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Nazi Time Capsule Found in Poland

A Nazi time capsule was discovered in Poland, buried in the foundations of the old Nazi training school of Ordensburg Krössinsee. Read more

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George C. Marshall: Architect of Victory

By Michael D. Hull

President Franklin D. Roosevelt was disturbed in the autumn of 1938 by the Munich agreement, at which the rights of Czechoslovakia were signed away, and by reports of mounting air strength in Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany. Read more

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WWII Vehicles: The Island-Hopping LVT

By R.J. Seese

While making business calls in Tampa, Florida, during the summer of 1980, I spotted a strange looking tracked contraption atop an overgrown pedestal in front of the U.S. Read more

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Hitler’s Lebensborn Children: Kidnappings in German-Occupied Poland

By Brent Douglas Dyck

In the summer of 1943, Malgorzata Twardecki, a single mother living in Nazi-occupied Poland, received an ominous order to bring her five-year-old son to the local town council office by 6 the following morning. Read more

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Operation Plunder: Crossing the Rhine

By David Lippman

“I am busy getting ready for the next battle,” Field Marshal Sir Bernard Law Montgomery wrote his son David in early March 1945. Read more

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Was the 1917 Enfield a Good Rifle Compared to the Springfield?

By Steve Lilley

In director Howard Hawks’s 1941 film classic, Sergeant York, then-Corporal Alvin York, portrayed by Gary Cooper, single-handedly knocks out more than 30 German machine-gun nests and, with little assistance, captures 132 enemy soldiers. Read more

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The Battle of the Coral Sea

By John Wukovits

World War II was less than six months old when the American public, already stunned by the debacles at Pearl Harbor and Guam, faced one of its darkest moments. Read more

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The Athens War Museum

By Peter Suciu

While not a major military power today, from the  time of the classical age through the Middle Ages, Greece was the center of several major military dynasties. Read more

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Soviet Navy Over Berlin

By Victor Kamenir

On July 22, 1941, exactly one month after invading the Soviet Union, German aviation conducted its first air strike on Moscow. Read more

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Perilous Rescue of the SS Cape San Juan

By Eric Niderost

The giant Martin PBM-3R “Mariner” landed with a kind of swanlike grace, its stubby bow parting the waters, transforming them into a series of white and foamy ripples that radiated from the seaplane’s wake. Read more

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Deep Strike on Augsburg

By Allyn Vannoy

In the spring of 1942, the Allies were hard pressed battling German U-boats in the Atlantic as Britain was struggling to feed its people. Read more

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Daring Raid on Algiers Harbor

By Christopher Miskimon

In November 1942, the Anglo-American invasion of North Africa, Operation Torch, caused a short but intense conflict with French forces loyal to the Vichy regime in power on the European mainland. Read more

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Surging Toward the Alps: Last Battles of the Italian Campaign

By Michael E. Haskew

For the Allied armies in Italy, the final winter of World War II was one of planning, replenishment, and the continuing effort to make existence in a war-ravaged land in the midst of snow and ice as bearable as possible. Read more

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Maskirovka: The Hidden Key to Soviet Victory

By Phil Zimmer

Promoted to full colonel in the German Army and an award of the prestigious Knight’s Cross were significant accomplishments, even in the waning days of World War II. Read more

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Adolf Galland: Winged Knight of the Luftwaffe

By Michael D. Hull

On a bright spring day in 1944, a Luftwaffe Focke-Wulf 190 fighter encountered a formation of U.S. Read more

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“The Story of G.I. Joe”: Poignant Death of an American Soldier

By Duane Schultz

There was a time, in January 1944, when everyone in America had heard of Captain Henry T. Waskow from Belton, Texas. Read more

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The Birth of the Viet Minh: World War II’s Prelude to the Vietnam War

By John Brown

In the late 18th century, the French established Catholic missions in Indochina, and until the 1820s they enjoyed local protection, but after that persecution began and increased steadily, particularly under Emperor Tu-Duc, who reigned from 1847 to 1883 and wanted to stamp out Christianity. Read more

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Royal Navy Destroyers

by Glenn Barnett

­­No class of ship in World War II saw more service than the destroyers of the Royal Navy. Read more

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Battle at Bir el Gubi

By Arnold Blumberg

February 1941 saw the fortunes of war favor the British in the North African wasteland of Cyrenaica (modern Libya). Read more

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The Katyn Forest Massacre: Cracks in the Allied Cause

by Michael E. Haskew

The enemy of my enemy is my friend, so an old saying goes. Perhaps it was the grandest exercise in political pragmatism and expediency that the world has ever known. Read more