WWII
During World War II, the use of airborne forces to “vertically envelop” the enemy went from an untested theory to a major part of offensive tactics, first for Germany and then the Allies. Read more
WWII
Commander Mitsuo Fuchida, strike leader for Operation Hawaii and 20-year veteran of the Imperial Japanese Navy (Kaigun), strapped himself into the observer’s seat as his Nakajima B5N2 “Kate” torpedo bomber, piloted by Lieutenant Mitsuo Matsuzaki, and lifted off from the carrier Akagi on the black morning of December 7, 1941. Read more
WWII
I am of Polish, Irish, and American Indian descent and grew up in the small (population 3,800) northern Illinois town of Geneva. Read more
WWII
When Hugo Broch flew his fighter for the Luftwaffe, he probably didn’t imagine he would ever find himself in the cockpit of a Supermarine Spitfire. Read more
WWII
Guest Post By History on the Net
No matter how little you know about history, you know something about Adolf Hitler. Read more
WWII
Enter into this suburban home outside Buenos Aires and you perhaps wouldn’t imagine it held the largest cache of Nazi artifacts in Argentinian history. Read more
WWII
In an effort to calm his nerves just before he jumped into Normandy on D-Day, Lud Labutka thought it might be a good idea to accept the drink being offered from the paratrooper sitting across from him on their C-47 transport as it crossed the English Channel. Read more
WWII
A New York Times article revealed the sorry state of a historic World War II submarine stuck in the Hackensack River. Read more
WWII
In mid-March 1945, the Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Red Army launched a major offensive with the aim of clearing Axis forces out of Hungary and forcing them back to the very borders of Hitler’s Greater German Reich. Read more
WWII
Before World War II, the Belgian port city of Antwerp was one of the world’s great ports, ranking with those of Hamburg, Rotterdam, and New York. Read more
WWII
They knew they were coming. They had been waiting for days, expecting at any minute to be rushed to battle stations, but for days nothing much had happened. Read more
WWII
On the morning of May 15, 1942, a strange motorcade rolled out of Campo Four, located 170 hot, dusty miles south of the Italian base at Jalo oasis in northeast Libya. Read more
WWII
Something about the series Band of Brothers struck a chord with television viewers all over the world. Read more
WWII
Described in one U.S. Army report as “the quiet paradise for weary troops,” the tiny nation of Luxembourg was viewed by American commanders in late 1944 much like Belgium—liberated, safe, and an ideal location for combat-worn troops to rest and for untested replacements to get exposed to outdoor living and military routine before being exposed to combat. Read more
WWII
There is no shortage of museums in the Belgian Ardennes to record the region’s dark winter of World War II. Read more
WWII
This year, as I have done almost every year for the past 30 years, I took part in the Memorial Day ceremony at the 10th Mountain Division War Memorial near the division’s former training area high up in the Colorado Rockies. Read more
WWII
Seventy-five years ago this month, the pivotal battle of World War II in the Pacific occurred in the waters surrounding an otherwise obscure atoll, Midway, roughly 1,300 miles from Pearl Harbor, where American involvement in the conflict had begun so suddenly just six months earlier. Read more
WWII
Jim Cramer, host of CNBC’s Mad Money show, made a mistake on May 11th when he jokingly parroted a common misconception about the German invasion of Poland. Read more
WWII
Background: In this, the third and final installment of a three-part series excerpted from The Lions of Carentan, the 2011 book by a respected German military historian, Fallschirmjäger Regiment 6 (FJR 6) has been pushed out of Ste.-Mère-église, Read more
WWII
Background: Fallschirmjäger Regiment 6, under the command of Major Friedrich August Freiherr von der Heydte, had the fortune (or misfortune) to be stationed in Normandy at the time of the Allied invasion of France on June 6, 1944. Read more
