Adolf Hitler
It was Napoleon Bonaparte who purportedly said, “An army travels on its stomach.” Toward the goal of feeding his particular army’s stomach more efficiently, in 1795 the French general came up with an interesting solution to the problem. Read more
Adolf Hitler
The concept of a ship that could submerge beneath the water and then resurface dates back as far as the late 1400s, when Italian Renaissance artist and inventor Leonardo da Vinci claimed to have found a method for a ship to remain submerged for a protracted period of time. Read more
Adolf Hitler
The United States had not yet entered World War II when Time magazine noted that the Army had created two new armored divisions. Read more
Adolf Hitler
By Patrick J. Chaisson
The chief shuffled to his seat in the underground conference room. He sat down heavily, eyes unfocused and dreamy, while a litany of woes was read to him. Read more
Adolf Hitler
By Blaine Taylor
The Russian winter of 1941-1942 hit with terrible ferocity. Battling the deadly, numbing cold as well as the massive numbers of Red Army troops were soldiers from sunny Spain. Read more
Adolf Hitler
In October 1939, British Prime Minister Winston S. Churchill famously described Russia as “a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.” Read more
Adolf Hitler
By Christopher Miskimon
Historians often compare Adolf Hitler to a gambler. He kept making risky bets that paid off time and again—until they didn’t. Read more
Adolf Hitler
In the predawn hours of April 24, 1945, SS-Brigadeführer Gustav Krukenberg received orders from Army Group Vistula defending Berlin to immediately lead the remnants of the 57th Battalion of the 33rd Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS Charlemagne from its staging area at the SS training camp at Neustrelitz to the German capital. Read more
Adolf Hitler
On December 10, 1944, Generalleutnant (equivalent to major general in the U.S. Army during World War II) Fritz Bayerlein was called to a meeting at Kyllburg (Eifel) to participate in a map exercise involving an advance to the Meuse River. Read more
Adolf Hitler
By Flint Whitlock
His world was literally crashing down in flames around him. Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich, which he had created out of nothing but his own will—an empire that he had once boasted would last for a millennium—was on fire and being torn apart by shot and shell, besieged on all sides. Read more
Adolf Hitler
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
Adolf Hitler
“We felt that we were already dead men,” wrote former Captain Albrecht Wüstenhagen in a May 1988 letter to the author of his time in the fortress garrison of Küstrin. Read more
Adolf Hitler
By Richard Z. Freemann, Jr.
“War is mainly a catalogue of blunders.”
—Winston Churchill (1950)
On Sunday, June 22, 1941, as the sun slumbered, 3.6 million soldiers, 2,000 warplane pilots, and 3,350 tank commanders under skilled German command crouched at the border of Soviet-occupied Poland ready to invade the Communist nation Joseph Stalin had ruled with steel-fisted brutality for years. Read more
Adolf Hitler
Born on November 15, 1891, in Heidenheim, Germany, Erwin Rommel was a hero of World War I, receiving the Pour le Mérite, or Blue Max, for his actions on the Italian Front. Read more
Adolf Hitler
World War II spanned six long years from 1939 to 1945. The Allied powers, principally The United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union, defeated the Axis powers, led by Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, and Fascist Italy. Read more
Adolf Hitler
On December 16, 1944, Hitler launched Operation Wacht am Rhein, or Watch on the Rhine. Popularly known as the Battle of the Bulge, the ensuing offensive was a desperate effort to win a major victory in the West. Read more
Adolf Hitler
Commonly known as D-Day, the Western Allies invaded Nazi-occupied Europe during World War II on June 6, 1944. Read more
Adolf Hitler
Born November 30, 1874, to British politician Lord Randolph Churchill and Jenny Jerome, an American socialite, Winston Churchill rose to serve in Parliament and as Prime Minister of Great Britain from 1940 to 1945 and 1951 to 1955. Read more
Adolf Hitler
Born in Branau, Austria, on April 20, 1889, Adolf Hitler rose to lead the Nazi Party in Germany during the 1920s and was appointed the nation’s chancellor in 1933. Read more
Adolf Hitler
When the Sicilian port city of Palermo fell to Lt. Gen. George S. Patton’s Seventh Army on July 22, 1943, his soldiers were surprised by their reception. Read more
