Battle of Arras: Rommel’s View

South of the crossroads of Arras in the Pas de Calais region of France, British and German troops are buried alongside each other. Read more

Sir John Dill and Winston Churchill: A Clash in Strategy

In describing the relationship between British General Sir John Dill and his political superior, Prime Minister Winston Churchill, Dill’s biographer, Alex Danchev, noted, “It was … an association strikingly lacking in empathy or understanding, etched in fundamental disagreement, and scarred by a mutual disaffection welling up at times into personal distaste.” Read more

Operation Drumbeat’s Devastating Toll on Allied Shipping

After refueling in the mid-Atlantic and suffering bow damage from being rammed by a tanker, a 769-ton German submarine reached its destination, the American East Coast, early on Monday, May 4, 1942. Read more

Fighting on the Volkhov Front: The First Soviet Counteroffensive at Leningrad

The great city of Leningrad was being strangled, its people dying by the thousands.

Death came in many ways. Read more

Melee for the Manhay-Grandmenil Sector in the Bulge

The young men of Companies H and I of 3rd Battalion, 517th Parachute Regiment (PIR) were about to move out for their assault on the crossroad town of Manhay, Belgium. Read more

Zemke’s Wolfpack: Famed P-47 Fighter Group

On May 4, 1943, the U.S. Army Air Forces’ 56th Fighter Group was ordered to meet a formation of Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bombers returning from a run over Antwerp, Belgium. Read more

Wingate’s Operation Thursday: Genius or Ineffectual?

The interest in Brigadier Orde Wingate, founder and leader of the Commonwealth Chindits or Special Force, persists to this day, more than 75 years after his fiery death after his B-25 Mitchell bomber crashed in the hills of India. Read more

Dudley Clarke’s Commandos

After the British Expeditionary Force’s (BEF) debacle at Dunkirk in northern France in May 1940, the new prime minister, Winston Churchill, needed a novel type of fighting force to strike back at Nazi Europe. Read more

Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler’s Drive to the Don

Rostov was the key to the Caucasus and the rich Soviet oil fields that lay along the Black and Caspian Seas. Read more

Seaplane Destroyers in the Pacific

The Fletcher-class destroyer was one of the finest, most versatile warships of World War II. More than 170 of them were built, a figure that far exceeds the total of any other type of warship of the era. Read more

Game Review: Battlefield 1

One of the most interesting aspects of Battlefield 1’s initial announcement was how oddly novel the entire concept seemed. Read more

Greeting the Liberators: The Civilians of Normandy

The Germans were gone. After more than four years of occupation, the soldiers of the Wehrmacht had been evicted from France’s Normandy region by the American and British armies. Read more

Developing the Atomic Bomb

In 1938 the Italian Fascist government of Benito Mussolini began enacting a series of laws intended to intimidate, persecute, and otherwise control virtually every aspect of the lives of Italian Jews. Read more

Roman Disaster at Adrianople

After five hours of continuous slaughter, an eerie calm descended on the blood-soaked plain near the Roman city of Adrianople. Read more

Disaster At Dieppe

 “Don’t worry men—it’ll be a piece of cake!”

So declared Maj. Gen. John Hamilton “Ham” Roberts while briefing the officers of his 2nd Canadian Infantry Division on the eve of the large-scale Allied raid at Dieppe—a small port city on the northern French coast between Le Havre and Boulogne—scheduled for August 19, 1942. Read more

WWII Book Reviews: From Defeat to Victory

The Battle of Sangshak is one of those unknown fights that laid thegroundwork for the subsequent Allied victory in World War II. Read more

Archduke Charles: Napoleon’s Worthy Opponent

To say the Austrians despised the French after they were vanquished by them in 1805 at Ulm and Austerlitz is an understatement. Read more

A Graveyard of Ships at Bikini Atoll.

At the dawn of the Cold War, the United States probed the potential destructive power of nuclear weapons, particularly their effect on warships. Read more

Reconnaissance Behind Enemy Lines in Vietnam

Special Forces Sergeant Nick Brokhausen awoke to the taste of dirt in his mouth and the crump of exploding mortar bombs. Read more

King John the Tyrant

The tension between the king and his barons always seemed to be ready to explode into civil war during the reign of the three Angevin kings of England. Read more