The Infamous Thai Declaration

It is a great story, and well known that in January 1942 Thailand’s ambassador to the United States refused to deliver Thailand’s declaration of war to the U.S. Read more

The Bridge at Remagen

By the end of January 1945, Hitler’s desperate Ardennes Offensive had ground to a halt. Though the last-ditch push to the west had inflicted heavy casualties on American forces, it was the German army that suffered irreplaceable losses in men, equipment, and materiel and was no longer capable of offensive operations. Read more

The Last Long Ride: Wilson’s Selma Raid

As reveille sounded through the Union encampments on the south bank of the Tennessee River between Eastport, Mississippi, and Chickasaw, Alabama, on March 22, 1865, sleepy Federal troopers roused themselves, built fires, and cooked breakfast. Read more

Lifting the Japanese Military

Japanese military successes in 1941 and 1942 shocked the West. Behind those successes lay a logistics effort not often appreciated, that of shipping. Read more

Culloden Moor: Bonnie Prince Charlie vs. the Duke of Cumberland

John William O’Sullivan watched the Duke of Cumberland’s army as it stretched out in front of him, lined up in battle order on the northeastern side of Drummossie Moor, a mile or so from Culloden House. Read more

Cloak and Dagger Mounties

In the early morning of Monday, November 9, 1942, the german U-boat U-518 surfaced off the bleak Quebec coast. Read more

The Plan to Destroy the Albemarle

Lieutenant William B. Cushing’s Union Navy steam launch chugged up the dark Roanoke River late in 1864. Read more

A Soldier Remembers the Pearl Harbor Attack

At about 8 am on the morning of December 7, 1941, I stood on the third-floor deck of a red brick barracks that looked across the Schofield Barracks golf course toward the infantry barracks that housed much of the U.S. Read more

The Battle of Franklin: John Bell Hood’s Catastrophic Defeat in Tennessee

On the morning of November 30, 1864, Fountain Branch Carter, a 67-year-old farmer, planter, and Confederate sympathizer, watched as his front yard in Franklin, Tennessee, filled up with Union soldiers pitching tents and starting campfires. Read more

Lessons at St. Nazaire

Even today, they don’t like to talk about the St. Nazaire raid.

Compared to the thousand-plane raids that went deep into Germany later in World War II, the January 3, 1943, bomber mission from England to the coast of German-occupied France was small and spanned only a modest distance. Read more

Continental Army Captain Nathan Hale

On the night of September 16, 1776, young Nathan Hale, a captain in the Continental Army, set out across Long Island Sound from his native Connecticut on the armed sloop Schuyler. Read more

Australia’s Owen Gun

A casual observer of World War II photographs after 1943 will often notice slouch hat- or beret-wearing Australian “diggers,” or armed Melanesian natives in the Australian Constabulary battalions, slogging through the muck and jungle of New Guinea, Bougainville, New Britain, and Borneo carrying a rather odd-looking weapon with a vertical top-mounting magazine. Read more

Trench Art

Art is in the eye of the beholder, of course, but for those who collect militaria there is a special kind of art that requires a special kind of appreciation. Read more

Chris Kyle’s Precision Rifles

From the sniper’s perch, the city of Fallujah, Iraq, on November 7, 2004, looked dusty and brown. Most of the buildings were squat, two-story affairs, with the occasional minaret or domed mosque sitting above them. Read more

Patton’s War for Sicily’s Beaches

By Kevin M. Hymel

“Only God and the Navy can do anything until we hit the shore,” Lt. Gen. George S. Read more

Royalist Reckoning at Naseby

Late on the evening of June 13, 1645, King Charles I convened a hurried council with senior officers of the Royalist army at the village of Market Harborough in England’s East Midlands. Read more

Fork-tailed Devil

Technically and visibly, it was unique among World War II fighters. The P-38 stood on tricycle landing gear, with its twin Allison engines in separate booms and the pilot sitting in his cockpit in a cupola between the booms. Read more

Civil War Fieldworks

Ever since Julius Caesar’s legions conquered Gaul, opposing armies have built temporary fortifications, or fieldworks, during campaigns in the open countryside. Read more

Accused of insulting Hitler, Jackie the dog’s fate was superseded by the German invasion of the Soviet Union.

At the height of its power and with the Third Reich on the verge of initiating its colossal invasion of the Soviet Union, high-ranking members of the Nazi intelligence community literally went to the dogs. Read more

Warsaw Rising: The Battle for Poland’s Capital

Polish General Tadeusz “Bor” Komorowski knew the fight for the Old Town Warsaw was over. His last hope—and that of his army—was to slip out unnoticed and move the headquarters position to the town center. Read more