The Battle of Perryville: Death on a Dry River

For Union Lieutenant Harrison Millard, it was an unsettling development. An aide on the staff of Brig. Gen. Read more

Creating the OSS: FDR’s Network of Personal Spies

One of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s longtime interests was the hidden world of espionage. In the months before the United States entered World War II, the commander-in-chief was dabbling in the covert world of intelligence-gathering, using a number of trusted personal friends as his own private eyes and ears around the globe. Read more

The USS DuPage: Braving Kamikazes From Air And Sea

The mighty invasion armada for the main thrust at Luzon in the Philippine Islands was being assembled on December 28, 1944. Read more

Merrill’s Marauders Fought Tenaciously In Burma

A series of swift victories took Japanese troops to the gates of India in 1941-1942 when British and Indian units fell back to the Assam hills northwest of Burma. Read more

German Merchant Raider Kormoran & HMAS Sydney’s Deadly Duel

In November 1941, about 150 miles off the west coast of Australia, a singular naval battle was fought that had great implications for all struggles at sea, past and future. Read more

“Red” Mantini: Hero Of The 24th Infantry Division In Philippines

Angelo J. “Red” Mantini was hardly an angel growing up in the small coal-mining towns of western Pennsylvania in the 1930s. Read more

Battlefield: Bad Company 2 – Breaking Down the Walls

There’s currently a blazing hot war taking place within the very feed of our television advertising spectrum. If you haven’t noticed or, better yet, aren’t one to waste as much time as me watching TV, this is a head-to-head battle between two larger-than-life war game franchises. Read more

The German American Bund: Confessions of a Nazi Spy

CONFIDENTIAL TO LEADERS

It is a well-known fact, of course, that any movement needs something to dramatize it, to appeal to the public’s sense of sensationalism. Read more

The Sinking of Scharnhorst

She was a beautiful ship, long and sleek and very fast. She was christened Scharnhorst,named for Prussian General Gerhard Scharnhorst,one of the revered founders of the Prussian Army. Read more

General Joseph “Vinegar Joe” Stilwell

General Joseph Stilwell was one of the United States’ best military commanders, yet in the course of America’s involvement in World War II he never led U.S. Read more

The Fieseler Storch Fi 156

On March 12, 1939, Heroes’ Memorial Day (or Veterans Day) in the Nazi Third Reich, the thousands of onlookers at the giant annual parade in Berlin were treated to an unusual sight as a small monoplane landed on the Unter den Linden between Hermann Göring’s State Opera House and the Neue Wache (New Guardshouse). Read more

William Nolan: Remembering the Bataan Death March

Staff Sergeant William Nolan dared not raise his hopes this August day in 1945, but something unusual was unfolding. Read more

Sara Hauptman: Resistance Fighter And Holocaust Survivor

When the Nazis paraded in triumph down the Champs Elysees on June 14, 1940, Sara Hauptman shook her fist at them from the crowded Parisian sidewalk. Read more

USS Houston And HMAS Perth Stood Tall At the Battle Of Sunda Strait

The haggard American sailors aboard the limping cruiser hoped that the journey upon which they had just embarked was the long-expected voyage back to the United States. Read more

The Fall Of Shanghai: Prelude To The Rape Of Nanking & WWII

In the 1930s Shanghai was in its heyday, a teeming metropolis of some 3.5 million people. The great city was a fascinating blend of cultures, its very existence refuting Rudyard Kipling’s famous aphorism. Read more

Jacqueline Cochran: Blazing A Trail For Women In Aviation Service

On September 28, 1939, the day after Warsaw fell to the German Army, American aviatrix Jacqueline Cochran sat down and wrote a letter to First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. Read more

HMS Upholder Fought In Mediterranean To Defeat Rommel In North Africa

She was a tiny vessel, not really designed for the dangers and hardships of war in far places and deep waters. Read more

An Occurrence at Wrightsville Bridge

The citizens of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, awoke one morning in late June 1863 to find the Civil War literally at their doorsteps. Read more

Battle of Mortain: The Big Red One’s Square-Off with German Panzers

At the start of the Battle of Mortain, Field Marshal Gunther Von Kluge was in an optimistic mood. Read more

Operation Silver Fox: An Opportunity Lost at Murmansk

As Adolf Hitler began to formulate his grandiose plans for the conquest of the Soviet Union, he considered the far northern operation area little more than a sideshow. Read more