Germany at War

Visiting the rebuilt Church of Our Lady in Dresden, Germany, was one of the most inspirational experiences of my life.

Hank Herzberg of Chicago learned what had happened to his boyhood friend from Hanover, Germany, by reading my post called The German Jew Who Bombed Berlin. And his own story as a Ritchie Boy is also extraordinary!

I had two personal reasons for visiting the museum at Peenemünde in Germany, where the Nazis invented their deadly V-weapons: because it plays a role in my wartime novel about aerial photo interpretation, and because my father-in-law Kurt Drews worked here during the war.

Back then they were called V-weapons, but today we call them cruise missiles. In the German language, the V stood for Revenge. Hitler promised that his revenge weapons would punish the Allies for their bombing of German cities. These jet-propelled missiles almost won the war. Even before the war, the Nazis realized that the land, […]

My mother-in-law Gerda Drews was a teenager living in Berlin during World War Two. She witnessed the ferocious battle of Berlin, and her family’s tragic experiences after her city fell to the Soviet Army.

Gerda Drews was a child living in Berlin with her family when the Second World War began, and over the next five years she survived the bombing of her city 363 times, witnessing some horrific sights. By Elinor Florence My family members, on both my mother’s and my father’s sides, served in the Canadian forces […]

Jewish pilot Georg Hein, sent to England as a teenager to escape certain death in a concentration camp, changed his name to Peter Stevens and became a decorated RAF pilot. This daring young man was shot down, captured, and spent four terrifying years as a German POW.