Curated playlist
German Army personnel of World War I
- Max ErnstMax Ernst died on the 1st of August 1914. That, at least, was how he described it. In his autobiography, he wrote: "On the first of August 1914 M.E. died. He was resurrected on the eleventh of November 1918." Those dates bracket the four…
- Martin HeideggerMartin Heidegger was born on the 26th of September 1889 in rural Meßkirch, Baden, the son of a village church sexton. He died in his sleep in Freiburg on the 26th of May 1976, and was buried two days later in his birthplace, beside his…
- Heinrich HimmlerHeinrich Himmler was reluctant to open his mouth. A British doctor in Lüneburg leaned in to examine it on the 23rd of May 1945, and the prisoner jerked his head away. Then he bit down on a hidden potassium cyanide pill and collapsed onto…
- Adolf HitlerAdolf Hitler was born on the 20th of April 1889 in Braunau am Inn, a town in Austria-Hungary near the German border. He died by suicide on the 30th of April 1945, in a bunker beneath a city in ruins. Between those two dates lies the…
- Adolf HeusingerAdolf Heusinger was standing next to Adolf Hitler when the bomb went off on the 20th of July 1944. The man who planted it, Claus von Stauffenberg, had placed an explosive device beneath the conference table at Hitler's Wolf's Lair…
- Franz MarcIn 2022, a painting called Die Foxes sold for 42,654,500 pounds, a record for the German artist Franz Marc. He never saw such sums. Born in Munich in 1880, Marc was struck in the head and killed instantly by a shell splinter at the Battle…
- Hermann GöringHermann Göring asked to die by firing squad, the death of a soldier. The Nuremberg court refused him. So on the night before his scheduled hanging in October 1946, he swallowed a capsule of potassium cyanide instead, defeating the rope by…
- Joachim von RibbentropJoachim von Ribbentrop was born on the 30th of April 1893 and hanged on the 16th of October 1946, and in the years between those two dates he rose from selling champagne across Europe to signing the documents that helped ignite the Second…
- Erwin RommelErwin Rommel rode into Tripoli on the 12th of February 1941 as commander of a freshly created desert force, the Afrika Korps, with orders to hold a defensive line. He ignored them within weeks. By the time the war in North Africa ended, he…
- Hermann HothHermann Hoth was sentenced to 15 years in prison in October 1948 for war crimes and crimes against humanity, yet just six years later he walked free on parole. By the time he died in Goslar in January 1971, he had spent his final decades…
- Paul HindemithPaul Hindemith was born in Hanau, near Frankfurt, on the 16th of November 1895, and within two decades he would be playing concertmaster at the Frankfurt Opera Orchestra. He was a composer, yes, but also a theorist, a teacher, a violist, a…
- Hans SpeidelHans Speidel was the man who answered the phone when Hitler ordered Paris destroyed. On the 26th of August 1944, Alfred Jodl, chief of staff of the German high command, rang Field Marshal Walter Model with instructions to begin targeting…
- Richard SorgeRichard Sorge arrived in Yokohama on the 6th of September 1933, carrying press credentials from the most prestigious newspaper in Germany and a Nazi Party membership card fresh from Berlin. Joseph Goebbels had attended his farewell dinner.…