World War II Figures, Part 2 - Germany Quiz

Answer: Albert Speer

Albert Speer was an architect who joined the Nazi Party in the early 1930s. As wells as designing buildings, he was in charge of armaments, and his use of slave labour led to him being tried as a war criminal at Nuremberg. He served 20 years in prison and died in 1981.

Answer: Heinrich Himmler

Heinrich Himmler was anti-Semitic from an early age and joined the Nazi party in 1923. In 1929, he was appointed commander of the S.S. Regarded as a major architect of the holocaust, he was captured by Allied forces in May, 1945, but committed suicide by cyanide before he could be tried.

Answer: Hermann Goring

Hermann Goring (or Goering) was a fighter pilot during World War I. He joined the Nazi Party in 1922 and was appointed Supreme Commander of the Luftwaffe in 1935. In May, 1945, he surrendered to American forces to avoid being captured by the Russians. At Nuremberg, he was sentenced to death by hanging, but committed suicide by cyanide the night before sentence was due to be carried out.

Answer: Joseph Goebbels

Joseph Goebbels joined the Nazi Party in 1924. In 1933, he was appointed Reich Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda. He played a major part in discrimination against the Jews during the Nazi era. In May, 1945, Goebbels and his wife poisoned their six children before committing suicide.

Answer: Erwin Rommel

Erwin Rommel was a career soldier who was awarded the Iron Cross during World War I. After playing a major part in the 1940 Blitzkrieg in the Low Countries and France, he was deployed to North Africa to command the Afrika Korps. After initial successes, he was eventually defeated by Montgomery and the Desert Rats in 1943.

He later commanded the German forces in northern France following the D-Day invasion. Implicated in a plot to kill Hitler, he committed suicide in October, 1944.

Answer: Adolf Hitler

Adolf Hitler was born in Austria in 1889 and served in the German army during World War I. He became involved in politics in the 1920s, becoming leader of the Nazi Party in June, 1921. He became Chancellor of Germany in 1934 and led his country into World War II with his invasion of Poland in 1939.

His racist policies led to the holocaust with around six million Jews murdered in concentration camps and elsewhere. With the Russians at the doorstep, Hitler committed suicide in his bunker in Berlin on April 30th, 1945.

Answer: Adolf Eichmann

Adolf Eichmann joined the Nazi Party in 1932 and over the next few years was involved in persuading Jews to "voluntarily" leave Germany. This policy changed to forced deportation once war had broken out. In January, 1942, he attended the infamous Wannsee Conference which discussed the "final solution". Eichmann was put in charge of the mass transportation of Jews to the death camps.

After the war he fled to Argentina, where he was captured by Israeli Nazi hunters in 1960. He was put on trial in Jerusalem in 1961 and was hanged the following year.

Answer: Rudolf Hess

Rudolf Hess served in the German army during World War I, earning the Iron Cross. He joined the Nazi Party in 1920, and was named Deputy Fuhrer in 1933. In 1941, with Germany likely facing a war on two fronts in the near future, Hess flew to Britain on a secret mission to negotiate peace.

His plane crash-landed in Scotland and he was arrested. He spent the rest of the war in prison (including a brief spell in the Tower of London) before facing trial at Nuremberg. He was sentenced to life imprisonment, dying at Spandau Prison in 1987.

Answer: Karl Donitz

Karl Donitz served in the Germany navy during World War I on both surface ships and U-boats, before being captured by British forces. He remained in the navy after the war. He was named Commander of Submarines in 1939, then Supreme Commander of the Kriegsmarine in 1943.

He was Hitler's successor as Fuhrer for a matter of days in May, 1945. At the Nuremberg trials, he was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

Answer: Josef Mengele

Josef Mengele joined the Nazi Party in 1937 and the S.S. the following year. He served in the army in the early years of World War II, earning the Iron Cross. In 1943, he was appointed Chief Physician at Auschwitz. Among his duties was selecting which people on incoming trains were to be sent straight to the gas chambers.

He became notorious for his medical experiments on inmates, particularly twins. After the war he fled to South America, drowning in Brazil in 1979.