Red Army

Sturgeon Catch 1942: The Siege of Sevastopol

By late October 1941, the armies of the Third Reich had swept deep into western Soviet Russia. Read more

Red Army

Cauldron of Death: the Demyansk Salient and the Eastern Front

On the vast Eastern Front, the Demyansk salient represented little more than a smudge on the battle map. Read more

Red Army

Russo-Japanese Clash at the Battle of Nomonhan

In May 1939, Mongolian herdsmen and part-time militia cavalry crossed the Khalkhin Gol, or Halha, River near the village of Nomonhan in Manchurian-claimed territory. Read more

Red Army

The German 11th Panzer Division: Giving Up the Ghost

It was an impressive sight. Upon the reviewing stand as honored guest was General Dwight D. Read more

Red Army

The Soviet Secret Police & the Katyn Forest Massacre

On September 17, 1939, in the wake of Hitler’s invasion of Poland, the Soviet Red Army crossed the Polish frontier from the east. Read more

Red Army

Cold War Spies: General Reinhard Gehlen

By 1944, many top generals in Adolf Hitler’s army understood the war was lost and that they had better make arrangements to ensure their safety. Read more

Red Army

Operation South Wind’s Battle for the Gran Bridgehead

By the end of 1944, the Soviet Red Army had surrounded the Hungarian capital of Budapest and established strong defensive positions running from Esztergom on the Danube to Lake Balaton. Read more

Red Army

Brutal Brawl for Berlin

By the end of March 1945, the Western Allied armies were across the Rhine, the last major geographical barrier to an all-out final assault against the Third Reich. Read more

Red Army

The WWII Sniper: Caught in the Crosshairs of Famous Sharpshooters

The art of sniping developed from the sharpshooting practiced during earlier conflicts. During the 19th century, the steadily improving technology of the rifle led to the use of sharpshooters during the American Civil War and the Boer War. Read more

Red Army

Afghanistan: The Soviet Union’s War in Vietnam

In late 1979, the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan was torn apart by a civil war pitting the weak Communist government of Hafizullah Amin against several moderate and fundamentalist Muslim rebel armies. Read more

Red Army

Russian Antitank Rifles

The German panzers approached the Russian artillery  column as it moved to a new position. As the troops trudged toward their new firing point, six panzers appeared, rampaging into the Russian rear area, no doubt searching for vulnerable targets to destroy. Read more

Red Army

Training Stalin’s Red Army Sharpshooters

Snipers played an important a role in World War II, just as much as any tank, airplane, or artillery piece. Read more

Red Army

The Blue Division and the Spaniards Who Fought Against Stalin

By Blaine Taylor

The Russian winter of 1941­-1942 hit with terrible ferocity. Battling the deadly, numbing cold as well as the massive numbers of Red Army troops were soldiers from sunny Spain. Read more

Red Army

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

Red Army

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

Red Army

Battle of Berlin Prelude: Küstrin, and Death on the Oder

 “We felt that we were already dead men,” wrote former Captain Albrecht Wüstenhagen in a May 1988 letter to the author of his time in the fortress garrison of Küstrin. Read more

Red Army

The Soviet Invasion of Manchuria led to Japan’s Greatest Defeat

By Nathan N. Prefer

To the Soviet military, it is known as the Manchurian Strategic Offensive Operation. Although it had no official name to the Japanese, it has become known in the West as Operation August Storm.  Read more

Red Army

Operation Barbarossa: How Stalin was Blindsided by Berlin

By Richard Z. Freemann, Jr.

“War is mainly a catalogue of blunders.”   

—Winston Churchill (1950)

On Sunday, June 22, 1941, as the sun slumbered, 3.6 million soldiers, 2,000 warplane pilots, and 3,350 tank commanders under skilled German command crouched at the border of Soviet-occupied Poland ready to invade the Communist nation Joseph Stalin had ruled with steel-fisted brutality for years.  Read more

Red Army

Race to Moscow

The troops of Germany’s Army Group Center were more than a week into a fresh offensive to capture Moscow on July 14 when they approached the historic battlefield of Borodino where the Russians delayed Napoleon’s advance on Moscow in 1812. Read more

Red Army

World War II Summary and Synopsis

World War II spanned six long years from 1939 to 1945. The Allied powers, principally The United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union, defeated the Axis powers, led by Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, and Fascist Italy. Read more