Axis
The captured German pilot was cocky and boastful. He had just parachuted into the American airfield, now lit up by the fires of burning Republic P-47 Thunderbolts, a sprinkling of bright torches amid the gray January gloom and the dirty white snow. Read more
Axis
In the wan North African light on February 14, 1943, Lt. Col. John Waters watched columns of dust rise from the east. Read more
Axis
Andrei Andreievich Vlasov, one of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin’s favorite generals, played a key role in saving Moscow from Adolf Hitler’s armies during the winter of 1941-1942. Read more
Axis
The great waves were huge and black, greedy tentacles of the North Sea clawing and snatching at the battered ships struggling in the icy dark. Read more
Axis
May 10, 1940, marked the beginning of the war in western Europe. Nazi-controlled Germany invaded Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg, and France. Read more
Axis
Consolidated B-24 Liberator bomber crews of the U.S. 11th Bombardment Group spent the first three months of 1943 organizing on Hawaiian airfields and flying practice and patrol missions around the islands. Read more
Axis
By the autumn of 1943, the Allied armies fighting in Italy had discovered that Winston Churchill’s description of Italy as the “soft underbelly of Europe” had been a falsehood of monumental proportions. Read more
Axis
In March 1940, Benito Mussolini met with Adolf Hitler near the Brenner Pass on the border between Austria and Italy. Read more
Axis
“I am not a collector of deserts,” Mussolini declared regarding his imperial ambitions. Instead, he would be a loser of them, most publicly in North Africa and, in one of World War II’s least-known campaigns, in East Africa. Read more
Axis
The most successful Italian Army of World War II was a political creation of dictator Benito Mussolini. Read more
Axis
The war in North Africa flung vast armies across the arid deserts of Libya and Egypt for two long years, beginning with the Italian invasion of Egypt in September 1940. Read more
Axis
The director flicked his finger, and General Charles de Gaulle began reading his address into the British Broadcasting Corporation’s microphone, speaking from London to his defeated countrymen across the English Channel, calling upon them to continue resistance in the face of overwhelming German supremacy. Read more
Axis
The Germans could not believe it. Without suffering the loss of a single soldier or sailor, the German Army and Navy had sailed 1,500 miles through waters dominated by the British Royal Navy and captured Narvik without firing a shot, bagged nearly 500 Norwegian soldiers, seized one of Norway’s major military depots, and even taken five armed British merchant ships and their crews. Read more
Axis
When one gazes upon the bookshelves in the Military History section of a well-endowed library, one cannot help but notice the number of volumes dedicated to the battles for North Africa during World War II and particularly to the Battle of El Alamein in October 1942. Read more
Axis
The parachute of aptly named Major J.D. Frost cracked open in the freezing air high above the French Channel coast at 12:45 am, and he commenced drifting down through the moonlit gloom. Read more
Axis
The arrival of Vyacheslav M. Molotov, the People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs of the Soviet Union, in Berlin on a rainy November 12, 1940, was a solemn, strained occasion. Read more
Axis
On July 17, 1941, United States Army Chief of Staff General George C. Marshall sat before the Senate Military Affairs Committee. Read more
Axis
In September 1943, Canada’s top air ace, the “Falcon of Malta,” Flying Officer George Beurling, was faced with two problems. Read more
Axis
Several Allied operations targeted a single enemy commander: the unsuccessful raid on General Erwin Rommel’s headquarters in North Africa to kill the Desert Fox; the assassination of the Butcher of Prague, SS Reichsprotektor of Bohemia and Moravia Reinhard Heydrich; and the shooting down of Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto’s plane in the sky above Rabaul in 1943. Read more
Axis
Nearly three-quarters of a century distant from the end of World War II and the defeat of Nazi Germany, one may conclude with confidence that few images of mankind’s violent history stir greater revulsion and, yes, lingering fear than that of a glowering Adolf Hitler—steely eyes gazing outward from a page or the glow of a computer screen. Read more
