Treaty of Versailles

V-E Day: Victory at Last for World War II’s Allies

By Flint Whitlock

Within his reinforced concrete bunker, 50 feet below the garden of the New Reichs Chancellery on Berlin’s Wilhelmstrasse, German dictator Adolf Hitler, his soon-to-be bride Eva Braun, and several hundred friends, SS guards, and staff members could feel the concussion and hear the unending drumroll of thousands of Soviet artillery shells reducing the already-battered capital city of the Third Reich to unrecognizable rubble. Read more

Under Van Deman, the Military Intelligence Section had wide powers of intelligence collection and investigation.

Treaty of Versailles

Famous Military Spies: Ralph Van Deman

By Peter Kross

In the long history of American military intelligence, the names that come to mind most often are those of Nathan Hale, Benedict Arnold, Herbert Yardley, and William Donovan. Read more

When did World War I end? Ostensibly, it's an easy question to answer. However, the end of the conflict was by no means absolute by the 1919 Treaty of Versailles.

Treaty of Versailles

When Did World War I End?

by Mike Haskew

At least ostensibly, World War I ended first with the cessation of armed hostilities between the warring powers at the famed “11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month,” that is November 11, 1918. Read more

Treaty of Versailles

The Real Adolf Hitler

By Michael E. Haskew

Nearly three-quarters of a century distant from the end of World War II and the defeat of Nazi Germany, one may conclude with confidence that few images of mankind’s violent history stir greater revulsion and, yes, lingering fear than that of a glowering Adolf Hitler—steely eyes gazing outward from a page or the glow of a computer screen. Read more

Treaty of Versailles

Polish Ciphers and the Miracle on the Vistula

By Arnold Blumberg

The Russo-Polish War of 1919-1920 was the most portentous event facing post-Versailles Europe. It was not just the continuation of a centuries-long contest between Russia and Poland to determine which would dominate eastern Europe, but a struggle involving a new ideology—communism—which the Bolshevik regime in Moscow had to spread throughout the Continent to survive. Read more

Thousands of horses used in WWII German cavalry and as pack animals were killed in combat or slaughtered by starving soldiers.

Treaty of Versailles

WWII German Cavalry: Horses of the Blitz

by G. Paul Garson

By 1939 the German Reich possessed 3,800,000 horses to be used in WWII German cavalry while 885,000 were initially called to the Wehrmacht as saddle, draft, and pack animals. Read more

Treaty of Versailles

Black POWs Under the Nazis

By G. Paul Garson

On May 13, 1940, the German army invaded France, crossing the River Meuse at Sedan. Upon France’s capitulation, the Franco-German armistice was signed on June 22, and a portion of France was placed under German occupation, with the remaining area ostensibly left to its own, with the Vichy collaborationist government in control. Read more

Germans became interested in rocketry because rockets were not denied them by the Versailles Treaty. Through the 1930s they got a huge head start over the democracies in the use of rockets as weapons of war.

Treaty of Versailles

Germany’s Deadly V-2 Rockets

By David Alan Johnson

Sixty-four-year-old Robert Stubbs slowly walked across the playing field of the Staveley Road School in the West London suburb of Chiswick. Read more

With the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary in Sarajevo, World War 1 rapidly engulfed the continent of Europe.

Treaty of Versailles

How World War 1 Reshaped The Course of Europe

by Mike Haskew

On June 28, 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary and his wife, Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg, visited the city of Sarajevo and were assassinated by Gavrilo Princip, a 20-year-old Yugoslav nationalist. Read more