WWII
Germany operated surface auxiliary cruisers, sometimes termed commerce raiders, in both world wars. The defeat of France in June 1940 opened Atlantic Ocean ports to the Germans for the first time, greatly facilitating access to the high seas by such raiders. Read more
WWII
Operation Frantic was a seven-shuttle bombing series conducted by American bomb squadrons operating out of Southern Italy and Great Britain. Read more
WWII
Angelo J. “Red” Mantini was hardly an angel growing up in the small coal-mining towns of western Pennsylvania in the 1930s. Read more
WWII
CONFIDENTIAL TO LEADERS
It is a well-known fact, of course, that any movement needs something to dramatize it, to appeal to the public’s sense of sensationalism. Read more
WWII
The records of the House Unamerican Activities Committee are kept in the National Archives in Washington, DC. The collection of “Unamericans” is stored in pull-out drawers, filling an entire wall in the building’s Legislative Archives. Read more
WWII
She was a beautiful ship, long and sleek and very fast. She was christened Scharnhorst,named for Prussian General Gerhard Scharnhorst,one of the revered founders of the Prussian Army. Read more
WWII
General Joseph Stilwell was one of the United States’ best military commanders, yet in the course of America’s involvement in World War II he never led U.S. Read more
WWII
On March 12, 1939, Heroes’ Memorial Day (or Veterans Day) in the Nazi Third Reich, the thousands of onlookers at the giant annual parade in Berlin were treated to an unusual sight as a small monoplane landed on the Unter den Linden between Hermann Göring’s State Opera House and the Neue Wache (New Guardshouse). Read more
WWII
A few days after the Marines had established a toehold on the island of Guadalcanal, a trio of natives appeared at the mouth of the Tenaru River. Read more
WWII
Staff Sergeant William Nolan dared not raise his hopes this August day in 1945, but something unusual was unfolding. Read more
WWII
When the Nazis paraded in triumph down the Champs Elysees on June 14, 1940, Sara Hauptman shook her fist at them from the crowded Parisian sidewalk. Read more
WWII
The haggard American sailors aboard the limping cruiser hoped that the journey upon which they had just embarked was the long-expected voyage back to the United States. Read more
WWII
In the 1930s Shanghai was in its heyday, a teeming metropolis of some 3.5 million people. The great city was a fascinating blend of cultures, its very existence refuting Rudyard Kipling’s famous aphorism. Read more
WWII
On September 28, 1939, the day after Warsaw fell to the German Army, American aviatrix Jacqueline Cochran sat down and wrote a letter to First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. Read more
WWII
She was a tiny vessel, not really designed for the dangers and hardships of war in far places and deep waters. Read more
WWII
At the start of the Battle of Mortain, Field Marshal Gunther Von Kluge was in an optimistic mood. Read more
WWII
As Adolf Hitler began to formulate his grandiose plans for the conquest of the Soviet Union, he considered the far northern operation area little more than a sideshow. Read more
WWII
While the 30th Infantry Division was fighting for its life at Mortain, a plan was devised to cut off the retreating German Army in an area known as the Falaise Pocket. Read more
WWII
by Michael Haskew
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
At 8:30 on the evening of September 7, 1943, an Italian military ambulance entered Rome carrying two American prisoners of war. Read more
European Theater
