WWII
British Prime Minister Winston Churchill had made the promise to Soviet Premier Josef Stalin, and Admiral Sir John Tovey of the Royal Navy had to keep it: to sail three convoys loaded with critical supplies from Britain to Russia every two months, with 25 to 35 ships in each convoy. Read more
WWII
By the autumn of 1943, the Allied armies fighting in Italy had discovered that Winston Churchill’s description of Italy as the “soft underbelly of Europe” had been a falsehood of monumental proportions. Read more
WWII
The Battle of Berlin began with what a German colonel called “a dull, continuous roar of thunder from the east.” Read more
WWII
In March 1940, Benito Mussolini met with Adolf Hitler near the Brenner Pass on the border between Austria and Italy. Read more
WWII
“I am not a collector of deserts,” Mussolini declared regarding his imperial ambitions. Instead, he would be a loser of them, most publicly in North Africa and, in one of World War II’s least-known campaigns, in East Africa. Read more
WWII
The most successful Italian Army of World War II was a political creation of dictator Benito Mussolini. Read more
WWII
The war in North Africa flung vast armies across the arid deserts of Libya and Egypt for two long years, beginning with the Italian invasion of Egypt in September 1940. Read more
WWII
The director flicked his finger, and General Charles de Gaulle began reading his address into the British Broadcasting Corporation’s microphone, speaking from London to his defeated countrymen across the English Channel, calling upon them to continue resistance in the face of overwhelming German supremacy. Read more
WWII
The most successful and popular patriotic show of World War II and one of the most unique productions in the history of entertainment was Irving Berlin’s This Is the Army, which originally began as a Broadway musical. Read more
WWII
Most Americans were surprised by the Japanese attack on pearl Harbor, but the military had known that war with Japan was inevitable. Read more
WWII
The Germans could not believe it. Without suffering the loss of a single soldier or sailor, the German Army and Navy had sailed 1,500 miles through waters dominated by the British Royal Navy and captured Narvik without firing a shot, bagged nearly 500 Norwegian soldiers, seized one of Norway’s major military depots, and even taken five armed British merchant ships and their crews. Read more
WWII
When one gazes upon the bookshelves in the Military History section of a well-endowed library, one cannot help but notice the number of volumes dedicated to the battles for North Africa during World War II and particularly to the Battle of El Alamein in October 1942. Read more
WWII
In an August 14, 1944, General Bernard L. Montgomery was facing a manpower crisis, unable to drive the Germans out of Caen. Read more
WWII
As the months of 1945 passed at an agonizingly slow pace, Allied forces in the Pacific struggled unwaveringly toward Japan. Read more
WWII
On December 9, 1941, Grand Admiral Erich Raeder, the commander of the Kriegsmarine, lifted all restrictions on German naval attacks against American vessels by his surface and submarine fleets. Read more
WWII
Brave, urbane, and complex, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto was Japan’s greatest naval strategist and the architect of one of the most stunning achievements in the history of modern warfare. Read more
WWII
“So this is the Eastern Fleet,” ran Vice Admiral Sir James Fownes Somerville’s signal. “Never mind. Many a good tune is played on an old fiddle.” Read more
WWII
It was getting dark when they reached Arnhem bridge, but there it was, still intact.
Lieutenant Jack Grayburn’s No. Read more
WWII
The parachute of aptly named Major J.D. Frost cracked open in the freezing air high above the French Channel coast at 12:45 am, and he commenced drifting down through the moonlit gloom. Read more
WWII
The arrival of Vyacheslav M. Molotov, the People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs of the Soviet Union, in Berlin on a rainy November 12, 1940, was a solemn, strained occasion. Read more
