The economy became a battlefield during World War II when Nazi Germany initiated Operation Andreas in 1940—later renamed Operation Bernhard in 1942—under the command of SS Major Friederich Bernhard Krüger. Under the operation, Nazi Germany printed counterfeit British banknotes. Initially intending to artificially inflate the British economy, the Nazi authorities later decided to utilize the forged notes to finance their intelligence activities and World War II military efforts.

Operation Andreas: The Origins of Operation Bernhard

On September 18, 1939, Alfred Naujocks, a key SS (the “political soldiers” of the Nazi Party) operative known for his leading role in the Gleiwitz incident, presented Reinhard Heydrich, a chief lieutenant of the SS, with the proposal to forge British paper currencies, amounting to £30 billion.

Just weeks earlier, Naujocks had played a crucial role in implementing the so-called Gleiwitz incident, seizing a Polish radio station and transmitting an anti-German speech. The Gleiwitz incident is regarded as being utilized by Nazi Germany to invade Poland in September 1939, setting the stage for the start of World War II.

According to Naujocks’s proposal, the forged notes would be dropped over Britain, causing inflation and ultimately destabilizing its economy. Heydrich liked the proposal and notified Joseph Goebbels, the Reich Minister of Propaganda, about the scheme. However, Goebbels did not show much enthusiasm, describing it as “a grotesque plan.” Nevertheless, the Chancellor of Germany, Adolf Hitler, approved the plan. The operation was subsequently codenamed Operation Andreas in late 1939.

Heydrich ordered Alfred Naujocks to lead the operation and set up a forgery unit in Berlin, Germany. Albert Langer, a mathematician and codebreaker, was charged to oversee the technical aspects of the plan. The tasks of Operation Andres included creating banknote paper indistinguishable from the authentic British notes, preparing identical printing plates to the British notes, and duplicating the British unique serial numbering system.

The team of Operation Andreas chose to forge the £5 note, which was the highest denomination in common circulation at the time.

The operation did not remain a secret, however. Already in November 1939, a Russian émigré informed the British Ambassador to Greece, Michael Palairet, of the Nazi plan, referring to it as the “Offensive against Sterling and Destruction of its Position as World Currency.”

When informed, the British government alerted the Bank of England, which, in turn, issued a blue emergency £1 note with a metal security thread running through the paper, making it technically harder to forge the note. The bank also made a public announcement, warned British society about the counterfeit activities, and stopped producing new £5 notes.

The technical team at the Berlin forgery unit managed to accomplish the given tasks in just seven months. However, by the end of 1940, Naujocks resigned from his position due to disagreements with Heydrich. Operation Andreas continued under the leadership of Andreas Langer, though he faced challenges and struggled to achieve consistency and accuracy in forging the British notes.

By 1942, Lagner also resigned, and Operation Andreas ceased to exist. Even though about £3 million in forged notes were produced, due to their low quality, most of them were never used.

Operation Bernhard: The Second Attempt to Destabilize British Economy

A well-known SS officer named Bernhard Krüger was tasked by the Nazi Party in 1942 to coordinate the second attempt to counterfeit British currency. Consequently, the second operation became known as Operation Bernhard. Unlike Operation Andreas, which only sought to destabilize the British economy, Operation Bernhard intended to finance Nazi espionage operations during World War II.

At Sachsenhausen, a Nazi concentration camp in Oranienburg, Germany, operation units were set up in blocks 18 and 19. The units had wired fences. Special SS guards controlled the territory, isolating it from the rest of the building.

Krüger’s first task was identifying incarcerated Jewish prisoners skilled in draftsmanship, engraving, printing, banking, and typography to assemble the forging group. The first group, composed of 26 Jewish prisoners, was formed in September 1942, and in just 2 months, 80 other prisoners joined them in Sachsenhausen.

The prisoners at Units 18 and 19 were treated with unusual respect compared to other inmates. Bernhard Krüger ordered that they receive better living conditions and enjoy some privileges, such as listening to the radio and reading newspapers. These privileges aimed to keep the prisoners’ morale high and increase efficiency, as the given tasks were technically complex, requiring attention and patience.

The prisoners at Sachsenhausen were tasked to thoroughly study the original British banknotes. In particular, they had to analyze the security marks, the vignette, the color and structure of the banknote paper, as well as the signatures.

The group managed to identify 150 security marks on British notes, intended as an anti-counterfeiting measure, and created high-quality printing plates to forge the £5, £10, £20, and £50 banknotes. Through extensive experimentation, the group created banknote papers as well.

The production of the forged notes began in January 1943. To make them “look and feel” as the circulating currency, prisoners were ordered to repeatedly rub and fold the forged notes with dirty hands, intending to create the illusion of age and usage.

Printing of the forged British notes reached its peak in mid-1943 when about 65,000 notes were printed in just a month.

Printed banknotes were divided into four categories based on the quality of the counterfeit notes:

• Grade 1, the highest quality forged notes, were intended to be in circulation in the neutral countries during World War II;
• Grade 2 forged notes were to be utilized as an allowance for collaborators of the Nazi regime;
• Grade 3 notes were intended to be dropped over the British territory;
• Grade 4 notes were defective and deemed to be destroyed.

Operation Bernhard in Practice

The inmates at Units 18 and 19 worked with a vague feeling that their lives would end after the completion of Operation Bernhard. Unsure whether they should delay the progress to postpone their execution or to excel to hasten their own deaths, the operation progressed. The high-ranking Nazi officials were content with the results of Operation Bernhard. Ironically, the Third Reich awarded twelve prisoners (three of them being Jewish) with the War Merit Medal.

Indeed, the work of the forging units proved to be astonishing. From 1942 to 1945, Nazi Germany forged 132 million pounds, equal to about 15% of all genuine notes in circulation, or seven billion dollars in 2023.

The Third Reich deployed a significant portion of the forged banknotes to fund intelligence activities as well as to support Nazi espionage operations in Europe. For instance, the forged notes were extensively used to buy weaponry and raw materials for the production of weapons. Forged British banknotes were also utilized to procure illicit weaponry from partisans in Yugoslavia, which was then distributed to pro-Nazi factions in Southeastern Europe.

Reportedly, Nazi authorities paid Elyesa Bazna, a notorious Albanian spy codenamed Cicero, in counterfeit British notes for his intelligence efforts. Elyesa Bazna passed critical classified information over to the Nazis by stealing documents from the British ambassador to Turkey.

In another instance, forged British notes equaling £100,000 were reportedly utilized to rescue Adolf Hitler’s political ally and leader of fascist Italy, Benito Mussolini, during the Gran Sasso raid in September 1943.

By 1943, 10-15% of the Grade 1 Nazi-forged British banknotes circulated across Europe and North Africa. Ultimately, doubts began to emerge about the authenticity of British currency. This widespread mistrust undermined the pound, leading to a decline in its international value, further straining Britain’s economic stability during World War II.

Uncovering Operation Bernhard

During Operation Bernhard, the forgers faced significant challenges in replicating the complex and unique British banknote serial numbers. Initially, the solution applied was to reuse serial numbers from authentic banknotes. However, this method proved ineffective.

In 1943, Nazi-forged notes were exposed when a bank employee in Morocco noticed that a £5 note he received had already been marked as “paid” at another bank, indicating that it was a counterfeit.

In response, the British government decided to withdraw all notes with a face value higher than £5 from circulation and inform everyone of the widespread counterfeiting of British banknotes.

Ultimately, Operation Bernhard was uncovered in 1944, when the British captured infamous Nazi intelligence officer Alfred Naujocks.

By 1945, the Allied forces were advancing on the European continent; the Nazi defeat in World War II was imminent. The prisoners at Units 18 and 19 were transferred to Austria and were liberated when the United States forces entered the occupied Austrian territories on May 6, 1945.

Reportedly, the Nazi authorities dumped most of the forged notes and equipment into Lake Toplitz (a lake in the Austrian Alps), anticipating that the evidence of Operation Bernhard would remain secret in the deep waters of the lake. To the Nazis’ surprise, in 1945, the Austrian newspapers reported about a diver finding wooden boxes containing counterfeit £5 banknotes. The media outlets revealed the total value of the found banknotes was around £700 million, which the Austrian National Bank had sought to destroy.

The Legacy of Operation Bernhard

Even though Operation Bernhard did not collapse the British economy, it went down in history as one of the most interesting covert plots of World War II, having implications years after the completion of the war.

The forged British notes were still in circulation years after 1945. Only in 1964 did the British authorities decide to reintroduce the £10 note. The £20 note reappeared in 1970, and the £50 in 1981.

The leader of Operation Bernhard, SS Major Krüger, hid from the British authorities at his home until his surrender in November 1946. Forging an enemy’s currency was not considered a war crime; hence, Krüger underwent the complex denazification process and continued working for the Hahnemühle paper company.

Operation Bernhard has acquired considerable attention around the world and has been extensively covered in the media, literature, and film industries. Some forged British banknotes during Operation Bernhard are held in museums, including the National Bank of Belgium and the Bank of England Museum.

One of the best-known authors writing about the operation is Adolf Burger, a Jewish Slovak printer forced to become a counterfeiter. Years after liberation, he wrote a book titled The Devil’s Workshop: A Memoir of the Nazi Counterfeiting Operation, published in 1983.

Historian Vince Houghton, working as a curator at the International Spy Museum in Washington, D.C., described Operation Bernhard as an example of economic espionage. As Houghton outlines, this operation “is indicative of intelligence agencies and governments trying to find the edge—the way to defeat their enemy any way possible.”

