Allies

Any Bonds Today?

One of the most unusual baseball games ever played was a three- way game in New York City between the New York Yankees, the New York Giants, and the Brooklyn Dodgers. Read more

Allies

A Memorable Marine Mascot

Soochow was a mongrel dog with a remarkable gift for self-preservation. A homeless stray, he attached himself to some U.S. Read more

Allies

Were P-47 Thunderbolt Aircraft Really Formidable Fighter-Bombers?

Since the end of World War II, the aviation press has made the North American P-51 Mustang into the superstar Allied fighter of the war. Read more

Allies

Duel in the Desert: Operation Crusade’s Battle of Bardia

The desert sky lit up like a summer lightning storm on the night of December 31, 1941. The distant thunder of hundreds of guns rolled across the sandy, stony ground. Read more

Allies

WWII Concentration Camps: The Horrific Discovery at Buchenwald

When Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany on January 30, 1933, the world changed forever.

Not only was Hitler determined to pay back Germany’s enemies for his country’s defeat during the Great War, but he was also determined to rid Germany and the rest of Europe of persons whom his twisted Aryan ideology believed were “inferior” or “subhuman.” Read more

Allies

Julius Streicher, Der Sturmer, and Fueling the Nazi Propaganda Machine

It was May 23, 1945, roughly a year before the execution of Julius Streicher, founder and publisher of the vilest anti-Semitic Nazi propaganda of the war. Read more

Allies

The U.S. Army Medical Corps: Caring for the Casualties in World War II

For centuries wounded soldiers of every nation were responsible for much of their own care. Medical attention was primitive and often not a high priority for military planners beyond the officer corps. Read more

Allies

Escape into Arizona’s Desert: German Prisoners in World War II

On Christmas Eve, 1944, Colonel William Holden, commander of the prisoner of war camp at Phoenix, Arizona, suddenly lost all hope for a happy holiday. Read more

Allies

The Battle of Aachen: Breaking Down the Door to Europe in WWII

By the autumn of 1944, German resistance in the West was quickly crumbling as the British and Americans approached the German border 233 days ahead of schedule.  Read more

Allies

The Rangers’ British Padre: Father Albert Basil

One day shortly after the Battle of El Guettar in central Tunisia in March 1943, Colonel William O. Read more

Allies

The Soviet Dunkirk: The Tallinn Offensive

Early in World War II, a bitter joke circulated within the Soviet military. It ran, “What is the first thing Russia does when war is declared? Read more

Allies

British General Orde Wingate’s Blurred Legacy

British General Orde Wingate is one of the more enigmatic World War II commanders encountered in a number of biographical and military historical accounts. Read more

Allies

Johann Georg Elser’s Treasonous Plot to Prevent World War II

At exactly 8 PM on November 8, 1939, German Chancellor Adolf Hitler strode briskly into Munich’s Burgerbraukeller beer hall at the head of his glowering entourage, brushing past a forest of hands raised in the Nazi salute. Read more

Allies

Wekusta: Weathermen of the Wehrmacht

The fundamental pillars of war—strategy and tactics— inevitably depend on an imponderable and uncontrollable factor: the weather. With the increasing sophistication of weather data gathering, analysis, and forecasting in the early 20th century, predicting the weather became an integral part of World War II. Read more

Allies

How Paratroopers Earned Their Wings

Every American soldier who jumped into North Africa, Europe, the Philippines, and other combat zones around the globe during World War II had to first learn his trade at Fort Benning, Georgia. Read more

Allies

How Juan Pujol Garcia (a.k.a. “Garbo”) Made The D-Day Invasion Happen

In the predawn hours of June 6, 1944, the largest armada ever sent into war assaulted the coast of France at Normandy. Read more

Allies

Captured Weapons of the Reich: A Photo Essay

Allies

The Fairey Swordfish Torpedo Bomber

Radar, atomic bombs, jet engines and early cruise missiles were among the numerous technological advances of World War II. Read more

Allies

WWII: German Rations and Feeding the Troops of the Third Reich

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

Allies

Cockleshell Heroes: Courageous Commandos in Canoes

Early in World War II, the British War Office and the Admiralty were shocked by daring small boat attacks, some of them suicidal, on Allied shipping in the Mediterranean Sea. Read more