WWII
Arnhem’s Other Urquhart
By Jon DiamondThe Hollywood military film devotee will remember the beginning of the epic, A Bridge Too Far, when a young British airborne officer named Fuller informs Lt. Read more
WWII
WWII
Bringing Down the Bridges
By John ManciniIn April 1941, German troops swarmed into Greece from Bulgaria. Despite a valiant defense by the Greek Army and support from the British, the Nazis smashed their battle lines and controlled Greece within weeks. Read more
WWII
George S. Patton’s End Run: The Story of His Final Days
By Major General Michael ReynoldsBy early 1945, less than a year before General George S. Patton’s mysterious death, Adolf Hitler’s armies were almost exhausted. Read more
WWII
Panzers at the Gates of Moscow
By Jonathan JordanThe war map gave Adolf Hitler every reason to be confident. Operation Barbarossa, Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union begun on June 22, 1941, had succeeded spectacularly on nearly every front. Read more
WWII
Rain of Terror: The Bombing of the British Isles
By Michael D. HullFirst, there was a faint drone, with black specks visible in the sunny sky. Then the drone grew into a thunder, and hundreds of bombers appeared over London. Read more
WWII
Scandinavian Airborne Assault
By Henrik O. LundeThe Polish Campaign in 1939 demonstrated the awesome effectiveness of aircraft as weapons platforms for close ground support. Read more
WWII
War Takes Wing
By Gregory PedutoThe army brass argued at length; the scheme proposed by behavioral psychologist B.F. Skinner was mad, foolhardy, but also ingenious. Read more
WWII
Mission Critical Overlord Weather
By Gene J. PfefferOperation Overlord, the cross-Channel attack that hit the Nazi-occupied beaches of Normandy in 1944, was the culmination of a grand strategy adopted early in the war, followed sporadically during the years of conflict, and aimed at defeating Hitler’s Reich by striking directly at Germany by invasion. Read more
WWII
Night Jump into Tragedy
By Victor KamenirIn August 1943, immediately after the Battle of Kursk, the Red Army launched a series of follow up operations, resulting in the liberation of a large swath of Nazi-occupied Soviet territory. Read more
WWII
Red Army Airborne
By Victor KamenirThe official history of Russian and Soviet airborne forces began on August 2, 1930, when 12 parachutists were dropped during maneuvers in the Moscow Military District. Read more
WWII
German All-Terrain Vehicle
By Blaine TaylorThe first published photo of one of the odd—but highly versatile —frontline vehicles of World War II appeared on the cover of the July 1942 edition of German Propaganda Minister Dr. Read more
WWII
Red Sea Naval War
By Vincent P. O’Hara & Enrico CernuschiOn May 9, 1936, four days after Italian troops entered Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa, Mussolini appeared on a balcony of Rome’s Palazzo Venezia to proclaim Victor Emmanuel emperor of the newly created Italian East Africa. Read more
WWII
Hemingway Goes Sub Chasing
By Robert E. Cray, Jr.“We are going to have Christ’s own bitter time to win it, if, when, and ever,” commented Ernest Hemingway to his friend and editor, Charles Scribner, at the start of World War II. Read more
WWII
Tale of the Biscuit Bomber: The C-47 in WWII
By Sam McGowanEven though, technically at least, it was not a combat airplane, the performance of the Douglas C-47 transport led General of the Army Dwight Eisenhower to label it as one of the most important weapons of World War II. Read more
WWII
King Company at Bloody Lindern
By Frank ChadwickIn November 1944, an American infantry division underwent its baptism of fire in the worst conditions imaginable and acquitted itself with honor beyond anyone’s expectation. Read more
WWII
Fleeing to Fight
By John Osborn Jr.“They had lost their country but kept their honor,” future British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan said of General Wladyslaw Anders and the Polish II Corps, men in the strange position of trying to win the liberation of their homeland by fighting in Italy. Read more
WWII
Barrier at Monte Cassino
By John BrownThe Gustav Line, stretching across Italy at its narrowest part between Gaeta and Ortona, was a formidable system of defenses, some of it in coastal marshes but mainly in mountainous country through which ran fast-flowing rivers. Read more
WWII
A Warning Against Appeasement
By Jon DiamondThe “Mythology of Munich” and “What Would Winston Do?” These were the feature story and the cover headline, respectively, for the June 23, 2008, issue of Newsweek magazine. Read more
WWII
A Fighting Foot Soldier of the 45th
By Christopher MiskimonThe morning of February 16, 1944, dawned foggy over the Via Anziate in Anzio, Italy. The 45th Infantry Division’s 2nd Battalion, 157th Infantry Regiment had advanced overnight to take positions on the west side of the roadway, assuming its place on the front line. Read more
WWII
The Battle of Cape Esperance: A Sorely Needed Naval Victory
By David Alan Johnson“One large, two small vessels, one six miles from Savo off northern beach, Guadalcanal. Will investigate closer.” Read more
