracked as it headed home. It was shot down and crashed in the blue Dutch waters of the IJsselmeer with seven men aboard.

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‘She played it down’: Bletchley Park codebreaker dies at 99

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Margaret Betts, of Ipswich, was headhunted in 1942 to decipher enemy communications during WW2

One of the last surviving female Bletchley Park codebreakers, who worked helping to decipher enemy communications during the second world war, has died aged 99.

Margaret Betts, of Ipswich, Suffolk, was 19 when she was headhunted by “men from the ministry”, having performed well at school, her son Jonathan Betts, 68, said.

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‘Then the black rain fell’: survivor’s recollections of Hiroshima inspire new film

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The 230-page unpublished memoir will reflect the horrors suffered by ordinary Japanese citizens in a feature-length drama

A major feature film on Hiroshima is going into production, inspired in part by an unpublished memoir of a Japanese man who witnessed the devastation of the city after the atomic bomb was dropped in 1945.

Scriptwriter Elisabeth Bentley was taken aback by the personal recollections of Kiyoshi Tanimoto in a 230-page memoir that she unearthed in a US archive.

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Former guard at Nazi death camp charged with being accessory to murder

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Gregor F, 98, who worked as guard at Sachsenhausen between 1943 and 1945, to be tried in juvenile court due to age at time

A former Nazi concentration camp guard has been indicted on charges of acting as an accessory to murder in the latest of a string of eleventh-hour attempts to gain justice for Holocaust victims and survivors.

The 98-year-old, identified as Gregor F, worked as a guard at the Sachsenhausen camp north of Berlin between 1943 and 1945.

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US air force photos of England at war available to public for first time

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Thousands of images from second world war include bomb damage to Old Trafford and troops at leisure

Black-and-white aerial photographs offering a bird’s eye view of England as it changed during the second world war are being made available to the public for the first time.

The 3,600 images include pictures of bomb damage to Old Trafford in Greater Manchester, as well as other towns and cities. They also show ancient monuments surrounded by anti-tank defences in West Sussex, and troops at play at a US army camp in Wiltshire.

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‘The Holocaust happened on British soil’: Inquiry into​ Nazi camps creates bitter divide on Alderney

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An official investigation of claims that many more people than previously thought died during Nazi control of the Channel Island has pleased some, but dismayed others

Their foreboding entrance smothered in ivy, the tunnels gouged out of sheer rock beside Water Lane on the island of Alderney have long terrified generations of the island’s children.

For decades, though, it seemed that was as far as the notoriety of the dank tunnels on the outskirts of St Anne, the capital of the tiny Channel Island, would extend.

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‘We were the frontline’: Australia’s only all-Indigenous battalion remembered as last Torres Strait digger dies

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They were underpaid and trained with broom handles, but that didn’t stop the Torres Strait Light Infantry Battalion fighting for their country

The last surviving member of the Torres Strait Light Infantry Battalion (TSLIB), the only all-Indigenous battalion to serve for the Australian Defence Force, has been laid to rest.

Mebai Warusam, 99, was buried on his home island of Saibai in the Torres Strait on 5 August, only weeks after the second last survivor, Awati Mau, 96, was buried in his community at the tip of Cape York.

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Japan’s PM deplores ‘Russia’s nuclear threat’ on 78th anniversary of Hiroshima

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Mayor of city where Little Boy atom bomb was dropped says nuclear deterrence is ‘folly’

Japan’s prime minister has hit out at Russian threats to use nuclear weapons as the country marked the 78th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.

Around 140,000 people died in Hiroshima on August 6, 1945 and 74,000 in Nagasaki three days later, when the United States dropped atomic bombs on the two Japanese cities days before the end of World War II.

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Channel Island Nazis inquiry under pressure to find out why perpetrators never faced justice

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Thousands of people may have perished on Alderney during the second world war but their murderers never stood trial

The official inquiry into Nazi atrocities committed on Alderney in the Channel Islands is under pressure to investigate why those responsible for committing war crimes on British soil were never brought to trial in the UK.

Prof Anthony Glees, the security and intelligence expert who advised Margaret Thatcher’s war crimes inquiry, told the Observer: “This is a vital opportunity to establish all the facts, and it must examine why those who perpetrated such heinous war crimes were never brought to trial in this country. The review into the atrocities on Alderney is to be warmly welcomed, but I believe it should not just focus on the numbers killed, as important as that is.”

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The RSF are out to finish the genocide in Darfur they began as the Janjaweed. We cannot stand by | Kate Ferguson

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Peace between Hemedti’s RSF and Sudan’s army will not end war crimes. As UN security council president, Britain must act

As conflict in Sudan escalates, it is becoming clear that the Rapid Support Forces has returned to Darfur to complete the genocide it began 20 years ago. The RSF is the Janjaweed rebranded, the “devils on horseback” used by the Sudanese government from 2003 to implement widespread and systematic crimes against non-Arab communities across Darfur. The RSF was, and still is, commanded by Gen Mohamed Hamdan “Hemedti” Dagalo.

In recent weeks, what we knew was coming has been confirmed. Yale University’s Conflict Observatory, which uses a combination of satellite imagery, Nasa thermal-detection data and open-source analysis, found evidence of the “targeted destruction of at least 26 communities” by the RSF between 15 April and 10 July. Mass graves have been discovered, and satellite imagery shows entire urban neighbourhoods and villages have been burned down.

