My name is Samuel de Korte. As a historian I specialize in black American soldiers during the Second World War and Dutch soldiers during the Napoleonic wars. Past projects include writing the history of the 614th Tank Destroyer Battalion, the first segregated combat unit to win the Distinguished Unit Citation. I translated the memoirs of a Dutch officer that served with Napoleon in Russia in 1812 and I wrote a book about the Tuskegee Airmen. In 2025 a book about the 452nd Anti-Aircraft Artillery Battalion. Currently I am working on a book about the 777th Field Artillery Battalion.
Currently, there is a gap in the existing historiography. Black American soldiers are systematically ignored, forgotten, or tokenized. To acknowledge and address the contributions of these brave warriors, it is important to share the history of Black American soldiers during the Second World War.
For the Militology channel on Youtube I write scripts about a variety of topics. One of the scripts, which I have written, is about the 614th Tank Destroyer Battalion.
As a historian, I truly believe that history should be freely accessible. During my research about Black American soldiers during the Second World War, I came across various sources, which I had digitized and are now publicly available.
In the movie Jugend by filmmaker Alessandro Pepe about the SS-division Hitlerjugend the relationship with a SS soldier and his girlfriend at home is examined. The twist at the end of the film is -spoiler alert- that his girlfriend has already died in an Allied bombardment. In this article we will examine the mentioned numbers to see if these are correct and what the consequences of this are.
