Articles Archive

Desmond Doss

By Mike Haskew

On April 1, 1945, the American X Army landed at Okinawa, just 340 miles from the home islands of Japan. Read more

Deception is a vital tool in war. During World War II, the British developed a dummy tank to fool enemy surveillance planes into thinking they had more tanks than they needed, were strong where they were weak, and were preparing to attack where they were not. Read more

The First Victory

By David H. Lippman

Both sides needed reinforcements.For the Japanese and the Americans in October 1942, the battle for Guadalcanal was turning into a bottomless pit, demanding more and more scarce resources—in the air and at sea and, most importantly, on the ground. Read more

Saipan’s Maritime Heritage Trail

By Jennifer F. McKinnon & Della A. Scott-Breton

Saipan’s shallow, tropical lagoons are a veritable waterpark for World War II enthusiasts who do not mind getting wet. Read more

A Good Samaritan

By Jon Diamond

The iconic photograph the Blinded Soldier, New Guinea taken on Christmas Day 1942, reveals a wounded and barefoot Australian soldier, Private George “Dick” Whittington of the 2/10th Battalion, being led down a path through a surrounding field of tall kunai grass to an Allied field hospital at Dobodura in Papua, the eastern third of the world’s second largest island, New Guinea. Read more

Smoke from his cigar curls upward as an SS officer and his detachment pause at a road sign directing traffic toward the village of Malmedy, Belgium, during the opening hours of the German Ardennes offensive that came to be known as the Battle of the Bulge. In a field near Malmedy, troops under the command of SS Colonel Jochen Peiper committed one of the most infamous battlefield atrocities of World War II.

Adolf Hitler Sends Joachim Peiper to the Bulge

By Josh Quackenbush

During the Battle of the Bulge, the largest battle America has ever fought, Hitler chose the Sixth Panzer Army for the German juggernaut’s most important role. Read more

Union General William T. Sherman’s March to the Sea

By Mike Haskew

Union General William T. Sherman was a friend and trusted subordinate of General Ulysses S. Grant, commander of all Union armies in the field during the Civil War. Read more

A Soldier Remembers the Pearl Harbor Attack

By John Sanford Baird

At about 8 am on the morning of December 7, 1941, I stood on the third-floor deck of a red brick barracks that looked across the Schofield Barracks golf course toward the infantry barracks that housed much of the U.S. Read more

Incident on the Yangtze

By Michael D. Hull

While America and Europe struggled through economic depression and nervously watched the spread of fascism in the second half of the 1930s, the situation was far more ominous in the Far East. Read more

Simply a Butchery: Grant at Cold Harbor

By Mike Phifer

“Lee’s army is really whipped,” declared Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant to Maj. Gen. Henry Halleck on May 26, 1864. Read more

Against the Odds: Jeanette Rankin

By Martin K.A. Morgan

An Associated Press report described “a chorus of hisses and boos” that echoed through the chamber when the Congresswoman from Montana cast her vote. Read more

WWII Japan’s Reign of Ruin

By David Dean Barrett

More than seventy years after the fact, the use of atomic bombs by the United States in the final days of World War II remains one of the most controversial events of the 20th century. Read more

Sen Toku: Japan’s Underwater Aircraft Carriers

By Steven D. Lutz

As soon as Colonel James Doolittle’s B-25 raid struck Japan in April 1942, Japan sought to wreak revenge on the United States, but by 1944 devastating aerial bombings on Japan by the Americans had become all too regular. Read more

Beyond All Praise: British Defense of Crete

By Jon Diamond

Brigadier Eric Dorman-Smith, serving as a liaison to Lt. Gen. Richard O’Connor during Operation Compass, the Western Desert campaign, traveled to General Archibald Wavell’s Middle East Command headquarters in Cairo on February 12, 1941, to seek permission to advance British XIII Corps farther west to Tripoli after the total victory over the Italian Xth Army at Beda Fomm, which gave Britain and her Commonwealth Allies control of the Cyrenaican half of Libya. Read more