Nazi Germany

Bloody Fight for Hill 351: Skirmish in the Colmar Pocket

On a cold, dark December morning in 1944, B Company, 1st Battalion, 15th Regiment began the slow ascent up Hill 351. Read more

Nazi Germany

Steve Stupak: Surviving the German Death March

By 1945, the war in Europe was nearing its conclusion. Having suffered a severe defeat at the hands of the Allies in the Battle of the Bulge, Adolf Hitler’s seemingly indestructible Third Reich was quickly crumbling under the Allied juggernaut. 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 Crusader’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

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

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

Nazi Germany

The Buchenwald Concentration Camp: Patton’s Bastardly Discovery

The blue arrows on Lt. Gen. George S. Patton, Jr.’s Third Army situation maps in his mobile headquarters trailer all pointed eastward. Read more

Nazi Germany

Hitler’s Waffen-SS and the Last Battle in Berlin

In the predawn hours of April 24, 1945, SS-Brigadeführer Gustav Krukenberg received orders from Army Group Vistula defending Berlin to immediately lead the remnants of the 57th Battalion of the 33rd Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS Charlemagne from its staging area at the SS training camp at Neustrelitz to the German capital. Read more

Nazi Germany

Hitler’s Death in the Führerbunker

By Flint Whitlock

His world was literally crashing down in flames around him.    Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich, which he had created out of nothing but his own will—an empire that he had once boasted would last for a millennium—was on fire and being torn apart by shot and shell, besieged on all sides. Read more

Nazi Germany

The German and Austrian Jews of the Allied Armies

Once they escaped from Nazi-dominated Europe, hundreds of German and Austrian Jews joined the American and British military to help bring an end to the Nazis’ reign of terror. Read more

Nazi Germany

With the “Ragtag Circus” Across Europe: The Story of Frank Fauver

The 83rd U.S. Infantry Division had been mobilized for World War I in September 1917. Its unit patch was a downward-pointing black triangle with the letters O-H-I-O stitched as an abstract gold monogram in the center. Read more

Nazi Germany

The History of Third Reich Uniforms

The evolution of Third Reich uniforms followed from a long history of European uniforms in general and Imperial German uniforms in particular. Read more

Nazi Germany

Amazing Photography of Normandy: D-Day Plus 1 Year

On June 6, 1945, two Stars & Stripes newspaper reporters traveled to Normandy with a mission: to photograph the effects of the year-old D-Day landings on the beaches, towns, and fields. Read more

Nazi Germany

Nazi Propagandist William Joyce

The most famous of the English-Language radio broadcasters from Nazi Germany was Brooklyn, New York-born William Joyce, known by the disparaging moniker Lord Haw Haw. Read more

Nazi Germany

Joseph P. Kennedy: Most Controversial Ambassador to Great Britain?

In 1939, Joseph P. Kennedy, the scion of the modern-day Kennedy family which included three United States senators, an attorney general, and the 35th president of the United States, was appointed the American ambassador to Great Britain by President Franklin D. Read more