Allies
The Imperial War Museum
By Roy StevensonAlthough Britain has a number of war museums, the Imperial War Museum (IWM) is acknowledged as the Holy Grail of them all—the one you must visit when in London. Read more
Allies
Herrlisheim: What Became of the 12th Armored Division’s Lost Battalion
By Nathan N. PreferOn January 17, 1945, as Allied forces prepared to descend on Germany itself and put an end to the war in Europe, an American tank battalion disappeared. Read more
Allies
Why America Participated in the Allied Bombing of France in WWII
By Flint WhitlockBy any standard, the ancient city of Rouen, in Upper Normandy, is a historical treasure. Within its magnificent High Gothic Notre-Dame Cathedral (which was portrayed in a famous series of paintings by the Impressionist Claude Monet as well as by his contemporary Camille Pissarro) is a tomb containing the heart of Richard the Lionheart (1157-1199) who had been King of England and the Duke of Normandy. Read more
Allies
The Graf Spee & Britain’s First Naval Victory of World War II
By David LippmanAs soon as the British radio operator started batting out the distress signal on December 2, 1939, the German pocket battleship opened up with a 37mm gun. Read more
Allies
Japanese Suicide Attacks at Pearl Harbor and Beyond
by David Alan JohnsonThe deliberate crashing into enemy targets by Japanese aviators did not begin at the Battle of Santa Cruz Islands. Read more
Allies
A Soldier Remembers the Pearl Harbor Attack
By John Sanford BairdAt about 8 am on the morning of December 7, 1941, I stood on the third-floor deck of a red brick barracks that looked across the Schofield Barracks golf course toward the infantry barracks that housed much of the U.S. Read more
Allies
Operation Aphrodite
By Mason B. WebbWhen it came to advanced military technology in World War II, arguably no one was better at it than Nazi Germany, whose scientists Adolf Hitler keep busy trying to invent the ultimate “super weapon” capable of defeating his enemies. Read more
Allies
Rampage on the Riviera: Operation Dragoon
By Glenn Barnette and André BernoleEarly in 1944, German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, the defeated hero of North Africa and now head of Army Group B in France, was tasked with strengthening the Atlantic Wall defenses against Allied invasion. Read more
Allies
Bombing Buchenwald
By Flint WhitlockIn early 1945, the 50,000 starved and brutalized prisoners incarcerated at KL Buchenwald—the infamous concentration camp located atop a hill known as the Ettersberg, just to the northwest of Germany’s cultural capital of Weimar—were growing desperate. Read more
Allies
Colt Commando Revolver .38 Special and the $25 War Department Deal
By Jon DiamondMany handgun enthusiasts’ blog entries recount how they stumbled onto a local gun show table only to find a dull-finished revolver that clearly bore the impression “Colt Commando .38 Special” on the left side of the barrel. Read more
Allies
How Capitalism Won WWII: This Is Capitalism and Expert Rob Citino Explain
By Nicholas Varangis“We won because we smothered the enemy in an avalanche of production, the like of which he had never seen, nor dreamed possible.” Read more
Allies
Crushing Counterattack at Salerno
By Arnold BlumbergOn the morning of September 13, 1943, Col. Gen. Heinrich G. von Vietinghoff, commander of the German Tenth Army, faced a difficult decision. Read more
Allies
The Last Fighter Pilot: An Account of the Final Combat Mission of World War Two
Guest Post By History on the NetThe following is an account of Captain Jerry Yellin, who flew the last combat mission of WWII on the morning of August 15, 1945, out of Iwo Jima. Read more
Allies
The Ilyushin Il-2 Sturmovik: The Soviet’s Deadly Tank Killer
By Phil ZimmerVasily Emelianenko led an Ilyushin Il-2 Sturmovik, or “Storm Bird,” flight in late June 1942 against a German-held airfield near Artemovsk in eastern Ukraine, flying low up a deep ravine to avoid detection. Read more
Allies
Four Things Dunkirk Gets Right About the Iconic Evacuation
By Nicholas VarangisDunkirk, Christopher Nolan’s latest film, has wowed critics since it hit theaters in the U.S. last week, and for good reason. Read more
Allies
The Salween Offensive: Blundering to Success in Burma
By Marc D. BernsteinAfter launching an invasion of Burma (today Myanmar) not long after Pearl Harbor, the Imperial Japanese Army went on to overrun much of China by May 1942 and closed the Burma Road—the vital, 717-mile-long mountain highway built in 1937-1938 that ran from Kunming in southern China to the Burmese border. Read more
Allies
The Dunkirk (2004) Miniseries Comes to BritBox
By Nicholas VarangisThis week, two Dunkirks will make their debut. The first is the much-anticipated Christopher Nolan film, a two-hour long Hollywood blockbuster set to take theaters by storm as a new take on the war epic genre. Read more
Allies
The USS Laffey Survived Waves of Kamikazes Off Okinawa
By John WukovitsTwo warships have been named in honor of Seaman Bartlett Laffey, a Civil War Medal of Honor recipient. Read more
Allies
Skiing Off To War: A Squad Leader in the 10th Mountain Division
By Bruce K. Campbell with Glenn BarnettI was born in Los Angeles in 1924 and attended local schools. In high school I enrolled in ROTC and, when I could, I went skiing for fun. Read more
Allies
The Last Flight of the Lonesome Polecat
By Diane Condon-BoutierEvery February 11, Rouxmesnil-Bouteilles, a tiny town in Upper Normandy situated north of the Seine River a short distance inland from the coastal city of Dieppe and some two hours from the D-Day invasion beaches, pays homage to 10 American airmen who crashed into the town center, narrowly missing the local children assembled in their schoolhouse just a few yards away. Read more
