Military History Archives

Military History

The Cuban Missile Crisis: On the Brink of Nuclear War

By Peter Kross

For 13 tension-filled days in October 1962, the world came closer to nuclear war than it has ever come before or since. Read more

Military History

Reel War: The Evolution of the American War Film

By Philip Burton Morris

The first truly realistic American films of World War II began with a flourish familiar to any moviegoing audience at the time: a hand-drawn company logo introduced by musical fanfare. Read more

Military History

South African Paratroopers’ Raid on Cassinga

By Thomas B. Blevins

South Africa in the spring of 1978 was a country besieged. The apartheid state was increasingly unpopular with its neighbors and unable to control its own restive black population. Read more

Military History

What Makes Great Commanders Great?

By Richard A. Gabriel

Of the thousands of commanders who have served in history’s armies, why is it that only a few are remembered as great leaders of men in battle? Read more

Military History

The Russo-Finnish War: Why Stalin Tried to Invade Finland

By Arnold Blumberg

Prior to the Russo-Finnish War, problems were already setting in for Russia and Germany. The hugely cynical German-Soviet nonaggression pact, concluded in August 1939, assigned the Baltic region of eastern Europe to the exclusive sphere of influence of Communist Russia. Read more

Military History

Opening Moves on the Rio Grande: The Relief of Fort Texas

By David A. Norris

The hot days at Fort Texas were about to get a lot hotter. For days, the men of the 7th U.S. Read more

Military History

Giuseppe Garibaldi and the Italian Red Shirts

By Louis Ciotola

In the spring of 1860, when Giuseppe Garibaldi became Dictator of Sicily, Italy was a confusing conglomerate of states, divided between Piedmont-Sardinia and Austrian Venetia in the north, the Papal States in the middle, and the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, centered in Naples, in the south. Read more

Military History

Battle of Alma: First Blood in the Crimea

By Eric Niderost

On the morning of September 14, 1854, an Anglo-French fleet arrived off the coast of the Crimean Peninsula in the Black Sea. Read more

Military History

Battle of Omdurman: The Last British Cavalry Charge

By Eric Niderost

It was the morning of September 1, 1898, the day before the Battle of Omdurman. Lieutenant Winston Churchill of the Queen’s 4th Hussars rode out with four squadrons of the 21st Lancers to scout the approaches to Omdurman, a Sudanese village on the west bank of the Nile opposite Khartoum, epicenter of a revolt that had rocked the very foundations of the British Empire. Read more

Military History

Red Eclipse: Halting the Communist Drive on Seoul

By Marc D. Bernstein

By mid-April 1951, the war in Korea was nearly 10 months old. United Nations forces had suffered a reversal of fortunes in late 1950 with the entry of Communist China into the war, losing the South Korean capital of Seoul but later regaining it. Read more

Military History

First Mission of the U.S. Dragoons

By Kevin L. Cook

A caravan of traders bound for Santa Fe left Cantonment Leavenworth near the Missouri River on June 3, 1829, escorted by four companies of the 6th U.S. Read more

Military History

Khaki: The First Widespread Military Camouflage

By Peter Suciu

Modern military camouflage has gone high tech, with digicam or “digital camouflage” being the preferred pattern for soldiers in the field. Read more

Military History

The War of Jenkins’ Ear

By John Brown

In the 1700s, the Spanish empire in the Caribbean was a lucrative trade monopoly directed from Madrid, with Cadiz designated as the official port for trade to and from Spain and its colonies. Read more

Military History

Scipio and the Spanish Campaign

By Marc G. Desantis

The early years of Rome’s second war with Carthage were some of the darkest the Republic had ever known. Read more

Military History

The Bulgarian Legion

Anticipating the inevitable war with the Ottoman Empire, the Russian government approved creation of a military formation recruited from native Bulgarian volunteers. Read more

Military History

The Troublesome Ross Rifle of WWI

By Jerome Baldwin

At the turn of the 20th century, Canada was dependent on Great Britain for rifles to equip her army. Read more

Military History

The Siege of Shipka Pass

By Victor Kamenir

In the summer of 1875, the Christian Slavic populations of Bosnia and Herzegovina rose up in rebellion against their Muslim Ottoman Turkish rulers in response to high taxes and depredations by the local Turkish administration. Read more

Military History

The Malayan Emergency: How to Fight a Counterinsurgency War

By David Fontaine Mitchell

Following World War II, the British returned to a much different Malaya than they had departed three years earlier. Read more

Military History

South Koreans in Vietnam: A Force to Be Reckoned With

By William Stroock

On the night of February 13, 1967, the 11th Company of the 2nd South Korean Marine Brigade was occupying a position near the village of Trah Bin Dong in Quang Ngai province, South Vietnam. Read more