WWII
When Colonel-General Heinz Guderian, chief of the German General Staff, presented German leader Adolf Hitler with estimates of Russian strength for Operation Barbarossa, Hitler declared that the numbers were “completely idiotic” and “pure bluff.” Read more
WWII
The island of Tinian is located in the Northern Marianas, three miles southwest of Saipan, 100 miles north of Guam, and 1,500 miles from mainland Japan. Read more
WWII
U.S. Army Sergeant Vere Williams listened to his instincts as his landing craft approached the beach. It was August 15, 1944, and his unit, the 157th Infantry Regiment of the 45th Division was part of the invasion force for Operation Dragoon, the landings along France’s Mediterranean coast. Read more
WWII
By the evening of January 22, 1944, it was increasingly apparent that a drastic shift in strategy was needed to break the bloody debacle that had developed in central Italy. Read more
WWII
It is dusk on July 17, 1943. The Red Army has not only withstood Hitler’s Operation Citadel to eliminate the Kursk salient, but it has launched its own offensive. Read more
WWII
History is almost never “chiseled into stone.” The fog of time can be blown away when new information emerges. Read more
WWII
By Arnold Blumberg
After the Royal Navy’s traumatic departure from the Pacific Ocean in early 1942, the 4th Submarine Flotilla and its depot ship, the HMS Adamant, operated with the Eastern Fleet based at Trincomalee––a large, natural harbor located on the coast of Sri Lanka in the heart of the Indian Ocean. Read more
WWII
On the morning of August 19, 1942, the Canadian 2nd Division sailed across the English Channel and attacked the Nazi-held port of Dieppe, France. Read more
WWII
Lieutenant Dan Daspit, captain of the U.S. submarine Tinosa could not believe his luck. Framed neatly in the periscope eyepiece was a sitting duck. Read more
WWII
He organized, trained, and commanded the 4th Marine Division in the Marshall Islands and Saipan campaigns before taking command of the Fifth Amphibious Corps and leading it against Tinian and Iwo Jima. Read more
WWII
On December 10, 1944, Generalleutnant (equivalent to major general in the U.S. Army during World War II) Fritz Bayerlein was called to a meeting at Kyllburg (Eifel) to participate in a map exercise involving an advance to the Meuse River. Read more
WWII
Prior to the summer of 1941, the United States Marine Corps did not want them. The Navy barely tolerated them in restricted capacities as cooks, waiters, servants for officers, and dockside stevedores. Read more
WWII
“You’re crazy to go out there!” a paratrooper shouted to medic Al Mampre as he bolted from a trench outside of the Dutch town of Eindhoven. Read more
WWII
“To cap it all, down came the fog, the sort you sometimes get at sea—one minute clear, the next in a fog bank—so we relied on our radar a lot. Read more
WWII
WWII
Leningrad was the sacred city of Soviet Communism. The port city on the Neva River, 400 miles northwest of Moscow, began life in 1703 as Petrograd, or St. Read more
WWII
Roy Altenbach, a soldier from a German-speaking family in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, was assigned to the 47th Medium Maintenance Company, 22nd Ordnance Battalion. Read more
WWII
Imagine that you are an Allied soldier in the ETO. You are in your foxhole on the front line, looking and listening for any sign that the Germans are about to attack your position. Read more
WWII
Henry Muller had an important job. He was the intelligence officer of the 11th Airborne Division, known in military parlance as the G-2. Read more
WWII
Company B’s jeeps, armored cars, and self-propelled guns stood lined up on a narrow road, their crewmen anxious to move out. Read more
