A group of Japanese Americans who have renounced their U.S. citizenship and expressed a desire to return to Japan are in custody of law enforcement officers at the Tule Lake relocation camp. These men were en route to the Santa Fe internment camp, where nationals of Axis countries were held during the war.

Detention In Wartime

By Gene Eric Salecker

After the surprise bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, many Americans in authority began to fear the large number of people of Japanese ancestry living along the West Coast of the United States, thinking that some of them might have sympathies for Japan and might assist in a possible invasion or sabotage American efforts to resist such an invasion. Read more

A German tanker stands on the Russian steppe near Voronezh after emerging from the turret of his PzKpfw. III tank. In the summer of 1942, Hitler mounted an armored thrust to the south along the Eastern Front, and it led to ruin.

Derailing Case Blue

By Pat McTaggart

After the brutal defensive fighting during the winter of 1941-1942, Adolf Hitler was ready for another round with the Russians. Read more

The Bold Bull of Scapa Flow

By Phil Zimmer

Late on the night of Friday, October 13, 1939, Kapitänleutnant Günther Prien surfaced his 218-foot-long submarine, U-47, and guided it through the protected, shallow, narrow channel at Kirk Sound. Read more

Mussolini’s Fall from Power

By Blaine Taylor

At 10:30 on the night of May 9, 1936, as 400,000 people stood crowded together on Rome’s Palazzo Venezia underneath the most famous balcony in the world, Italian Prime Minister Benito Mussolini, 52, the leader of the country’s ruling Fascist Party, strode forward and began to speak to the silent masses below him. Read more

Admiral Satan

By Victor Kamenir

French Admiral Pierre-Andre de Suffren de Saint Tropez did not fit the image of a dashing naval officer. Read more

Hitler’s Masters of Murder

By Mark Simner

“I must tell you something…. I took part in a mass killing the day before yesterday.

[When we shot the Jews brought by] the first truck, my hand trembled somewhat during the shooting, but one gets used to it. Read more

Holding Hosingen At All Costs

By Alice Flynn

Ordered to “hold at all costs,” 300 American soldiers defended the small Luxembourg town of Hosingen during the first three days of the Battle of the Bulge. Read more

Rommel vs Montgomery

Rommel vs Monty

By Zita Ballinger Fletcher

The famous retreat of the “Desert Fox” Erwin Rommel across North Africa following his defeat at the Second Battle of El Alamein in 1942 was less a retreat than a series of stubborn battles to hold ground. Read more

Boer soldiers armed with Mauser repeating rifles in shoulder-high trenches on the far bank of the Modder River laid down a sheet of fire against the advancing British.

Boer General Jacobus De La Rey

By William E. Welsh

In the early weeks of the Second Boer War, General Jacobus Hercules De La Rey suggested a way to overhaul the tactics of his fellow Boers in a way that would prove devastating to his British opponents. Read more

A Death in San Pietro

By Tim Brady

After sweeping through Sicily in the summer of 1943, Allied forces invaded Italy in September. The American Fifth Army landed at Salerno and moved up the peninsula through Naples that fall. Read more

The Last Days Of General Patton

By Michael D. Hull

Fearless, demanding, and inspirational, General George Smith Patton, JR., was generally recognized as the U.S. Army’s outstanding field commander by the end of World War II.  Read more

Banzai

By Colonel Dick Camp (USMC, Ret.)

In the summer of 1944, the 5th Amphibious Corps under Marine Lt. Gen. Holland M. Read more

When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, the cruiser USS Pensacola was caught up in the confusion of the early days of American involvement in World War II while escorting troops and materiel to the Philippines. In this photo a convoy of ships assembles for a hazardous wartime voyage.

Alone at Sea

By Glenn Barnett

The American military presence in China, which stretched back to the 1850s, came to an abrupt end in November 1941. Read more