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Reichsfuhrer SS Heinrich Himmler, founder of the Lebensborn Program, talks with a young Ukrainian boy. Many children were essentially kidnapped from occupied countries and given to German parents.

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Children for Hitler

By Brent Douglas Dyck

By 1936, 18-year-old Hildegard Koch had reached a crossroads in her young life as she finished her schooling. Read more

Cortes and his Spanish conquistadors defeated a mighty Aztec army at Otumba in July 1520. The victory occurred one week after the Night of Sorrows, when the Spanish suffered heavy casualties while fleeing the Aztec capital.

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Cortés Exacts His Revenge

By John Walker

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

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Lightnings on the Deck

By Patrick J. Chaisson

Second Lieutenant William Capron first saw the attacking Messerschmitts as black dots descending rapidly to ambush his squadron of American fighter-bombers. Read more

The A-10 Thunderbolt II’s seven-barrel, 30mm autocannon fires a round made of depleted uranium encased in an aluminum shell with a muzzle velocity of 3,500 feet per second.

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Weapons: The A-10 Warthog Attack Aircraft

By Christopher Miskimon

Smoke and haze clouded the skies over Kuwait on February 25, 1991. It was the second day of Operation Desert Storm, the ground operation to eject the Iraqi military from its smaller neighbor. Read more

Pompey led troops to victory in a series of battles and actions that neutralized threats to Rome’s interests in Asia Minor.

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Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus

By Ludwig Heinrich Dyck

Gnaeus Pompey was one of the pivotal Roman leaders during the last decades of the Republic. He was born into an old and wealthy provincial family from Picenum on September 29, 106 BC. Read more

U.S. Navy Lieutenant Alex Vraciu holds up six fingers signifying the number of Japanese aircraft that fell to his guns during an eight-minute span on a single mission.

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The Setting Sun

By David H. Lippmann

Once again, the Japanese regarded an upcoming naval engagement as the “decisive battle,” but it had been two years since her aircraft carriers and battleships had emerged from their Inland Sea lairs to menace the United States Navy. Read more

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The F-4U Corsair

By William F. Floyd Jr.

On December 4, 1950, Jesse Brown, U.S. Navy Ensign and the Navy’s first African American aviator, was flying 1,000 feet above the icy Korean mountains in his Corsair when its engine cut out. Read more

The first U.S. M4 Sherman enters the German city of Aachen through a hole opened in the railroad station entrance by a tank dozer—German defenders had demolished a viaduct on the main avenue into Aachen, slowing the Americans’ progress.

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Smashing in to Germany

By William R. Hogan

Task force commander Lieutenant Colonel Samuel Hogan, eager to get any advantage over the entrenched enemy of the 12th Infantry Division, requested a section of M2 flamethrowers from the 23rd Engineer Battalion. Read more

Allied vessels burning after a Luftwaffe raid on the Italian port of Bari on December 2, 1943, sank 27 cargo and transport ships, including the US Liberty ship John Harvey—with a secret cargo of 2,000 M47A1 mustard gas bombs, each holding 60–70 lbs of the chemical agent.

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The SS John Harvey’s Mustard Gas Disaster

By Neil Taylor

Ensign Kay Kopl Vesole, USNR, did not like being a sitting duck. Normally he would have enjoyed the warm Italian sunshine, but as commander of the Navy Armed Guard aboard the John Bascom, a 7,176-ton Liberty ship, he was not permitted to relax while his ship lay moored in crowded Bari harbor, a small though vital port on the heel of Italy. Read more

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Uniform: The 8th Texas Cavalry

By Don Troiani & William Welsh

Colonel Benjamin F. Terry, a sugar planter from Fort Bend County on the coastal plains of Texas, raised the 8th Texas Cavalry Regiment. Read more

Standing on what is most likely a PzKpfw. III, a German tank commander scans the desert horizon in North Africa. The battle-hardened forces of Gen. Erwin Rommel’s Afrika Korps would inflict a stinging defeat on the Americans at Tunisia’s Kasserine Pass in February 1943

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Chaos Pass

By David Lippman

The message was sent to a staff officer for Brig. Gen. Paul Robinett to read, and it made very little sense. Read more

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Flint Whitlock’s ‘Patton and the Battle for Sicily’

By Kevin Seabrooke

Launched on the night of July 9-10, 1943, the amphibious assault of Operation Husky was the largest the world had ever seen—more than 3,200 vessels and half a million Allied soldiers, sailors, and airmen attacked the island of Sicily, Adolf Hitler’s “Fortress Europe.” Read more

From Around the Network

  • WWII

    V-E Day: Victory at Last for World War II’s Allies
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  • Destroyed and abandoned, these German armored vehicles offer silent testimony to the desperation of the fighting near St. Vith. Before retiring, the American defenders of the town severely hampered German efforts to exploit their Ardennes breakthrough.

    European Theater

    The Execution of Eddie Slovik
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