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The Crater: Explosion of Death

By John Walker

It was just after 3 am on Saturday, July 30, 1864. A month of relative quiet along a two-mile stretch of Union and Confederate trench lines immediately east of Petersburg, Virginia, was about to come to an explosive end. Read more

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The Japanese Blitz on Bataan

By Donald Young

Following their impressive string of victories in Malaya, Hong Kong, Burma, the Dutch East Indies, and the Philippines, it appeared that the Japanese were invincible in the early days of World War II. Read more

Carthaginian general Hannibal Barca enters an Italian village following a victory over the Romans in a contemporary painting by Peter Connolly. Hannibal invaded the Italian peninsula in 218 bc to keep the war away from Carthage and put the burden of sustaining the fight on his enemy’s lands.

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Hannibal’s Cunning Ambush

By Chuck Lyons

When still a young boy, Hannibal once came upon his father, the Carthaginian general Hamilcar Barca, who at the time was preparing to go to Iberia where Carthage was campaigning to expand its power. Read more

The bombardier of a Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress bomber mans the .50-caliber machine gun in the plane’s nose and scans the skies for German fighters as the formation enters hostile airspace. The Münster raid of October 10, 1943, proved costly for the Eighth Air Force in both men and aircraft.

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Disaster In A Bright Blue Sky

By Allyn Vannoy

Lieutenant Robert Sabel struggled to get his Fortress, the Rusty Lode, home. Eight B-17s of his bomb group, the 390th, had already been shot from the sky. Read more

Nixon at work in the Oval Office. Pentagon leaders made sure that if they received unusual military orders from the president they would be evaluated properly.

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The Secret World of Richard Nixon

By Blaine Taylor

In the spring of 1974—at the height of the political Watergate crisis in Washington, D.C.—Joseph Laitin, a spokesman at the Office of Management and Budget whose office was in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, next door to the White House, was on his way over to the west wing of the White House to meet with Treasury Secretary George Schultz. Read more

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.

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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

Paratroopers of the 82nd Airborne Division ride aboard a transport aircraft en route to their drop zones near the Salerno beachhead during the Allied invasion of the Italian mainland September 13-14, 1943. Members of the 504th and 505th Parachute Infantry Battalions were dropped to support the push inland. Members of the509th were deployed behind enemy lines to break up German communications at Avellino.

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Desperate Venture at Avellino

By Nathan N. Prefer

The Fifth U.S. Army was in trouble and dropping 600 paratroops at Avellino to disrupt the communications of the 16th Panzer Division seemed like a sound solution. Read more

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A Second Sumter: The Struggle for Pensacola

By Eric Niderost

The election of Abraham Lincoln as president in November 1860 caused a national crisis of unprecedented scope. For years, Southern firebrands had defended slavery and exalted the principle of states’ rights. Read more

The climactic moment of the Battle of Courtrai occurred when Count Robert of Artois, commander of the French army, led a suicidal charge into the Flemish ranks after the battle already had been lost. He is portrayed in a 19th-century painting pinned under his horse and mortally wounded.

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Revenge Of The Flemish Lion

By William E. Welsh

The Flemish infantry fidgeted under the sweltering sun as they stood shoulder to shoulder in a field east of the town of Courtrai on July 11, 1302. Read more

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Hell on Hill 1338

By Edward F. Murphy

The morning calm was shattered by the sharp crack of rifle fire. Though the nearly impenetrable jungle vegetation and a dense layer of fog dampened the noise, the paratroopers of Alpha Company, 2nd Battalion, 503rd Infantry, 173rd Airborne Brigade tensed immediately. Read more

In this painting by artist Robert Taylor, a modified RAF Lancaster bomber roars through the night sky after releasing its payload during an attack on the Möhne River Dam in Germany’s Ruhr Valley.

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After Me, The Flood

By Al Hemingway

A full moon in a cloudless sky shone over Germany’s Ruhr Valley on the night of May 16, 1943, meaning that all Royal Air Force (RAF) bombing missions over Nazi Germany had been canceled. Read more

Polish troops from the Vistula Legion, part of Napoleon’s army besieging the Spanish city of Saragossa in 1809, attack the Santa Engracia convent during the building-to-building fighting. Artist Baron Louis Lejeune, who saw service during the campaign as aide-de-camp to Marshal Lannes, depicted himself wounded at the base of the monument.

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The Siege of Saragossa

From the Memoirs of Heinrich von Brandt Translated and with commentary by Jonathan North

Napoleon’s invasion of Spain and Portugal sparked a cataclysmic conflict that shook Napoleonic Europe to its very core. Read more

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When the Gods Die: the Battle of Otumba

By Brian Geeslin

In the morning hours of July 8, 1520 Hernando Cortés, with the remnants of his army of Spanish adventurers and Indian allies, neared the crest of mountains overlooking the plain of Otumba (the Spanish corruption of the Nahuatl name of Otompan), an Indian city dominating the valley along Cortés’s line of march. Read more

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Rogue Point

By Joseph Luster

While not directly tied to any specific historical military campaigns, Rogue Point recently appeared as a promising cooperative shooter that mixes in a handful of military-inspired classes for action that is heavily dependent on solid teamwork. Read more

A Panther tank of the 1st SS Panzer Division “Leibstandarte” moves forward warily during the Battle of the Bulge as its commander scans the horizon for signs of enemy forces.

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The SS Elite In The Battle for Bastogne

By Major General Michael Reynolds

The story of Hitler’s Bodyguard, the 1st SS Panzer Division Leibstandarte (LAH), in the battle for Bastogne does not begin until after the siege of that city had been raised by the U.S. Read more

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Fire Over Texas: Galveston in the Civil War

By R. Thomas Campbell

When Texas seceded from the Union on February 1, 1861, it did not take long for the new Confederate government to realize that the state’s 385-mile coastline was extremely vulnerable to enemy assaults. Read more