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Σάββατο 19 Δεκεμβρίου 2015

The nazi occupation of Greece, 1941-44: An endless list of crimes, atrocities and bloodbaths


Despite the fact that several historians and modern day nazi apologists are trying to exonerate the Germans for the countless atrocities and crimes against humanity they committed in Greece during WW2, the truth cannot be hidden.



In Greece, from 1941 to 1944, the civilian deaths resulting from the nazi German, fascist Italian (until 1943, when the Italians swiftly changed sides) and Bulgarian occupation, adds up to about 578,000 persons. 

That number comprises the deaths resulting from the persistent famine caused by the economic policies of the Axis, and the violent deaths resulting from the resistance and the reprisals.



It does not include though the deaths resulting from diseases such as TB and malaria, persistent malnutrition, wounds and exposure, which are a direct result of war conditions, but which occurred shortly after the end of the war. 

It is estimated that the overall loss of life due to the war to be 13% of the Greek population.

In August 1944 Greek guerrilla fighters attacked the German military camp at Vrastamites (the village is called today "Ypsilandis", in Boeotia, central Greece). 

The Germans burned down every house in the village and dynamited the church in retaliation. 

All able-bodied men who could be caught were shot and the rest fled for their lives to the mountains. 


The Greeks were the first Europeans who won a victory against fascism. They defeated the Italian allies of the Germans. They fought bravely against the attacking Germans and kept fighting them throughout the occupation of their country, 1941-1944.

Once in Greece, the Germans rewarded Greek bravery with implacable hostility. They dismembered the country, dividing it between the Bulgarians, the avenging Italians, and themselves.

The unspoken strategy of the occupiers (Germans, Italians, Bulgarians) was to wipe out the Greeks through starvation, bombing, and mass murder. 

They did that, inflicting unspeakable atrocities against the civilian population. But the Germans, being the warlords-in-chief, outdistanced their partners in crime, Bulgarians and Italians. Their barbarism easily surpassed that of all previous foreign occupiers of Greece.


In the short period of German occupation, 1941-1944, the violence of the German-led armies of conquest, turned Greece from a modestly well-to-do country to a country on the brink of death.

The following math of mass starvation and murder tell the story. The numbers come from "The Sacrifices of Greece in the Second World War," a 1946 report prepared for the Greek government by the architect K. A. Doxiadis. 

The story of WWII Greece starts with food, the weapon of starvation for the occupiers. During 1941-1944, there was a dramatic decline in Greek food production: wheat and barley, life and death crops for the Greeks, dropped by 40 percent; beans, 36 percent; tobacco, 89 percent; cotton, 75 percent; olive oil, 16 percent; grapes and raisins, 66 percent; wine, 50 percent; fruits, 20 percent.



The occupiers speeded Greek starvation by killing the peasants' farm animals. They slaughtered 60 percent of the horses, mules, and cattle; 50 percent of the donkeys, sheep and goats; 80 percent of the hogs; and 50 percent of the chickens.

Next after food, the entire country became a field of desolation for the Germans, Italians and Bulgarians. They destroyed 25 percent of the country's forests; 56 percent of the roads; 50 to 90 percent of the bridges; 65 percent of automobiles; 60 percent of the trucks; 80 percent of the buses; 100 percent of the trains and railways; 80 percent of the factories; 100 percent of the water and sewage infrastructure.


The 1946 report says: "principal harbors were blown up… Installations, machinery and quays were destroyed." The Germans also blew up the strategic Corinth canal. In addition, the Germans sank 74 percent of the Greek ships and destroyed 100 percent of telephone communications.

The Germans bombed all major Greek cities, inflicting heavy damage. According to the 1946 study: "The whole country lies in ruins. From northern Epirus to the Dodecanese large and small buildings, churches, schools, hospitals and dwellings have been transformed into a mass of tragic ruins."



