Red Army

The Luftwaffe Me-109F vs. the Red Army’s Yak-1

By Ray Denkhaus

By the summer of 1942, the venerable and battle-proven Messerschmitt 109E was all but replaced by the improved Me-109F in front-line units. Read more

Red Army

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

By Susan Zimmerman

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

Red Army

Escape from Kirovograd

By Pat Mactaggart

The waning months of 1943 were a bleak time for the German forces in southern Russia. Since the massive battle at Kursk in July, the Red Army had pushed the armies of Field Marshal Erich von Manstein’s Army Group South hundreds of kilometers to the west. Read more

Red Army

The Soviet Winter Offensive: From the Vistula to the Oder

By Henrik Lunde The Situation in the East, Summer 1944

The area between the Baltic Sea and the Carpathian Mountains had been relatively quiet since the end of Operation Bagration late in the summer of 1944. Read more

Red Army

The Trampled Swastika

By Eric Niderost

On April 20, 1945, Adolf Hitler, Reich Chancellor and Führer of Germany, emerged from his underground bunker in the center of Berlin. Read more

Red Army

Konev Strikes

By Pat Mctaggart

During the last half of 1944, the Wehrmacht in the east had been forced to cede just about everything it had conquered since the beginning of the war against the Soviet Union in June 1941. Read more

Red Army

Battle for Tolvarjarvi

By David H. Lippman

From Leningrad to Murmansk, columns of Soviet Red Army troops stormed down roads and trails into Finland’s dense forests, lakes, and swamps, seeking to cut Finland in half. Read more

Red Army

Zhukov Strikes Back

By Jeff Chrisman

Smolensk Russia, Headquarters, German Army Group Center (AGC), December 3, 1941; Army Group commander, 61-year-old Generalfeldmarschall Fedor von Bock is a troubled man. Read more

Red Army

Operation Winter Storm: Manstein’s Attempted Relief of Stalingrad

By R. Jeff Chrisman

It was November 24, 1942. Speeding across the snow-covered landscape of eastern Ukraine, the personal command train of German Field Marshal Erich von Manstein was on its way to the southern Russian city of Novocherkassk, where he would take up his new assignment as commander of Army Group Don. Read more

Red Army

A Soviet Red Army Victory at Vienna

By Major General Michael Reynolds

In mid-March 1945, the Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Red Army launched a major offensive with the aim of clearing Axis forces out of Hungary and forcing them back to the very borders of Hitler’s Greater German Reich. Read more

Red Army

Otto von Knobelsdorff: Panzer Commander

By Harry Yeide

While many in the English-speaking world have heard of Erwin Rommel and Heinz Guderian, few today know the name of Otto von Knobelsdorff, a German panzer general who commanded troops in battles every bit as pivotal as his contemporaries did, in quantity and quality, and who also fought against General George S. Read more

Red Army

Storming the Reichstag in Russia’s ‘Military Disneyland’

By Nicholas Varangis

Explosions send fire through the air, aircraft drone overhead, tanks rumble across the cratered ground, and machine guns chatter in murderous conversation on a chaotic battlefield. Read more

Red Army

The Supply Front: The Allies’ Key to Victory

By Glenn Barnett

After the war in Europe was won, General Dwight D. Eisenhower had many opportunities to review various campaigns with the leaders of the Soviet Army–– including even Joseph Stalin himself. Read more

Red Army

Nazi War Machine: Why the WWII German Army Was So Strong

By Michael E. Haskew

With the end of World War I, the German Army had not been defeated in the field. Read more

Red Army

Saga of a Volksdeutscher: German Pole Goes to War

By Allyn Vannoy

As Russian and German tanks exchanged fire, German Corporal Erwin Engler realized that if he was to get his wound treated, to even survive—if he was to ever see his family again back in what had been the Polish Corridor—he was going to have to make a dash across open ground to reach the safety of a wooded area. Read more

Red Army

The Volkssturm: Last-Ditch Militia of the Third Reich

By Blaine Taylor

On October 18, 1944—the 131st anniversary of the Battle of the Nations’ victory over Napoleon in 1813—Reichsführer-SS (National Leader) Heinrich Himmler stepped up to a microphone to make a national radio address announcing the formation of the Nazi Party-controlled Volkssturm, or People’s Militia. Read more

Red Army

The Demyansk Pocket: Disaster For Germany’s Scandinavian Volunteers

By Henrik Lunde

On the surface it may seem odd that men of conquered nations would eagerly sign up to fight for their masters, but that is exactly what happened in Scandinavia in the 1940s. Read more

Red Army

Operation Bagration: Soviet Triumph in the East

By Henrik Lunde

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

Red Army

Wretched Misconduct of the Red Army

By Martin K.A. Morgan

The vast Soviet War Memorial in Berlin’s Treptower Park commemorates 5,000 Red Army soldiers who fell in battle in the city in April and May 1945. Read more

Red Army

Finland on the Eastern Front: Defense of the VKT Line

By Henrik O. Lunde

In 1941, Finland joined Nazi Germany in its attack on the Soviet Union, resulting in the third war with its giant eastern neighbor in 23 years. Read more