SS-Obersturmbannführer Robert Schrader, IVb (Ärzte / Sanitätsdienst) of 21. SS Waffen-Gebirgs-Division der SS "Skanderbeg" (albanische Nr. 1), in the area of operation of the combat groups SS-Freiwilligen-Gebrigsjäger-Regiment 14 "Skanderbeg" east of Andrijevica (Sučeska), Balkan. The picture was taken during Unternehmen "Draufgänger" (Operation Daredevil), 22 July 1944.Source :
ECPAD Archives
https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=2980188468934265&set=gm.1031226890705404
Paul Kümmel (13 April 1911 in Nürnberg - 27 December 1982)
SS Nr. : 28373
Promotions:
20.04.1936 SS-Untersturmführer
09.11.1937 SS-Obersturmführer
28.02.1939 SS-Hauptsturmführer
09.11.1943 SS-Sturmbannführer
20.04.1945 SS-Obersturmbannführer
Career:
00.05.1934 SS-Rottenführer in 4.Sturm / LSSAH
00.09.1940 Chef 3.Kompanie / SS-Totenkopf-Standarte 10
00.07.1941 Chef 8.Kompanie / SS-Infanterie-Regiment 10
00.11.1943 SS-Panzer-Ausbildungs -und - ErsatzGeschütz Regiment
00.03.1944 Kommandeur III.Bataillon / SS-Panzergrenadier-Regiment 9 "Germania"
00.05.1944 Kommandeur I.Abteilung / SS-Panzer-Regiment 5 "Wiking"
00.06.1944 Kommandeur III.Bataillon / SS-Panzergrenadier-Regiment 9 "Germania"
00.10.1944 Kommandeur I.Abteilung / SS-Panzer-Regiment 9 "Hohenstaufen"
00.11.1944 Kommandeur III.Bataillon / SS-Panzergrenadier-Regiment 20
Medals and Decorations:
00.00.194_ Eisernes Kreuz II.Klasse
00.00.194_ Eisernes Kreuz I.Klasse
28.11.1944 Nahkampfspange in Silber
Notes:
Douglas E. Nash (author) : "I was never able to nail down the exact reasons why he was so abruptly transferred from one battalion command to another in a different division. Perhaps the reasons why was that he had qualified himself as a battalion commander, but there were at least two very excellent men who were waiting in line to replace him (Heinz Murr and Paul Scholven), while in contrast the Hohenstaufen Division needed replacement battalion commanders after the debacle in Normandy. Kümmel may also have requested a transfer, but I found nothing in his record to indicate this. It could also have been because his "senior raters" (his division commander Herbert Gille and the senior Waffen-SS commander on the Eastern Front, Felix Steiner, were not overly impressed with his performance). On his efficiency report dated 28 May 1944, Gille stated: "K. needs to become more confident. After further instruction, K. will become a good battalion commander." Steiner wrote on 7 August 1944, "Agree. He is not a prominent personality. Fills his position adequately." Perhaps that was all that was needed to move him out? After all, he wasn't a "Wikinger" from the beginning, having begun his combat career in a Totenkopf Infantry Regiment fighting against partisans in 1941 as part of the 1st SS-Infantry Brigade."
Source :
https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=10158135645364639&set=gm.1031367484024678
https://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=53885
Members of the RAD (Reich Labour Service) prepare to clear the wreckage of what is reported to be Hauptmann Werner Mölders’ second kill during World War II, a Blenheim IV of No 18 Sqn that he brought down over the Moselle on 30 October 1939. The aeroplane, flown by Flg Off Denis Elliot, crashed near Küsserath, nine miles east-northeast of Trier. Its three-man crew was killed.Source :
"Jagdgeschwader 53 'Pik'As' Bf 109 Aces of 1940" by Chris Goss and Chris Davey
Alexander Lernet-Holenia (Vienna, October 21, 1897 — July 3, 1976) was an Austrian poet, novelist, dramaturgist and writer of screenplays and historical studies who produced a heterogeneous literary opus that included poetry, psychological novels describing the intrusion of otherworldly or unreal experiences into reality, and recreational films.
