Fascist italy

The Imperial War Museum

By Roy Stevenson

Although Britain has a number of war museums, the Imperial War Museum (IWM) is acknowledged as the Holy Grail of them all—the one you must visit when in London. Read more

Fascist italy

Operation Strangle: The First Great Air Interdiction Campaign

By Jeff Patton

Following the spectacular success of the Allied air campaign against Iraq during Operation Desert Storm in 1991 and against the Serb forces in Kosovo in 1999, the value and efficiency of utilizing air power to shape or forgo the need for a ground battle has been taken for granted by military planners. Read more

Fascist italy

Pearl Harbor: The Sleeping Giant Awoken

By Flint Whitlock

It was, as the phrase goes, another perfect day in paradise. As the sun rose above the Pacific in the clear, cloudless sky east of the Hawaiian Islands, on December 7, 1941, the giant U.S. Read more

Fascist italy

The EUR: Mussolini’s New Rome

By Alan K. Lathrop

Visitors to a certain part of Rome today may not even be aware that they are walking in an area that came about because of an architectural vision of Benito Mussolini, Italy’s infamous fascist dictator. Read more

Fascist italy

Clash of Ideology at the Paris Expo

By Paul Garson

The 1937 Paris International Exposition once again centered world attention on the French capital that had previously been the stage for five world’s fairs, including the famous 1889 Paris Exhibition and the raison d’être for the construction of the Eiffel Tower, at 984 feet then the tallest structure in the world. Read more

Fascist italy

Axis Powers: The Infamous Tripartite Pact

By Blaine Taylor

On the evening of September 26, 1940, American radio announcer and journalist William L. Shirer noted in his later famous Berlin Diary that the next day Italian Foreign Minister Count Galeazzo Ciano would arrive there from Rome, adding that most people thought it was for the announcement that Francisco Franco’s Spain was entering the war on the side of the Axis. Read more

Fascist italy

Demise of the Japanese Navy

By Christopher Miskimon

The Japanese superbattleship Musashi was steaming east along with a fleet of other battleships, cruisers, and destroyers on their way toward what was expected to be a climactic battle at Leyte Gulf. Read more

Fascist italy

Benito Mussolini & The Fascist March on Rome

By Blaine Taylor

On March 23, 1919, but four months after the armistice that ended the Great War—100 young toughs, ex-Italian Army war veterans, former socialist politicians, and newspapermen met in Milan’s Piazza San Sepolchro in industrial northern Italy to form a new political party. Read more

Fascist italy

Was Leon Degrelle a Traitor of Belgium, or a German Army Hero?

by Richard Rule

Leon Degrelle was born in 1906 in Belgium to a prosperous family in the French-speaking region of Wallonia. Read more

Fascist italy

American Athletes and Spectator Sports During World War II

By Flint Whitlock

In the 1940s, war disrupted the lives of millions of people around the globe: fuel rationing, food rationing, shortages of all kinds, and, of course, the death and destruction that was visited on cities, nations, and whole populations. Read more

Fascist italy

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

Fascist italy

WWII Tanks: Italy’s Failed Iterations

by Arnold Blumberg

Although it suffered, like all combatants, from the costly stalemate and horrendous casualties of trench warfare during World War I, Italy never used tanks during that conflict. Read more

Fascist italy

The Fairey Swordfish Torpedo Bomber

By Phil Zimmer

Radar, atomic bombs, jet engines and early cruise missiles were among the numerous technological advances of World War II. Read more

Fascist italy

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

Fascist italy

Rommel’s Failed Gamble: The “Six Days’ Race”

By Arnold Blumberg

An old cliché admonishes, “Bad things always come in threes.” Whether it was thought of as a law of nature or merely coincidence, a rapid succession of events in North Africa during the summer of 1942 seemed to confirm this widely held notion among the officers and men of the British Eighth Army. Read more