Nazi Germany

The Real “Great Escape”

By Jeffrey A. Denman

In early 1942, the air war over Germany was taking its toll on the Royal Air Force. Read more

Nazi Germany

Leclerc and Liberation

By Michael D. Hull

After the humiliating fall of France in June 1940, two impassioned patriots—a general and an infantry captain—refused to accept defeat and determined, against all odds, to exact retribution from the German invaders. Read more

Nazi Germany

“Is Paris Burning?” Liberating the City of Light

By Kelly Bell

By the late summer of 1944, the Third Reich was almost surrounded. Two years earlier Adolf Hitler had ground 10 European countries under his heel along with vast expanses of North Africa and Soviet Russia. Read more

Nazi Germany

Airborne Close Encounter

By Chris Blenheim

At midnight, the jumpers of 2nd Battalion, 517th Parachute Regimental Combat Team, as well as the 596th Parachute Combat Engineer Company, still dripping from the paint-spray line, shuffled across Ombrone Airfield to the waiting of Serial 6 and climbed aboard. Read more

Nazi Germany

The Wannsee Conference & Hitler’s ‘Final Solution’

By Blaine Taylor

It is, perhaps, not as well known as other prewar and wartime gatherings of the World War II era, but the quietly held meeting of top Nazi bureaucrats at a secluded villa on Lake Wannsee in the Berlin suburbs on January 20, 1942, was just as much a landmark event as others with higher profiles. Read more

Nazi Germany

The Me 262 and the Beginning of the Jet Fighter Age

By Phil Zimmer

The Germans knew the bombers were coming, and they prepared even as the U.S. 457th Bomber Group first assembled in the early morning sunlight over faraway London. Read more

Nazi Germany

Death of the Ternopil Garrison

By Pat McTaggart

The city of Ternopil, located on the eastern bank of the Seret River, was founded in 1540 as a Polish military stronghold. Read more

Nazi Germany

Heinz Guderian: Author of the Blitzkrieg

By Phil Zimmer

Hitler was enraged as he stalked his way around the room during the waning months of World War II. Read more

Nazi Germany

The Fight for Singling

By Arnold Blumberg

After four months and a 600-mile advance from the beaches of Normandy into Brittany and then through eastern France, the spearhead of Lt. Read more

Nazi Germany

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

Nazi Germany

Seizure of the Surcouf

By Christopher Miskimon

When built, the French Surcouf was the largest submarine in the world. She was named for Robert Surcouf, the famed French privateer who waged successful economic warfare against England during the Napoleonic era. Read more

Nazi Germany

Soviet Invasion of Manchuria: Catching Japan Unawares

By John Walker

At 11:02 am on August 9, 1945, an American warplane dropped an atomic device nicknamed “Fat Man” onto the city of Nagasaki, Japan. Read more

Nazi Germany

Stalingrad: Apocalypse on the Volga

By John Walker

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

Nazi Germany

Bridging the Rhine at Remagen: Infantryman Paul Priest Recalls the Historic Crossing

By George A. Larson

As Allied troops advanced along a broad front toward Nazi Germany in the winter of 1945, the United States Army was eager to capture an intact bridge over the Rhine River to allow its troops and heavy equipment to advance rapidly into Germany. Read more

Nazi Germany

Gallantry on the High Seas: Merchant Ship Sacrifices in the Atlantic

By Robert Barr Smith

Throughout World War II, the British Admiralty’s deepest concern was the all-important shipping lanes that supplied their island fortress. Read more

Nazi Germany

Balkan Bedlam: Special Forces in WWII Albania

By John W. Osborn, Jr.

When British Prime Minister Winston Churchill created the Special Operations Executive (SOE) to organize guerrilla resistance against the Nazis, he famously ordered it to set Europe on fire. Read more

Nazi Germany

Panzer Group 4: The March to Leningrad

By Pat McTaggart

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

Nazi Germany

Hedy Lamarr: Allied Inventor and Actress

By Eric Niderost

Hedy Lamarr was the most beautiful actress of her generation, a celluloid diva who was the epitome of Hollywood glamour, sensuality, and sophistication. Read more

Nazi Germany

Battle at Crossroads X: Glidermen of Bastogne

By Leo G. Barron

For the cold and hungry GIs of Company B, 1/401st Glider Infantry Regiment, holding the western approach to Bastogne would push the men to the limits of their endurance. Read more

Nazi Germany

Mers el Kebir: Why the Royal Navy Sunk the French Fleet in WWII

by Michael D. Hull

When the armistice between France and Germany was put into force on June 25, 1940, the fate of the powerful French Navy—the fourth largest in the world—was of critical importance to the British. Read more