Colonel John Allen and the River Raisin Debacle

By Stuart W. Sanders

It had been eight years since Jane Logan Allen’s husband, Colonel John Allen, had departed with his regiment. Read more

Ultimate General: Civil War

By Joseph Luster

Back in 2014, developer Game-Labs released a nice little strategy game called Ultimate General: Gettysburg, which was met with generally high praise. Read more

One of the last Arizona survivors passed away recently.

When Raymond Haerry passed away last September the quite exclusive club to which he belonged dwindled to five remaining members. Haerry was one of the few men who had served aboard the battleship USS Arizona in Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and survived the Japanese attack and subsequent explosion that devastated the warship and killed 1,177 U.S. Read more

Command of the Air: The Allied Bombing of Germany

by Gerald Astor

Behind the strategy that governed the American air war in Europe during World War II lay events and ideas that dated back to World War I and the 1920s. Read more

P-47 Thunderbolts at the Battle of the Bulge

By Robert F. Dorr & Thomas D. Jones

The captured German pilot was cocky and boastful. He had just parachuted into the American airfield, now lit up by the fires of burning Republic P-47 Thunderbolts, a sprinkling of bright torches amid the gray January gloom and the dirty white snow. Read more

Top Secret Missions: Liberating General George S. Patton’s Son-In-Law

By Jonathan F. Keiler

In the wan North African light on February 14, 1943, Lt. Col. John Waters watched columns of dust rise from the east. Read more

Soviet Soldiers by Sea: The Soviet Naval Infantry

By Victor Kamenir

The year 1943 began badly for the German Army on the Eastern Front. After a great struggle at Stalingrad, German Field Marshal Friedrich Paulus surrendered himself and his Sixth Army on January 31. Read more

General Andrei Vlasov & Hitler’s Third Reich

By Wil Deac

Andrei Andreievich Vlasov, one of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin’s favorite generals, played a key role in saving Moscow from Adolf Hitler’s armies during the winter of 1941-1942. Read more

All Alone: The HMS Glowworm

By Robert Barr Smith

The great waves were huge and black, greedy tentacles of the North Sea clawing and snatching at the battered ships struggling in the icy dark. Read more

The Wehrmacht in France: Decisions in a Time of Debacle

By Brooke C. Stoddard

May 10, 1940, marked the beginning of the war in western Europe. Nazi-controlled Germany invaded Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg, and France. Read more

Battle of the Bismarck Sea: A 15-Minute War in the South Pacific

By Sam McGowan

Most military historians consider the Battle of Midway to be the turning point of World War II in the Pacific. Read more

First Strike Against Japanese Industry

By Phil Scearce

Consolidated B-24 Liberator bomber crews of the U.S. 11th Bombardment Group spent the first three months of 1943 organizing on Hawaiian airfields and flying practice and patrol missions around the islands. Read more

“Convoy is to Scatter”: Arctic Convoy Disaster

By David H. Lippman

British Prime Minister Winston Churchill had made the promise to Soviet Premier Josef Stalin, and Admiral Sir John Tovey of the Royal Navy had to keep it: to sail three convoys loaded with critical supplies from Britain to Russia every two months, with 25 to 35 ships in each convoy. Read more

Battle of Guningtou: The Republic of China Fights For Survival

By Edward F. Chen

In October 1949, the government of the Republic of China faced the greatest crisis in its history. Read more

Battle of Berlin: Why it Became the Death Knell for Hitler’s Third Reich

By David H. Lippman

The Battle of Berlin began with what a German colonel called “a dull, continuous roar of thunder from the east.” Read more

A Tale of Two Famiglie: Resistance and Atrocities During the Italian Resistance

By Ed Emering

In March 1940, Benito Mussolini met with Adolf Hitler near the Brenner Pass on the border between Austria and Italy. Read more

No Deserts for Il Duce: The Italian Rout in East Africa

By John W. Osborn Jr.

“I am not a collector of deserts,” Mussolini declared regarding his imperial ambitions. Instead, he would be a loser of them, most publicly in North Africa and, in one of World War II’s least-known campaigns, in East Africa. Read more

The Italian Army in Russia: from Barbarossa to Stalingrad

By James I. Marino

The most successful Italian Army of World War II was a political creation of dictator Benito Mussolini. Read more

Ordeal at Outpost Snipe: Defiant Stand at El Alamein

By Christopher Miskimon

The war in North Africa flung vast armies across the arid deserts of Libya and Egypt for two long years, beginning with the Italian invasion of Egypt in September 1940. Read more

Debacle at Dakar

By David H. Lippman

The director flicked his finger, and General Charles de Gaulle began reading his address into the British Broadcasting Corporation’s microphone, speaking from London to his defeated countrymen across the English Channel, calling upon them to continue resistance in the face of overwhelming German supremacy. Read more