German Shipwreck said to contain Peter The Great’s Amber Room Reveals New Treasures

German shipwreck the Karlsruhe is finally being explored at the bottom of the Baltic Sea. But does it hold the remains of the legendary Amber Room, not to mention other precious items raided by Hitler’s men? Divers are certainly banking on it, though this painstaking journey is far from complete.

On Monday Baltictech detected objects on their sonar. Most intriguingly there are 10 chests – these had been shaken loose from the 196 ft steamship and …

Source: German Shipwreck said to contain Peter The Great’s Amber Room Reveals New Treasures

Britain is no country for old men: Britain is no country for a very old Second World War spitfire pilot called Flight Lieutenant Edmund James

Edmund, who is 98 years old, is one of the last remaining fighter pilots from the Second World War. While, at the age of 17, he was too young to fight in the Battle of Britain, Edmund enlisted in the RAF and joined 93 Squadron and based at Biggin Hill he saw action over British waters and above the fields of France during and after D-Day in 1944.

He was involved in …

Source: Britain is no country for old men: Britain is no country for a very old Second World War spitfire pilot called Flight Lieutenant Edmund James

November 19, 1904 The Hunted – Today in History

We rarely hear about the work of the spy or the saboteur in times of war. These are the Heroes who work behind enemy lines, with little to protect them but their own guts and cleverness. We rarely know their names and yet, there are times when the lives of millions …

Source: November 19, 1904 The Hunted – Today in History

21-Year Old WWII Soldier’s Sketchbooks Reveal a Visual Diary of His Experiences

En-route to Europe. Promenade Deck. “And you know, we were far from even thinking of combat. They didn’t tell us. We didn’t know what was going to happen, once we landed. …—you know, the day it happens they tell you.” (September 2, 1944)

True artists must find a creative outlet no matter what the circumstance—including times of war. Thanks to the creative passion and steady hand of then 21-year old soldier Victor Lundy, we have a breathtaking visual record of World War II, in the form of documentary sketches. For Lundy, “drawing is sort of synonymous with thinking,” which means we are left with an intimate archive of sketches that unfold one soldier’s experience fighting on the front lines. Lundy was studying architecture in New York when …

Source: 21-Year Old WWII Soldier’s Sketchbooks Reveal a Visual Diary of His Experiences

Lord Kitchener in London | London Historians’ Blog

Broome House, near Canterbury.

A guest post by Dr Anne Samson, London Historians Member.

The name Kitchener does not tend to trigger thoughts of London. Invariably, it’s the poster “Your country needs you” which comes to mind or the Second Anglo-Boer (South African) war of 1899-1902 with concentration camps and farm burning in South Africa or Kitchener’s New Armies and…

Kitchener in his pomp, 1910, aged 60, by Bassano. NPG, London.

Source: Lord Kitchener in London | London Historians’ Blog

Blue plaque to be unveiled for woman who was Churchill’s ‘favourite spy’ | World news | The Guardian

I meant to post this in the middle of September when it was still current news and then promptly forgot about it!

Christine Granville: Hitler’s Favourite Spy

She was a Polish countess and Churchill’s favourite spy whose many dazzling accomplishments included smuggling microfilm across Europe which proved Hitler’s plans to invade…

Source: Blue plaque to be unveiled for woman who was Churchill’s ‘favourite spy’ | World news | The Guardian

See also: The Spy Who Loved: The Secrets and Lives of Christine Granville by Clare Mulley

Resistance Fighter Noor Inayat Khan Honoured With Plaque in Central London

Hon. Assistant Section Officer Noor Inayat Khan (code name Madeleine), George Cross, MiD, Croix de Guerre avec Etoile de Vermeil. Noor Inayat Khan served as a wireless operator with F Section, Special Operations Executive.

Female spy, Noor Inayat Khan, born in Moscow to Indian and US parents, made history in WWII when she became the first Muslim woman to be deployed behind enemy lines in Paris, France in 1943.

