WWII

WWII

Operation Removal: Taking the Japanese Holdouts Near Saipan

by Al Hemingway

On September 2, 1945, representatives from the Allied and Japanese governments signed the peace treaty that ended World War II. Read more

WWII

World War II: A Campaign Against Oil? A Look at Ploesti

by Sam McGowan

World War II was the first fully mechanized war in history, and oil, both crude and synthetic, was a major factor in military planning. Read more

WWII

Frederick’s Devil’s Brigade & Bringing Back the V-42 Stiletto

By Michael Haskew

The fight at Monte La Difensa on December 3, 1943, was swift but brutal as members of the First Special Service Force, a combined unit of U.S. Read more

WWII

The Repulse and Prince of Wales Battleships: How They Sunk

By Joseph M. Horodyski

During the 1920s and 1930s Great Britain built up its Far East defenses steadily if slowly, centering around Singapore as its primary naval base in the Pacific area. Read more

WWII

Exercise Tiger: Deadly D-Day Rehearsal

by Robert Heege

It was spring 1944, and the morning sun was glinting off the face of the water as the Landing Ship, Tank (LST) transports chugged their way through the choppy surf and headed in close toward shore, their destination a gravel-strewn stretch of beach on the English Channel code named “U” for Utah. Read more

WWII

The Japanese Empire’s Mitsubishi G4M Betty Bomber

By Joseph M. Horodyski

The two types of aircraft responsible for sinking the Prince Of Wales and Repulse represented the best of Japanese aviation in 1941. Read more

WWII

Joachim Peiper’s Escape from the Battle Of the Bulge

By Major General Michael Reynolds

By December 24, 1944, the commander of the Sixth Panzer Army’s strongest battlegroup, SS Obersturmbannführer (Lieutenant Colonel) Jochen Peiper, was facing the ultimate military nightmare. Read more

WWII

Erwin Rommel Frustrated By French Foreign Legion At Bir Hacheim

by Edward L. Bimberg

When Brig. Gen. Joseph-Pierre Koenig, commander of the 1st Free French Brigade, surveyed the area he had just been ordered to defend, he must have been mightily discouraged. Read more

WWII

Operation Jericho

by Joseph M. Horodyski

On the bitterly cold, windswept morning of February 18, 1944, the crews of 19 De Havilland Mosquito Mk.VI Read more

WWII

Galeazzo Ciano’s Diary: The Inside Story of Mussolini’s Government

By Blaine Taylor

On July 19, 1940, fresh from his victorious campaigns on the Western Front, German Führer and Reich Chancellor Adolf Hitler delivered his “peace speech” to the Reichstag in Berlin’s Kroll Opera House. Read more

WWII

Convoy PQ 17: A Story of Unprecedented Arctic Disaster

By Keith Milton

First Sea Lord Admiral Sir Dudley Pound stopped tapping his pencil on the oaken desk and slowly leaned backward in the oversized leather chair. Read more

WWII

War Came Home to the Streets of Arnhem

By Christopher Miskimon

British airborne troops were landing near Arnhem, Holland, on the morning of September 17, 1944. Despite the fact that elements of two veteran SS panzer divisions were reconstituting in the area, the Germans were taken much by surprise. Read more

WWII

Operation Magic Carpet

When World War II in Europe came to an end, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Commander Allied Expeditionary Force, published a victory message to the troops. Read more

WWII

Einsatzgruppen in Germany: The Nazi Killing Squad

By Blaine Taylor

The wide-scale murder of Jews by Nazi Germany’s Einsatzgruppen began in Poland in September 1939, protested only by German Army Generals Johannes Blaskowitz and Georg Kuchler. Read more

WWII

The Pacific War: Bull Halsey & Raymond Spruance

By Michael Haskew

On the eve of the turning point of World War II in the South Pacific, the U.S. Navy’s most experienced aircraft carrier commander, Admiral William F. Read more

WWII

Air Chief Marshal Hugh Dowding & Hermann Goering

by Michael Haskew

By the summer of 1940, Hitler’s Nazi war machine had advanced from victory to victory, crushing Poland, overrunning France and the Low Countries, and ejecting Allied forces from the continent of Europe at Dunkirk. Read more

WWII

Field Marshals Erwin Rommel & Gerd von Rundstedt

by Michael Haskew

The Allied invasion of Nazi-occupied Europe was inevitable as the tide of World War II turned against Germany. Read more

WWII

Walking in the Footsteps of Heroes

By Flint Whitlock

I wrote previously about my guided three D-Day tours in the summer of 2014. I repeated the tour-guiding experience in May and June this year for the Minnesota World War II History Roundtable during a tour of Fifth Army battlefields in Italy. Read more

WWII

Eisenhower and MacArthur: an In-Depth Comparison

by Michael Haskew

Two of America’s most famous senior commanders to emerge from World War II were Eisenhower and MacArthur. These officers were largely responsible for command decisions that resulted in Allied victories in the South Pacific and in Europe. Read more

WWII

Georgy Zhukov and Ivan Konev: The Race to Berlin

by Michael Haskew

On orders from Soviet Premier Josef Stalin, the offensive that resulted in the capture of the Nazi capital of Berlin in April 1945, developed into a race between the army groups of two Soviet commanders, Marshal Georgy Zhukov and Marshal Ivan Konev. Read more