The countryside had a similar fate. According to the 1946 study, "the occupying forces applied a systematic plan for the destruction of Hellenism: the burning of villages. 1,770 Greek villages lie in ashes. In certain parts of the country, particularly near the frontiers, destruction by fire reached the proportion of 90 % of the villages of every region."

The Germans and their allies killed or were responsible for the death of thirteen percent of the Greek population. In 1940, there were 7,335,000 people in Greece. In 1944, the population numbered 6,805,000 persons. The report notes that the favorable methods of mass murder included: "Hangings, massacres, shootings, [and] death vans."


The genocidal effects of German occupation of Greece reached a macabre climax in June 1944. On June 10, 1944, Greek partisans killed a few German soldiers near Distomo, a small village near Parnassus and Delphi. The Germans retaliated with crusading ferocity.

Hundreds of soldiers advanced toward Distomo - spreading death on their way, shooting people and animals. Once in the village, the Germans acted with a mania for death and criminality rarely matched in history. They kept shooting anyone on sight. But eventually, they put the annihilation of Distomo into action. They raped all female children and women, cutting their breasts and ripping apart their stomachs. In some cases, they strangled the women with their own guts. 

They cut the throats of all infants.


The Germans then shot or hanged all boys and men. 

In fact, they used bayonets to crucify men on trees lining the streets. All this mayhem took the Germans an entire day. The next day, they came back to Distomo and filled their trucks with looted goods from the homes of the dead peasants.

A Swedish Red Cross worker stationed in Athens, Sture Linner, witnessed the results of the German atrocity. In his book, My Odyssey, he admits he drove a truck full of food to Distomo. It was June 14, 1944. He entered a village in flames, empty of life, utterly destroyed. The picture could have matched Dante's inferno.


Linner visited Distomo in November 1944 when the Germans were withdrawing from Greece. Greek partisans surrounded a detachment of German soldiers near Distomo. Linner drove a truck full of food. A priest and a Greek military commander met him near the village. The priest said both Greeks and Germans were starving. But he urged Linner to feed the defeated Germans because they had a long way to reach home.

Linner's Greek wife burst into tears.

Two executive orders issued at the highest levels of the Third Reich played an important role in the Greek Holocaust. 

The first, issued by Hitler himself, was the torching directive according to which, if there was a suspicion that a residence was used by the resistance, that building was a legitimate target for burning, regardless of the possibility that the majority of the inhabitants might be non-combatants. 


The second order, signed by Marshal Wilhelm Keitel on 16 September 1941, specified that for every German killed, a minimum of 100 hostages would be executed, and for every wounded one, 50 would die.

The first mass executions took place in Crete even before the island fell to the Germans. 

In 1945, under the auspices of the United Nations, a 4-member committee headed by Nikos Kazantzakis was given the task to investigate Axis atrocities in Crete. The Kazantzakis report enumerates the destruction of more than 106 Cretan villages and many massacres. 



The area around the Agias Prison in the Hania area was found hiding several mass graves. The first mass murder was recorded in the village Galatas, near Hania, where the villagers had dared defend their birthplace from the invading Germans. 

On 26 May 1941, while the battle was still raging, the Germans murdered old men and women in their homes, and looted and burned the village. One of the massacres the Kazantzakis committee did not report was the murder of all men in Kontomari. 



That massacre was immortalized for posterity by Peter Weixler, a German officer whose photographs graphically describe the execution.

An even worse fate befell the village Kandanos, whose men and women had fought the Germans in order to allow hundreds of Allied troops to escape the paratroopers by reaching safely the south shore of Crete. 

In Kandanos all men and women were murdered. Among those executed was Kostas Archakis, aged 103 and two 80-year old women who were thrown into their burning homes to endure horrible deaths.


These massacres were only the beginning. On 20 October 1941 in Ano and Kato Kerdyllia in Macedonia, the Germans gathered 222 men ages 15 to 60, ordered them to excavate a mass tomb, executed them under the gaze of their families, and then burned the villages. 

On 24 October, in Mesovouno of Ptolemais, they executed 165 men and then burned the village. On 25 October, in the area of Kilkis, they executed 96 men and then burned the villages Kleisto, Kydonia and Ampelofyto. 


