Hanna Reitsch, the Reichenberg Project & Germany’s Kamikazes
By David Alan JohnsonBy early 1944, the Luftwaffe was only a shadow of what it had been at the beginning of the war. Read more
Polish Prince Joseph Poniatowski
By Jeremy GreenPolish Prince Joseph Poniatowski, a great hero of Napoleonic legend, ultimately was a man without a country. Born on May 7, 1762, the prince at first enjoyed the luxurious life of a nobleman because of his ties to the ruling family of Poland. Read more
Guadalcanal: Bloody Encounter at Hell’s Point
By Al HemingwayOn the humid morning of August 19, 1942, infantrymen from Company A, 1st Battalion, 1st Marines carefully eyed the landscape for any signs of Japanese soldiers as they slowly made their way through the thick jungle on the island of Guadalcanal, located in the Solomon Islands. Read more
Death at the Hawthorn Hedge: Poitiers, 1356
By William E. WelshThe Black Death that ravaged England and France for a half-dozen years in the mid-14th century served merely as a brief intermission between the first and second acts of the painfully protracted struggle known as the Hundred Years’ War. Read more
Commando Paddy Mayne: Ireland’s Wolf of the Desert
By Kelly BellThe night of December 14, 1941, was bitterly cold in the North African desert. Midway between El Agheila and Tripoli, Libya, was the German and Italian air base outside the town of Tamet. Read more
Death Penalty for Desertion
By John W. Osborn, Jr.British Army privates Thomas Highgate, Ernest Jackson, and Louis Harris shared a distinction in World War I that they undoubtedly would rather not have had. Read more
The Real Story of General George Patton, Jr’s Death & Final Days
By Major General Michael ReynoldsThe commander of the U.S. Third Army, General George Patton, Jr., took no great pleasure in the end of the war in Europe; he already knew that despite his lobbying of many influential figures in Washington, D.C., Read more
Benedict Arnold’s Invasion of Canada
By Earl EchelberryFresh from his capture of Fort Ticonderoga, Colonel Benedict Arnold in the summer of 1775 lobbied hard to the Continental Congress for authorization to lead an expedition to the lower St. Read more
The WWII Sniper: Caught in the Crosshairs of Famous Sharpshooters
By Jon LatimerThe art of sniping developed from the sharpshooting practiced during earlier conflicts. During the 19th century, the steadily improving technology of the rifle led to the use of sharpshooters during the American Civil War and the Boer War. Read more
Charles Russell Lowell Memorials
By Helen HannonThe unique persona of Charles Russell Lowell, a gifted Union cavalry officer from Massachusetts, inspired a series of memorials in his honor, ranging from famous monuments to obscure frontier forts. Read more
For God and Country: The Story of John Birch
By Sam McGowanIn the 1960s the John Birch Society was well known to most Americans as a right-wing political organization noted for its anti-communism and conspiracy theories. Read more
The Battle of Buena Vista: Old Rough and Ready in Mexico
By Mike HaskewIt was the spring of 1846, roughly nine months before the Battle of Buena Vista. It had become apparent to everyone at this point that a Mexican-American War was inevitable, and diplomatic efforts between the two countries had failed. Read more
Warhorses—collateral casualties of WWII
By G. Paul GarsonBy 1939 the German Reich possessed 3,800,000 horses while 885,000 were initially called to the Wehrmacht as saddle, draft, and pack animals. Read more
Defeat of the Spanish Armada
By Eric NiderostOn Friday, July 29, 1588, a group of English gentlemen decided to play a friendly game of bowls after a hearty midday meal. Read more
Fliegen und Siegen: Photographs from the Luftwaffe
By A. BurkeSixty-five years ago, Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring’s Luftwaffe showcased its aerial triumphs in a 1942 commemorative book of photographs entitled Fliegen und Siegen (“Flying and Victory”). Read more
Baptism or Death: The Wendish Crusade, 1147-1185
By Kirk FreemanBy the middle of the 12th century, much of western Europe had settled into a tenuous, often interrupted peace, and many modern nation-states had begun to emerge. Read more
The Invasion of Crete: Descent Into The Inferno
By William E. WelshBy May 1941, the German Luftwaffe’s fortunes had risen to great heights and plummeted to equally startling depths in the course of a single year of blitzkrieg warfare in Western Europe. Read more
Blaise de Monluc
By William McPeakA hundred miles north of the mountainous region near the Pyrenees was the rolling land of the Garonne River, home of the Gascon noble families. Read more
Revolts in the Death Camps
By Jonathan F. KeilerBy the spring of 1943, the Nazi deaths camps in eastern Poland—Sobibor, Belzac, and Treblinka—were running out of victims. Read more
Roosevelt’s Crowded Hour
By John WukovitsBy mid-June 1898, a potent American military conglomeration had assembled off the extreme southeastern coast of Cuba. Thirty-two troop transports brought 819 officers and 15,058 enlisted men to Cuba from Florida, along with 89 newspaper correspondents, 11 foreign military observers, and 10 million pounds of rations. Read more