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‘No more cover-up’: Nazi concentration camps on Channel Island finally to be officially investigated

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Review could show that thousands more Jews and prisoners of war died on Alderney than previously thought

The full horrors of the only Nazi concentration camps to exist on British soil will finally be investigated in an official government inquiry, the Observer can reveal.

Eighty years on from one of the darkest episodes in British history, the government is to carry out a review into the numbers of prisoners murdered by the Nazis on Alderney, the tiny Channel Island and British crown dependency.

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RAF proposal to move Dambusters dog’s grave rejected

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West Lindsey council votes down proposal to relocate dog, named after a racial slur, to Norfolk airbase

Councillors have rejected proposals to exhume and relocate a dog buried at the former base of the Dambusters put forward amid concerns about the suitability of the grave’s location once the site is repurposed as accommodation for asylum seekers.

During an extraordinary planning meeting on Wednesday evening, West Lindsey district councillors unanimously voted down an application by RAF Heritage to relocate the dog to an airbase in Norfolk.

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Leon Gautier, last surviving French D-day commando, dies at 100

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Gautier was one of 177 green berets in the Kieffer unit which stormed the Normandy beaches on 6 June 1944

Leon Gautier, the last surviving member of the French commando unit that waded ashore on D-day alongside allied troops to begin the liberation of France, died on Monday. He was 100 years old.

Gautier was one of 177 French green berets who stormed the Normandy beaches defended by Hitler’s forces in 1944.

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Second world war British fighter planes unearthed in Ukraine

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Remains of eight Hurricanes dating back to 1940s conflict found south of Kyiv

Authorities in Ukraine have discovered the remains of eight British Hurricane fighter planes dating back to the second world war.

The aircraft, found near an unexploded bomb dating from the same conflict in a forest south of Kyiv, were sent to the Soviet Union by Britain after Nazi Germany invaded the country in 1941.

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Skulls left scattered after Ukraine dam breach may be from second world war

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Mudflats are littered with bones, some of which may be remains from battle 80 years ago near Nikopol

The emptying of the vast reservoir along the Dnipro River in Ukraine as a result of the destruction of the Nova Kakhovka dam last week has left mudflats littered with skeletons, according to footage posted online, in a reminder of the region’s violent past.

Videos taken on Ukrainian-held and Russian-occupied sides of the Dnipro where the reservoir used to be, show skulls scattered in the ooze, one wearing a second world war helmet. The footage could not be independently verified due to fighting in the area.

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Northern Ireland sale of Hitler memorabilia to go ahead despite outcry

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Bloomfield Auctions rejects accusations it is acting immorally and insulting the memory of Nazis’ victims

A Northern Ireland auction house is going ahead with the sale of Adolf Hitler memorabilia despite an outcry from Jewish leaders.

The managing director of Bloomfield Auctions, Karl Bennett, rebuffed accusations on Wednesday that the sale was immoral and would insult the memory of those murdered by the Nazis.

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Fears looted Nazi art still hanging in Belgian and British galleries

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Leading art museums are reassessing their works after a Belgian journalist traced how a fascist sympathiser acquired a Jewish dealer’s collection

In August 1940, Samuel Hartveld and his wife, Clara Meiboom, boarded the SS Exeter ocean liner in Lisbon, bound for New York. Aged 62, Hartveld, a successful Jewish art dealer, left a world behind. The couple had fled their home city of Antwerp not long before the Nazi invasion of Belgium in May 1940, parting with their 23-year-old son, Adelin, who had decided to join the resistance.

Hartveld also said goodbye to a flourishing gallery in a fine art deco building in the Flemish capital, a rich library and more than 60 paintings. The couple survived the war, but Adelin was killed in January 1942. Hartveld was never reunited with his paintings, which were snapped up at a bargain-basement price by a Nazi sympathiser and today are scattered throughout galleries in north-western Europe, including Tate Britain.

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Kremlin calls Poland’s decision to rename Kaliningrad a ‘hostile act’

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Russian city will now be known as Królewiec in official documents, its name in the 15th and 16th centuries

The Kremlin has described Poland’s decision to rename the Russian city of Kaliningrad in its official documents as a “hostile act”, as ties continue to fray over the Ukraine war.

Kaliningrad, which sits in an exclave sandwiched between Lithuania and Poland on the Baltic coast, was known by the German name of Königsberg until after the second world war, when it was annexed by the Soviet Union and renamed to honour politician Mikhail Kalinin.

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Nothing to see here: Dutch village calls off search for Nazi loot

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Ommeren became hive of activity after Dutch National Archive unveiled map featuring a red ‘X’ in January

A Dutch village that became the focus of a frenzied treasure hunt after a map allegedly showed Nazi loot buried there during the second world war has declared the search over – and said nothing was found.

The small hamlet of Ommeren did conclude that there had indeed been treasure buried there, but that it was removed after the war.

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Russian regions scrap Victory Day parades amid fear of Ukraine strikes

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Governor of region 400 miles from border latest to cancel over ‘safety concerns’ in glaring admission of vulnerability

At least six Russian regions have scrapped 9 May Victory Day parades that mark the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany amid fears over Ukrainian strikes, with a region 400 miles from the border being the latest to cancel.

The governor of Saratov announced the parade there would not go ahead because of “safety concerns”, adding to a string of cancellations that are a glaring admission of the country’s military vulnerability more than 14 months into the war.

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