Terence MacSwiney (1879-1920), Dolours Price (1950-2013), and Brendan Hughes (1948-2008) are just three of the hundreds of Irish Republicans who over the centuries have chosen to go on hunger strikes in defiance of the British government, protesting against the British presence on Irish soil and their status within the prison system. All three hunger strikers, in different ways, helped to bring the Irish Republican campaign to international attention. While MacSwiney did not survive his strike and died in October 1920 after 74 days of refusing food, Price and Hughes eventually called off their strikes, albeit with different results.

1. Terence MacSwiney

In her article Dead Faces Laugh, Francesca Petrizzo writes that during the 1980-81 hunger strikes in Northern Ireland, “Time and its reckoning were essential to the impact of hunger strike: tallies of the days of the fasting were kept on public boards in Belfast’s nationalist quarters, and they were daily updated on protest placards. But fasting time could not be relied upon.”

Some hunger strikers died unexpectedly and “unusually” earlier than anticipated, leaving their families and their supporters shocked, unprepared, and angry. Martin Hurson (1956-1981), for example, died of dehydration after “only” 46 days, on July 13, 1981. Francis Hughes (1956-1981), who began his hunger strike two weeks after Bobby Sands, died on May 12, 1981, after refusing food for 59 days. His cousin, Thomas McElwee (1957-1981) passed away a few months later on the 62nd day of the strike, while still in relatively good health. In 1920 Terence MacSwiney survived for 73 days without food.

MacSwiney was 41 years old and his literary hero was Percy Bysshe Shelley. Born at 23 North Main Street, in Cork, he was the son of John MacSwiney (a native Irish speaker who died in 1895 after emigrating alone to Australia) and Mary Wilkinson, an English catholic.

Unlike other fellow Republicans, Terence MacSwiney believed that religious fervor could and should go hand in hand with republican principles—a belief he expounded at length in many of his writings, collected in The Principles of Freedom (1921). He refused to join the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) and resigned from the separatist Celtic Literary Society (CLS)—which he had co-founded—after the CLS publicly aligned itself with Sinn Féin. In 1914, however, he joined the Cork branch of the Irish Volunteer Force (IVF) and over the next few years he became a full-time IVF organizer and leader.

MacSwiney was first arrested in January 1916 but was released shortly thereafter. He was arrested again on May 3, 1916, following the Easter Rising, and was initially transferred to Gronfoch internment camp in Wales before being moved to Reading Gaol—the same prison where Oscar Wilde was imprisoned in 1895. He was finally released on Christmas Eve and soon became engaged to Cork Republican Muriel Murphy.

Between 1916 and 1920, MacSwiney was arrested multiple times, spending four years in various prisons in Dublin, Dundalk, and Belfast. In August 1920, he was arrested for the last time. On August 16, he was sentenced to two years in prison and taken across the sea to Brixton prison in London. Just a few months earlier, he had been elected Lord Mayor of Cork following the assassination of his friend Tomás Mac Curtain (1884-1920).

Mac Curtain served as the Lord Mayor of Cork for a few months before being shot dead by a group of Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) men in front of his wife and son on his 36th birthday. In the early 1920s, it was believed that hunger strikers would die within a month. As days went by and MacSwiney’s body grew weaker but refused to give up, the eyes of the world were on London. What was going on in his cell? Was he being secretly fed by someone inside the prison? Or was it, as MacSwiney himself suggested, divine intervention, a sign from God that he supported the republican cause?

Several South American countries asked the Pope to intervene. The American government threatened a boycott of British goods. Eventually, some 70 days after the beginning of the strike, the prison doctor tried to force-feed MacSwiney, but MacSwiney slipped into a coma and died. Mahatma Gandhi later revealed that he was greatly influenced by MacSwiney’s actions and writings.

2. Dolours Price

There is a direct line connecting Dolours Price and Terence MacSwiney. As well as being Irish and Republican, both Price and MacSwiney went on hunger strikes while incarcerated in Brixton Prison, in South London. “If the protests were measured by a present, painfully felt time, the hunger strikers themselves were not constrained by it: they looked, consistently, both forward and back,” Francesca Petrizzo writes. If Dolours Price—and her sister Marian, who went on hunger strike with her—looked back to Terence MacSwiney and his 73 days of agony in the very same prison where she was starving, MacSwiney in 1920 may have looked back to Thomas Ashe (1885-1917), the first republican hunger striker to die. He passed on the evening of September 25, 1917, after being force-fed in the Mater Misericordiae Hospital opposite Mountjoy Prison.

Dolours and Marian Price began their hunger strike in November 1973, at the height of the Troubles.

Arguing that they should be classified as political prisoners, they demanded to be transferred from Brixton Prison to a women’s prison in Northern Ireland. They had just been convicted, along with other members of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA), of orchestrating car bombings in the British capital. On March 8, 1973, two car bombs exploded in London: one opposite the Old Bailey Courthouse and the other outside the Ministry of Agriculture near Whitehall. Two additional car bombs were found and defused. One was parked outside New Scotland Yard, the other outside an army recruitment office near Whitehall.

Dolours’s and Marian’s strike lasted for 208 days. After only a few weeks, the prison authorities began force-feeding them. Thomas Ashe had been subjected to the same treatment and died because of it. Finally, after a wave of protests in Ireland and the United Kingdom, the process was halted on May 18.

Dolours and Marian Price continued their strike until June 7, when they were granted the right to serve their sentences in Northern Ireland. Shortly afterward, the International Medical Council declared the practice of force-feeding unethical. From then on, hunger strikers would no longer be subjected to forced feeding.

As Patrick Radden Keefe points out in his book Say Nothing, Dolours Price would live the rest of her life wondering if she was not partly responsible for the deaths of the Long Kesh strikers in 1981. By defying the British authorities and indirectly pressuring the International Medical Council to ban the practice of force-feeding, the Price sisters had, in a sense, contributed to creating the “perfect storm” of 1981. With Margaret Thatcher refusing to meet the demands of the IRA prisoners, and the IRA prisoners determined to continue their strike, the lack of a safety net provided by force-feeding ultimately led to the deaths of ten prisoners within a few months.

For the rest of her life, Dolours Price continued to have an extremely problematic relationship with food, stating that the hunger strike and force-feeding had alienated her and her sister “from the process of sustenance, the whole process of putting food in your body.”

On April 30, 1980, Marian was released from prison and transferred to the Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast. Both sisters had developed anorexia nervosa as a result of fasting and force-feeding. Without Marian at her side, Dolours’s health deteriorated even more rapidly. She was finally released on medical grounds. On January 24, 2013, she was found dead in her home in Malahide, Dublin, by one of her sons. She died as a result of the toxic effects of a mixture of prescribed anti-depressants and tranquilizers.

3. Brendan Hughes

Time collapses during a hunger strike—or, to quote Petrizzo again, time on a hunger strike becomes “dilated and threatening, and weaponised.” If this is true for any hunger striker anywhere in the world, it is even truer for Brendan Hughes. Nicknamed “the Dark” because of his dark hair and thick dark mustache, Hughes was the OC of the IRA prisoners detained in the Long Kesh prison when they all went on hunger strike on October 27, 1980.

The other Republicans who joined him were Tom McFeely, Tommy McKearney, Raymond McCartney—a cousin of James Wray, one of the victims of Bloody Sunday—Leo Green, John Nixon—a member of the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA)—and Sean McKenna. For Irish republicans, it was the ultimate insult to be compared to any other “common” criminal. They insisted that they were not common criminals, but political prisoners, the bearers of a long and proud tradition of rebellion.

The 1980 hunger strikers had five demands: the right not to wear the prison uniform; the right not to be forced to do prison work; the right to free association with other prisoners; the right to organize their own educational and recreational activities and facilities; the right to one letter, one parcel, and one visit per week.

A few months later, on December 12, six prisoners and members of the loyalist Ulster Defence Association (UDA) also went on hunger strike. Ironically, they shared all the five Republican demands plus the right to be separated from Republican prisoners. Five days later, when Cardinal Tomás Ó Fiaich (1923-1990), who served as the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland from 1977 until his death, visited the prison and called on the hunger strikers to end their protest, it was—again ironically—the UDA prisoners who interrupted their strike.

Debilitated and in a wheelchair, McKenna told Hughes: “Dark, please don’t let me die.” Hughes promised he wouldn’t. Then one day McKenna slipped into the coma that usually precedes death. Hughes saw the prison authorities take him away on a stretcher, followed closely by two priests and the prison doctor. Hughes was faced with a dramatic dilemma. Time was running out. Time was “threatening and weaponised.”

As the strikers’ leader, it was his duty to continue the strike and ensure that months of hardship and suffering were not in vain. On the other hand, if he didn’t end the strike McKenna would die. On December 18, after 53 days, Hughes called off the strike. McKenna died in December 2008, ten months after Brendan Hughes. The hunger strike left both men with several lifelong health problems, including heart issues, a weakened immune system, arthritis, and poor eyesight.

While MacSwiney died in the Brixton prison in south London, at the very heart of the system that his actions, including his hunger strike, were intended to undermine, both Price and Hughes survived. But hunger strikes rarely end with the end of fasting. Dolours Price developed anorexia nervosa and suffered from PTSD and alcoholism throughout her life. Many hunger strikers, from Brendan Hughes to Sean McKenna, continued to have problems with their eyesight long after the strike ended. Two years before his death, Hughes underwent an operation to save his sight, and a few days later he appeared on the front page of the Irish News sporting an eye patch. Despite their different outcomes, the strikes of Terence MacSwiney, Dolours Price, and Brendan Hughes managed to draw worldwide attention to the Republican cause.