Those massacres were carried out solely in order to intimidate the population. The massacres continued through 1942 and intensified in 1943, when the Greek Resistance, obeying orders from the Middle East Allied Headquarters, intensified their activities against the occupation forces. 

That was part of the Allied strategy, aimed to convince the Germans that a landing on the Greek shores was forthcoming, whereas their plan was to land on Sicily. On 26 July 1943 the Germans massacred 154 people in Mousiotitsa of Epirus and burned the village.

On August 16, the day after one of the greatest holy days of the Eastern Orthodox church, the Dormition of the Mother of Jesus, the Germans, also in Epirus, destroyed the village Kommeno. 



There had been no incident to incite that massacre. Only a suspicion that there were guerrillas in its vicinity. 

This particular massacre has been studied by historians in some detail, because there were survivors who managed to escape by swimming the fast waters of Arahthos river, or by hiding in the forested area bordering the village. In Kommeno, the Germans murdered 145 men, 174 women and 97 children, 414 in all. 

Twenty families were wiped out completely and 17 people drowned trying to cross Arahthos.


Kurt Waldheim, who reported that massacre to Berlin from his position in Thessaloniki, reported only the 145 men who were killed, neglecting to mention women and children, and falsified facts by citing explosions of large quantities of munitions, which never took place. Eventually Kurt Waldheim became Secretary General of the United Nations and President of Austria.

More than 90 holocausts have taken place in Greece, in which the majority of the inhabitants were murdered. In addition, 1,700 to 1,800 villages were burned, many of them totally. 


The Germans developed the act of destruction to the level of a fine art: they spread the condemned structures with incendiary powders, which under fire from a gun or a pistol exploded into flames. 

They also developed the military vocabulary to match their unparalleled ingenuity of destruction: the elimination of a population, as in Kommeno, was a Clean-Up Operation Undertaking: Waldheim talks about Sauberungsunternrhmen (Purging Operation) Kommeno , for example. 

The troops charged to carry out the systematic looting of Greek households and farms were the Aufraumtruppen (Clean-Up Troops). The stealing of Greek property was carried out under orders by the highest command of the Wehrmacht.



The story of the Greek Holocaust would not be complete without mentioning Kalavryta, Distomo, Hortiati and Agios Georgios.

In Kalavryta, 1,100 men 12 to 90 years old were executed on a gently sloping corn field outside the town, while the women and young children of the village were held in the school house, which was set afire. 

The women broke the doors and escaped death, but the male population was killed in the largest one-day atrocity in a non-Slavic land. 



The date was 13 December 1943. That massacre took place as a revenge for the killing of German prisoners of war by the ELAS andartes (guerillas). But the Kalavrytans were not responsible for that act, and in fact they had tried hard to safeguard the German prisoners that the guerillas kept in their city. 

All the villages in the vicinity of Kalavryta were destroyed, and their inhabitants were murdered. The monks at the nearby Mega Spilaio historic monastery, as well as the monks in Agia Lavra, where the Greek revolution of 1821 was first declared, were also murdered. The Germans killed everyone they run across as they moved from one village to the other.



The historical Archives at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Athens are replete with accounts of massacres perpetrated throughout Greece. Atrocities in which the eager German troops exceeded the directive of 100 Greeks killed per German death abound. 

On 2 September 1944, at the village Hortiati, 20 kilometers east of Thessaloniki, the Germans executed 149 civilians of both sexes and all ages for the death of one German who was killed in a skirmish with ELAS. On 15 June, 1944, two German soldiers were wounded in a battle with ELAS near the village Ayios Georgios on the road from Levadia to Thebes. 


After the andartes (guerillas) left, the Germans rounded up 26 men women and children from that village, ushered the men into a small house and killed them with machine gun fire while the women, older men and children watched. Then they executed the rest of the group, threw their corpses in the same small house, doused them all with gasoline and set them afire. An infant who had survived was thrown into the pyre alive.



