Nazi Germany

To Field an Army: A Short History of the Draft

The 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

Nazi Germany

How the Allies Used Captured German Tanks and Vehicles

Geijsteren Castle sits north of the Dutch town of Venlo on the banks of the Meuse River. In late 1944, the castle was a strongpoint in the local German defenses and under attack by elements of the British Sixth Guards Tank Brigade. Read more

Nazi Germany

Luxembourg’s Hoffman Museum

You won’t find the familiar little triangular signs, “Warnung Minen!” hanging on barbed wire today in Western Europe, with one exception. Read more

Nazi Germany

The Duke and Duchess of Windsor: A Dark Royal Secret?

One of the most interesting yet little known aspects of World War II was the role played by the Duke of Windsor, previously King Edward VIII of England, and his covert relationship with Adolf Hitler’s Germany. Read more

Nazi Germany

Any Bonds Today?

One of the most unusual baseball games ever played was a three- way game in New York City between the New York Yankees, the New York Giants, and the Brooklyn Dodgers. Read more

Nazi Germany

Were P-47 Thunderbolt Aircraft Really Formidable Fighter-Bombers?

Since the end of World War II, the aviation press has made the North American P-51 Mustang into the superstar Allied fighter of the war. Read more

Nazi Germany

The Krag Jorgensen Rifle: How it Defined the Future of American Warfare

During the era in which the Krag Jorgensen rifle came into its own, an arms race was in effect among the nations of Europe. Read more

Nazi Germany

Duel in the Desert: Operation Crusade’s Battle of Bardia

The desert sky lit up like a summer lightning storm on the night of December 31, 1941. The distant thunder of hundreds of guns rolled across the sandy, stony ground. Read more

Nazi Germany

WWII Concentration Camps: The Horrific Discovery at Buchenwald

When Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany on January 30, 1933, the world changed forever.

Not only was Hitler determined to pay back Germany’s enemies for his country’s defeat during the Great War, but he was also determined to rid Germany and the rest of Europe of persons whom his twisted Aryan ideology believed were “inferior” or “subhuman.” Read more

Nazi Germany

Julius Streicher, Der Sturmer, and Fueling the Nazi Propaganda Machine

It was May 23, 1945, roughly a year before the execution of Julius Streicher, founder and publisher of the vilest anti-Semitic Nazi propaganda of the war. Read more

Nazi Germany

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

Nazi Germany

The Battle of Aachen: Breaking Down the Door to Europe in WWII

By the autumn of 1944, German resistance in the West was quickly crumbling as the British and Americans approached the German border 233 days ahead of schedule.  Read more

Nazi Germany

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

Nazi Germany

Canadians in Spain: The Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion

After years of social upheaval, political unrest, and violence, Spain erupted into all-out civil war on July 18, 1936, when General Francisco Franco led a junta of right-wing army officers in a revolt against the democratically elected government of the Spanish Republic. Read more

Nazi Germany

Hitler’s Experience in the Trenches of the Great War

In the months before the outbreak of World War I, 25-year-old Adolf Hitler was living the starving artist’s life in the Bavarian city of Munich, selling his paintings door-to-door and in the city’s numerous beer halls. Read more

Nazi Germany

Captured Weapons of the Reich: A Photo Essay

Nazi Germany

Third Reich Women at War

During the 12 years of the highly militarized society of the Third Reich, some 20 million Germans—men and women as well as children—donned a uniform of one kind or another.  Read more

Nazi Germany

Cockleshell Heroes: Courageous Commandos in Canoes

Early in World War II, the British War Office and the Admiralty were shocked by daring small boat attacks, some of them suicidal, on Allied shipping in the Mediterranean Sea. Read more

Nazi Germany

A Photographer in the Ninth Air Force

When most people think of the U.S. Army Air Forces in World War II, the first image that usually comes to mind is that of the heavy bombers, the B-17s and B-24s, that ravaged targets in Europe and the B-29s that wreaked havoc on Japanese cities in the Pacific. Read more

Nazi Germany

Tank Destroyers in Action! Photos of the 809th on the Front

The 809th Tank Destroyer Battalion was an independently attached unit of the U.S. Army. The battalion was activated on March 18, 1942, at Camp Forrest, Tennessee, and remained in the United States through most of the war. Read more