In a reign that spanned decades, Queen Elizabeth II left her mark on the world. She saw the United Kingdom through incredible changes as the kingdom, its countries, and its people moved into the twenty-first century. A regal figurehead yet a unique woman and individual, the queen was beloved by many worldwide. As famous as she was, she was still human, made up of many facets of personality, belief, and duty. From her ascension to the throne in 1952 to her death in 2022, Elizabeth II was the face of royalty to millions.

1. She is Often Called the “Accidental Queen”

In her early years, Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor was considered unlikely to reign the British kingdom. Her grandfather, King George V, was ruling when his granddaughter was born, and she was third in the line of succession at the time of her birth.

Her uncle, Edward, Prince of Wales, was first and had yet to have any children. Elizabeth’s father, the Duke of York, was next. However, the monarchy was shaken in 1936 when George V died. He had suffered from chronic lung issues and was getting progressively ill. Although his true cause of death was not revealed until 1986, he passed away from medically assisted suicide on January 20.

Edward, Prince of Wales, became King Edward VIII, but not for long. He became the only British monarch to ever abdicate by choice when he gave up his throne on December 10 of that same year.

After his brother ruled for less than a year, Elizabeth’s father, now King George VI, stepped into the role of king, and she found herself first in the line of succession. His reign was unexpectedly short as well. A lifelong smoker, the king suffered from lung cancer. Though he seemed to recover with treatment, he passed away in his sleep on February 6, 1952, likely from a pulmonary embolism or lung hemorrhage related to his prior illness.

Thus, a series of unfortunate events had dramatically changed Elizabeth’s life from the time she was born, and the twenty-seven-year-old was crowned in the first televised coronation ceremony on June 2, 1953.

2. Queen Elizabeth Was a Woman of Many Nicknames

Queen Elizabeth enjoyed many nicknames throughout her life, originating with many different people. Elizabeth was unable to pronounce her own name as a toddler, calling herself “Tillabet.” Her father transformed this into “Lilibet,” a name the family used until the queen’s death.

Her grandchildren and great-grandchildren called their grandmother “Granny” or “Gan-Gan.” The silliest nickname in the repertoire may be the one Prince Philip used to speak to his wife of 73 years; he called her “cabbage”! This originates from a French idiom, mon petit chou. It literally translates in English to “my little cabbage,” a fond way of referring to a darling loved one.

3. She Was the First Female Member of the British Royal Family to Join the Armed Services in an Active, Full-Time Role

Back when she was still a princess, Elizabeth joined the Auxiliary Territorial Service in 1945. This branch of the British military was made up of women tasked with a variety of war-related jobs. In joining, Elizabeth was the first member of the royal family to be a full-time participant in the armed forces in an active role.

Elizabeth trained as a driver and mechanic and eventually reached the rank of junior commander, equivalent to captain. The queen’s involvement in the military, along with the military career of her husband, Prince Philip, who was a longstanding member of the Royal Navy, resulted in empathy and respect for the military on behalf of the monarch. She supported numerous military charities and causes and led several remembrance events, such as marking the centennial of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier located in Westminster Abbey.

In addition, true to royal tradition, the queen was given numerous military titles with her ascension to the throne. During her reign, she held over fifty ranks and appointments in the armed forces, including Head of the Armed Forces.

4. The Queen Was a Famous Corgi Fan

An all-around animal lover, the queen was well known for her love of dogs, specifically Pembroke Welsh Corgis. Her father gave her one of the dogs, Susan, for her eighteenth birthday. Susan was so special to Elizabeth that she accompanied the future queen and Prince Philip on their honeymoon. Her adoration for Susan led to a lifelong attachment to the breed, and she owned over thirty corgis throughout her lifetime.

Queen Elizabeth was said to prefer corgis due to their energy and spirit. Two of her final dogs, Willow and Holly, were the fourteenth generation of Susan’s descendants. Willow died in 2018, marking the end of the queen’s corgi lines. After the birth of Willow and Holly, the queen chose to stop breeding dogs, as she didn’t want to leave them behind when she eventually passed away.

Still, her home was never without dogs, as she was gifted with pets by friends and family members, including Sandy, a corgi her son and granddaughters gave her for her 95th birthday.

In addition to her corgis, with whom she established a royal breeding program, the queen had numerous mixed-breed dogs as companions over her life. When she passed away, her remaining pets, Muick (pronounced Mick) and Sandy, were entrusted to Sarah Ferguson, known as “Fergie,” the ex-wife of the queen’s son Andrew. As of the time of publishing, the dogs are thriving at Royal Lodge in Windsor with Fergie.

5. Like Other British Monarchs, She Celebrated Two Birthdays

In a tradition that began with British King George II in 1748, Queen Elizabeth had two birthdays. She celebrated her actual birthday, April 21, in private. However, she celebrated her birthday publicly on a Saturday in June, coinciding with the annual Trooping the Colour parade.

Trooping the Colour is a military celebration that includes over 1,400 soldiers, military horses, and musicians. It concludes with an inspection of the troops and a royal salute. The main event is a parade that begins and ends at Buckingham Palace. The royal family views a fly-by from the Royal Air Force from the Buckingham Palace balcony.

The events of Trooping the Colour actually take place over three weekends, with the final weekend considered the sovereign’s birthday celebration. King George II started the tradition because his birthday was in November when it was too cold for an outdoor public celebration, and it was continued by the sovereigns that followed, including Elizabeth.

6. Queen Elizabeth Was Very Particular About Her Nail Polish

The queen always gave an air of royal elegance, but that doesn’t mean her look was always a pricey one. In fact, the queen preferred a nail polish that costs 7.99 pounds—about nine American dollars! Queen Elizabeth II was said to have worn only one color of nail polish, a shade called Ballet Slippers by the brand Essie.

The nude-pink color has long been a favorite of the queen, and according to a quote from the queen’s hairdresser, it was “the only color Her Majesty would wear.” The brand is available in several countries around the world. It is sold at typical places where nail polish is sold, such as drugstores and big box stores—a fashion staple of the queen’s that is available to just about anyone!

7. She Was Not a Teetotaler and Made Champagne a Habit

As a monarch, the queen made sure to mind her manners in public, and that often included abstaining from alcohol in public settings. However, she was by no means a teetotaler. She generally drank wine at meals and had a drink in the evenings. Her favorite nightly drink was said to be a dry martini, but she often enjoyed a glass of champagne at bedtime. However, in 2021, the 95-year-old queen was recommended by her doctors to give up alcohol entirely except for special occasions to preserve her health.

8. She Used Her Purse as a Signaling Device

The queen was a huge fan of handbags, particularly Launer purses. She was said to own over 200 of them and usually carried one everywhere. Not only were her bags useful for carrying the essentials, she used them to send quiet signals to her staff members.

If the queen placed her handbag on the table during dinner, it let the staff know that she wished for the event to wrap up in five minutes. If the bag was placed on the floor, it signified that the queen had found herself in a less than enjoyable interaction and wanted to be removed from the situation with an interruption by a lady-in-waiting.

9. The Queen Was the Longest Reigning Monarch in British History

Queen Elizabeth was the longest-reigning monarch in British history when she passed away at the age of 96 in 2022. She ruled the United Kingdom and was the head of state for Canada, Australia, and New Zealand for almost seventy-one years. She saw more than a dozen US presidents serve during her reign.

Only three other monarchs in world history have managed reigns over seven decades, and Elizabeth’s was the second longest ever. Only King Louis XIV of France, who ruled for 72 years, was on the throne longer than Elizabeth.

10. Who Needs an Alarm Clock?

Instead of rising to an alarm clock each morning, Queen Elizabeth II was roused by a personal bagpiper who played for fifteen minutes each morning, beginning at 7:30 AM. The queen’s piper also performed at state events.

The role of royal piper was created in 1843 after Queen Victoria and her husband Prince Albert visited the Scottish highlands and fell in love with the unique sound of bagpipes. Since the role was created, there have been seventeen royal chief pipers. The piper at the time of the queen’s death, Pipe Major Paul Burns, played the farewell music at the sovereign’s funeral in 2022.

After Germany’s surrender in WWII, the country was occupied and partitioned by the victorious Allies. The scale of death and destruction was immense and there was no government to speak of following the collapse of the Nazi government. Out of this came two different versions of postwar Germany: the communist East and the democratic West. Disagreements over the future of Germany were among the causes of the Cold War, and the division between East and West continues to impact Germany to this day.

Germany Surrenders, 1945

After the brutal siege of Berlin and Adolf Hitler’s suicide, Germany’s remaining government officials finally surrendered to the Allies early on the morning of May 7th, 1945. The German surrender was unconditional, placing the country’s fate in the hands of the Allies. Allies took control of all of Germany’s governing infrastructure, its military, and had the responsibility of ensuring law and order. This was to be a tall order for the Allies because they did not share a common vision of what would actually happen to the country after the war. The division of postwar Germany resulted from the disagreements between the Allies on how to proceed.

One thing that was agreed on between the Western Allies and the USSR was the need for Denazification. All public symbols of Nazi rule were destroyed and the Reich’s most infamous laws, the Nuremberg Laws, were repealed. This went hand-in-hand with the abolition of all German armed forces and the mass demobilization of remaining personnel. While both the Western Allies and Soviets employed some former Nazis in different capacities, the Soviets were more ruthless, deporting hundreds of thousands of POWs and German officials to Siberia. The collapse of the Nazi government also meant that justice was to be served to people accused of war crimes. Hundreds of people were convicted during the Nuremberg trials, of whom twelve were hanged.

