This Date in History: November 18

 

On Saturday, November 18, 1944, the U.S. Army hanged Private Curtis L. Maxey at the Peninsular Base Section Stockade Number 1 at Aversa, Italy for the crime of rape.  (The Fifth Field: The Story of the 96 American Soldiers Sentenced to Death and Executed in Europe and North Africa in World War II)

On Saturday, November 18, 1944, official executioner Major Mortimer H. Christian hanged U.S. Army Tech 5 Richard B. Scott and Private William D. Pennyfeather at Fort du Roule at Cherbourg, France for the crime of rape.  (The Fifth Field: The Story of the 96 American Soldiers Sentenced to Death and Executed in Europe and North Africa in World War II)

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Dr. Rudolf Diels, first chief of the Prussian State Police under Nazi rule – an organization that later became the Gestapo, born December 16, 1900 in Berghausen/Taunus, dismissed in 1934, arrested and placed in a Gestapo prison after the 20 July 1944 plot against Hitler, author of his memoirs, Lucifer Ante Portas, died in a hunting accident November 18, 1957 near Katzenelnbogen/Rheinland-Pfalz, on concentration camps:

“Years after my departure from Berlin I heard of the existence of some camps of which I had no knowledge in 1933.”  (2,000 Quotes From Hitler’s 1,000-Year Reich)