Germany

The Corporal M2 Missile

By Peter A. Goetz

Six days after the Allies’ D-Day landings on the coast of Normandy in June 1944, Germany retaliated by launching its first Vergeltungswaffe, or Vengeance Weapon, at the city of London. Read more

Germany

The Nazi ‘Gold Train Incident’

By Peter Kross

By the spring of 1945, Hitler’s thousand year Reich had come crashing down in flames. The Allied armies that had landed at Normandy almost one year earlier had penetrated deep inside Germany. Read more

Germany

The Scholarly Spies

By Tim Miller

Early in June 1940, refugees from northern France and the low Countries who had flooded Paris in May fled with the residents of the city as the German advance neared. Read more

Two mother ships—the control aircraft—flank the drone after the pilot has bailed out. Note the bright wings of the drone, which were painted yellow to make the craft more visible to the mother ship.

Germany

Operation Aphrodite: Drones versus V2 Rockets

by William Scheck

In 1944, air traffic over southern Britain was almost at the New York City rush- hour level. On any given early morning, heavily laden B-17s and B-24s would be circling, laboriously assembling into formation for runs to targets in France and Germany. Read more

Gustav was the best kind of reformer. He thoroughly understood the tactics he was changing, he had keen insight, and he put himself into the field to observe the results of his reforms.

Germany

Gustavus Adolphus: Lion of the North

By Isaac Blatter

Oddly, the fall of the brilliant King Gustavus Adolphus on the field of battle marked both the beginning of Sweden’s rise to power and the end of one of the most aggressive ages of military reform. Read more

Germany

Operation Crusader at Sidi Rezegh—Siege of Tobruk

By Thomas Haymes

By the end of the second day visibility was reduced to almost zero. Burning hulks of everything from ME-109s to M3 “Honey” tanks, Panzer IIIHs, and trucks of all descriptions littered the battleground that was once an airfield. Read more

Germans became interested in rocketry because rockets were not denied them by the Versailles Treaty. Through the 1930s they got a huge head start over the democracies in the use of rockets as weapons of war.

Germany

Germany’s Deadly V-2 Rockets

By David Alan Johnson

Sixty-four-year-old Robert Stubbs slowly walked across the playing field of the Staveley Road School in the West London suburb of Chiswick. Read more

Baron Manfred von Richthofen was not the first flyer to be awarded the “Blue Max.” In fact, he waited anxiously for it. The award goes back to the 17th century.

Germany

The Pour le Mérite

By Robert Whiter

It was early in the year 1917, and a member of the Luftstreiknafte (German Army Air Service), Freiherr (Baron) Manfred von Richthofen, was feeling a trifle disgruntled. Read more

Germany

Mata Hari: The Dancing Spy

By Robert Heege

Just before six o’clock on the morning of October 15, 1917, a caravan of five rickety automobiles departed the prison at Saint-Lazare and proceeded to make its way post-haste through the gaslit streets of Paris. Read more

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