After the German Surrender

The German people were in a sense of absolute shock about the invasion and occupation of their country. A decade before, they were convinced that they had overcome the worst of the Great Depression and that their country was becoming a major power. Hitler’s death shocked even Germans who didn’t support him. The deaths of millions for no gain, the rapes of German women by Soviet soldiers, and the mass displacement of Germans from around its empire caused enormous trauma.

The defeat of the Axis and the subsequent changes to Germany’s borders led to one of the largest population movements in history. The Allies agreed that the Volksdeutsche, Germans living outside of Germany and Austria, needed to be “humanely relocated” within sovereign borders. This led to some 12 million Germans leaving their native countries. Germany, already struggling to help the people within its own borders, now faced a humanitarian crisis that few people in Europe had any sympathy for. It took years for these people to be fully reintegrated into German society. The expulsions of the Volksdeutsche are estimated to have led to two million deaths.

Military personnel returned to homes that had been destroyed and anger from the civilian population who had suffered. German POWs captured by the Soviets remained in camps in the USSR until the 1950s. The loss of so many young men caused serious problems for the economy in postwar Germany. It was especially problematic for East Germany, where the Soviets had seized much of the industry after the surrender. Despite considerable financial support, the Germans struggled to rebuild their infrastructure, and the country’s postwar reconstruction took decades.

Redrawing Germany’s Borders

The 1945 Potsdam Conference led to the formal creation of four zones of occupation: the French, American, British, and Soviet sectors. The Soviets took parts of Pomerania and Silesia and gave them to Poland. Both governments of East and West Germany opposed this land transfer and only accepted it decades later. Germany had always sought to control as much of Central Europe as possible, and the loss of areas considered an integral part of the German homeland rankled deeply. Much of Prussia, the driving force behind Germany’s unification in the 19th century, remained outside Germany’s new borders. The historic Prussian city of Königsberg was renamed Kaliningrad and became part of the Soviet Union, and remains a Russian exclave sandwiched between Lithuania and Poland.

West of the Rhine, France sought to extend control over areas it long believed were part of its territory. The West German government became very concerned that Paris would annex the Saar and Rhineland regions for their natural resources. While this did not happen thanks to the creation of the European Coal and Steel Community, Germany lost Alsace to France, a bitter blow in the decades-long struggle between Paris and Berlin over the region.

These border changes were deeply humiliating to the German people, and even anti-Nazi Germans were distraught to see their homeland being carved up by the Allies. However, the loss of territories was not too extreme and people began to focus on reconstructing their lives to create some semblance of normal.

Allied Occupation

Unlike the First World War, when the Allies only occupied a small part of Germany, the postwar period from 1949 to 1952 saw the total occupation of the country. Britain controlled much of northwest Germany, France controlled areas around the Saar and Rhineland, the US occupied the southwest, and the USSR controlled the whole eastern part of the country. Additionally, Berlin was divided into four occupation zones. This was designed to ensure none of the victors felt cheated, but it led to major ramifications for the Germans on the ground.

The occupation armies faced the major task of cleaning up the country, hunting war criminals, and ensuring order. The Americans and British focused on benevolent governance, aiming to create a reliable government in their occupation zones. The Soviets and French were more punitive, demanding immense reparations and openly seeking to annex more German territory. By 1946, the UK and US merged their occupation zones, the Marshall Plan aided West Germany’s reconstruction, and the Allies began to turn over leadership to local civilian authorities. France agreed to leave, although it remained very concerned about German revanchism.

In the east, the Soviets acted very harshly, seizing a large amount of resources and insisting that they would control the political future of their occupation zone. This deindustrialization policy ensured that the East would always be poorer than the West, a divide that continues to this day.

The Creation of East Germany

Throughout World War II, German communists found safe haven in Moscow thanks to Soviet help. After the surrender, they went from being pariahs in Germany to becoming the rulers of East Germany. The new German Democratic Republic was entirely a communist country, designed to reflect the wishes of Moscow more than its citizens. The Western Allies were totally opposed to its creation, with the US only recognizing it in 1955.

Initially, several political parties were allowed to have representation in the Volkshammer, a new parliament in East Germany. The dominant Socialist Unity party took total control in a matter of years and set about collectivizing East German society. There was little private business, no public religious institutions, and little personal freedom.

This state of affairs angered a lot of the population. Tens of thousands East Germans fled to West Germany or beyond, hoping to avoid living under communist rule. In 1952, massive strikes and demonstrations took place in response to the government’s collectivization program. The Soviets told the GDR to make cosmetic changes to avoid a total breakdown in society. While the uprising fizzled out, it was clear that communist rule was always under threat and repression would have to be the main tool of control in the GDR. The creation of the Stasi (the secret police) and the new GDR armed forces was primarily about controlling society.

The Creation of West Germany

In sharp contrast to the communist-dominated East Germany was the new Federal Republic of Germany in the west. The leader of the Christian Democratic Union party, Konrad Adenauer, served as its first chancellor. An opponent of the Nazis and a veteran German politician, Adenauer aimed to make the FRG a major international player. He created a large industrialized free-market economy, got Germany accepted as a member of the European Coal and Steel Community, and reconciled with France.

Throughout the Cold War, the Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats were the main two parties in the FRG. While many countries were concerned about a resurgence of Nazism, the United States and its allies saw the country as a major asset. In 1955, the Bundeswehr, the new West German army, was created. It would grow to become one of the most powerful militaries in Europe, although West Germany would never be allowed to develop nuclear weapons. To ensure its close relationship with the US and UK, West Germany joined NATO in 1955.

The FRG’s membership in the Western alliance ensured its survival for the next several decades. Meanwhile, the East German army joined the Soviet-dominated Warsaw Pact. Right from the outset, the division of Germany foreshadowed the ideological struggle between communism and liberal democracy.

Germany and the Outbreak of the Cold War

While the Allied occupation zones were transforming into West and East Germany, Berlin also remained a divided city. Established in 1947 at the intersection of Friedrichstrasse and Zimmerstrasse, Checkpoint Charlie became known as the final frontier of western European democracy. Little more than a decade later, the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961 served as a physical reminder of the metaphorical Iron Curtain that came down between Eastern and Western Europe.

In 1948, the Soviets and their allies decided to test the Western alliance by blockading West Berlin. They hoped to gain concessions or even force the West to abandon their enclave in the city. However, the Western Allies opted to keep West Berlin supplied through a massive airlift. From June 1948 to September 1949, the US Air Force dropped or flew in supplies that could feed the residents of West Berlin. After the Soviets ended the blockade, the division of Germany was effectively formalized. This was one of the first major salvos of the Cold War.

The postwar period of Germany was marked by a great division that never truly healed. Having seen their country destroyed, Germans embraced two different political futures: communism or democracy. The Western world often argues that their occupation of Germany was a perfect model for postwar reconstruction. This overlooks the story of East Germany, which suffered terribly and never recovered, even after the reunification of Germany in 1990 after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Like several other countries in Eastern Europe, Hungary swung from one political extreme to the other at the end of the Second World War. Having embraced fascism for years, Hungary became a communist satellite of the USSR after its occupation by the Soviet Union during the war. In the decade after the war, postwar Hungary’s leaders generally followed Stalin’s instructions from Moscow. Their unpopular actions set the stage for the Hungarian Uprising of 1956.

Hungary in WWII

Throughout the 1920s and the 1930s, the Hungarian government was controlled by Admiral Miklós Horthy. Horthy was a fascist whose rule was motivated by three key principles. The first to reverse the humiliation of the Treaty of Trianon signed in 1920 after the First World War, which saw the country lose more than half its territory. The second was that Hungary could not embrace liberal democracy because the country was too underdeveloped for that system of government. Finally, Hungary must be for Hungarian people; minorities were considered a threat to the state. Horthy’s policies ensured that he aligned with other European fascist leaders like Hitler and Mussolini and that Hungary joined the Axis powers.

Hungary signed the Anti-Comintern Pact and Tripartite Pact in 1939 and 1940, respectively. Hungarian military and civilian officials hoped to regain the territories it had lost at Trianon. Even though one of Hungary’s greatest foes, Romania, was also a member of the Axis, concerns about Soviet policy outweighed any qualms about joining the fascist alliance. Large numbers of Hungarian forces found themselves committed to major battles on the Eastern Front and occupation duty in Yugoslavia. An estimated 200,000 Hungarians died on the Eastern Front, a death toll that led to calls for Hungary to withdraw from the war. By 1944, efforts by Hungary to do so led to a coup by German-backed elements of the Arrow Cross party. The coup’s success meant Hungary remained part of the Axis until the end of the war.

The Impact of the War

Admiral Horthy’s decision to enter WWII was one of the most costly decisions ever made by a Hungarian leader. When the city of Budapest came under siege by the Red Army, it was clear the war had been lost, but the Germans and their diehard allies from the Arrow Cross party insisted on fighting. As a result, 80% of the city was destroyed in the fighting. Much of the country was devastated by war and the economy lay in tatters.

The human toll on the country was very heavy. Hungary lost an estimated 864,000 deaths from 1940 to 1945. Little over 200,000 of these were military personnel, mostly lost fighting the Soviets on the Eastern Front. Around 664,000 Hungarian civilians died during the war either from the fighting, starvation, or the Holocaust. This was nearly 9.5% of the country’s prewar population. The death and destruction was not solely caused by the Soviets; Allied air raids over the country caused severe damage and possibly thousands of deaths. This devastation would take years to recover from. The country’s involvement in the Holocaust also cast a pall over its reputation that remains in place to this day. While Hungary initially did not participate in the Holocaust, by the end of the war, Hungarian Jews faced deportation or death on the spot. Of the 563,000 Jews living in Hungary who died during the war, 500,000 perished after the 1944 coup.

