The Second Great War (and the Weather that Defined it)

Weather has long played a vital role in human history. Kublai Khan’s attempted conquest of Japan was foiled when his invasion fleet was destroyed by a typhoon. Read more

Guns for Victory: The Watervliet Arsenal in World War II

President Franklin D. Roosevelt electrified the world when on December 29, 1940, he called on America to become “the great arsenal of democracy.” Read more

Sinking the Wilhelm Gustloff

Snow flurries swirled out of the darkness over the Baltic Sea. Chunks of ice floated on the water, and lookouts shivered at their posts. Read more

Japan’s Underwater Aircraft Carriers

Lieutenant Commander Stephen L. Johnson had a problem on his hands; a very large problem. His Balao-class submarine, the Segundo, had just picked up a large radar contact on the surface about 100 miles off Honshu, one of Japan’s home islands, heading south toward Tokyo.  Read more

How Politics, Blunders, and Betrayal in the European Theater Shaped the Postwar Order

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

“Flak Was Our Worst Enemy”: Wilbur Bowers’ Air War Over Europe

For 33 months beginning in 1942, the U.S. Eighth Air Force and its precision daylight bombing strikes against German targets in Europe tried to pound the Third Reich into submission. Read more

The Fall of Beijing, 1937

Most people think that World War II broke out on September 1, 1939, when the Wehrmacht crossed the German-Polish border. Read more

Armored Strike at Nomonhan

General Georgi Zhukov had arrived at the Mongolia-Manchuria border in the early morning hours of June 5, 1939, after a grueling three-day trip from Moscow. Read more

The Polish II Corps in Italy

Despite the Nazi conquest of European nations during World War II, individual soldiers from the occupied countries rose again to fight the German Army, and the largest army in exile to fight the Germans was Polish. Read more

The Battle of Kiev: How it Brought About an End to Nazi Terror

It was less than a month since the great blood letting in the Orel salient in July 1943 had taken place, and just some months to go before the infamous Second Battle of Kiev. Read more

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