Locating Enemies on the Western Front

All wars give rise to change and innovation. In the early years of the 20th century, a short but nasty territorial war erupted between Russia and Japan. Read more

Oberstleutnant Alfred Becker

Students of World War II know the name Percy Hobart—a British general who raised and trained several armored divisions and who invented all sorts of unique and unusual weapons of war—swimming tanks, flail tanks (for exploding landmines), a flame-throwing tank, a tank that laid down its own roadway, and many other odd-but-useful devices. Read more

Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar

Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar, a Castilian mercenary who served Christian kings and Muslim emirs alike in late 11th-century Spain, was born in 1043 in the village of Vivar, about six miles north of the city of Burgos. Read more

Armored Clash on the Road to the Yalu

The chase was on in early autumn 1950. The North Korean People’s Army, after its invasion of South Korea, fell back north with United Nations’ forces in close pursuit following the Battle of Inchon the previous month. Read more

A tragic loss of life, a tragic loss of history

I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for prop-driven airplanes, especially World War II warbirds. I guess it began when my parents took me to an airshow back in the early 1950s. Read more

For Nearly a Century the Nomadic Huns Dominated Much of Europe

“A hitherto unknown race of men had appeared from some remote corner of the earth, uprooting and destroying everything in its path like a whirlwind descending from high mountains” wrote Ammianus Marcellinus, a 4th century AD Roman officer and historian. Read more

Jedediah Hotchkiss’ Map

After his exploratory expedition to the Shenandoah Valley in 1716, Virginia Governor Alexander Spotswood encouraged Germans and Dutch farmers residing in eastern Pennsylvania to settle the region when he found Virginians in the Tidewater and Piedmont regions of his state initially reluctant to settle beyond the Blue Ridge Mountains. Read more

Death Knell for Napoleon’s Empire

French Marshal Michel Ney found himself outmatched in a clash of arms with a Swedish-Prussian army at Dennewitz 40 miles southwest of Berlin on September 6, 1813. Read more

The Jagdpanzer 38

It became glaringly apparent to the German Wehrmacht in 1943 that it needed a solution to the threat of heavily armored British and Russian tanks whose armor proved too thick for German towed anti-tank guns. Read more

Into The Bitter Forest

“In the early hours of 8 February 1945, I climbed into my command post, which consisted of a small platform halfway up a tree,” Lt. Read more

English Mercenary Captain John Hawkwood

Long columns of heavily armed soldiers streamed southeast along the left bank of the Adige River in the Veneto region of northern Italy on March 11, 1387. Read more

General Robert Frederick: The Devil’s General

By Nathan N. Prefer

He was an unknown junior lieutenant colonel when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, yet by the end of that war he was the youngest major general commanding one of the most famous divisions in the European Theater.  Read more

Pivotal Victory at Kings Mountain

Kings Mountain was a battle of militia–American Patriots against American Loyalists. Short and intense, it was the last desperate stand of British Major Patrick Ferguson and a turning point in the American Revolution. Read more

Military History Book Reviews for Spring 2023

Putin’s Wars: From Chechnya to Ukraine (Mark Galeotti, Osprey Publishing, Oxford UK, 2022, 384 pp., maps, photographs, bibliography, index, $35, hardcover)

The Abyss: Nuclear Crisis Cuba 1962 (Max Hastings, Harper Collins Publishing, New York NY, 2022, 544 pp., Read more

Stubborn Defense at Rechicourt

First Lieutenant James H. Fields, a 24-year-old from Houston, Texas, led the 1st Platoon of Company A, 10th Armored Infantry Battalion. Read more

The Great War: Western Front

It’s time to travel back to the era of World War I once again in The Great War: Western Front, which puts you in control of the battlefield in a unique dual role system. Read more

The American “Few”

The “few” who defended Great Britain in the sky during the days it stood alone against Hitler would have been hundreds fewer without the volunteers from outside the British Empire. Read more

Knights of Honor II: Sovereign

If your particular flavor of strategy falls on the grand side of the spectrum, you might want to dive into the recently-released Knights of Honor II: Sovereign, which arrives courtesy of developer Black Sea Games and publisher THQ Nordic. Read more

Afghanistan: The Soviet Union’s War in Vietnam

In late 1979, the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan was torn apart by a civil war pitting the weak Communist government of Hafizullah Amin against several moderate and fundamentalist Muslim rebel armies. Read more

Brutal Slugfest at Anzio

For the Americans of 2nd Battalion, 13th Armored Regiment, their arrival at Anzio in early May 1944 was anything but heartening. Read more