Establishment of Communist Rule

The Soviets did not just aim to knock Hungary out of WWII; they intended to introduce communism. The veteran Hungarian communist leader and Stalin’s friend Mátyás Rákosi was thrust into power right after the Soviets took control of all of Hungary. Rákosi had been a commissar in Béla Kun’s short-lived communist government in 1920 and spent many years in exile in the USSR during Horthy’s rule. When he returned to power, he had scores to settle.

While the first postwar elections saw the communists gain a mere 17% of the vote, Rákosi sought to undermine these results almost immediately. He began cracking down on opposition factions, using the support of the Soviet army and NKVD. Within a couple of years, he set up a secret police that perpetrated a brutal reign of terror. Additionally, the government launched a collectivization program to bring privately owned land under state control. All religious institutions in the country were shut down in line with traditional communist doctrine. An estimated 2,000 people died in the reign of terror following the creation of the Hungarian People’s Republic.

To prove his loyalty to Stalin, Rákosi agreed to sign a reparations agreement with Moscow, and indemnity of $200 million to the USSR for their involvement in the 1941 invasion. His economic policies mirrored Stalin’s collectivization and industrialization programs from the 1930s. The lack of any meaningful opposition meant that he could do whatever he felt was necessary to consolidate his rule.

Postwar Border Changes

Hungary had joined the Axis in WWII in an effort to reconquer land Horthy believed was rightfully Hungarian. When the Treaty of Trianon was signed in 1920 after WWI, Hungary lost two-thirds of the territory it had during its union with Austria and close to three million Hungarians were forced to live outside the country’s borders. The loss of northern Transylvania was especially traumatic because of the large Hungarian community there and its proximity to the Hungarian homeland. As part of his agreement to get Hungary into WWII on his side, Hitler agreed to recognize Hungarian claims over Transylvania.

When Romania switched sides to support the Soviets at the end of the war, they were rewarded by Soviet recognition of Romanian control over northern Transylvania. In a treaty signed in 1947, Hungary’s new government agreed to recognize Romanian sovereignty over the disputed zone. This treaty stated that Hungary’s borders were to be what they were in 1938. One exception was that Czechoslovakia gained a strip of territory that was disputed before the war. Any Hungarian that wished to move to their homeland was free to do so.

Hungarian nationalists were appalled, earnestly believing that they had a right to control northern Transylvania and much of the Carpathian region. The willingness of the Hungarian People’s Republic to sign this treaty convinced many Hungarians that their state was totally controlled by Moscow. This further undermined the popularity of the Hungarian communist government.

The Economy of Postwar Hungary

Postwar Hungary suffered terrible economic hardship due to several factors: The destruction and costs of the war, economic mismanagement by the communist leadership, and the loss of so many young men in the war. The war cost Hungary money it could not afford and the destruction of its Jewish population meant the destruction of much of its middle class. The challenges faced by Rákosi’s government would have daunted a team of professional economists. His cabinet was woefully unprepared for the problems they faced.

For several years after 1945, Hungary suffered from some of the worst hyperinflation of any country in modern history. Prices boomed due to reconstruction costs and lack of available funds. Only major government intervention through price controls brought hyperinflation down. 90% of the country’s industrial capacity was damaged and basic transportation could not function. Being a member of the Eastern Bloc meant Hungary could not receive relief funds from the United States through the Marshall Plan.

Rákosi’s government responded with a Stalinist approach to economic management. Forced industrialization led to the return of much of Hungarian industry, but output remained low. The Three Year Plan brought limited recovery and abolished the feudal elements of the Hungarian economy during Horthy’s regime. However, it also created a culture of dependency on state management due to the lack of private business and investment. Worker’s unions were entirely controlled by the state, meaning they had no power to protest poor working conditions. The poor economic recovery contributed to popular discontent with the government.

Imre Nagy and the Hungarian Uprising

As a result of poor economic management, heavy losses incurred in the Second World War, and Hungary’s membership of the Warsaw Pact, tensions in Hungarian society reached a boiling point. After the death of Stalin in 1953, the new Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev criticized Stalinist repression in 1956 and signaled a more conciliatory approach towards the West. In Hungary, Rákosi was obliged to step aside as party leader in July 1956 and was replaced by Erno Gero. Gero remained unpopular with the people, and student demonstrations in October brought the reformer Imre Nagy back into power as prime minister.

Although still a member of the ruling Hungarian Working People’s Party, Nagy set out to reform the Stalinist system during an earlier stint as prime minister from 1953 to 1955. He eased government control of the economy, believing that the economy could only grow with private investment. He also released hundreds of thousands of political prisoners held by his predecessor’s regime.

Although Nagy and the student protestors who brought him to power had been encouraged by Khrushchev’s denunciation of Stalin, his intention to hold free democratic elections and leave the Soviet-dominated Warsaw Pact rang alarm bells in the Kremlin. The prospect of Hungary drifting away from the Eastern Bloc and perhaps abandoning communism entirely was unacceptable to Khrushchev. On November 4th, 1956, Soviet tanks rolled into Budapest and put an end to the Hungarian Uprising. Despite a promise of safe conduct from party leader János Kádár, Nagy was arrested and executed two years later.

It is estimated that during Germany’s occupation of France from 1940-1944, some 500,000 French men and women joined the resistance. They not only fought the German and Italian armies, but they also fought other French people who collaborated with the Axis. It was one of the most successful insurgency operations in history.

France After the Surrender

When the French Third Republic surrendered to Nazi Germany in June 1940, its leadership placed itself in the hands of Hitler’s henchmen, who had long vowed retribution for Germany’s defeat in WWI. Many French were horrified by the surrender and vowed to keep fighting notwithstanding the decision made by the government in Paris. Others, like former French Marshal Philippe Pétain, thought that Germany’s victory offered the opportunity to remake France in their image. This division henceforth characterized French politics in the Second World War.

Adolf Hitler and his subordinates decided that controlling all of France and its empire was too costly. Berlin made the decision to take control of all of the Atlantic coastline and northern France, while also annexing Alsace-Lorraine to Germany. A new collaborationist French regime was created in the city of Vichy and led by Pétain and some of his colleagues. Vichy France was allowed to administer the southern zone and the rest of France’s empire as long as they did not challenge German interests.

In the German zone in the north, Wehrmacht units were garrisoned in cities and towns to maintain German control and to stop resistance attacks. They were supported by the German secret police, or Gestapo, which hunted down resistance members, Jews, and anyone else marked for death or imprisonment by the Reich. Germany also used French ports and airfields for its assault on Britain and allied shipping. In the south, Italy took control of Corsica and the French Alps.

The First Resistance Organizations

The sight of German troops marching down the Champs-Élysées appalled many French patriots. Many Frenchmen and women vowed to find ways to resist, but the lack of weapons and munitions initially made such resistance activities very difficult. Nevertheless, resistance activity began almost immediately, causing a security crisis for the Vichy regime and the Axis occupation authorities further north.

Brigadier General Charles De Gaulle, who had fought the Germans in WWI and the 1940 invasion, refused to acknowledge the surrender agreement and fled to the United Kingdom with some of his staff. De Gaulle became the first prominent Frenchman to announce his intention to resist, something that was opposed by many other French politicians and military leaders. After giving a legendary speech on BBC radio urging French people to oppose Axis rule, he took leadership of the Empire Defense Council, the first formal French resistance organization of WWII, which was based in French Equatorial Africa.

In Metropolitan France, resistance organizations took time to develop. However, the arrival of agents of the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) encouraged resistance activity. French communists formed a group called the Special Organization which began assassinating policemen and German officials in Paris. In 1941, the French officer Henri Frenay formed a militant group called Combat, which vowed armed resistance. Other small groups were founded by Polish and Spanish exiles, Jews, and North African immigrants in France.

The Increase in Resistance Activity and the Collapse of Vichy

The proliferation of resistance groups in France and the empire brought both opportunities and risks. De Gaulle hoped to take control of most resistance groups and created the French National Committee to do so. He was helped by Jean Moulin, a resistance fighter who traveled back and forth between the Vichy zone and Britain. In 1941, the French National Committee created its own intelligence service called the Central Office for Intelligence and Action (BCRA) under André Dewavrin to gather intelligence on German and Italian dispositions and assist partisan groups. De Gaulle still struggled with legitimacy due to British mistrust, Vichy hostility, and the communists vowing to pursue their own course. He was helped by two events: Germany declaring it would conscript French workers for its industries and the collapse of Vichy rule in the south.

Despite Vichy’s efforts to maintain control in southern France and North Africa, resistance activity grew due to the lack of a Gestapo presence. The colonial administration in North Africa was controlled by several generals and admirals of mixed loyalties. From 1940-1942, they remained loyal to Pétain. However, some Frenchmen, local Jews and Arabs, and Allied spies organized resistance to the Vichy. In Algeria, José Aboulker, a member of a prominent Jewish family, organized a network of spies to undermine Vichy rule. They worked with American and British officials to prepare for a general uprising when the Allies invaded. De Gaulle’s National Committee had limited influence on resistance groups in North Africa before the Allied invasion.

Before the Allies launched Operation Torch, they met privately with some Vichyist admirals and generals to convince the garrisons in Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco to switch loyalties. De Gaulle and his colleagues were not informed due to the opposition of General Henri Giraud, who wanted to take control of the resistance himself. This posed serious problems for French unity and also showed the mistrust Allied leaders had for De Gaulle and his supporters. The Allied invasion plan relied on the French switching sides immediately and joining the Allies as they marched eastward toward Libya.

