Japanese troops advance through the rubble of a destroyed building in Shanghai on October 29, 1937. Young Marine Captain Evans Carlson witnessed the onslaught.

Neville Chamberlain

Creating the OSS: FDR’s Network of Personal Spies

By Peter Kross

One of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s longtime interests was the hidden world of espionage. In the months before the United States entered World War II, the commander-in-chief was dabbling in the covert world of intelligence-gathering, using a number of trusted personal friends as his own private eyes and ears around the globe. Read more

A Lockheed Hudson bomber of the Royal Australian Air Force scores a hit against a Japanese freighter near Port Moresby, New Guinea.Variants of the Lockheed Electra and Lodestar designs saw service around the globe during World War II.

Neville Chamberlain

Lockheed’s Electra and Lodestar

By Sam Mcgowan

During its history, the Lockheed Aircraft Corporation has earned a reputation for building versatile airplanes. Its 1950s era C-130 Hercules is no doubt the most famous, but it was not the first. Read more

Manning a twin Bofors antiaircraft gun on the deck of the Queen Mary, a crew is put through its paces by an officer during gunnery training at sea.

Neville Chamberlain

RMS Queen Mary’s War Service: Voyages to Victory

By Eric Niderost

The late summer of 1939 saw Great Britain teetering on the brink of war with Hitler’s Germany. The years of appeasement and vacillation, of meekly acquiescing to Hitler’s insatiable territorial demands, were over at last. Read more

By 1940, cruisers built under the post-World War I naval treaties were feeling their age. Anove, a captured Japanese photo- graph shows the HMS Cornwall succumbing to an air attack.

Neville Chamberlain

HMS Cornwall: a Symbol of British Naval Power

By William R. Hawkins

Following the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922 (and roughly four years prior to the construction of the HMS Cornwall), cruisers became a focus of the interwar naval arms race, no less keenly felt by the British, whose survival depended on the sea-lane. Read more

Britain appeared doomed until the German naval codes were cracked.

Neville Chamberlain

The Codebreakers’ War in the Atlantic

By Gene J. Pfeffer

The Battle of the Atlantic was a life-and-death struggle between the German Kriegsmarine and the Allied navies that was fought for control of Britain’s lifeline to its empire and to the United States. Read more

Neville Chamberlain

Sir John Dill and Winston Churchill: A Clash in Strategy

By Jon Diamond

In describing the relationship between British General Sir John Dill and his political superior, Prime Minister Winston Churchill, Dill’s biographer, Alex Danchev, noted, “It was … an association strikingly lacking in empathy or understanding, etched in fundamental disagreement, and scarred by a mutual disaffection welling up at times into personal distaste.” Read more

Neville Chamberlain

The First Day of World War II

By Michael D. Hull

Just after midnight on September 3, 1939, a stylish young former socialite from Boston, Massachusetts, made her way toward London aboard the Harwich boat train after crossing the English Channel. Read more

British Prime Minister Winston Churchill inspects Polish troops at Tentsmuir, Scotland, in October 1940. To Churchill’s right is Polish leader in exile Wladyslaw Sikorski.

Neville Chamberlain

Stanislaw Sosabowski: Poland’s Premier Paratrooper

By Tom Aiello, Ph.D

Stanislaw Sosabowski started his military career in the anti-Hapsburg Polish underground movement in 1907, served in the Austrian Army in World War I, and rose to the command of the Polish Parachute Brigade in World War II. Read more

Wearing distinctive pith helmets, British soldiers assume prone positions as their commander scans the horizon for enemy activity. These troops were photographed near Ramadi, Iraq, as the British attempted to secure Middle Eastern oil reserves.

Neville Chamberlain

Auchinleck of the Indian Army

By Jon Diamond

Many students of World War II history know General Sir Claude Auchinleck as the Commander-in-Chief Middle East, who, after taking over for General Sir Archibald Wavell in late June 1941, oversaw the fluctuating fate of Britain’s Eighth Army while combating German General Erwin Rommel’s Afrika Korps during Operations Crusader and Gazala. Read more

Neville Chamberlain

The Red Air Force Night Witches: Flight of the Rodina

by George Tipton Wilson

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

Neville Chamberlain

The Generals’ Battle: British War Minister Leslie Hore-Belisha

By Jon Diamond

Lord John Vereker, 6th Viscount Gort, Commander in Chief of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) in France in 1940, and his chief of staff, General Henry Pownall, have both been forever associated with the British Army’s greatest continental defeat; namely, the retreat through Flanders and eventual evacuation from the harbor and beaches of Dunkirk in May and June, after being engaged with the invading German Wehrmacht for only three weeks. Read more

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