When British diplomat Lord Halifax arrived at the Berghof in the Bavarian Alps on November 19, 1937, he mistook German Reich Chancellor Adolf Hitler for a footman and was about to hand him his coat and hat when Foreign Minister Baron Constantin von Neurath hissed, “The Führer! Read more
It was fated to be the last wartime conference of the Big Three Allies of World War II, but it was the first not attended by the late American President Franklin D. Read more
When the German invasion of Norway was set in motion on April 9, 1940, much of the planning for the event had been done on a shoestring. Read more
The tempo of war planning intensified for the invasion of Europe during the early months of 1944. Finally, at daylight on June 6, 1944, Allied infantry stormed ashore along the German-held Normandy coast. Read more
During the early morning hours of October 26, 1942, several hours before the sun came up, Admiral William F. Read more
The second week in April 1940 was a stormy period in the North and Norwegian Seas. The weather deteriorated during April 7, with low cloud cover and fog. Read more
Shortly before dawn on May 20, 1941, a flight of 500 transport planes took off from seven airstrips on mainland Greece. Read more
On July 26, 1948, President Harry Truman issued Executive Order No. 9981, which stated in part, “It is hereby declared to be the policy of the President that there shall be equality of treatment and opportunity for all persons in the armed services without regard to race, color, religion, or national origin.” Read more
As soon as he arrived on the bridge of the submarine USS Dace, Lt. Cmdr. Rafael C. Read more
It’s a plain, old, pale yellow, three-story building in a small town (fewer than 20,000 inhabitants) north of Salzburg, Austria. Yet this architecturally unremarkable building stands in the center of a recent political firestorm. Read more
The Great Patriotic War, as World War II came to be known in the Soviet Union, provided the stage upon which Marshal Georgy Zhukov achieved lasting fame. Read more
On the evening of August 7, 1937, two neophyte radio broadcasters went to dinner together at the luxurious Adlon Hotel in Berlin, Germany. Read more
In December 1944, the Ardennes front or “ghost front” was an area where either veteran Allied units rotated in to rest and recover from terrible combat losses or where new, untested units arrived to gather some combat experience from the minor skirmishes that would occasionally flare up. Read more
The swinging beams of searchlights and the wail of air raid sirens had preceded the crash of the guns. Read more
At first, it was all about the ore. Magnesium, iron, and manganese ore were the lifeblood of German industry, especially the armaments industry, which used the iron and manganese to produce steel for Hitler’s war machine. Read more
On the second day of Adolf Hitler’s bold invasion of Russia in June 1941, the Germans were confronted with one of their most glaring shortcomings in weapons and armament. Read more
“I submit that it was the wrong decision. It was wrong on strategic grounds. And it was wrong on humanitarian grounds.” Read more
In the predawn hours of September 15, 1944, the official start of the two-month Battle of Peleliu, a powerful fleet of U.S. Read more
Laden with 500-pound bombs and incendiaries, 10 Japanese twin-engine Mitsubishi Ki21 Sally bombers took off from the Hanoi airfield in Indochina on the morning of Saturday, December 20, 1941. Read more
By the morning of July 27, 1944, General Omar Bradley’s First U.S. Army had won the “Battle of the Hedgerows” in Normandy and stood ready to break out to the south. Read more
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