When Torch commenced, some resistance bands staged an uprising to assist the landings. However, they were confined to Jewish and leftist groups while the majority of the French garrison fought the Allies. When the Allies won, they installed a government that relied on former Vichy officials such as Admiral François Darlan instead of members of the Free French movement. At the same time, Germany and Italy began moving their forces into the Vichy zone, even as they allowed Pétain’s government to remain in place. This action, along with Germany announcing the conscription of Frenchmen into the Organization Todt (Reich Labor Service), led to an increase in resistance activity in the mainland and the development of the rural resistance known as the Maquis.

The Unification of the Resistance

The collapse of Vichy rule gave the resistance an opportunity to combine several different groups under a unified command. In January 1943, Jean Moulin convinced three separate resistance networks to unify under the name Armée Secrète. Moulin then moved north with the aim of convincing additional factions to join this force. In May, Moulin met with other resistance leaders in Paris to form the National Council of the Resistance (CNR). The formation of the CNR ensured coordination of resistance activity within France, such as targeting railways and other critical infrastructure.

The Gestapo had considerable success in targeting key resistance figures by creating turncoats within the CNR. In June 1943, the Secret Army’s commander General Charles Delestraint was arrested by the Gestapo and sent to a concentration camp, where he died in 1945. When Moulin called a meeting to identify who got Delestraint arrested, he himself was betrayed and seized by German agents. Moulin was also killed by the Germans in captivity and his arrest hamstrung resistance activity for some time. By this point, resistance cells were engaged in pitched battles with a collaborator militia known as the Milice, the Vichy’s security force.

The French Communist Party’s resistance network, called FTP, did not recognize De Gaulle’s authority and stayed out of Moulin’s unification efforts. However, they still carried out attacks against the Germans and Vichyists. Under the leadership of Missak Manouchian, the FTP carried out a series of targeted killings, such as General Julius Ritter, the officer responsible for the recruitment of forced laborers. Manouchian was also caught and killed, but FTP continued its activities.

The Height of Resistance Activity in 1944

As it became clear that the Axis was going to lose the war, the French resistance saw its strength grow and finally gained sufficient weapons to undertake offensive actions against the Germans. Italy’s surrender in 1943 meant that resistance units could use Italian weapons left in the occupied territories such as Corsica. More resistance activity meant more reprisals, meaning that the resistance was taking a major risk when it escalated its attacks against German garrisons.

While some resistance became aware of the possibility of an Allied landing in France, almost no Frenchmen or women were aware of the planning behind operations Overlord or Dragoon. As a result, resistance units began planning to seize large amounts of territory by themselves. For instance, in the Haute-Savoie, several hundred maquisards seized a plateau and began fighting thousands of German troops in March 1944. They were defeated, but many survived to fight another day. By this point, all resistance forces were now called the French Forces of the Interior (FFI) and came under the command of De Gaulle’s subordinate General Marie-Pierre Koenig. Despite mistrust from some Allied commanders, the FFI received an increased supply of light weapons and small arms from the Allied intelligence agencies. The hope was that the FFI would act as a force multiplier for Allied forces landing in Normandy and the Riviera.

As preparations for the landings continued, the Allies dropped more commandos into France to help the FFI. Joint Allied-FFI teams were called Jedburgh teams and aimed to weaken German defenses. Their activity began shortly before the Normandy landings in June 1944.

Liberation

On June 6, 1944, Allied airborne and seaborne units arrived on the Normandy coast to start the liberation of France. Subsequently, the US 7th and French 1st Armies landed in the Riviera as part of Operation Dragoon on August 15, 1944. FFI units joined the battle by either sabotaging German supply lines or attaching themselves to frontline Allied units. Elements of the FFI group Résistance-Fer derailed German troop trains and targeted bridges on the way to the front. The Germans and milice struck back mercilessly, burning whole villages like Oradour-sur-Glane and deporting remaining Jews and maquisards to the concentration camps.

As the Allies advanced deep into France, the FFI prepared for the total liberation of the country. In the south, FFI columns assisted Allied troops as they advanced towards the German border. By the time American forces entered the city of Lyon, the maquis had pushed the Germans and milice out of the city. FFI units also helped ensure that Paris fell without too much destruction by securing critical areas of the city before the Americans arrived. As part of his effort to reinstate stability during the liberation, De Gaulle ordered the integration of the FFI into the Free French Army. He also called on the FTP to disarm to avoid the possibility of a communist revolution.

In the decades following the war, the French Resistance was eulogized for its sacrifices during the war. De Gaulle insisted that they, rather than the Allied landings in Normandy, were responsible for the liberation of France, some of its darker components were hidden, such as the ruthless postwar purge of collaborators and the betrayal of some of its leaders by Gestapo informants. Nonetheless, its contributions were important to the Allied success, such as saving Jews, passing on vital intelligence, and delaying German reinforcements to the front.

During the Second World War, the Polish resistance to Nazism was divided between the anti-communist Home Army and the communist partisans. When the Soviets took over the country, they sought to turn the country into a satellite state. This involved brutal collectivization, the suppression of political opposition, and pulling the country away from the West. What happened to Poland after World War II reverberated in the country for decades to come.

Poland in the Second World War

From its inception in 1918 to the 1939 invasion, Poland’s Second Republic was a hybrid regime, containing elements of liberal democracy and military influence in politics. The state’s borders were based on the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, meaning that it had large minority communities under its rule. The tension between the Polish majority and the restless minorities weakened the central authority of the state and gave rise to political parties advocating either communism or fascism. This became a major problem when Germany invaded in 1939.

Germany’s invasion on September 1st was followed by a Soviet invasion of Poland’s eastern provinces a couple of weeks later. Both the Third Reich and the USSR saw Polish statehood as a threat to their power and partitioned the country between them. This was the fourth time this had happened in Polish history. Poles began resisting both occupiers through the creation of the Home Army, also known as the AK (Armia Krajowa). When the Germans invaded the USSR in 1941, they pushed the Soviets and their collaborators out of eastern Poland. From then on, the Home Army’s main effort was to fight the Germans.

By 1944, the war had swung against the Axis powers. Poland now had two governments in exile: the Soviet-backed communist one and the Western-backed “London Poles.” The AK found itself fighting communist Poles in addition to the Germans, enraging Moscow. When the AK launched the Warsaw Uprising in August 1944, Soviet troops were in no hurry to cross the Vistula and did not mourn the destruction of the rebels by the German authorities.

Damage and Losses in WWII Poland

The destruction inflicted on Poland during the Second World War was truly horrific. It is estimated that as many as six million Polish citizens were killed during the war. This included nearly all of Poland’s three-and-a-half million Jews, most of whom perished in the Holocaust. The physical damage has been estimated at several trillion dollars, and major cities such as Warsaw and Wrocław had been totally destroyed. Millions more people were displaced, especially in the border areas claimed by both Germany and the USSR. On a per capita basis, Poland was among the countries which suffered the heaviest losses during the war.

Much of Poland’s intellectual and political class had been destroyed during the war. Polish children had been kidnapped en masse by the Germans. The annexation of western Poland into the Reich led to large-scale ethnic cleansing. During the period of Soviet control in the east, there were massive deportations of Polish citizens considered a threat. The life people had during the Second Republic was totally upended.

The Holocaust had taken place all over Europe and North Africa, but Poland had been the main hub of mass killing. Despite some efforts by the AK to save Jews, the Germans largely succeeded in crushing Jewish life in Poland, and the Warsaw Ghetto was completely destroyed. The survivors felt abandoned by Polish society and many wished to leave for Palestine or the United States.

Introduction of Polish Communism

Right after the Soviets drove out the German occupiers, they sought to bring Polish communists to power. The Polish Communist Party had long been seen as a threat by the pre-war Polish government and had been banned. During the Second World War, the Communists formed their own partisan units that were hostile to the AK. Moscow purged any members not directly loyal to Stalin and sought to control the party’s agenda. When the Germans were driven out of Poland, Bolesław Bierut, a leader of the Polish Workers’ Party, took over as the new leader of the Polish People’s Republic (PPR).

A fraudulent election in 1947 led to the new United Workers’ Party taking complete control over the country. The communist government proceeded to take revenge on anyone who had been part of the Second Republic’s government. Additionally, they sought to collectivize private property in conjunction with reconstruction efforts. While the United Workers’ Party had some support from Polish citizens, the majority resented what they saw as another occupation.

The introduction of communism into Poland would be resisted fiercely by the veterans of the Home Army. Their fight against the new Polish People’s Republic led to the outbreak of a new civil war.

Postwar Insurgency Against the PPR and the Soviets

The AK was formally disbanded in January 1945 after being crippled by the failed uprising and the Soviet takeover of the country. However, many of its members vowed to fight on due to their fears of communist rule. Their fears were justified: in June 1945, 16 commanders of the AK were brought to Moscow under arrest and put on trial. All but four of them received lengthy prison sentences even though there was very little evidence of the crimes they had supposedly committed. This trial was part of a massive purge in Polish society of anyone not sufficiently cowed by the communist takeover.

Survivors of the AK continued to fight a guerrilla campaign in the forests. These “cursed soldiers” fought hard against both the Soviet army and the new Polish security service known as the UB (Urząd Bezpieczeństwa). The scale of the fighting was intense, and tens of thousands of people were killed or displaced in the process. Unlike during the Second World War, when the Western Allies provided aid to the AK, the postwar insurgents received no assistance. As many as 30,000 Poles took part in the post-war insurgency, meaning it took years for the Communist Party to crush it. By the 1950s, the Soviets and their Polish puppets had destroyed most of the partisan bands.