Lernet-Holenia was born in 1897, as Alexander Marie Norbert Lernet to Alexander Lernet (an ocean liner officer) who had married his mother Sidonie (née Holenia) shortly before his birth. He attached his mother's maiden name to his family name only when he was formally adopted by Carinthian relatives of his mother (whose aristocratic family had lost most of its wealth after the war) in 1920. In July 1915, Alexander finished high-school in Waidhofen an der Ybbs and took up Law studies at the University of Vienna, but volunteered for the Austro-Hungarian army in September 1915 and fought in World War I from 1916 onward, serving in the eastern battle theatres and ending the war as a lieutenant. During his service time he first took to poetry, and became a protégé of Rainer Maria Rilke in 1917.
After the war Lernet-Holenia became a full-time writer and published his first volume of poetry, Pastorale, in 1921 and his first drama, Demetrius, in 1925.
Lernet-Holenia participated in the Invasion of Poland as a reactivated and drafted lieutenant of the reserve, an experience on which he based his 1941 novel Die Blaue Stunde (The Blue Hour) which after the war became known under the title Mars im Widder (Mars in Aries). It has been called "the only Austrian resistance novel" because the plot features an ideologically troubled central character, hints at the existence of active political opposition, and because the Nazi government banned and quarantined the first edition of the book. His work was also part of the literature event in the art competition at the 1936 Summer Olympics.
Although Lernet-Holenia made himself a lucrative business as a popular screenplay writer during the Third Reich, he was one of the few accomplished Austrian authors who kept his distance from National Socialism, and refused to endorse the Nazi political system or to participate in its notorious blood and soil literary efforts. However, to stay in business he had to make arrangements with the regime, which included becoming chief dramaturgist at the "Heeres-Filmstelle" (the audiovisual media center of the Wehrmacht in Berlin, charged with producing propaganda films for military cinemas) after the Polish campaign. Robert Dassanowsky has stated that "[Lernet-Holenia's] early actions in the Reich were confused, appearing to vacillate between naiveté and the often clumsy, often shrewd acts of a survivalist ... a unique but not incomprehensible position." Lernet-Holenia became more outspoken as the war progressed. After his removal from his public position in 1944 he escaped service on the Eastern combat theatre through contrived illness and the help of the resistance network.
Being politically untainted, Lernet-Holenia's public recognition rose steeply once again after World War II, and he became an icon of the Austrian culture scenery. The year 1948 alone saw the casting of three films based on his novels, starring prominent actors such as Maria Schell and Attila Hörbiger. Together with Friedrich Torberg (and later with Günther Nenning) he co-edited the intellectual culture magazine Forum beginning in 1957. In 1969 he was elected president of the Austrian section of the PEN Club but resigned in 1972 in protest when the Nobel Prize was awarded to Heinrich Böll, whom Lernet-Holenia regarded as a supporter of the Red Army Faction.
Alexander Lernet had married Lernet-Holenia's mother (the widow Baroness Sidonie Boyneburgk-Stettfeld) only shortly before his birth. Rumors that attributed biological fatherhood to a Habsburg archduke were perpetuated by biographers throughout his life and afterwards but were never substantiated.
In 1923 Alexander Lernet-Holenia — originally a Protestant — converted to the Roman Catholic faith. He was married to Eva Vollbach and lived with her in St. Wolfgang im Salzkammergut from 1926 until 1951 when the couple moved to Vienna. From 1952 until his death, he lived in state apartments in the imperial Hofburg Palace. Lernet-Holenia remained an outspoken political conservative and aristocratic elitist throughout his life, an attitude that brought him into increasing conflict with the leftist cultural scenery of the 1960s, earned him a reputation as the "difficult old man of Austrian literature," and pushed him into increasing isolation during his final years.
He died of lung cancer in 1976, two years after publishing his last novel Die Beschwörung (The Conjuration) under the pseudonym G. T. Dampierre.
