Jonathan Trigg’s ‘To VE Day Through German Eyes’

When the Wehrmacht in Western Europe collapsed in August 1944, it seemed a great opportunity, coinciding with similar great defeats on the Eastern Front that summer. Read more

Mark Lardas’ ‘The Capture of U-505’

Germany’s Enigma device provided its navy with secure coding equipment for secret communications. On his own initiative, U.S. Read more

Wilhelm Langbein and Heidi Langbein-Allen’s ‘Save the Last Bullet

Fourteen-year-old Willi Langbein crouched in a foxhole, four panzerfaust antitank weapons stacked next to him. Ten meters to either side was another foxhole with another teenaged soldier huddling against the chill and the fear. Read more

Paul Ballard-Whyte’s ‘Lucky Hitler’s Big Mistakes’

From the time he served in the German Army during world War I through to the early years of World War II, Adolf Hitler seemed to lead a charmed life. Read more

The Soviet Dunkirk: The Tallinn Offensive

Early in World War II, a bitter joke circulated within the Soviet military. It ran, “What is the first thing Russia does when war is declared? Read more

Gardening in Salonika: World War I in the Balkans

The Germans mocked it as their largest prisoner-of-war camp, and French Premier Georges Clemenceau was hardly less withering in his opinion of the Allied stronghold at Salonika, Greece. Read more

British General Orde Wingate’s Blurred Legacy

British General Orde Wingate is one of the more enigmatic World War II commanders encountered in a number of biographical and military historical accounts. Read more

The Multiple Launch Rocket System

On February 24, 1991, the ground phase of Operation Desert Storm began. Over the next four days, the soldiers of an international coalition, formed to eject the Iraqi army of Saddam Hussein from the neighboring nation of Kuwait, carried out a whirlwind offensive that quickly overwhelmed their foe. Read more

Decision at the Battle of the Dunes

The cold North Sea surf washed over the boots of the advancing English infantry of Oliver Cromwell’s New Model Army as they tromped through the drifting sand dunes across the beach at Dunkirk on the morning of June 14, 1658. Read more

Johann Georg Elser’s Treasonous Plot to Prevent World War II

At exactly 8 PM on November 8, 1939, German Chancellor Adolf Hitler strode briskly into Munich’s Burgerbraukeller beer hall at the head of his glowering entourage, brushing past a forest of hands raised in the Nazi salute. Read more

London’s National Army Museum

The city of London practically overflows with military history. Predating the Romans, London has been the seat of government ever since it was fortified by William the Conqueror in the 11th century. Read more

The Air War for Rabaul

On February 23, 1942, one month after Rabaul had fallen to the Japanese, six B-17s of the U.S. Read more

Delaying Action at Kapyong

The Chinese always attacked at night. It was April 22, 1951, and the Communists had just launched the largest offensive of the Korean War. Read more

The Supermarine Spitfire

On April 21, 1942, in action over Malta, Flight Lieutenant Denis Barnham of No. 601 Squadron was given credit for downing a German Junkers Ju-88 bomber and a Messerschmitt Bf-109 fighter. Read more

Fehrbellin: The Battle that Made Prussia

For nearly two and a half centuries, Prussia celebrated June 28 as a birthday of sorts. On that date in 1675, the Prussians achieved the start of their proud military tradition. Read more

Patton: from Gafsa to El Guettar

Lieutenant General George S. Patton, Jr., looked forward to fighting German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, his North African nemesis. Read more

Indian Victory in Bangladesh

After the British left India in 1947, abandoning the jewel in their centuries-long empire, the subcontinent was partitioned into two states, India and Pakistan. Read more

U.S. Marine’s Legacy of Valor

By Dick Camp (Colonel, USMC, Retired)

The war in the Pacific was a bloody, protracted struggle between the Empire of Japan and the United States and her allies. Read more

Emelian Pugachev: Master Imposter of a Russian Czar

On August 12, 1772, a wandering Don Cossack named Emelian Pugachev crossed the Polish frontier into Imperial Russia on an official passport that entitled him, after spending six weeks in quarantine, to resettle as a free citizen on the Irgiz River in southeast Russia. Read more

Operation Grenade: Race to the Roer

In early 1945, while the American First Army was focusing on the dams of the Roer River near the German-Belgium border and Patton’s Third Army was probing the Eifel and clearing the Saar-Moselle triangle, the First Canadian Army was about to open their offensive as part of Operation Veritable in a drive southeast up the left bank of the Rhine from the vicinity of Nijmegen. Read more