WWII
A Gamble for Peace: Ellis Zacharias & the South Pacific
By Todd Raffensperger“I submit that it was the wrong decision. It was wrong on strategic grounds. And it was wrong on humanitarian grounds.” Read more
WWII
WWII
Top Flying Tiger: General Claire Chennault
By Michael D. HullLaden with 500-pound bombs and incendiaries, 10 Japanese twin-engine Mitsubishi Ki21 Sally bombers took off from the Hanoi airfield in Indochina on the morning of Saturday, December 20, 1941. Read more
WWII
The Long Lance Torpedo at Guadalcanal
By David Alan JohnsonThe bogey man of the U.S. Navy during the Guadalcanal campaign was not the Zero fighter or the I-class submarine. Read more
WWII
The Battle of Peleliu: Was it necessary?
by Eric NiderostIf Peleliu was one of the bloodiest campaigns of the Pacific Theater, it was also one of the least known until recently. Read more
WWII
Heinrich Himmler’s New-Found Diaries
Captured by the Red Army during World War II, diaries written by Heinrich Himmler, Reichsführer of the SS, lay forgotten in the vast, byzantine collections of the Russian Military Archive. Read more
WWII
Ensign Kazuo Sakamaki: Underwater Peril at Pearl Harbor
By John PerryDuring the early hours of December 7, 1941, five midget submarinesof the Imperial Japanese Navy waited to enter Pearl Harbor, the anchorage of the U.S. Read more
WWII
Operation Barbarossa: Holding the Line at Smolensk
By Victor KamenirAfter crushing the first-line Soviet armies in brutal three-week cauldron battles at the border, the steamroller of German Army Group Center continued deeper into Soviet territory during the opening days of Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union, which began on June 22, 1941. Read more
WWII
Smolensk & The Eastern Front: The Katyusha Rocket System
by Victor KamenirThe fighting at Orsha saw the first battlefield use of the Red Army’s experimental battery of BM-13 multiple-launch rocket systems. Read more
WWII
The USS Panay: First Step on the Road to War
By Eric NiderostAround 10 o’clock on the morning of December 13, 1937, New York Times correspondent Hallett Abend received an unexpected visitor: Rear Admiral Tadao Honda of the Imperial Japanese Navy. Read more
WWII
Band of Brothers’ Buck Compton: One Man’s Call of Duty
By Flint WhitlockThanks to the late historian Stephen Ambrose, his book Band of Brothers, and the HBO series of the same title, the legendary, extraordinary exploits of Easy Company, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment (PIR), 101st Airborne Division, have become well known to a whole new generation. Read more
WWII
Nomads of War: The Long Range Desert Group
By John W. Osborn, Jr.“The problem,” a member said, “is to make yourself so much master over the appalling difficulties of nature—heat, thirst, cold, rain, fatigue—that, overcoming these you yet have physical energy and mental resilience to deal with the greater object, the winning of the war.” Read more
WWII
German U-Boats on American Shores: Operation Pastorius & Beyond
by David Alan JohnsonThe U-boat landings of German spies off the coast of Long Island during Operation Pastorius were not the only instances of U-boats putting German agents ashore on the Atlantic coast of the United States. Read more
WWII
FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and the Nazi Saboteur
By David Alan JohnsonIt was just about midnight on June 12, 1942, and the Abwehr (Nazi Germany’s intelligence agency) hoped that Dasch and his three men, along with another four-man group to be put ashore on the coast of Florida, would be able to destroy factories of the Aluminium Company of America (ALCOA) located in the United States. Read more
WWII
World’s First Smart Weapon: the ‘Bat’
By Alan AlpersOn May 27, 1945, U.S. Naval Reserve Lieutenant Leo Kennedy was patrolling from his station at Yonton Field in Okinawa. Read more
WWII
Hero of Verdun: Marshal Henri Philippe Pétain
By Blaine Taylor“I’ve been old in all my ranks,” said Henri Philippe Pétain, created Marshal of France on December 8, 1918, at age 62. Read more
WWII
World War II Propaganda Posters
By Eric H. RothMilitary posters played a crucial role in motivating Americans to do their best and make sacrifices—of all kinds—during World War II. Read more
WWII
USS Rasher: The Legendary Undersea Warrior
By Kelly BellAt 12:30 am, October 9, 1943, Commander Edward S. Hutchinson spotted his first targets as a submarine commander. Read more
WWII
Hollywood’s Dream Factory During World War II
By Herb KugelWorld War II came to the Hollywood motion picture studios, the “Dream Factories” as they were sometimes called, the day after Pearl Harbor. Read more
WWII
The Muddled History of Philippe Pétain
By Michael E. HaskewHe was, in the truest sense, a national hero. Philippe Pétain, Marshal of France, the hero of Verdun, is, however, best remembered in the modern world as a traitor, a collaborationist who sacrificed the honor of France to make a deal with Hitler and the Nazis. Read more
WWII
‘Raising a flag over the Reichstag’ Photographer Yevgeni Khaldei
By Michael E. HaskewThe image of Red Army soldiers hoisting their hammer and sickle emblazoned banner atop the Reichstag, the seat of the German parliament, is a classic photo of World War II, an image that told the world Nazi Germany was at last finished. Read more
