Nazi Germany
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
Nazi Germany
German Teller mines were insidious weapons—killing or maiming thousands of Allied soldiers and civilians. The Wehrmact employed others, too, to great effect during the Second World War. Read more
Nazi Germany
On May 13, 1940, the German army invaded France, crossing the River Meuse at Sedan. Upon France’s capitulation, the Franco-German armistice was signed on June 22, and a portion of France was placed under German occupation, with the remaining area ostensibly left to its own, with the Vichy collaborationist government in control. Read more
Nazi Germany
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
Nazi Germany
In espionage fiction, there are three types of spies. The first is the suave, dapper James Bond, 007, license to kill, a hit with the ladies. Read more
Nazi Germany
On May 6, 1939, King George VI of Great Britain and his wife Queen Elizabeth arrived in Portsmouth to board the liner Empress of Australia, which was to take them to Canada and subsequently to the United States. Read more
Nazi Germany
Nineteen-year-old army combat engineer Jay Rencher blinked the salt spray from his eyes, filled his lungs, and again plunged beneath the cold, roiling waves. Read more
Nazi Germany
Britain badly needed a victory. As if to underline Britain’s difficult fortunes, on May 21, 1941, the German battleship Bismarck and heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen dealt the island kingdom a serious blow by sinking the battlecruiser HMS Hood and severely damaging the new battleship HMS Prince of Wales during a furious engagement in the Denmark Strait. Read more
Nazi Germany
Lieutenant General Omar Bradley had reason to be pleased by the last week of July 1944. His First Army had scratched out a substantial foothold on the Normandy coast, capturing three times more French territory than his British allies. Read more
Nazi Germany
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
Nazi Germany
During the Allied air campaign against the Third Reich in World War II, well over a million tons of bombs were dropped on German territory, killing nearly 300,000 civilians and wounding another 780,000. Read more
Nazi Germany
”The subject of Poland is by far the most complex of all the problems to be considered,” the American delegation to the Paris Peace Conference at Versailles was told in 1919, as it was preparing to sort out the incredible mess in European affairs following the end of World War I. Read more
Nazi Germany
In August 1942, with Operation Barbarossa at its height, the invader in coal shuttle helmet and field gray uniform crawled on his elbows through brush up the hillock, pistol in his right hand. Read more
Nazi Germany
Hitler’s Germany was known for its organization and efficiency, as well as its deprivations, terror, and cruelty. This was exemplified in its security forces. Read more
Nazi Germany
Reginald Alexander was born in Gardnerville, Nevada, in 1924 to Scottish émigré parents who were originally from Westcolvin, Scotland. Read more
Nazi Germany
After the German Army’s invasion of Russia in June 1941 and the capture of the historic Lithuanian city of Vilnius late that month, Abba Kovner and a group of friends took refuge in a Dominican convent on the city’s outskirts. Read more
Nazi Germany
When the Tokyo War Crimes Trials opened in the former hilltop headquarters of the Japanese military at Ichigaya on May 3, 1946, American-born chief prosecutor Joseph Keenan faced a difficult task. Read more
Nazi Germany
At 3 am, on August 23, 1914, a solitary figure stood on a darkened railway platform at Hanover, Germany, awaiting a special train’s arrival from Berlin. Read more
Nazi Germany
In early September 1940, the world was in turmoil. The battle of Britain was nearing its climax, and elsewhere global tensions ran high. Read more