Today she is making history once more as…

Source: Resistance Fighter Noor Inayat Khan Honoured With Plaque in Central London

The Jewish Ghetto and Photonostalgia: Roman Vishniac’s Vanished World | A R T L▼R K

A re-run from A R T L▼R K.

On the 19th of August 1897, one of the world’s most remarkable microbiologists and naturalist photographers, Roman Vishniac was born in Pavlovsk, the Russian Empire. Within the art world, however, he is best remembered for his photojournalistic coverage of the Eastern European Jewish ghettos prior to World War II. In the late 1930s, Vishniac was commissioned by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) to photograph the Jewish poor of Eastern Europe. Out of the sixteen thousand photographs he managed to take, only two thousand survived. Most of them have been published several times in book form as Polish Jews (1947), A Vanished World (1969), and To Give Them Light (1992).

Vishniac’s body of work has come to be thought of as the last photographic record of a universe on the cusp of being comprehensively and cataclysmically…

Source: The Jewish Ghetto and Photonostalgia: Roman Vishniac’s Vanished World | A R T L▼R K

Nazi concentration camp guard convicted over 5,232 murders | World news | The Guardian

A 93-year-old former SS guard has been found guilty of accessory to the murder of 5,232 people at a Nazi concentration camp in the final days of the second world war.

Bruno Dey, who was 17 when he joined Stutthof concentration camp as a guard, was handed a two-year suspended sentence by a youth court in Hamburg on Thursday morning…

Source: Nazi concentration camp guard convicted over 5,232 murders | World news | The Guardian

Secret Spitfires – The Book – solentaviatrix

We’ve had the Secret Spitfires documentary and DVD, then the stage play (Shadow Factories). Now the book is published.

Secret Spitfires: Britain’s Hidden Civilian Army by Karl Howman, Etham Cetintas, Gavin Clarke.The History Press. Hardcover. ISBN: 9780750991995. Also available on kindle…

Source: Secret Spitfires – The Book – solentaviatrix

Beaufighter Discovered by Couple Walking on the Beach

Graham Holden and his partner were walking their dog on a Cleethorpes beach when they discovered wreckage that left him “amazed.”

Experts believe that what they found is the remains of an RAF Bristol Beaufighter which crashed shortly after it took off from North Coates in Lincolnshire one day in April 1944. RAF North Coates was located six miles southeast of Cleethorpes when it operated from 1914 until its closure in 1990. The airfield is now operated privately…

Source: Beaufighter Discovered by Couple Walking on the Beach

18 year old French Resistance fighter Simone Segouin captured 25 Nazis during the fall of Chartres

In 1944, when [Simone Segouin] was only 18 years old, she joined the Francs-Tireurs et Partisans – a combat group made up of militant communists and French nationalists. Her father served in the Great War and he was a great inspiration for her to join the resistance. She was known by her nom de guerre Nicole Minet…

Source: 18 year old French Resistance fighter Simone Segouin captured 25 Nazis during the fall of Chartres

VE Day: Last Nazi message intercepted by Bletchley Park revealed – BBC News

The last German military communications decoded at Bletchley Park in World War Two have been revealed to mark the 75th anniversary of VE Day. They were broadcast on 7 May 1945 by a military radio network making its final stand in Cuxhaven on Germany’s North Sea coast.

Source: VE Day: Last Nazi message intercepted by Bletchley Park revealed – BBC News

VE Day 75 – Remembering the meteorologists of WW2 | Royal Meteorological Society

One of the world’s most important weather forecasts ever made was during the Second World War. Meteorologist, Group Captain James Stagg (attached to the Royal Air Force) persuaded General Eisenhower to change the date of the Allied invasion of Europe from the 5th to the 6th of June 1944 – D-Day. Weather also played a key role in the initial decoding of the complex German Enigma code as code breakers discovered the transmission of coded weather data.

Source: VE Day 75 – Remembering the meteorologists of WW2 | Royal Meteorological Society

He kept the memory alive! | rebel notes

“Those who were killed in action had done their duty to the end, to the last drop of blood that soaked into the pavements of the Warsaw Ghetto…”

Source: He kept the memory alive! | rebel notes