Panzer V Panther

The Kursk Battle: The Eastern Front’s Turning Point

When they invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, the Germans were confident of a swift victory over the Russian untermenschen (subhumans). Read more

Panzer V Panther

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

Panzer V Panther

Saint Sever Tank Duel: M4 Sherman vs. Mark V German Panther

The Normandy landings, the fighting at St. Lô and Caen, Operations Goodwood and Cobra, and the subsequent Argentan-Falaise Pocket have always drawn major attention from historians, with respect to the early struggle for supremacy in France. Read more

Panzer V Panther

The Battle of Targul Frumos: A Defensive Stand on the Eastern Front

May 1, 1944. Marshal of the Soviet Union Ivan Stepanovich Konev had a right to be pleased with himself and his men as he gazed at the maps spread before him. Read more

Panzer V Panther

Ordnance: The British PIAT (Projector Infantry Anti-Tank) Gun

It was surely as ungainly a weapon as was ever made, and one of the clumsiest. It was a 3-foot, 32-pound steel tube with a monopod to support it, a huge trigger on the underside, and a padded shoulder piece at one end. Read more

Panzer V Panther

Inside an M5 Stuart: A Tanker’s WWII Tale in His Own Words

By Kevin M. Hymel

“OH MY GOD!” thought tanker Joe Cotten. “We’re shooting machine guns at a Tiger Royal!” It was late December 1944 in the Alsace-Lorraine region of France, near the German border. Read more

Panzer V Panther

Stalling Hitler’s Panzers at Mortain

A column of German Mark V Panther tanks advanced through a thick fog north of the French town of Mortain, blindly firing their machine guns. Read more

Panzer V Panther

Operation Bagration: Soviet Triumph in the East

Operation Bagration, the largest operation of World War II, has never been adequately acknowledged in the West to the same extent as a number of smaller campaigns. Read more

Panzer V Panther

The Battle of Arracourt: Patton’s Third Army vs Manteuffel’s Panzers

Lieutenant General George S. Patton, Jr., the commander of the newly constituted U.S. Third Army, had one simple order that late summer of 1944: “Go east and go like Hell.” Read more

Panzer V Panther

Sherman Tanks vs. Tiger Tanks: Which Was Best at the Bulge?

When American soldiers landed in France in June 1944 as part of the great Allied crusade to liberate Europe, they were well trained, fully equipped, and brimming with confidence. Read more

Panzer V Panther

M4 Sherman: “Blunder” or “Wonder” Weapon?

For the Allied tankers and infantrymen of the American, British, Canadian, and Free French armies battling German Panther and Tiger tanks in Normandy in the summer of 1944, the Sherman tank’s failures were glaringly evident as their own shells bounced off the hulls of the Nazi armor and they were themselves destroyed at a far greater range by the powerful German tanks. Read more

Panzer V Panther

Death of the Ternopil Garrison

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

Panzer V Panther

The Fight for Singling

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

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Armored Blitz to Avranches

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

Panzer V Panther

The Battle of the Bulge: 75+ Years On

During the Battle of the Bulge, Adolf Hitler launched his last great counteroffensive along the Western Front. From full armored divisions running on gasoline fumes to “American schools” teaching spies how to pose as Allied soldiers, Hitler used everything in his arsenal to try to turn the tide of the war. Read more

Panzer V Panther

Operation Greif and Otto “Scarface” Skorzeny

With a quarter of a million German troops pouring through the Ardennes Forest, three Americans fleeing in a jeep should have raised no alarm. Read more

Panzer V Panther

War Machines: The Failure of German Mechanization in WWII

“Hitler’s generals, raised on the dogma of Clausewitz and Moltke, could not understand that war is won in the factory.” Read more

Panzer V Panther

WWII Vehicles: The T-34 Russian Tank

Early in World War II, German panzer forces trampled all foes. Confidence suffused the Germans, and their tank designs stagnated. Read more

Panzer V Panther

Ferdinand Porsche’s ‘Elefant’ Tank Destroyer Could Have Excelled

World War II tanks usually had aggressive- or ferocious-sounding names, such as Hellcat, Panther, or Tiger. Yet the tendency was not universal, as with British Cruisers or the American M-3 Honey. Read more

Panzer V Panther

Touring the Battle of the Bulge

The Battle of the Bulge lasted an entire month, and was fought over almost the entire Grand Duchy of Luxembourg and half of Belgium, yet finding all of the battlefields and historic sights is a bit more difficult than locating the D-day beaches. Read more