Albert speer: Did you mean...?

Heinrich Himmler (1900-1945) was the head of the Nazi SS (Schutzstaffel) organisation. One of the most powerful individuals in Nazi Germany, Himmler built up the SS from a small paramilitary unit to a vast organisation, which included armoured...

An 1846 family portrait by Franz Xaver Winterhalter showing Queen Victoria (r. 1837-1901), Albert, Prince Consort, and their then five children. (Royal Collection)

Operation Gomorrah (aka the Battle of Hamburg or Hamburg Air Offensive) was a sustained area bombing campaign of the German port of Hamburg in four night attacks by the Royal Air Force and two daytime attacks by the United States Air Force...

The Night of the Long Knives (aka Blood Purge or Röhm-Putsch) of 30 June 1934 was a purge of the Nazi Sturmabteilung (SA) paramilitary group which continued through 1 and 2 July. Adolf Hitler (1889-1945), wary of the growing power of the...

The Allied strategic bombing of Germany during World War II (1939-45) involved British and U.S. bomber planes attacking industrial cities, factories, railways, airfields, and dams. Over 600,000 civilians died as a consequence. The campaign...

The Battle of the Ruhr or the Ruhr Air Offensive (March-July 1943) was a sustained bombing campaign by the British and the United States air forces against the industrial heartland of Germany during the Second World War (1939-45). The offensive...

Saint Thomas Aquinas (l. 1225-1274, also known as the "Ox of Sicily" and the "Angelic Doctor") was a Dominican friar, mystic, theologian, and philosopher, all at once. Although he lived a relatively short life, dying at age 49, Thomas occupied...

Erwin Rommel (1891-1944) was a German field marshal who gained fame as a tank commander in the Fall of France in 1940 and then as the commander of the Afrika Korps in North Africa, where he gained numerous victories. Known as the 'Desert...

The Anschluss ('fusion') of 12 March 1938 was the annexation and formal union of Austria with Germany. Adolf Hitler (1889-1945), the Nazi leader of Germany, dreamed of an empire which enclosed all German speakers, his 'Greater Germany'. Hitler's...

Reinhard Heydrich (1904-1942) was a lieutenant-general in the Nazi SS organisation, Gestapo chief, and head of Reich security. A favourite of Adolf Hitler (1889-1945), Heydrich controlled all police activity in the Third Reich and was instrumental...