Showing posts with label Interview. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Interview. Show all posts

Wednesday, December 10, 2025

Unpublished Interview from the Oder Front (1945)


After the Soviets broke through the German defenses on the Vistula in January 1945, the first Soviet troops reached the Oder river, the last natural line of defense before Berlin, in late January 1945. By February, the bulk of the Soviet troops have arrived there. They stopped there, and did not advance beyond the Oder (with the exception of a few bridgeheads), mainly to clear their flanks in Silesia, East Prussia and Pommerania. 

The Germans had basically no units in that area, and for the next two months, almost all new and repaired weapons, including tanks and planes, were sent to the Oder front, and new units were hastily sent there.
But the Wehrmacht was just too bled out after years of fighting, and the Soviets managed to easily cross the Oder during their final offensive towards Berlin mid April 1945. 

In the months of February and March, German propaganda cameramen often visited the Oder to film footage for the German Newsweek.

The following video contains unpublished German propaganda footage from the frontlines near Frankfurt, including an interview with two soldiers in a trench, an interrogation of a defected Soviet soldier, and an interview with a battalion commander about defense preparations on the Oder. 


Source :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vo0nsrNSKgs

Sunday, October 12, 2025

Hitler's Last Award Ceremony

On 20 March 1945, as the Third Reich teetered on the brink of collapse, Adolf Hitler held his final award ceremony in the garden of the Reich Chancellery in Berlin. It was a grim and surreal spectacle, filmed by the Propaganda Ministry to project an illusion of steadfastness amid ruin. Before the Führer stood rows of young boys from the Hitlerjugend, many barely in their teens, decorated with the Iron Cross for their supposed bravery in the defense of the Reich. Their faces reflected exhaustion, fear, and misplaced pride as Hitler, gaunt and trembling from illness, moved slowly down the line to shake their hands. This brief ceremony—recorded in black-and-white and later colorized—became one of the most haunting images of Nazi Germany’s final days: the dying leader of a doomed empire entrusting its fate to children. It was not a celebration of victory, but a somber symbol of desperation and the human cost of fanatical devotion.



Source :
Die Deutsche Wochenschau Nr. 755 - 22 March 1945

Tuesday, June 15, 2021

Egon Groeneveld in the Veterans Meeting at Strasbourg

Generalmajor z.V. und SS-Brigadeführer Egon Groeneveld (SS-Führer beim Stab des SS-Abschnitts XXXXV in Straßburg) during the Veteranentreffen (Veterans meeting) event in Strassburg / Strasbourg, 1943.







Source :
https://www.ebay.de/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p2047675.m570.l1313&_nkw=Egon+Groeneveld&_sacat=0