At the Costly Anzio Beachhead

By Christopher Miskimon

The morning of February 16, 1944, dawned foggy over the Via Anziate near Anzio, Italy. The 45th Infantry Division’s 2nd Battalion, 157th Infantry Regiment had advanced overnight to take positions on the west side of the roadway, assuming its place on the front lines. Read more

The Winter War’s Classic Victory

By David H. Lippman

The word itself was bland. “Motti” is Finnish for a “bundle of sticks,” but the theory was how the tiny armies of Finland would deal with the long columns of Soviet troops that had been storming down the roads and logging the trails of that nation’s sub-Arctic wilderness since the Russo-Finland War broke out on November 29, 1939. Read more

“The Enemy Must Be Annihilated”

By Patrick J. Chaisson

It was an amphibious commander’s worst nightmare—swarms of enemy tanks, spitting death with every cannon shell and machine-gun burst, smashing through the American beachhead. Read more

World War II Games for the Holidays

By Joseph Luster

The original Steel Division first brought its real-time strategizing to PCs back in May of 2017, putting players in intense battles throughout Normandy, France, during World War II. Read more

Ernie Pyle: Foxhole Dateline

By Michael D. Hull

If General Omar N. Bradley was “the GIs’ general,” then their best friend in World War II was undoubtedly a small, stringy reporter with graying red hair from Indiana who shared their foxholes and hardships while slogging across five battlefronts. Read more

Wolf of the Atlantic

By Christopher J. Chlon

Fregattenkapitän (Commander) Otto Kretschmer sank or damaged more Allied ships than any other U-boat commander during World War II. Read more

The Tide Turns at El Alamein

By Michael D. Hull

After more than two wearying years of seesaw fighting across the North African desert, the outlook was bleak for the British Eighth Army in the early summer of 1942. Read more

Seven Meetings to D-Day

By Kevin M. Hymel

The invasion force was ready. All across the United Kingdom men waited in more than 5,000 ships and hundreds of landing craft. Read more

War at Sea

By Christopher Miskimon

Gunther Prien grew up at sea, joining the merchant service as a cabin boy at 15. In October 1939, with World War II just a month old, the 31-year-old Prien stood in the conning tower of U-47, a German U-boat plying the North Sea toward the United Kingdom. Read more

Dying Civil War Generals’ Last Words

By Roy Morris, Jr.

Although undeniably brave and noble, Union General Robert McCook’s parting comments as he lay dying of a gunshot wound in a stranger’s bed in south-central Tennessee did not achieve the immortality of other famous last words by Civil War generals. Read more

A broad perspective of the rush of the third battalion of Garde upon a churchyard defended by Austrians in the afternoon phase of the battle.

Frederick the Great at Leuthen: The Oblique Order

by Vince Hawkins

Usually considered to be a single maneuver, Frederick the Great’s “oblique attack” or “oblique order” was in fact two distinct grand tactical maneuvers, each of which could be executed separately or in combination as demonstrated at Leuthen. Read more

The Costly Kyushu Invasion of Operation Olympic?

By Sam McGowan

During the more than half a century since the end of World War II, there has been much speculation about what would have happened if President Harry Truman had not dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the invasion of Japan had actually taken place. Read more