The cursed soldiers became legendary in Poland for standing against the United Workers’ Party. However, armed resistance was proven futile. For the next several decades in Poland, anti-communist resistance was from the underground press and other civil society organizations.

Population Transfers and Border Changes

Pre-war Poland was a large multiethnic state that witnessed serious ethnic and religious tensions between different communities. The influx of new German settlers during the war made matters much worse. By the 1950s, the demographics of postwar Poland looked very different to prewar Poland. Thanks to the Holocaust and postwar violence by Poles, the Jewish population had dropped drastically. It would only revive after the end of the Cold War.

In the west, Poland was granted control over areas that had long been a part of Germany. This included Silesia, Pomerania, and parts of East Prussia. The ethnic German population was largely removed after the war because of Polish fears that they could be a fifth column as they had been in 1939. Polish control over these areas offset the massive loss of territory in the west.

The Kresy, or eastern borderlands, had long been claimed by Poland. Many of the non-Polish people who lived in the region had been very hostile to Polish claims over that territory. During the war, Ukrainian nationalist militias ethnically cleansed the Poles out of Volhynia in a brutal series of massacres. When the war ended, the Soviets sought to ensure that both the Ukrainian SSR and the PPR were monoethnic. Operation Vistula led to the expulsion of most Ukrainians from Poland. At the same time, the Soviets forced Poles living in Ukrainian territories to leave too. These population and border changes were cataclysmic for people living in the region.

Poland and the Cold War

Part of the USSR’s objective in setting up a friendly government in Poland was to ensure no-one on its western border posed a threat. This had been a consideration of Russian foreign policy since the 18th century and contributed to the Partitions of Poland. In addition to setting up a new government and interior ministry to control the public, the Soviets helped set up a new army that was aligned with Soviet objectives. The Cold War was starting and the Soviets were concerned about an invasion from the West. Creating a Polish puppet state would help keep the West at bay.

Part of this effort involved setting up the Warsaw Pact. This alliance, which was intended to mirror NATO, brought together newly created Soviet-backed communist governments all over Eastern Europe. Poland was at the center of this new alliance because it was considered a very formidable power. The Warsaw Treaty of 1955 was modeled after NATO’s founding charter and included a collective defense pledge. Since public polling did not exist in the Eastern Bloc, it was unclear how people in Poland supported their country being in this alliance. It lasted all the way until the end of Communist rule in 1989.

The Polish Communists failed to lay long-term foundations for their rule. Most Poles resented being a Soviet puppet state and one of the main aims of the Polish opposition was to bring the country out of the Warsaw Pact. Poland finally threw off the yoke of communism in 1989, in large part due to Lech Wałęsa’s leadership of the Solidarity movement. In recent decades, Poland has transformed itself into a major player in the European Union.

On the night of December 7, 1941, Adolf Hitler was at his secret military headquarters in East Prussia, known as the Wolf’s Lair, when he received the first reports of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. He was pleased with the news. For Hitler, the heavy damage inflicted on United States battleships like the USS Arizona and the USS Oklahoma signaled victory for the Axis powers, whose main members were Germany, Japan, and Italy.

Why Hitler Welcomed the Attack on Pearl Harbor

To understand why Hitler was elated, it helps to look at a map of Europe in early December 1941. For the previous six months, German armies commanded by the Oberkommando des Heeres fought through the massive landmass of the Soviet Union during the invasion codenamed Operation Barbarossa, which began on June 22, 1941. By early December, German forces had reached the outskirts of Moscow before their advance stalled due to the harsh winter. On the morning of December 5, 1941, Soviet forces led by General Georgy Zhukov launched one of the largest counterattacks in history, successfully pushing German troops back 50 to 100 miles.

If Soviet forces could break through German defenses, they would have an opportunity to split the stalled German army in the Soviet Union in half. Hitler feared this outcome more than anything else. What he hoped for was an event that would draw American attention away from Europe, as growing United States supply shipments to Great Britain and the Soviet Union were severely undermining German strategic plans.

When news reached Hitler of the Japanese attack against the United States Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, he welcomed the development. He believed that Japan would tie down the United States Navy and force America to divert major military resources to the Pacific for the duration of the war. What he didn’t know was that the primary United States aircraft carriers, including the USS Enterprise and USS Lexington, had escaped destruction at Pearl Harbor because they were at sea at the time of the attack.

Why Hitler Wasn’t Obligated to Declare War on the US

While many analysts believe that Hitler was forced into the war with America because he was bound by a treaty with Japan and Italy, this claim is only partially accurate. While the Tripartite Pact of September 27, 1940 stipulated in Article 3 that if any of the signatories were attacked, they would come to one another’s defense, it did not obligate them if a signatory struck the first blow. Because Japan struck the first blow at Pearl Harbor, Hitler was under no treaty obligation to enter the war to defend Japan.

However, he personally ordered Germany to enter the war on Japan’s side as soon as he learned of the attack. He rushed Germany’s formal declaration of war because he wanted Japan to remain a committed ally. Seeking the political initiative, Hitler announced the formal declaration of war on the United States in a speech to the Reichstag at the Kroll Opera House on December 11, 1941.

The Miscalculation That Made Hitler Underestimate America

Another factor behind Hitler’s happy reaction was his miscalculation of the American national character and drive. Through his racial lens, he viewed America as a nation made up of weak individuals who had surrendered control to corporate leaders. He believed that Americans were too soft and undisciplined to handle a long, protracted war, despite understanding the nation’s industrial strength.

For perspective, the United States had a population of roughly 132 million people and produced far more than Germany in overall economic output by 1941. Thinking that Japan would knock America out of the fight or keep it distracted, he believed that the Axis powers would buy enough time to defeat the Soviet Union in 1942.

How Pearl Harbor Unleashed German U-Boats on the US Coast

Pearl Harbor was exactly what the German submarine command, known as the Befehlshaber der U-Boote, was waiting for. Until December 1941, German Admiral Karl Dönitz, serving as Commander of Submarines, operated under orders from Hitler to avoid conflicts with American ships so as to keep the United States out of the war. Now, Hitler looked forward to Operation Drumbeat, the code name given to attacks that German Type IX U-boats would launch off the East Coast of the United States.

With America officially in the war, he could send his submarines to target ships along the American shoreline and cut off supplies to Great Britain. German U-boats would go on to sink hundreds of Allied ships in American waters shortly after he declared war on December 11, 1941. German U-boat crews nicknamed these easy victories the Second Happy Time.

His hands were clammy like those of a corpse, and his fingers ended in sharp claws. His eyes glowed like bright red orbs, and from his mouth he breathed blue and white flames. Beneath a black cloak, this thin figure was that of Spring Heeled Jack, a terrifying and devilish man who terrified the people of England and Scotland during the Victorian era.

The Violent London Encounters That Sparked a National Panic

The first encounter with the monstrous Spring Heeled Jack occurred in October 1837 in Clapham Common in south London. A servant girl, Mary Stevens, was walking home when a man jumped out and accosted her. He grabbed her with cold, corpselike hands and forced his kisses upon her. Her screams alerted others who ran to her aid, and the mysterious figure took off.

The next day, the cloaked figure appeared again as he jumped in front of a carriage before fleeing by easily springing over a 9-foot wall while cackling maniacally. Such an impossible feat earned him the nickname of “Spring Heeled Jack.”

Over the next few months, reports poured in as women were attacked by this mysterious cloaked figure, and panic began to spread through London. 

The Lord Mayor of London, Sir John Cowan, received many letters of complaint, detailing terrifying encounters with the assailant in and around the city. These “wicked pranks” were rampant.

Reports of the Violent Assailant Sparked National Concern

On February 19, 1838, Jane Alsop answered the door of her father’s house in Bearbinder Lane in East London to find a man asking for assistance, claiming to have caught Spring Heeled Jack. When she handed him a candle, however, the man threw off his cloak to reveal his hideous visage and grabbed Jane with metallic claws.

He wore a helmet and vomited forth blue flame, while his eyes burned like fire, and upon his form he wore a white tight-fitting suit like oilskin. Jane struggled and escaped, running towards the house with her assailant in pursuit. When Jane’s sister arrived, Spring Heeled Jack fled the scene. 

Mere days later, Jack struck again in Green Dragon Alley, Limehouse, where sisters Lucy and Margaret Scales were returning from visiting their brother. A cloaked figure had been waiting in the shadows and jumped out at them, spurting blue flame in Lucy’s face before exiting the scene. Lucy fell to the ground, deprived of her sight. Help arrived quickly, but Lucy suffered fits for hours after the incident. 

A man, Thomas Millbank, claimed to be Spring Heeled Jack and was arrested. Jane Alsop, however, insisted that her assailant could breathe fire, and so Millbank was not convicted. 

These were just a few of the many attacks that happened, and they certainly wouldn’t be the last. The legend of Spring Heeled Jack continued for decades, living long past the real attacks and into the realm of myth, fueled by the media and penny dreadfuls which turned him into a recurring fictional villain. 

The Marquess of Waterford and the Hunt for a Real Perpetrator

While the myth of Spring Heeled Jack as a supernatural being persisted, there were many skeptics who challenged the idea, and fingers were pointed at various suspects. In the 1840s, the Marquess of Waterford, Henry de la Poer Beresford, was a prime suspect. The “Mad Marquess” was an Irish nobleman who had a history of crude pranks, disdain for women and social norms, and a problematic relationship with the law. 

Waterford married and settled down in 1842, and calmed his behavior, eventually dying in a riding accident in 1859. Encounters with Spring Heeled Jack, however, continued beyond the turn of the century. It’s quite believable the phenomenon was not just one person, but a series of copycat pranksters. 

