Great Patriotic War
Women of the Air Force
By Amy Goodpaster StrebeIn 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. HymelOperation 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 ZimmerVasily 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 VarangisExplosions 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. MorganThe 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
Sinking the Wilhelm Gustloff
By Chuck LyonsSnow flurries swirled out of the darkness over the Baltic Sea. Chunks of ice floated on the water, and lookouts shivered at their posts. Read more
Great Patriotic War
Joseph Stalin’s Kliment Yefremovich Voroshilov: A Soviet Survivor
by Blaine TaylorIn 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 TaylorThe 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 KunzingerGeorgina’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. HaskewThe 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
To Field an Army: A Short History of the Draft
By Mike HaskewThe 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
The City That Would Not Die: Siege of Leningrad
By Richard RuleLeningrad, the old imperial capital, was the most beautiful city in Russia and had for centuries been her cultural heartland. Read more
Great Patriotic War
The Kursk Battle: The Eastern Front’s Turning Point
By Jonas GoldsteinWhen they invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, the Germans were confident of a swift victory over the Russian untermenschen (subhumans). Read more
Great Patriotic War
Georgy Zhukov and Ivan Konev: The Race to Berlin
by Michael HaskewOn 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