The massacre that took place on 10 June 1944 in Distomo surpasses in sadism virtually all massacres. On that day, the Germans gathered the residents of Distomo in the school building and slaughtered them in the most horrific ways. 



Two hundred and thirty two men women and children were tortured and killed in ways which we shall not detail here, out of respect for the reader.



Παρασκευή 18 Δεκεμβρίου 2015

Images of the Greek Civil War, as they appeared on Picture Post magazine, May 22, 1948



Picture Post, a magazine that pioneered photojournalism, was edited by Stefan Lorant, when it was first published in 1938 by Edward G. Hulton. 


The magazine was an immediate success and after four months was selling 1,350,000 copies a week.



When Lorant emigrated to the United States in 1940 Tom Hopkinson took over as editor. Hopkinson recruited a team of talented writers and photographers including Tom Winteringham, Macdonald Hastings, Maurice Edelman, Walter Greenwood, Vernon Bartlett, A. L. Lloyd, Anne Scott-James, James Cameron, Robert Kee, Sydney Jacobson, Ted Castle, Bert Hardy and Kurt Hutton.


Hopkinson used the Picture Post to campaign against the persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany. 


In the journal published on 26th November 1938, he ran a picture story entitled Back to the Middle Ages. 


Photographs of Adolf Hitler, Joseph Goebbels, Herman Goering and Julius Steicher were contrasted with the faces of those scientists, writers and actors they were persecuting.


In January 1941 Tom Hopkinson published his Plan for Britain. 


This included minimum wages throughout industry, full employment, child allowances, a national health service, the planned use of land and a complete overhaul of education. 


This document led to discussions about post-war Britain and was the forerunner of the Beveridge Report that was published in December 1943.


The sales of the Picture Post increased rapidly during the Second World War and by December 1943 the magazine was selling 950,000 copies a week. The trend continued after the war and by the end of 1949 circulation reached 1,422,000 with profits of over £2,500 a week.


Tom Hopkinson was often in conflict with Edward G. Hulton, the owner of Picture Post. Hulton supported the Conservative Party and objected to Hopkinson's socialist views. 


In August 1945 Hulton wrote to Hopkinson telling him that "I cannot permit editors of my newspapers to become organs of Communist propaganda. Still less to make the great newspaper which I built up a laughing-stock."


In 1950 Hopkinson sent James Cameron and Bert Hardy to report on the Korean War. While in Korea the two men produced three illustrated stories for Picture Post. 


This included the landing of General Douglas MacArthur and his troops at Inchon. Cameron also wrote a piece about the way that the South Koreans were treating their political prisoners. 


Edward G. Hulton considered the article to be "communist propaganda" and Hopkinson was forced to resign.



Ted Castle took over as editor but several journalists, including James Cameron, Lionel Birch and A. L. Lloyd, refused to continue working for the magazine.


When Tom Hopkinson left the Picture Post it was selling over 1,380,000 copies a week. By June 1952 it had fallen to 935,000. 



Sales continued to decline and by the time the magazine was closed in May 1957 circulation was less than 600,000 copies a week.



Read more here

Images here

Πέμπτη 17 Δεκεμβρίου 2015

Λίμνη Ιωαννίνων, 13 Μαρτίου 1941: Η τελευταία πτήση του Τέντι Μπανκς με το Gladiator του




Ο Τέντι Μπανκς, πιλότος της ΡΑΦ, ηλικίας 21 ετών, βρισκόταν στην Ήπειρο ως μέλος της 112ης Μοίρας της Βρετανικής Βασιλικής Αεροπορίας, πετώντας με ένα διπλάνο Gloster Gladiator ΜΚ ΙΙ, με αριθμό N5913.

Έχει ήδη πιστωθεί με δύο επιβεβαιωμένες καταρρίψεις ιταλικών μαχητικών αεροσκαφών και μια ή δύο ανεπιβεβαίωτες.




