WWII

WWII

Paul Tibbets: The Man Who Piloted the Enola Gay

Today, in his nineties, Paul Tibbets is still a handsome man. He has a full head of silver hair. Read more

WWII

The Spanish Blue Division Along WWII’s Eastern Front

To their Russian enemies they were the “Spanish mercenaries of Hitler’s Fascist lackey, Franco.” To Hitler himself, “One can’t imagine more fearless fellows. Read more

WWII

Discharged: George Faulkner’s Odyssey from Soldier to Civilian

Every man in uniform dreamed of taking that big boat home, but stepping foot on American soil was just part of the journey. Read more

WWII

OSS Operation Ginny

The three rubber dinghies struggled through the rough surf in the pitch black night toward an inhospitable stretch of rocky beach. Read more

WWII

Warsaw 1943: A War of Desperation

In April 1940, Adolf Hitler’s SS began building a walled compound in occupied Warsaw in which to imprison Jews who had survived the previous autumn’s bitter fighting as the German juggernaut romped through western Poland. Read more

WWII

WWII Heroes: Aristides de Sousa Mendes

Panic and confusion reigned across France as the bright, warm spring of 1940 turned into summer.

Blitzkrieg, a brutal new mode of warfare, was on the loose in Western Europe. Read more

WWII

U.S. Heavy Bombers in WWII: Caught on the Ground

In the popular history of World War II, the assertion that the United States was caught unprepared in Hawaii and the Philippines has become widely accepted as fact. Read more

WWII

The Bridge at Remagen

By the end of January 1945, Hitler’s desperate Ardennes Offensive had ground to a halt. Though the last-ditch push to the west had inflicted heavy casualties on American forces, it was the German army that suffered irreplaceable losses in men, equipment, and materiel and was no longer capable of offensive operations. Read more

WWII

The Soviet Secret Police & the Katyn Forest Massacre

On September 17, 1939, in the wake of Hitler’s invasion of Poland, the Soviet Red Army crossed the Polish frontier from the east. Read more

WWII

The USS Vestal: The Pearl Harbor Attack & Beyond

On Saturday, December 6, 1941, the repair ship USS Vestal eased alongside the USS Arizona at her berth at Pearl Harbor. Read more

WWII

Cold War Spies: General Reinhard Gehlen

By 1944, many top generals in Adolf Hitler’s army understood the war was lost and that they had better make arrangements to ensure their safety. Read more

WWII

Hit & Run: British Commandos Striking the Atlantic Wall in Norway

Following the forced evacuation of Allied forces at Dunkirk in June 1940, British leaders viewed a dim future. Read more

WWII

WWII Spies: Oreste Pinto

Two men were seated on either side of a paper-strewn table inside an office of MI5, the British intelligence service, in the Royal Victoria Patriotic School at Clapham, London, shortly after the fall of France in the spring of 1940. Read more

WWII

The “George Medal” and Guadalcanal

In the long and distinguished history of the U.S. Marine Corps, thousands of marines have been awarded medals for meritorious service on the battlefield. Read more

WWII

Sleep in the Military: Not Dead, Just Dead Tired

One of the most precious resources in war, and the one most often in short supply, is sleep. Read more

WWII

Mission for MacArthur

In modern naval history, there is perhaps no more colorful figure than the late Vice Admiral John Duncan Bulkeley. Read more

WWII

Operation South Wind’s Battle for the Gran Bridgehead

By the end of 1944, the Soviet Red Army had surrounded the Hungarian capital of Budapest and established strong defensive positions running from Esztergom on the Danube to Lake Balaton. Read more

WWII

The death of President Franklin D. Roosevelt stunned the nation and the world in April 1945.

It was a sunny spring day atop Pine Mountain in Warm Springs, Ga. In his little white pine cottage, where he was resting from the strenuous Big Three conference at Yalta in the Crimea on February 4-11, 1945, President Franklin D. Read more

WWII

Marauding Wahoo

On the night of September 14, 1942, the men aboard the U.S. Navy submarine Wahoo spotted smoke rising from the funnel of a vessel emerging from Truk’s north pass. Read more

WWII

Stalingrad: Battle in the Cauldron

The imperious ringing of a field telephone broke up the meeting that General Vasili Chuikov was holding with his exhausted 62nd Army staff in their dugouts in Stalingrad. Read more