This Date in History: August 8

 

Richard Walter Darré, SS-Obergruppenführer, born July 14, 1895 in Belgrano/Buenos Aires, Argentina, Reich Agricultural Leader, Reich Food Minister, Nazi agricultural expert, member of the post-World War I “Berlin Freikorps,” dismissed in 1942 for incompetence, winner Nazi Golden Party Badge and War Service Cross 1st Class, sentenced at Nürnberg to five years, died on August 8, 1953 in Munich, said of Martin Bormann: “However one tried to prevent it, he always found some reason to sit down beside you.”  (2,000 Quotes From Hitler’s 1,000-Year Reich)

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Heinrich “Hein” Reimers was killed in action on August 8, 1944 near Saint-Aignan-de-Cramesnil, Normandy serving in the 2nd Company of the 101st SS Heavy Panzer Detachment, as the driver for Michael Wittmann, when their Tiger 007 was engaged by Sherman Firefly tanks from Squadron A of the 1^st Northamptonshire Yeomanry.  Undiscovered for four decades, the German War Graves Commission disinterred the bodies of five men in the early 1980s and found Heinrich Reimers’ identity disc with one of the corpses.  His remains are located at the German War Cemetery in La Cambe, Normandy in Plot 47, Row 3, in Grave 120G, along with the rest of the crew.  (Waffen-SS Tiger Crews at Kursk: The Men of SS Panzer Regiments 1, 2 & 3 in Operation Citadel, July 5-15, 1943)