Skip to main content
Elinor Florence (Company name) Elinor Florence

Germany at War

I saved this topic for Christmas Eve, simply because it is so inspirational. The rebuilding of the bombed Church of Our Lady in Dresden, Germany, is a heart-warming example of renewal and redemption. Please look at the before and after pictures to see what I mean. I don’t want to discuss the controversy surrounding the bombing of Dresden, Germany, which took […]

Read More

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.

Read More

Today we call them cruise missiles, but back then they were called V-weapons. In German, the V stood for Revenge. Hitler promised that his revenge weapons would punish the Allies for their bombing of German cities. And these jet-propelled missiles almost won the war. Even before the war, the Nazis realized that the land, sea and air defences […]

Read More

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.

Read More

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 […]

Read More

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.

Read More