Axis

Savagery off Samar: Interview with Jack Yusen

Interview by John Wukovits

The 18-year-old seamen bobbed in the oily waters off the Philippine coast with other survivors of the October 25, 1944, battle. Read more

Axis

Donald R. Lobaugh: From Delinquent to Medal of Honor Recipient

By Richard A. Beranty

Donald R. Lobaugh was a juvenile delinquent, a kid sent to reform school when he was 16 years old. Read more

Axis

Vladimir Peniakoff: Popski’s Private Army

By John Brown

In September 1942, two patrols of armed jeeps and trucks of the Long Range Desert Group (LRDG) raided the German airfield at Barce. Read more

Axis

The Chance-Vought F4U Corsair: Whistling Death in the South Pacific

by Sam McGowan

Thanks to the rather far-fetched mid-1970s TV series Black Sheep Squadron, the bent-wing image of the Chance-Vought F4U Corsair is no doubt one of the most vivid of the World War II fighters in the minds of most Americans. Read more

Axis

Famous Navy Ships: The Triumph of the USS Batfish

By Robert Barr Smith

She was a sleek, efficient, deadly killer, a home to six officers and 60 enlisted men, and a holy terror to the enemy. Read more

Axis

Americans in the Royal Air Force

by David Alan Johnson

As they boarded the train for Montreal, the two Americans tried to look as inconspicuous as possible. Read more

Axis

The Red Army’s Bloody Clash at Izyum

By Pat McTaggart

During the winter of 1941, both the Red Army and the German Wehrmacht experienced a terrifying bloodletting. Adolf Hitler’s seemingly invincible armies, having advanced hundreds of miles inside the Soviet Union, were slowed by the October muddy season that had turned all but a few roads into almost impassible quagmires. Read more

Axis

The Imperial Japanese Army’s Takasago Volunteers

by Glenn Barnett

When Commodore Matthew C. Perry sailed out of Tokyo Bay after his historic visit in 1854, he left in his wake a desire among the Japanese to emulate all things Western. Read more

Axis

Hiro Onoda’s Surrender: Fighting World War II Until 1974

By Glenn Barnett

The Japanese empire was a fine place for young Hiro Onoda. In 1939, at age 17, he hired on with a lacquerware company that posted him to Hankow (Wuhan) in Japanese-occupied China. Read more

Axis

The Dieppe Raid: A Tragic Dress Rehearsal

By Richard Rule

By early 1942, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill was still unable to boast a single victory in the field against Germany. Read more

Axis

Joseph Stalin’s Kliment Yefremovich Voroshilov: A Soviet Survivor

By Blaine Taylor

In the summer of 1941, as the Nazi German blitzkrieg rolled over the Russian Red Army defenses at the embattled city of Leningrad, today once more St. Read more

Axis

Michael Prestianni: Guarding the War Criminals at Nuremberg

By Roscoe C. Blunt

Perhaps the most feared group of accused criminals in the annals of history was a potpourri of personalities who had been associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. Read more

Axis

The WWII Bombing of Pantelleria Island: A Test of Air Power

By Robert F. McEniry

On May 13, 1943, nearly 300,000 Axis soldiers surrendered to the Allies in northern Tunisia. This successful conclusion to the North African campaign led to speculation at the time as to where the Allies would strike next. Read more

Axis

Operation Jericho: Mosquito Raid on Amiens Prison

By Robert Barr Smith

Many of the prisoners knew this night was probably their last on earth. Amiens Prison had seen a great many judicial murders and much Gestapo torture and brutality, so except for those about to die, executions were routine. Read more

Axis

Why The Nazi Atomic Bomb Never Happened

By Jonathan F. Keiler

The most nightmarish of World War II alternative history scenarios is the one in which Nazi Germany acquires atomic weapons. Read more

Axis

The Doomed Expansion of Imperial Japan

by Michael E. Haskew

Since 1931, Japan’s army had asserted control over territory on the continent of Asia, brushing aside Chinese resistance, condemnation and political pressure from other nations, and most recently, the Allied military. Read more

Axis

Crossing the Rhine at Remagen

by Michael Haskew

Nine months after they splashed ashore on the beaches of Normandy, Allied troops stood along the west bank of the great Rhine River, the last natural barrier between them and the expanse of the Third Reich. Read more

Axis

King Boris III of Bulgaria

By Blaine Taylor

It was the high summer of 1943 in Eastern Europe, and World War II was going decidedly against the Third Reich, which had just suffered massive twin defeats on the Russian Front at the Battles of Stalingrad and Kursk, which many historians now believe turned the tide of war irrevocably against Nazi Germany. Read more

Axis

Amphibious Landing at Anzio

By Mike Haskew

As the last days of 1943 slipped away, World War II in Italy ground to a miserable stalemate. Read more

Axis

Bloody Tarawa: Betio’s Lagoon

By John Wukovits

Colonel Merritt A. Edson, the 2nd Marine Division’s chief of staff, and Colonel David M. Shoup designed a simple plan to seize Betio—land along its northern beaches, drive straight across the narrow island, and kill the defenders. Read more