Assault on Oslo: The Naval Disaster in the Drøbak Strait

By Henrick O. Lunde

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

Iron Annie: The Junkers Ju-52

By William E. Welsh

Shortly before dawn on May 20, 1941, a flight of 500 transport planes took off from seven airstrips on mainland Greece. Read more

Segregation in the U.S. Military: Ruben Rivers

By Michael Haskew

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

Darter & Dace at the Battle of Leyte Gulf

By David Alan Johnson

As soon as he arrived on the bridge of the submarine USS Dace, Lt. Cmdr. Rafael C. Read more

How do you solve a problem like Hitler’s birthplace?

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

Georgy Zhukov and Russia’s ‘Great Patriotic War’

By Michael E. Haskew

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

“This is London…”: Edward R. Murrow in WWII

By Roy Morris Jr.

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

Blood for Time: 9th Armored at Bastogne and the Battle of the Bulge

By Charles Gutierrez

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

Bavarian Berchtesgaden and Its Bunkers

By L. VanLoan Naisawald

The swinging beams of searchlights and the wail of air raid sirens had preceded the crash of the guns. Read more

Battle for the Ore Deposits: The Red Army vs. Nazi Germany

By Pat McTaggart

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

WWII Ordnance: The Marauding Marder

By William E. Welsh

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

A Gamble for Peace: Ellis Zacharias & the South Pacific

By Todd Raffensperger

“I submit that it was the wrong decision. It was wrong on strategic grounds. And it was wrong on humanitarian grounds.” Read more

Unnecessary Hell: The Battle of Peleliu

By Eric Niderost

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

Top Flying Tiger: General Claire Chennault

By Michael D. Hull

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

Adolf Hitler’s Elite Bodyguard at Mortain

By Major General Michael Reynolds

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

Ernest Hemingway and the Ivy Leaguers in World War II

By Charles Whiting

During the second week of July 1944 a young, sharp Lieutenant Goldstein of the 4th Infantry Division’s 22nd Infantry Regiment was told by his boss, Colonel Buck Lanhan, “Expect a special civilian, a big war correspondent is coming to visit us. Read more

Game Review: Sebastian Frank: The Beer Hall Putsch

By Joseph Luster

While we do our best to mix it up, most of what we;
 cover in these pages falls along similar folds. Read more

Ensign Kazuo Sakamaki: Underwater Peril at Pearl Harbor

By John Perry

During the early hours of December 7, 1941, five midget submarinesof the Imperial Japanese Navy waited to enter Pearl Harbor, the anchorage of the U.S. Read more

Operation Barbarossa: Holding the Line at Smolensk

By Victor Kamenir

After crushing the first-line Soviet armies in brutal three-week cauldron battles at the border, the steamroller of German Army Group Center continued deeper into Soviet territory during the opening days of Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union, which began on June 22, 1941. Read more

The USS Panay: First Step on the Road to War

By Eric Niderost

Around 10 o’clock on the morning of December 13, 1937, New York Times correspondent Hallett Abend received an unexpected visitor: Rear Admiral Tadao Honda of the Imperial Japanese Navy. Read more