WWII
“For several months after the outbreak of the war with Japan the very fate of our nation rested in the hands of a small group of very dedicated and highly devoted men working in the basement under the Administration Building in Pearl Harbor.” Read more
WWII
It was supposed to be a routine delivery of soldiers to the battlefields of Guadalcanal—but nothing in war is ever routine. Read more
WWII
At the beginning of the battle for Imphal and Kohima, a Japanese Order of the Day instructed the troops: “You will fight to the death. Read more
WWII
Whirlybird and eggbeater were everyday lingo in 1943 when a few young men went to the Sikorsky factory in Stratford, Conn., Read more
WWII
They were all annoyed. The directive from Jagdkorps (JK) 2 made no sense, but it was clear: all New Year’s Eve parties were cancelled. Read more
WWII
By the winter of 1776, the struggle for American independence had reached its lowest point. In June of that year General George Washington’s Continental Army had stood at nearly 20,000 strong. Read more
WWII
Kurt Meyer was without doubt one of the most outstanding and highly decorated Waffen SS officers of World War II. Read more
WWII
In the latter half of 1943, the German Wehrmacht had seen disaster follow disaster on the Eastern Front. Read more
WWII
Within his reinforced concrete bunker, 50 feet below the garden of the New Reichs Chancellery on Berlin’s Wilhelmstrasse, German dictator Adolf Hitler, his soon-to-be bride Eva Braun, and several hundred friends, SS guards, and staff members could feel the concussion and hear the unending drumroll of thousands of Soviet artillery shells reducing the already-battered capital city of the Third Reich to unrecognizable rubble. Read more
WWII
Editor’s Note: The following is excerpted from Omaha Beach: D-Day June 6, 1944 by Joseph Balkoski (Stackpole Books, 2004; www.stackpolebooks.com). Read more
WWII
In the early 1970s, a former British Royal Air Force policeman–turned-hairdresser, Ken Small, visited South Devon on England’s Channel coast. Read more
WWII
When World War II began in September 1939, just nine months before the Siege of Malta, its three small islands in the central Mediterranean were still considered part of the British Commonwealth. Read more
WWII
I was always fascinated by the mastery of water,” Sir Donald Coleman Bailey reflected, long after the end of World War II. Read more
WWII
As he watched the preliminary bombardment from the railing of his ship, Colonel Lewis B. “Chesty” Puller had deep reservations. Read more
WWII
Freighter Ehrenfels’ siren shrieked through the muggy night across the harbor. As the captain pulled down hard on the alarm cord, the alarm howled out over the steaming darkness, screaming that British raiders were in the harbor, alerting Ehrenfels’ crew and calling for help from ashore. Read more
WWII
On the vast Eastern Front, the Demyansk salient represented little more than a smudge on the battle map. Read more
WWII
In some historical circles, a mistaken impression has developed that the U.S. Navy’s Task Force 38 launched the aerial offensive on the Japanese stronghold at Rabaul, New Britain, that ultimately rendered the base useless. Read more
WWII
General George S. Patton, Jr., once said, “An army is like a piece of cooked spaghetti. You can’t push it, you have to pull it after you.” Read more
WWII
Stripped of the regalia and high position of Reich Marshal in the Nazi regime and tried as a war criminal, the former Luftwaffe chief was by far the most colorful and outspoken defendant during the postwar proceedings. Read more
WWII
Built in the mid-1930s as one of the famed Treasury class of large U.S. Coast Guard cutters, USCGC Taney had a distinguished career spanning five decades of continuous service. Read more
