European Theater
It was April 29, 1945. World War II was nearly over. Former Italian Fascist leader Benito Mussolini was dead, killed by partisans at Lake Como on April 28, and his body mutilated and strung up in a Milan gas station. Read more
European Theater
When the armistice between France and Germany was put into force on June 25, 1940, the fate of the powerful French Navy—the fourth largest in the world—was of critical importance to the British. Read more
European Theater
If the phrase “the clothes make the man” is true, then it is equally true that the uniform makes the soldier. Read more
European Theater
In the recently concluded midterm elections, who could have guessed that World War II would have been a campaign issue for one of the candidates? Read more
European Theater
Despite being ridiculed as a vain, pompous, and glory-seeking imbecile in a spate of biographies, diaries, letters, trial transcripts, and memoirs by leaders, field marshals, generals, and diplomats from both the Allies and his own Axis partners during and after the war, Joachim von Ribbentrop nevertheless was one of the premier foreign affairs practitioners of the Nazi epoch. Read more
European Theater
By the end of April 1945, two of the most feared divisions of the Waffen-SS, the 1st SS Panzer Division Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler and the 12th SS Panzer Division Hitlerjugend, had both been reduced in strength to little more than reinforced regiments. Read more
European Theater
Marek Edelman was one of a very few Jewish patriots who fought the Nazis in the Warsaw Ghetto and lived to tell the story of the bravery of those who rose up against their oppressors during World War II. Read more
European Theater
Author Margaret Mitchell is remembered as one of the “first” citizens of Atlanta. Gone With the Wind, her novel of the Old South and the perseverance of heroine Scarlett O’Hara, stands as a literary classic which spawned one of the most famous motion pictures of all time. Read more
European Theater
More than 60 years after her death, Anne Frank, the young girl who was a virtual prisoner in the famous “annex” as she, her family, and others hid from the Nazi Jew hunters in Amsterdam, remains an icon of optimism and belief in the triumph of the human spirit. Read more
European Theater
Dear Editor,
Please allow me to express my displeasure concerning the article in the January 2008 issue, “A Life Shaped by Dyslexia” by Jeansonne et al. Read more
European Theater
In the spring of 1944, the Italian Campaign was one of frustration and stalemate for the Allies. General Mark Clark’s Fifth Army had been stymied at Cassino, and strong German defenses barred the gateway to the valley of the Liri River and Rome, the Eternal City and capital of fascist Italy. Read more
European Theater
The evacuation of nearly 350,000 allied officers and soldiers from the embattled beaches at Dunkirk was indeed an event of epic proportions. Read more
European Theater
It was indeed an unprecedented effort to raise a continent from the devastation of a horrific world war, and ironically, the idea belonged to a career soldier. Read more
European Theater
The peril posed to the British Isles, and indeed the entire Allied cause, by the Nazi U-boat threat can scarcely be overstated. Read more
European Theater
When athletes become pawns of politicians, their skills being touted as proof of their country’s ideological superiority over others, seldom are events played out as the demagogues would have scripted. Read more
European Theater
While the American 101st and 82nd Airborne Divisions were engaged in fighting near the Dutch towns of Eindhoven and Nijmegen, respectively, and the British XXX Corps struggled up the 100 miles of narrow road from the Belgian frontier toward Arnhem, Operation Market Garden very likely was already lost. Read more
European Theater
Adolf Hitler won victory after victory in the late 1930s: the remilitarization of the Rhineland in 1936, the incorporation of Austria into the Reich in 1938, the acquisition of the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia in 1938 followed by the control over much of the remainder of Czechoslovakia six months later, and then the conquest of Poland in September 1939. Read more
European Theater
Although the hunt for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq has thus far proved a frustrating enterprise for inspectors, there remains no doubt that such weapons were once in the hands of Saddam Hussein and his lieutenants. Read more
European Theater
As they boarded the train for Montreal, the two Americans tried to look as inconspicuous as possible. Read more
European Theater
The gunfire has receded with the tide. One of the most valuable pieces of real estate in Normandy, France, on June 6, 1944, which once crawled with American GIs and German soldiers, now welcomes peaceful visitors from around the world. Read more