Honors and Posthumous Recognition
Kleist Prize (1926)
Goethe Prize of the city of Bremen (1927)
City of Vienna Prize for Literature (1951)
Great Cross of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany (Großes Verdienstkreuz) (1958)
Grand Austrian State Prize for Literature (1961)
Gold Medal of the capital Vienna (1967)
Austrian Decoration for Science and Art (1968)
A park in Vienna's Hernals district was named after Lernet-Holenia on 24 September 1999.
The International Alexander Lernet-Holenia Society (Internationale Alexander Lernent-Holenia Gesellschaft) founded in Vienna in 1998 promotes the study, translation and publication of the author's works. Italian writer Roberto Calasso, a Franz Kafka scholar whose own writings reference Central European identity themes and tensions, serves at the Society's president.
Source :
"Alexander Lernet-Holenia und Maria Charlotte Sweceny; Briefe 1938-1945" by Christopher Dietz
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Lernet-Holenia
Although still based at Wiesbaden-Erbenheim when German troops invaded Poland on 1 September 1939, elements of I.Gruppe / Jagdgeschwader 53 (JG 53) dispersed to a meadow away from the airfield as a precautionary measure against possible enemy air attacks.
Source :
"Jagdgeschwader 53 'Pik'As' Bf 109 Aces of 1940" by Chris Goss & Chris Davey
Source :
"Jagdgeschwader 53 'Pik'As' Bf 109 Aces of 1940" by Chris Goss & Chris Davey
Source :
https://audiovis.nac.gov.pl/obraz/9599/55e8d0145516a9b67b36004adeb4c8a9/
Heinz Brandt (11 March 1907 – 21 July 1944) was a German officer during World War II who served as an aide to General Adolf Heusinger, the head of the operations unit of the General Staff. He may have inadvertently saved Adolf Hitler's life, at the cost of his own, by moving the 20 July plot bomb planted by Claus von Stauffenberg.
Brandt was born in Charlottenburg, Berlin and enlisted in the Reichswehr in 1925. He attended a course at the cavalry school in Hanover from 1927 to 1928 and was commissioned a lieutenant. In 1936 he was a member of the gold medal winning German show jumping team in the equestrian event at the Berlin Summer Olympics, on his horse Alchemy.
At the outbreak of the Second World War he was a Hauptmann on the general staff of the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht. After serving in an infantry division he was promoted to Major in January 1941 and Oberstleutnant in April 1942.
On 13 March 1943 Brandt was an unwitting participant in an attempt to assassinate Hitler. Generalmajor Henning von Tresckow instructed Lieutenant Fabian Von Schlabrendorff to ask Brandt to carry a package containing bottles of what he claimed was Cointreau onto Hitler's Condor plane for delivery to Oberst Helmuth Stieff as payment for a lost bet. The package in fact contained a primed bomb which in the event failed to detonate.
On 20 July 1944 he arrived at the Wolf's Lair headquarters in Rastenburg, East Prussia for a situation conference attended by Hitler. With the assistance of Major Ernst John von Freyend, Oberst von Stauffenberg put a briefcase containing a primed bomb at Brandt's feet as close as possible to Hitler and to the right of General Heusinger who was standing next to him. Stauffenberg then made an excuse that he had a phone call and left the room. Soon after he left, Brandt wanted to get a better look at a map on the table, he found the briefcase in his way and moved the briefcase to the other side of a thick strong table leg. Seven minutes later the bomb exploded and blew one of Brandt's legs off. Where Brandt was standing was in number 4 standing right beside the bomb:
Brandt died the next day after surgery in the Wolf's Lair hospital and was posthumously promoted to Generalmajor by Hitler. Three other people also died as a result of the explosion. It was later concluded that its exact positioning next to a leg of the map table was a crucial factor in determining who in the room survived.
In the 1971 Eastern Bloc co-production Liberation: Direction of the Main Blow, Brandt was portrayed by the East German actor Fritz-Ernst Fechner. In the 2008 film Valkyrie, Heinz Brandt is portrayed by British actor Tom Hollander.
Source :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinz_Brandt
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_killed_or_wounded_in_the_20_July_plot
The later Generalmajor Ingo von Collani in the beach with his children.Source :
https://www.bild.de/wa/ll/bild-de/unangemeldet-42925516.bild.html
