American tanks and armored gun carriers drive over snow-covered terrain to Samree during the Battle of the Bulge. Capture of the city opened the way to Houffallize, heart of the Bulge.

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The End of the Battle of the Bulge

By Arnold Blumberg

Wednesday, December 27, 1944, found the military situation in the Ardennes Forest of Belgium stalemated. After 12 days of unrelenting struggle, the American and German forces on this part of the Western Front found themselves locked in brutal combat, unable to drive each other back. Read more

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Was Rudolf Hess Murdered?

By Mason B. Webb

In 1979, Dr. Hugh Thomas, a British physician, came out with a highly controversial book that made the startling claim that Nazi Germany’s Deputy Führer, Rudolf Hess, did not commit suicide in Berlin’s Spandau Prison in 1987, but actually died in 1941, and that the man who died in prison was, in reality, Hess’s double! Read more

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William R. Dunn: Eagle Squadron Pilot

By David Alan Johnson

“I jammed the throttle wide open and, attacking the Me-109 from the port quarter, fired one burst of four seconds and three bursts of two seconds each,” Pilot Officer William R. Read more

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German All-Terrain Vehicle

By Blaine Taylor

The first published photo of one of the odd—but highly versatile —frontline vehicles of World War II appeared on the cover of the July 1942 edition of German Propaganda Minister Dr. Read more

Germans became interested in rocketry because rockets were not denied them by the Versailles Treaty. Through the 1930s they got a huge head start over the democracies in the use of rockets as weapons of war.

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Germany’s Deadly V-2 Rockets

By David Alan Johnson

Sixty-four-year-old Robert Stubbs slowly walked across the playing field of the Staveley Road School in the West London suburb of Chiswick. Read more

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Adolf Hitler’s Last Birthday

On April 20, 1945, Adolf Hitler observed his 56th, and last, birthday. There was little to celebrate. The so-called “Thousand Year Reich” was in its death throes after only 12. Read more

Manning a twin Bofors antiaircraft gun on the deck of the Queen Mary, a crew is put through its paces by an officer during gunnery training at sea.

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RMS Queen Mary’s War Service: Voyages to Victory

By Eric Niderost

The late summer of 1939 saw Great Britain teetering on the brink of war with Hitler’s Germany. The years of appeasement and vacillation, of meekly acquiescing to Hitler’s insatiable territorial demands, were over at last. Read more

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Grand Mufti al-Husseini: Britain’s Deadliest Enemy?

By Blaine Taylor

Like all Palestinians and most Arabs, Haj Amin al-Hussaini not only looked forward to an Axis Pact victory in World War II but also saw it as a means of defeating what he believed was a joint British-Jewish conspiracy to foist an Israelite homeland on the Middle East that would be to the detriment of his own people. Read more

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The Scholarly Spies

By Tim Miller

Early in June 1940, refugees from northern France and the low Countries who had flooded Paris in May fled with the residents of the city as the German advance neared. Read more

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The Fieseler Storch Fi 156

by Blaine Taylor

On March 12, 1939, Heroes’ Memorial Day (or Veterans Day) in the Nazi Third Reich, the thousands of onlookers at the giant annual parade in Berlin were treated to an unusual sight as a small monoplane landed on the Unter den Linden between Hermann Göring’s State Opera House and the Neue Wache (New Guardshouse). Read more

Wehrmacht infantrymen march through a Belgian town to occupy territory overrun by armored divisions.

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German Intelligence Chief Wilhelm Franz Canaris

by David Alan Johnson

In most popular spy thrillers, secret agents are tall, handsome, virile, and irresistible to women. Whether their name is Dirk Pitt, Jack Ryan, or James Bond, all are hard-drinking, well-tailored ladies’ men. Read more

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