Kriegsmarine

The Soviet Dunkirk: The Tallinn Offensive

Early in World War II, a bitter joke circulated within the Soviet military. It ran, “What is the first thing Russia does when war is declared? Read more

Kriegsmarine

Escape into Arizona’s Desert: German Prisoners in World War II

On Christmas Eve, 1944, Colonel William Holden, commander of the prisoner of war camp at Phoenix, Arizona, suddenly lost all hope for a happy holiday. Read more

Kriegsmarine

German U-Boats: Scapa Flow Shock

World War II had been in progress for six weeks when on the evening of October 12, 1939, the German submarine U-47 surfaced off the Orkney Islands at the northern tip of Scotland. Read more

Kriegsmarine

WWII: German Rations and Feeding the Troops of the Third Reich

It was Napoleon Bonaparte who purportedly said, “An army travels on its stomach.” Toward the goal of feeding his particular army’s stomach more efficiently, in 1795 the French general came up with an interesting solution to the problem. Read more

Kriegsmarine

Smashing Hitler’s Atlantic Wall

After overrunning France and other Western European countries in 1940, Adolf Hitler was certain that the Allies would one day attempt to invade the European continent and attack through the occupied countries to destroy his regime. Read more

Kriegsmarine

Sinking the Bismarck Myth

In 1960 Twentieth Century Fox released the film Sink the Bismarck! Based on C.S. Forrester’s bestselling book The Last Nine Days of the Bismarck, the documentary-style film tells a gripping and reasonably factual account of the most famous sea chase in history. Read more

Kriegsmarine

North Atlantic Odyssey

Joseph A. Gainard, captain of the American freighter City of Flint, hated to threaten his crew with piracy; the men were only reacting as any sailors would to the seizure of their ship by a foreign power. Read more

Kriegsmarine

The Codebreakers’ War in the Atlantic

The Battle of the Atlantic was a life-and-death struggle between the German Kriegsmarine and the Allied navies that was fought for control of Britain’s lifeline to its empire and to the United States. Read more

Kriegsmarine

North African Campaign: WWII’s Ultimate War of Logistics

Bradley could have been referring to German General Erwin Rommel. While Rommel was winning the war of desert armor tactics during 1941-1942 in the North African Campaign, he was losing the war of logistics. Read more

Kriegsmarine

KMS Scharnhorst: A Truly Cursed Warship from Nazi Germany?

Because the victorious Allies had destroyed Imperial Germany’s fleet after World War I, Adolf Hitler had no choice but to construct a new navy after he came to power. Read more

Kriegsmarine

Sub Hunters Over the Bay of Biscay

“Am over enemy submarine in position …”

Cut off in mid-transmission, this contact report came from a U.S. Read more

Kriegsmarine

Max Horton: Leading the Charge Against the U-Boats

British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who rode in a cavalry charge in the Sudan in 1898, escaped from the Boers in 1899 and served for six months as a troop leader in the Western Front trenches in 1915-1916, remarked during World War II, “The only thing that ever really frightened me during the war was the U-boat peril.” Read more

Kriegsmarine

The Second Great War (and the Weather that Defined it)

Weather has long played a vital role in human history. Kublai Khan’s attempted conquest of Japan was foiled when his invasion fleet was destroyed by a typhoon. Read more

Kriegsmarine

Sinking the Wilhelm Gustloff

Snow 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

Kriegsmarine

Operation Drumbeat’s Devastating Toll on Allied Shipping

After refueling in the mid-Atlantic and suffering bow damage from being rammed by a tanker, a 769-ton German submarine reached its destination, the American East Coast, early on Monday, May 4, 1942. Read more

Kriegsmarine

Project Underworld: The U.S. Navy’s Secret Pact with the Mafia

In the opening months of 1942, German U-boats pushed Allied supply lines to the breaking point. In the month of January, Axis submarines claimed over 20 Allied vessels including a tanker just 60 miles off the coast of Long Island. Read more

Kriegsmarine

Operation Sea Lion: Hitler’s Cancelled Invasion of Britain

Major Graf Von Kielmansegg, an officer in Germany’s  1st Armored Division based near Orleans, France, was dragged from a cinema on the night of August 28, 1940, and told to report to his chief of staff. Read more

Kriegsmarine

All Alone: The HMS Glowworm

The great waves were huge and black, greedy tentacles of the North Sea clawing and snatching at the battered ships struggling in the icy dark. Read more

Kriegsmarine

“Convoy is to Scatter”: Arctic Convoy Disaster

British Prime Minister Winston Churchill had made the promise to Soviet Premier Josef Stalin, and Admiral Sir John Tovey of the Royal Navy had to keep it: to sail three convoys loaded with critical supplies from Britain to Russia every two months, with 25 to 35 ships in each convoy. Read more

Kriegsmarine

The Battle of Narvik: Crippling the Kriegsmarine

The Germans could not believe it. Without suffering the loss of a single soldier or sailor, the German Army and Navy had sailed 1,500 miles through waters dominated by the British Royal Navy and captured Narvik without firing a shot, bagged nearly 500 Norwegian soldiers, seized one of Norway’s major military depots, and even taken five armed British merchant ships and their crews. Read more