Great Patriotic War

To Field an Army: A Short History of the Draft

By Mike Haskew

The call of a nation on its civilian population either to create a military force or to augment a standing army is virtually as old as civilization itself. Read more

Great Patriotic War

Women of the Air Force

By Amy Goodpaster Strebe

In 1941 two events took place on opposite sides of the world that forever impacted the history of women in aviation. Read more

Great Patriotic War

Dementi Shmarinov: Tracings of Barbarossa

By Kevin M. Hymel

Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, showed the world the extent of Nazi brutality. Read more

Great Patriotic War

The Ilyushin Il-2 Sturmovik: The Soviet’s Deadly Tank Killer

By Phil Zimmer

Vasily Emelianenko led an Ilyushin Il-2 Sturmovik, or “Storm Bird,” flight in late June 1942 against a German-held airfield near Artemovsk in eastern Ukraine, flying low up a deep ravine to avoid detection. Read more

Great Patriotic War

Storming the Reichstag in Russia’s ‘Military Disneyland’

By Nicholas Varangis

Explosions send fire through the air, aircraft drone overhead, tanks rumble across the cratered ground, and machine guns chatter in murderous conversation on a chaotic battlefield. Read more

Great Patriotic War

Wretched Misconduct of the Red Army

By Martin K.A. Morgan

The vast Soviet War Memorial in Berlin’s Treptower Park commemorates 5,000 Red Army soldiers who fell in battle in the city in April and May 1945. Read more

Great Patriotic War

Joseph Stalin’s Kliment Yefremovich Voroshilov: A Soviet Survivor

By Blaine Taylor

In the summer of 1941, as the Nazi German blitzkrieg rolled over the Russian Red Army defenses at the embattled city of Leningrad, today once more St. Read more

Great Patriotic War

Vyacheslav M. Molotov: Steel’s Hammer

By Blaine Taylor

The arrival of Vyacheslav M. Molotov, the People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs of the Soviet Union, in Berlin on a rainy November 12, 1940, was a solemn, strained occasion. Read more

Great Patriotic War

Leningrad: A Survivor’s Story

By Bob Kunzinger

Georgina’s mother sat next to me at her dining room table. She and her husband were veterans of the Great Patriotic War, and back in 1996 we all sat about the table on Victory Day and talked about the siege. Read more

Great Patriotic War

Georgy Zhukov and Russia’s ‘Great Patriotic War’

By Michael E. Haskew

The Great Patriotic War, as World War II came to be known in the Soviet Union, provided the stage upon which Marshal Georgy Zhukov achieved lasting fame. Read more

Great Patriotic War

The Deadly Defector from the USSR

By Todd Avery Raffensperger

“I’ve come to you from Moscow. The Central Committee of the Communist Party has ordered your liquidation.” Read more

Great Patriotic War

Georgy Zhukov and Ivan Konev: The Race to Berlin

by Michael Haskew

On orders from Soviet Premier Josef Stalin, the offensive that resulted in the capture of the Nazi capital of Berlin in April 1945, developed into a race between the army groups of two Soviet commanders, Marshal Georgy Zhukov and Marshal Ivan Konev. Read more