Still Fighting After Dunkirk

By Alan Davidge

Background: When the German army burst through Belgium’s Ardennes Forest in May 1940, it cut the Allies’ front line in half, then turned northwards through France towards the Channel coast. Read more

Napoleon’s Last Victory

At 2:30 am on June 15, 1815, tens of thousands of French soldiers around the town of Beaumont, France, were roused from their bivouacs. Read more

World War II Book Reviews for Spring 2023

Bitter Peleliu: The Forgotten Struggle on the Pacific War’s Worst Battlefield (Joseph Wheelan, Osprey Books, Oxford, UK, 2022, 336 pp., Read more

Killing Ground at Colenso

On the morning of December 15, 1899, the serene, windswept wilderness of northern Natal was punctuated by the sound of 18,000 British soldiers trudging north to relieve the besieged town of Ladysmith. Read more

Operation Biting: ‘The Bruneval Raid’

By January 1942, Britain was still in the fight of her life. Germany had occupied all western Europe, controlled the Mediterranean, and was threatening British colonies in North Africa. Read more

Heroic Stand at Verdun

The morning of June 23, 1916, dawned over the broad crenellated valley of the Meuse River in northeastern France. Read more

Wolfpack

Some World War II games give you control over an entire battlefield, or offer you an abundance of vehicular options that you can easily swap between at any given moment. 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

Vanguard: Normandy 1944

If you’re looking for a historically-accurate World War II shooter, the team at Pathfinder Games has your back with Vanguard: Normandy 1944. Read more

Letters from Oblivion: Auschwitz and Buchenwald

Henry Zguda, a Polish Catholic, spent three and a half years interned at Auschwitz and Buchenwald as a political prisoner. Read more

Hitler’s Experience in the Trenches of the Great War

In the months before the outbreak of World War I, 25-year-old Adolf Hitler was living the starving artist’s life in the Bavarian city of Munich, selling his paintings door-to-door and in the city’s numerous beer halls. Read more

Codebreaking Sergeant Richard

Wewak Convoy 21 was being annihilated, and the Japanese Army could do nothing to stop it.

The first vessel to die was Yakumo Maru. Read more

Ambush at Oriskany

The young Oneida warrior paused, tensing as he spotted some activity in the forest just in front of him. Read more

The 28th Infantry Division Stands

On September 16, 1944, Adolf Hitler revealed his master plan for reversing Germany’s declining fortunes in the West during World War II. Read more

Stand-up Fight at Peachtree Creek

During the early afternoon of July 9, 1864, the 103rd Ohio Volunteer Infantry Regiment of Maj. Gen. John M. Read more

First Sustained Nuclear Reaction

Enrico Fermi’s face was a study in concentration as his fingers deftly moved across the well-worn surface of his slide rule. Read more

Cortés Exacts His Revenge

As the year 1520 drew to a close, the half-starved inhabitants of Tenochtitlan, the magnificent capital city of the most powerful city-state in the Aztec Empire, found that they were threatened by a massive host of enemies, both foreign and indigenous, which was led by Spanish Captain-General Hernán Cortés and his small band of conquistadors. Read more

The Borkum Island Massacre and Trial

On August 4, 1944, a Boeing B-17G Flying Fortress heavy bomber, tail number 43-37909, so new that it did not have a nickname or nose art yet, took off from England on a bombing run over Germany that would end in a crash landing on Borkum Island in the North Sea. Read more

Roman Disaster at Carrhae

Gigantic clouds of dust rose from the sun-baked plain. The ground shook under the hoofs of thousands of cavalry. Read more

Major General Edward L. Spears

On May 22, 1940, within a fortnight of being appointed Britain’s prime minister, Winston S. Churchill was confronted with the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), under Lord Gort, retreating from Belgium. Read more