Cold War

Fiasco at the Bay of Pigs

By Peter Kross

On the morning of April 18, 1961, readers of the New York Times awoke to a startling headline: “Anti-Castro Units Land in Cuba; Report Fighting at Beachhead; Rusk Says U.S. Read more

German soldiers operate an Enigma machine, sending classified information encoded through a system of rotor settings that were believed to be virtually impossible to crack. However, Allied cryptanalysts at Bletchley Park were reading top secret German communications for some time during World War II.

Cold War

The Miracle of Bletchley Park

By Hervie Haufler

Great Britain’s military intelligence leaders learned from their experience in World War I that the kinds of minds capable of breaking codes are a rare commodity and are often not likely to blossom in a military atmosphere. Read more

Cold War

What did FDR know about the Katyn Forest Massacre?

By Michael E. Haskew

Months after the Red Army stormed across the Polish frontier from the east and occupied approximately half of Poland in the autumn of 1939, the Soviet secret police (NKVD) rounded up thousands of Polish Army officers and summarily executed them at various locations around the war-torn country. Read more

Cold War

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

A unique chronicle of Greece’s long and proud military history from the classical age to modern times.

Cold War

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

Israeli tanks led the lightning-fast thrust across the Sinai Peninsula to a point only 18 miles from the Suez Canal.

Cold War

Misadventure in the Sinai

By Eric Hammel

Many historians consider the Suez-Sinai campaign in the autumn of 1956 the last hurrah for British and French colonialist efforts in the Middle East. Read more

The House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) investigated who is 'American enough' during the Cold War.

Cold War

The HUAC Files

Kevin M. Hymel

The records of the House Unamerican Activities Committee are kept in the National Archives in Washington, DC. The collection of “Unamericans” is stored in pull-out drawers, filling an entire wall in the building’s Legislative Archives. Read more

In the wake of the events on August of 1963 near the Gulf of Tonkin, the USS Maddox quickly became a symbol of North Vietnamese aggression.

Cold War

Famous Navy Ships: The USS Maddox

by Brad Reynolds

The United States Navy commissioned the USS Maddox toward the end of World War II as a fast carrier escort for action in the Philippines and South China Sea. Read more