luftwaffe
After Adolf Hitler’s audacious invasion of Russia finally ground to a halt in December 1941 on the forested outskirts of Moscow, the exhausted German Army stabilized its winter front in a line running roughly from Leningrad in the north to Rostov in the south. Read more
luftwaffe
Adolf Hitler was obsessed with Leningrad. When planning his invasion of the Soviet Union, the Führer demanded that the capture of the city, which he regarded as the cradle of Bolshevism, be one of the top priorities of the campaign, giving it precedence over the capture of Moscow. Read more
luftwaffe
When the Arado Ar-234 Blitz jet bomber first appeared in the skies of Europe, most Allied airmen did not know what it was. Read more
luftwaffe
“I am busy getting ready for the next battle,” Field Marshal Sir Bernard Law Montgomery wrote his son David in early March 1945. Read more
luftwaffe
In July 1939, Archibald Wavell was named General Officer Commanding-in-Chief (GOC-in-C) of Middle East Command with the rank of full general in the British Army. Read more
luftwaffe
In the spring of 1942, the Allies were hard pressed battling German U-boats in the Atlantic as Britain was struggling to feed its people. Read more
luftwaffe
Operation Stösser was launched during Germany’s last gamble: Wacht am Rhein (Operation Watch on the Rhine), Hitler’s offensive in the West which Americans know as the Battle of the Bulge, had as its ultimate objective the Belgian port of Antwerp. Read more
luftwaffe
On a bright spring day in 1944, a Luftwaffe Focke-Wulf 190 fighter encountered a formation of U.S. Read more
luftwaffe
“I jammed the throttle wide open and, attacking the Me-109 from the port quarter, fired one burst of four seconds and three bursts of two seconds each,” Pilot Officer William R. Read more
luftwaffe
Pauline Hayton was 52 years old before her father, Norman Wickman, talked about his life in the British Army, and what happened in Dunkirk as he saw it. Read more
luftwaffe
During the last weekend of September 1938, the attention of the world’s capitals was transfixed by the diplomatic pas de deux Adolf Hitler and Neville Chamberlain were enacting to determine the fate of Czechoslovakia and ultimately the world. Read more
luftwaffe
Gottfried P. Dulias was a young Luftwaffe pilot who had seen plenty of action in the skies above the Eastern Front. Read more
luftwaffe
The second week in April 1940 was a stormy period in the North and Norwegian Seas. The weather deteriorated during April 7, with low cloud cover and fog. Read more
luftwaffe
First, there was a faint drone, with black specks visible in the sunny sky. Then the drone grew into a thunder, and hundreds of bombers appeared over London. Read more
luftwaffe
The Polish Campaign in 1939 demonstrated the awesome effectiveness of aircraft as weapons platforms for close ground support. Read more
luftwaffe
The first published photo of one of the odd—but highly versatile —frontline vehicles of World War II appeared on the cover of the July 1942 edition of German Propaganda Minister Dr. Read more
luftwaffe
“They had lost their country but kept their honor,” future British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan said of General Wladyslaw Anders and the Polish II Corps, men in the strange position of trying to win the liberation of their homeland by fighting in Italy. Read more
luftwaffe
Located 58 miles south of Sicily in the Mediterranean Sea, the rocky, 122-square-mile island of Malta was the hinge upon which all Allied operations in the Middle East turned during the first half of World War II. Read more
luftwaffe
When most people think of the Italian Army in North Africa during World War II, they tend to believe that the average Italian soldier offered little resistance to the Allies before surrendering. Read more
luftwaffe
On February 15, 1942, the island fortress of Singapore surrendered with 130,000 men, thus ending the defense of Malaya as one of the largest military disasters in the history of British arms since Cornwallis’s capitulation to Franco-American forces at Yorktown in 1781 during America’s Revolutionary War. Read more
