March 2017 Military Games

By Joseph Luster

Now that we’re comfortably settled into the new year, it’s time to take a look at what 2017 has in store for war gaming. Read more

Twilight of the Teutonic Order

In one of those ironies with which history abounds Polish Duke Conrad of Mazovia in 1226 invited the German Roman Catholic military order known as the Teutonic Knights to assist him in subjugating the unruly, pagan Prussians who were raiding his lands. Read more

Crossing the Rhine at Remagen

by Michael Haskew

Nine months after they splashed ashore on the beaches of Normandy, Allied troops stood along the west bank of the great Rhine River, the last natural barrier between them and the expanse of the Third Reich. Read more

King Boris III of Bulgaria

By Blaine Taylor

It was the high summer of 1943 in Eastern Europe, and World War II was going decidedly against the Third Reich, which had just suffered massive twin defeats on the Russian Front at the Battles of Stalingrad and Kursk, which many historians now believe turned the tide of war irrevocably against Nazi Germany. Read more

“Tripoli Will Be Italian”: Italy’s Colonial Conquests in Libya

By Raymond E. Bell

The Italian sailors sang “Tripoli Will Be Italian” at the rumble of the cannon as ships of the Italian naval squadron left port and sailed south to the shores of North Africa in late September 1911. Read more

Amphibious Landing at Anzio

By Mike Haskew

As the last days of 1943 slipped away, World War II in Italy ground to a miserable stalemate. Read more

A Burmese Jungle Masterstroke: Commonwealth Troops in Meiktila

by Jon Latimer

The battles of Kohima, Imphal, and the Admin Box saw the comprehensive defeat of the Japanese armies seeking to invade India during 1944 and sent them reeling back into Burma in early 1945, pursued by the revitalized British 14th Army under Lt. Read more

Soviet Partisans: The Rag-Tag Scourge Along WWII’s Eastern Front

by Pat Mctaggart

The concept of Soviet partisans participating in Russia’s wars was nothing new in 1941. During Napoleon’s invasion of the country in 1812, small bands of civilians harassed the French and their allies both before and after the retreat from Moscow. Read more

France’s Nightmare in Indochina

By Steven M. Johnson

The waters of the South China Sea shimmered in the sunlight on the morning of April 15, 1847. Read more

Terrible Tide at Tarawa: Interview with Stan Bowen

By John Wukovits

Stan Bowen spent the entire war in the U.S. Navy as a pharmacist’s mate, first in the operation at Tarawa, then Saipan and Tinian. Read more

Eleanor Roosevelt: American Ambassador to the South Pacific

by Glenn Barnett

On Sunday December 7, 1941, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt hosted a luncheon for 31 people at the White House. Read more

A living link to a horrific past.

Over the past few months, several stories with a World War II connection have slipped into the news. One of the most compelling was about a German TV documentary called A German Life. Read more

Operation Sea Lion: Hitler’s Cancelled Invasion of Britain

By Mark Simmons

Major Graf Von Kielmansegg, an officer in Germany’s  1st Armored Division based near Orleans, France, was dragged from a cinema on the night of August 28, 1940, and told to report to his chief of staff. Read more

Rommel’s Failed Gamble: The “Six Days’ Race”

By Arnold Blumberg

An old cliché admonishes, “Bad things always come in threes.” Whether it was thought of as a law of nature or merely coincidence, a rapid succession of events in North Africa during the summer of 1942 seemed to confirm this widely held notion among the officers and men of the British Eighth Army. Read more

The Azimuth “Smart” Bombs of World War II

By Joseph Frantiska, Jr.

As soon as one caveman threw a rock in anger at another, the human race took a giant step forward in warfare. Read more

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