Axis

The German Cruiser Königsberg

By Michael E. Haskew

When the German invasion of Norway was set in motion on April 9, 1940, much of the planning for the event had been done on a shoestring. Read more

Axis

OSS Bugatti: Fighting Alongside the Maquis

By John Mancini

The tempo of war planning intensified for the invasion of Europe during the early months of 1944. Finally, at daylight on June 6, 1944, Allied infantry stormed ashore along the German-held Normandy coast. Read more

Axis

Assault on Oslo: The Naval Disaster in the Drøbak Strait

By Henrick O. Lunde

The second week in April 1940 was a stormy period in the North and Norwegian Seas. The weather deteriorated during April 7, with low cloud cover and fog. Read more

Axis

Iron Annie: The Junkers Ju-52

By William E. Welsh

Shortly before dawn on May 20, 1941, a flight of 500 transport planes took off from seven airstrips on mainland Greece. Read more

Axis

The U.S. Navy in World War II: Problems with Torpedoes

by David Alan Johnson

Any American submarine that had made contact with a Japanese task force a year or two earlier would almost certainly not have had the success that Darter and Dace had with Admiral Kurita’s task force. Read more

Axis

Darter & Dace at the Battle of Leyte Gulf

By David Alan Johnson

As soon as he arrived on the bridge of the submarine USS Dace, Lt. Cmdr. Rafael C. Read more

Axis

“This is London…”: Edward R. Murrow in WWII

By Roy Morris Jr.

On the evening of August 7, 1937, two neophyte radio broadcasters went to dinner together at the luxurious Adlon Hotel in Berlin, Germany. Read more

Axis

Blood for Time: 9th Armored at Bastogne and the Battle of the Bulge

By Charles Gutierrez

In December 1944, the Ardennes front or “ghost front” was an area where either veteran Allied units rotated in to rest and recover from terrible combat losses or where new, untested units arrived to gather some combat experience from the minor skirmishes that would occasionally flare up. Read more

Axis

Bavarian Berchtesgaden and Its Bunkers

By L. VanLoan Naisawald

The swinging beams of searchlights and the wail of air raid sirens had preceded the crash of the guns. Read more

Axis

WWII Ordnance: The Marauding Marder

By William E. Welsh

On the second day of Adolf Hitler’s bold invasion of Russia in June 1941, the Germans were confronted with one of their most glaring shortcomings in weapons and armament. Read more

Axis

Unnecessary Hell: The Battle of Peleliu

By Eric Niderost

In the predawn hours of September 15, 1944, the official start of the two-month Battle of Peleliu, a powerful fleet of U.S. Read more

Axis

Top Flying Tiger: General Claire Chennault

By Michael D. Hull

Laden with 500-pound bombs and incendiaries, 10 Japanese twin-engine Mitsubishi Ki21 Sally bombers took off from the Hanoi airfield in Indochina on the morning of Saturday, December 20, 1941. Read more

Axis

Ernest Hemingway and the Ivy Leaguers in World War II

By Charles Whiting

During the second week of July 1944 a young, sharp Lieutenant Goldstein of the 4th Infantry Division’s 22nd Infantry Regiment was told by his boss, Colonel Buck Lanhan, “Expect a special civilian, a big war correspondent is coming to visit us. Read more

Axis

The Long Lance Torpedo at Guadalcanal

By David Alan Johnson

The bogey man of the U.S. Navy during the Guadalcanal campaign was not the Zero fighter or the I-class submarine. Read more

Axis

The Battle of Peleliu: Was it necessary?

by Eric Niderost

If Peleliu was one of the bloodiest campaigns of the Pacific Theater, it was also one of the least known until recently. Read more

Axis

Heinrich Himmler’s New-Found Diaries

Captured by the Red Army during World War II, diaries written by Heinrich Himmler, Reichsführer of the SS, lay forgotten in the vast, byzantine collections of the Russian Military Archive. Read more

Axis

Ensign Kazuo Sakamaki: Underwater Peril at Pearl Harbor

By John Perry

During the early hours of December 7, 1941, five midget submarinesof the Imperial Japanese Navy waited to enter Pearl Harbor, the anchorage of the U.S. Read more

Axis

Smolensk & The Eastern Front: The Katyusha Rocket System

by Victor Kamenir

The fighting at Orsha saw the first battlefield use of the Red Army’s experimental battery of BM-13 multiple-launch rocket systems. Read more

Axis

FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and the Nazi Saboteur

By David Alan Johnson

It was just about midnight on June 12, 1942, and the Abwehr (Nazi Germany’s intelligence agency) hoped that Dasch and his three men, along with another four-man group to be put ashore on the coast of Florida, would be able to destroy factories of the Aluminium Company of America (ALCOA) located in the United States. Read more

Axis

Hero of Verdun: Marshal Henri Philippe Pétain

By Blaine Taylor

“I’ve been old in all my ranks,” said Henri Philippe Pétain, created Marshal of France on December 8, 1918, at age 62. Read more