Στις 13 Μαρτίου του 1941, ο Μπανκς απογειώνεται για μια πτήση ρουτίνας, θέλοντας να δοκιμάσει τον οπλισμό του αεροσκάφους του, πολυβολώντας... πάπιες στη λίμνη Παμβώτιδα, τη γνωστή λίμνη των Ιωαννίνων.



Η μοίρα όμως του επεφύλασσε μια πικρή έκπληξη. 

Οι καιρικές συνθήκες ήταν ικανοποιητικές και επικρατούσε άπνοια και ο Μπανκς άρχισε να κατεβαίνει προς τη λίμνη. 

Κάτι όμως πήγε στραβά και το αεροπλάνο του με ταχύτητα περίπου 300 μιλίων, αφού πρώτα οι τροχοί του βρήκαν στην επιφάνειά της, "έφερε" μερικές τούμπες και συνετρίβη σε βάθος μόλις τριών μέτρων.

Οι σύντροφοί του, μάρτυρες της τραγωδίας που εκτυλίχθηκε μπροστά στα μάτια τους, έσπευσαν στο σημείο της συντριβής και το μόνο που κατάφεραν ήταν να ανασύρουν το νεκρό πιλότο από τα συντρίμμια. 



Ο άτυχος νέος πιλότος θάφτηκε με όλες τις τιμές, στο νεκροταφείο των Ιωαννίνων.

Αν και δεν υπάρχουν πληροφορίες σχετικά με την τύχη του συντριβέντος αεροσκάφους, αν δηλαδή ανελκύστηκε, το γεγονός ότι έπεσε σε μικρό βάθος συνηγορεί στην άποψη ότι τα συντρίμμια περισυλλέχθηκαν.

Αν κάποιος γνωρίζει περισσότερα στοιχεία, μπορεί να επικοινωνήσει με το ιστολόγιο.



Dr. Innes McCartney, the man who located and identified over 100 WW1 and WW2 wrecks


Dr. Innes McCartneyBA (Hons), MA, MA, PhD. Honorary Research Fellow Department of Archaeology, Anthropology and Forensic Science, Faculty of Science and Technology Bournemouth Universityis a nautical archaeologist, deep-wreck diver, historical consultant specialising in submarines and a naval history and diving publisher.  


Dr. McCartney, over the last 25 years, has specialised in the discovery of and investigation into twentieth century shipwrecks including the wrecks of the Battle of Jutland and many British and German submarines. 



He has appeared regularly on documentaries such as Time Team Special and is a popular speaker at conferences.

A key element of his work is the interaction between the archaeology and historical accounts of shipwrecks and how the differences which arise often challenge the historical record.


Innes has discovered many historic shipwrecks, including the M1 and HK Komet, and HMS Indefatigable and HMS Defence at Jutland; organised the Operation Deadlight expeditions; identified 44 mystery submarine wrecks; and been a key figure in the making of TV documentaries such as Deep Wreck Detectives and Clash of the Dreadnoughts. 

Innes was also the first diver to visit all three of the greatest diveable liner wrecks: Britannic, Lusitania and Andrea Doria.


Here's what Dr. McCartney has to say about his finds and future plans:

When did you start searching for wrecks and what was your incentive?

I started looking for new wrecks in the early 1990s, mainly because I thought I could improve the historical record by identifying many wrecks around the UK. 

By 1997 I began to specialise in the U-boat wars and then later the Battle of Jutland, for the same reasons.


Each wreck carries its own story. Many souls have perished in most of them. How do you feel when you approach a wreck for the first time? 

It depends on the circumstances of the sinking. 

If it is a scrapped wreck, like the Deadlight U-boats, then you are there simply to identify it. 

But others like Lusitania and the Jutland battle cruisers are also major graves and besides recording what is present one is always mindful of the loss of life and incumbent sensitivities surrounding these wrecks. 

For some reason I found the Lusitania spooky. I wouldn't dive it again.


Which are the most impressive wrecks you ever located and why? 

HMS M1 because it was a submarine with a 12-inch gun.