In the 1850s and 1860s, Spring Heeled Jack made appearances all over England, but mostly in the Midlands. In 1877, a soldier in the Aldershot Garrison peered into the darkness at a gentleman approaching him. The man promptly slapped the soldier and bounded away in great leaps, shrugging off gunfire. 

In the same year, in Newport Arch, Lincoln, he was seen and chased by a mob of people who shot at him, but the villain was unhurt and evaded his pursuers, vaulting away to safety. 

By the end of the century, most reports were coming from the northwest of England, and the last sighting was in 1904 in the Everton district of Liverpool.

Who or what Spring Heeled Jack was will likely never be known. Until then, theories abound, with some even claiming he was a demon or an alien. Perhaps he was the result of collective panic fuelling folklore. Either way, Spring Heeled Jack remains firmly entrenched in England’s lengthy catalog of urban legends.

After initially remaining neutral, Benito Mussolini’s Italy entered World War II in June 1940 by invading France. After Italian forces were driven out of North Africa, the Allies invaded Sicily and southern Italy in 1943, resulting in the overthrow of Mussolini’s regime in Rome. Although he escaped his arrest to establish a new government in northern Italy, he had effectively been reduced to the role of a German puppet. This led to his ignominious end in 1945.

Mussolini’s Ouster in 1943

After taking seizing power in Rome in 1922, Benito Mussolini vowed to turn Italy into a world power and a major player in European politics. Mussolini, who began his political career as a socialist, developed the far-right ideology of fascism as the solution for Italy’s post-WWI problems. He also believed that it was his destiny to rebuild the Roman Empire. He jailed and murdered many members of his opposition and ordered invasions of Albania, Libya, and Ethiopia. His ruthlessness and drive made him a role model to many aspiring fascists around the world, including Adolf Hitler.

However, Italy’s role in WWII was a disaster. Mussolini signed the Tripartite Pact and Anti-Comintern Pact, making Italy one of the main Axis powers. Italy’s attempts to conquer Egypt and Greece in 1940 proved to be disasters, and Italian troops had to be supported by German reinforcements to avoid defeat. While the Allies shredded Italy’s Armed Forces on air, land, and sea, dissent at home increased. Strikes became commonplace, desertion increased, and the opposition planned to topple the government.

The invasion of Sicily proved to be the final straw. Mussolini had reshuffled his government repeatedly but failed to convince people that he was not responsible for Italy’s failures. Generals like Vittorio Ambrosio and Pietro Badoglio called on King Victor Emmanuel III to withdraw from the war. After a meeting between the King and Mussolini at Villa Savoia on July 25, 1943, local carabinieri arrested Mussolini and a new government was declared over the radio.

The Italian Social Republic

In September 1943, Marshal Pietro Badoglio’s government signed an armistice with the Allies and formally withdrew from the Axis alliance. As a result, German forces entered northern Italy and occupied the country by force. By this point, Mussolini was being held in the Hotel Campo Imperatore in the Gran Sasso mountains by the military police. On September 12, German paratroopers led by SS Captain Otto Skorzeny landed by glider on the grounds of the hotel and rescued Mussolini. He was spirited north to take over the newly created Italian Social Republic (RSI) from the town of Salò.

Unlike the Kingdom of Italy, the RSI was a mere puppet regime that was controlled by Nazi Germany. Mussolini had to agree with the demand that thousands of Italians work in German factories. Additionally, the Gestapo began to hunt down anti-fascist Italians alongside collaborationist police. The RSI developed its own military to fight alongside the Germans when the Allies invaded Italy. It also used local gendarmes to maintain order in the territory it controlled.

Mussolini vowed to continue to support Germany’s war effort regardless of the cost Italy would bear. The RSI initially only allowed the Republican Fascist Party to operate in its territory; Mussolini allowed another smaller party to exist later on by the end of the war with the hope he would be allowed to rule Italy after the war ended. SS guards kept watch over him and his ministers, meaning that the real power in the RSI was SS Obergruppenführer Karl Wolff and members of the Wehrmacht.

The Formation of the Italian Resistance

Once German forces began occupying Italy, anti-fascist parties began coalescing to form a movement aimed at overthrowing the RSI and kicking the Germans out. Six parties, led by socialist politician Ivanoe Bonomi, created the Committee of National Liberation (CLN) that aimed to govern Italy once the Germans were pushed out of Rome. They aimed to take control of any Italian military units that refused to fight for the RSI. The stage was set for a civil war.

By April 1945, it was estimated that 185,000 Italians were partisans in the CLN’s ranks. They were divided between center-right Royalist bands such as the Justice and Freedom Brigades, Communists in the Garibaldi Brigades, and Socialists in the Matteotti Brigades. Some of their units were assigned to help the Allies advance northwards towards Rome. Others worked behind German-RSI lines to sabotage Axis supply lines. The CLN was able to garner significant support from Italians horrified by their country’s alliance with Germany and Japan.

On June 4, 1944, Allied troops advancing from the Anzio pocket and the Gustav Line entered Rome and liberated the city. For the next two months, they drove northwards, expanding the territory of CLN-controlled Italy. Partisans in the north waited patiently for the Allied forces to arrive so that they could start taking aggressive action against the RSI. They also worked to hide Jewish refugees and escaped Allied POWs from German roundups in RSI-controlled territory. When the time was right, CLN units would launch an uprising to defeat their enemies and get rid of Mussolini once and for all.

The Resistance Uprising in Northern Italy

In the summer and fall of 1944, the CLN urged partisan units in northern Italy to begin extensive operations against German and RSI forces. The main aim was to establish areas free of Axis control that CLN could then administer. The partisans themselves believed that the best way to resist Axis control of their territory was to set up autonomous republics. Not only did this undermine Mussolini’s position, it also ensured that the partisans could obtain resources and manpower from the areas they controlled.

Some successes were gained by surprise attacks on German and RSI garrisons. For instance, members of several partisan brigades set up the short-lived Republic of Ossola, a month-long period of democratic rule inside RSI territory. Mussolini ordered RSI units, including the infamous Black Brigades, to crush the partisans. By October, the Ossola Republic had collapsed. Other republics were formed by successful partisan units, but faced a similar fate to the rebels of Ossola. The stalling of the Allied advance also compromised matters for the CLN.

Mussolini vowed to preserve as much of his rule as possible and ordered RSI units to annihilate the partisans in northern Italy. He agreed to allow German forces to conduct anti-partisan sweeps through the countryside. This led to gruesome massacres such as the Marzabotto massacre, the largest massacre of Italian civilians in WWII. While the crushing of the partisans in 1944 bought Mussolini’s government some time, it ensured that Italians saw his government as fundamentally evil, and many vowed they would get revenge.

Mussolini Flees as the Allies Advance

Despite the serious setbacks partisans faced in 1944, CLN planned another uprising timed to coincide with the renewed Allied assault on the German lines in northern Italy. With support from Allied intelligence teams dropped behind enemy lines, partisan units planned to seize major Italian cities and ambush Axis forces as they retreated north. When the Allies marched north and finally broke through German lines, the partisans successfully rose up and secured vital ground such as the cities of Ravenna, Bologna, and parts of the Po Valley. The RSI was on its last legs and its forces crumbled beneath the onslaught.

In early 1945, Obergruppenführer Karl Wolff made secret contact with American representatives in Switzerland to negotiate a surrender of German forces in northern Italy. He even ordered German units to stop attacking partisan units, ensuring that they could operate openly in the country. This decision doomed Mussolini’s regime because he was reliant on German support. While the Allies surged northward, Mussolini began planning to open talks with the CLN, hoping for a pardon or a leadership role in the new government.

On April 18, 1945, Mussolini moved to Milan with some of his ministers and his lover, Claretta Petacci. He hoped to use the city’s fortifications and the presence of thousands of civilians as a barrier. However, Axis control of Milan was doomed and he was forced to flee when CLN and Allied troops entered the city. His hope was to get to the Swiss border and from there to Germany with Petacci.

Mussolini’s Death and Hanging

Mussolini, Petacci, and other RSI officials left Milan with a Luftwaffe convoy and hoped to dodge any CLN roadblocks. They were initially lucky but on April 27, they had the misfortune to be stopped by a unit of communist partisans near the village of Dongo. The 52nd Garibaldi Brigade had planned to capture as many RSI members as possible and even offered the Germans in the convoy a deal: turn over the Italians and they would be allowed to leave the country. Initially, no one recognized Mussolini and he was detained with the others.

However, partisan commander Urbano Lazzaro soon recognized Mussolini and ordered him be detained in the 52nd Brigade’s headquarters in Dongo. Some of the partisans hoped to bring him to a court so he could be tried publicly. Others worried that he could be rescued by RSI troops still in the area. Thus, both he and Petacci were moved to a rural farmhouse pending a further decision about their fate. To this day, it is not known exactly who ordered his killing. Some sources claimed it was Communist Party leader Palmiro Togliatti. Others claimed local commanders issued the order. Nonetheless, both Mussolini and Petacci were killed in the town of Giulino di Mezzegra by partisan Walter Audisio.

Their bodies were put in a truck and driven to Milan. The partisans there had scores to settle and strung up Mussolini’s and Petacci’s bodies upside down at Piazzale Loreto. Local passersby spit and flung garbage at the bodies until Allied troops arrived to take the bodies away. They were subsequently given an autopsy and buried in an unmarked grave in Milan. In 1957, Prime Minister Adone Zoli allowed for the body to be reinterred and formally buried in his hometown of Predappio, where it remains today.