WWII
The mission was simple: “There’s fire along that hedgerow there. Take care of it.”
The order went to First Lieutenant Richard “Dick” Winters, the acting commander of Easy Company, 2nd Battalion, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division. Read more
WWII
Baron Burkhard von Mullenheim-Rechberg’s life was in danger. An officer aboard the German battleship Bismarck, Mullenheim-Rechberg was at his station as his ship was trading salvos with several British warships. Read more
WWII
When I was a young boy in Seattle, my father told me about a fake town that had been built on top of Boeing’s Plant 2 during the war. Read more
WWII
In the fall of 1942, in a prelude to the now-famous Operation Uranus, the Red Army had its back to the wall once again. Read more
WWII
Most of the action during the Battle of Britain in the late summer of 1940 took place over southern England where Royal Air Force Spitfires and Hurricanes began to dominate dogfights against their German rivals. Read more
WWII
Thirty miles east of Indio, California, is the General Patton Memorial Museum, a special museum dedicated to General George S. Read more
WWII
The flimsy canvas flapped loudly as it buckled in the wind. More bothersome for the nine German commandos crammed inside the narrow fuselage was the constant motion—sinking, then sharply rising, as the DFS-230 glider ploughed and pitched through the towing aircraft’s turbulent wake. Read more
WWII
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
With the defeat of the German Seventh Army and the closing of the Falaise Gap in the summer of 1944, the Allies pursued the retreating enemy across France. Read more
WWII
Averell Harriman, the ambassador to the Soviet Union, visited the American battlefront lines near the German border in the fall of 1944. Read more
WWII
Say the words “pocket battleship” and up pops the name Admiral Graf Spee. Her two sister ships, the Deutschland/Lutzow and the Admiral Scheer are virtually unknown to Americans. Read more
WWII
Following the apocalyptic initial phase of Operation Barbarossa starting on June 22, 1941, the Germans inflicted crippling losses on the Red Army Air Forces (VVS) and the Soviet Naval Air Forces (VVS-VMF). Read more
WWII
Hundreds of American professional baseball players gave pause to their promising careers to step up to the plate for their country during World War II. Read more
WWII
Captain Lawrence Rulison, the commander of K Company, 3rd Battalion, 25th Marines, listened as his battalion commander, Lt. Read more
WWII
A single prisoner was bound and blindfolded in the courtyard of a French country house near the village of Ste-Marie-aux-Mines at 10:04 a.m. Read more
WWII
When little John Shirley Wood was delivered on January 11, 1888, in Monticello, Arkansas, one of the Free World’s greatest defenders greeted his first dawn as eagerly as everything else he confronted and overcame in a lifetime of soldiering. Read more
WWII
Tanks—seven divisions of them concentrated at one point, the weakest position in the Western defenses—that was what did it.” Read more
WWII
For the duration of World War II, from the evening of Sunday, September 3, 1939, to the evening of Monday, May 7, 1945, the Battle of the Atlantic never ceased. Read more
WWII
On April 21, 1942, in action over Malta, Flight Lieutenant Denis Barnham of No. 601 Squadron was given credit for downing a German Junkers Ju-88 bomber and a Messerschmitt Bf-109 fighter. Read more
WWII