U2504 because it was a rare electro Uboat, SS Armenian because of its association with the White Star Line and role of the US in WW1 and HSK Komet for its rarity value and because it took so long to find.



What are your plans for the future?

Find more wrecks and learn better ways of interpreting what we find.

How important is it to safeguard the legacies of the wrecks and the sailors who were lost with them? 

It is the most important aspect of what I do. Period.

You are the Winner of the Reg Vallintine Achievement Award for Historical Diving (UK, 2014). Tell us a bit more about it.

The award is given for research into the history of diving. 

I won it for my paper on the Admiralty divers who searched sunken U-boats in WW1. 

The paper can be downloaded from my academia.edu page.



What would you consider as the "holy grail" of wrecks and why? 

Whatever I am currently looking for...


I am currently working with the publishers Conway on my book on the shipwrecks of the Battle of Jutland, which will be released in May 2016.

You can find out more about Dr. McCartney's projects here

Δρ. Innes McCartney, ο άνθρωπος των 100 ναυαγίων του Α' και του Β' Παγκοσμίου Πολέμου



Ο Δρ. Innes McCartney, BA (Hons), ΜΑ, ΜΑ, PhD. Επίτιμος Επιστημονικός Συνεργάτης Τμήματος Αρχαιολογίας, Ανθρωπολογίας και Εγκληματολογικών Επιστημών στη Σχολή Θετικών Επιστημών και Τεχνολογίας του Πανεπιστημίου του Bournemouth, είναι ενάλιος αρχαιολόγος, αυτοδύτης και συγγραφέας που ειδικεύεται στην υποβρύχια και τη ναυτική ιστορία.



Ο Δόκτωρ McCartney, κατά τη διάρκεια των τελευταίων 25 ετών, έχει ειδικευτεί στην ανακάλυψη και την ταυτοποίηση ναυαγίων του εικοστού αιώνα, συμπεριλαμβανομένων των ναυαγίων της Μάχης της Γιουτλάνδης, αλλά και πολλά βρετανικά και τα γερμανικά υποβρύχια του Α' και του Β' Παγκοσμίου Πολέμου.



Εμφανίζεται τακτικά σε ντοκιμαντέρ και είναι δημοφιλής ομιλητής σε συνέδρια.

Ένα βασικό στοιχείο της δουλειάς του είναι η αλληλεπίδραση μεταξύ της αρχαιολογίας και των ιστορικών αφηγήσεων των ναυαγίων και το πως οι διαφορές που προκύπτουν, συχνά αμφισβητούν την ιστορική καταγραφή.

Ο Innes έχει ανακαλύψει πολλά ιστορικά ναυάγια και είναι επίσης ο πρώτος δύτης που καταδύθηκε και στα τρία από τα μεγαλύτερα ιστορικά ναυάγια : Το Βρετανικό (Britannic), το Λουζιτάνια (Lusitania) και το Αντρέα Ντόρια (Andrea Doria) .

O Δρ McCartney μας μιλάει για τα ευρήματα, αλλά και τα μελλοντικά του σχέδια:

Πότε άρχισες να ψάχνεις για ναυάγια και ποιο ήταν το κίνητρό σου;

Άρχισα να ψάχνω για νέα ναυάγια στις αρχές του 1990, κυρίως επειδή υπάρχουν πολλά ανεξερεύνητα ναυάγια γύρω από τη Βρετανία.

Το 1997 άρχισα να ειδικεύομαι στα υποβρύχια, βρετανικά και αγγλικά, του Α' και του Β' Παγκοσμίου και αργότερα στη Μάχη της Γιουτλάνδης, για τους ίδιους λόγους.


Κάθε ναυάγιο έχει τη δική του ιστορία. Πολλές ψυχές έχουν χαθεί στα περισσότερα από αυτά. Πώς νιώθεις όταν πλησιάζεις σε ένα ναυάγιο για πρώτη φορά;

Εξαρτάται από τις συνθήκες του ναυαγίου.

