Eastern Europe
May 1, 1944. Marshal of the Soviet Union Ivan Stepanovich Konev had a right to be pleased with himself and his men as he gazed at the maps spread before him. Read more
Eastern Europe
By 1944, many top generals in Adolf Hitler’s army understood the war was lost and that they had better make arrangements to ensure their safety. Read more
Eastern Europe
Although the great Crusades were over by 1309 ad, one old crusading order continued to evolve, flourish, and make enemies—the Knights Hospitallers of St. Read more
Eastern Europe
Poland does not always get the recognition it deserves for helping to defeat Nazi Germany and end the war in Europe. Read more
Eastern Europe
The winter of 1944-45 saw Nazi Germany in a grim position. The Allies were well established in Europe and advancing quickly. Read more
Eastern Europe
Black puffs from flak bursts began blossoming in the air around Lieutenant Tom Oliver’s Consolidated B-24 Liberator bomber high over the town of Bor, Yugoslavia. Read more
Eastern Europe
Thousands of dead Turkish soldiers choked the river and littered its bank. It was the fall of 1697 and the young Imperial Field Marshall, Prince Eugene of Savoy, had just vanquished the Ottoman army at Zenta (or Senta), on Hungary’s River Tiza. Read more
Eastern Europe
By Steven Karras
Prologue:Once they escaped from Nazi-dominated Europe, hundreds of German and Austrian Jews joined the American and British military to help bring an end to the Nazis’ reign of terror. Read more
Eastern Europe
Early in 1944, German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, the defeated hero of North Africa and now head of Army Group B in France, was tasked with strengthening the Atlantic Wall defenses against Allied invasion. Read more
Eastern Europe
The men and women who imagined and then built the atomic bomb thought they were doing something different from what makers of “conventional” weapons did. Read more
Eastern Europe
No sooner had the last shot of World War II been fired than a new, different kind of conflict began. Read more
Eastern Europe
British historian Alan Clark wrote in his book Barbarossa, “Roosevelt’s betrayal of Eastern Europe, whether out of calculation or gullibility, is so notorious as to need no further recapitulation.” Read more
Eastern Europe
In 1942, careworn Nazi Führer Adolf Hitler lamented to his military intimates at his Wolf’s Lair headquarters near Rastenburg in East Prussia, “If I had known that there were so many of them, I would have had second thoughts about invading!” Read more
Eastern Europe
Within hours of the entry of Great Britain and France into World War II on September 3, 1939, the British liner SS Athenia was sunk by a German U-boat off the northwestern coast of Ireland, with the loss of 112 dead, including 28 American citizens. Read more
Eastern Europe
In August 1942, with Operation Barbarossa at its height, the invader in coal shuttle helmet and field gray uniform crawled on his elbows through brush up the hillock, pistol in his right hand. Read more
Eastern Europe
In 376 AD the Goths appeared on the lower Danube frontier of the Roman Empire. They came as a whole tribe, with warriors, women and children. Read more
Eastern Europe
One of the most enduring questions emerging from World War II is the reaction of the West, and particularly the United States, to the plight of the Jews as they faced Hitler’s “Final Solution.” Read more
Eastern Europe
Mention spies and most people will think of James Bond or Ethan Hunt from Mission Impossible, but most people would struggle to name some notable female spies—apart perhaps from Mata Hari—yet they have always existed. Read more
Eastern Europe
Letters home provide us with a glimpse into the daily lives of soldiers during the best and worst times. Read more
