Podcast: Lepa Radic, Teenage Partisan Executed by the Nazis

Lepa Radić was just a 17-year-old Yugoslavian girl when she was hanged by the Nazis for being a Partisan in 1943.  This extraordinarily brave girl had joined the Yugoslav Partisans in the fight against their Nazi oppressors in World War II, and taken on the most dangerous assignments.  What turn of events lead to her transformation, capture and ultimate execution?

The 1945 Yalta BIG THREE Conference – Russia, US and UK

The Yalta (Crimea) Conference was the second World War II meeting by the “Big Three,“ President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Premier Joseph Stalin, heads of the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union.

Catcher, Lawyer, Soldier, Spy – the Odd Life of Moe Berg

Morris (Moe) Berg was all that and more, a life-long bachelor, devoted Jew, and eccentric intellectual.  The son of a pharmacist in Newark, New Jersey, young Moe fell in love with baseball.  He began playing baseball at age seven, first for a local Christian church, then high school, then at Princeton University.  The sport becameContinue reading “Catcher, Lawyer, Soldier, Spy – the Odd Life of Moe Berg”

The Oversteegen Sisters – Teenage Resistance Assassins

The Oversteegen sisters were only teenagers when they joined the Dutch resistance in the Netherlands during World War II. Together with a young friend, Hannie Schaft, they gathered intelligence for the Resistance, provided Jewish safe houses, bombed railways and, most remarkably, lured Nazi officers into the woods, and shot them. When World War II eruptedContinue reading “The Oversteegen Sisters – Teenage Resistance Assassins”

Operation Gunnerside: The Most Important WWII Mission you Never Heard Of

Operation Gunnerside was arguably the most important covert mission of World War II. It’s goal was daunting – to prevent Adolf Hitler from creating the atomic bomb first. Gunnerside would do so by denying the Nazi’s enough heavy water (deuterium oxide) to build a nuclear weapon. The Vemork hydroelectric plant, located in a remote valleyContinue reading “Operation Gunnerside: The Most Important WWII Mission you Never Heard Of”

The Nazi’s Wilhelm Gustloff – the World’s Worst Maritime Disaster

The sinking of MS WILHELM GUSTLOFF was the worst maritime disaster in world history, with more dead than the Titanic AND Lusitania combined.  It was a German refugee ship fleeing Poland and the advancing Russian army near the end of World War II. The Gustloff sank in the Baltic Sea after being torpedoed by theContinue reading “The Nazi’s Wilhelm Gustloff – the World’s Worst Maritime Disaster”

Podcast: Razor Tojo – Japan’s Adolf Hitler

  Contrary to popular myth, Japan’s version of Adolf Hitler was not the Emperor Hirohito, but rather its infamous Minister of War, Hideki Razor Tojo. But who was this ruthless and powerful man so few outside Japan know of?  He rose to power in the 1930’s, began World War II in the Pacific, and wasContinue reading “Podcast: Razor Tojo – Japan’s Adolf Hitler”