Αν πρόκειται για ένα ναυάγιο, όπως ο στόλος των γερμανικών υποβρυχίων που βυθίστηκε μετά το τέλος του πολέμου, τότε απλά τα εντοπίζω και τα ταυτοποιώ.

Άλλα όμως πολύνεκρα ναυάγια, όπως το Lusitania και  τα πολεμικά πλοία της Ναυμαχίας της Γιουτλάνδης είναι μνημεία και υγροί τάφοι και πέρα ​​από την καταγραφή τους πρέπει πάντα να τα προσεγγίζουμε με σεβασμό στη μνήμη όσων πνίγηκαν.

Για κάποιο λόγο βρήκα τρομακτικό το Lusitania. Δεν θα καταδυόμουν ξανά σε αυτό.


Ποια είναι τα πιο εντυπωσιακά ναυάγια που έχετε εντοπίσει και γιατί;

Το βρετανικό υποβρύχιο HMS Μ1, επειδή διέθετε πυροβόλο των 12 ιντσών.

Το γερμανικό υποβρύχιο U2504 επειδή ήταν ένα σπάνιο ηλεκτροκίνητο υποβρύχιο, το SS Armenia και το HSK Komet γιατί μου πήρε πολύ καιρό να το εντοπίσω.

Ποια είναι τα σχέδιά σου για το μέλλον;

Να εντοπίσω ακόμα περισσότερα ναυάγια και να βρω καλύτερους τρόπους να ερμηνεύσω την ιστορία τους.

Πόσο σημαντικό είναι να διασφαλισθεί η ιστορική μνήμη των ναυαγίων, αλλά και των ανθρώπων που χάθηκαν μαζί τους;

Είναι η πιο σημαντική πτυχή της δραστηριότητάς μου. 

Έχεις τιμηθεί με το βραβείο Reg Vallintine Achievement Award for Historical Diving (Βρετανία, 2014). Πείτε μας λίγο περισσότερα γι 'αυτό.

Το βραβείο δίνεται για την έρευνα στην ιστορία των καταδύσεων.

Τιμήθηκα με το βραβείο αυτό για την έρευνά μου για τους δύτες του βρετανικού Ναυαρχείου που έψαχναν βυθισμένα υποβρύχια τον Α' Παγκόσμιο Πόλεμο.

Η έρευνά μου βρίσκεται στη σελίδα academia.edu.



Ποιο θα χαρακτηρίζατε ως το «ιερό δισκοπότηρο» των ναυαγίων και γιατί;

Αυτό που ψάχνω σήμερα...


Συνεργάζομαι με τον εκδοτικό οίκο Conway για το βιβλίο μου για τα ναυάγια της Μάχης της Γιουτλάνδης, το οποίο θα κυκλοφορήσει το Μάιο του 2016.

Μπορείτε να μάθετε περισσότερα για τα έργα του Δόκτορος McCartney εδώ

Τρίτη 15 Δεκεμβρίου 2015

Nazi gold train: "There may be a tunnel. There is no train", according to the geological survey


It seems that the "nazi gold train" saga has reached to an end, as experts said that the geological surveys of the area in Poland did not produce any concrete evidence whatsoever.

There is no evidence that a Nazi train rumoured to be carrying gems and gold has been found in Poland, experts say.

Researchers presenting findings about the alleged discovery in the Polish town of Walbrzych said there might be a tunnel but no train.

However, one of those who claimed to have found the train said he still believed it was there.

It was claimed that the train was hidden underground near Wroclaw as Soviet forces approached in 1945.

In August, Deputy Culture Minister Piotr Zuchowski said that ground-penetrating radar images had left him "99% convinced" that a German military train was buried near Walbrzych.


He said images appeared to show a train equipped with gun turrets.

But on Tuesday, Professor Janusz Madej from Krakow's Academy of Mining said its geological survey of the site had found no evidence of a train.

"There may be a tunnel. There is no train," he told a press conference in Walbrzych.

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