Red Army

WWII Aircraft: The Arado Ar-234 Blitz Jet

By Robert F. Dorr

When the Arado Ar-234 Blitz jet bomber first appeared in the skies of Europe, most Allied airmen did not know what it was. Read more

Red Army

Prague Spring, 1968: “The Whole World is Watching”

By Todd A. Raffensperger

At 1:30 am on August 21, 1968, Czech authorities at Ruzyne Airport in the capital city of Prague waited to greet a special flight that was flying in directly from Moscow. Read more

Red Army

Surging Toward the Alps: Last Battles of the Italian Campaign

By Michael E. Haskew

For the Allied armies in Italy, the final winter of World War II was one of planning, replenishment, and the continuing effort to make existence in a war-ravaged land in the midst of snow and ice as bearable as possible. Read more

Red Army

The Katyn Forest Massacre: Cracks in the Allied Cause

by Michael E. Haskew

The enemy of my enemy is my friend, so an old saying goes. Perhaps it was the grandest exercise in political pragmatism and expediency that the world has ever known. Read more

Red Army

WWII German Cavalry: Horses of the Blitz

by G. Paul Garson

By 1939 the German Reich possessed 3,800,000 horses to be used in WWII German cavalry while 885,000 were initially called to the Wehrmacht as saddle, draft, and pack animals. Read more

Red Army

The Battle of Kursk: Showdown at Prokhorovka and Oboian

By Ludwig Heinrich Dyck

With the German Sixth Army destroyed at Stalingrad, the Soviet juggernaut lunged west and southwest across the River Donets. Read more

Red Army

Georgy Zhukov and Russia’s ‘Great Patriotic War’

By Michael E. Haskew

The Great Patriotic War, as World War II came to be known in the Soviet Union, provided the stage upon which Marshal Georgy Zhukov achieved lasting fame. Read more

Red Army

Battle for the Ore Deposits: The Red Army vs. Nazi Germany

By Pat McTaggart

At first, it was all about the ore. Magnesium, iron, and manganese ore were the lifeblood of German industry, especially the armaments industry, which used the iron and manganese to produce steel for Hitler’s war machine. Read more

Red Army

Smolensk & The Eastern Front: The Katyusha Rocket System

by Victor Kamenir

The fighting at Orsha saw the first battlefield use of the Red Army’s experimental battery of BM-13 multiple-launch rocket systems. Read more

Red Army

‘Raising a flag over the Reichstag’ Photographer Yevgeni Khaldei

By Michael E. Haskew

The image of Red Army soldiers hoisting their hammer and sickle emblazoned banner atop the Reichstag, the seat of the German parliament, is a classic photo of World War II, an image that told the world Nazi Germany was at last finished. Read more

Red Army

Panzers at the Gates of Moscow

By Jonathan Jordan

The war map gave Adolf Hitler every reason to be confident. Operation Barbarossa, Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union begun on June 22, 1941, had succeeded spectacularly on nearly every front. Read more

Red Army

Night Jump into Tragedy

By Victor Kamenir

In August 1943, immediately after the Battle of Kursk, the Red Army launched a series of follow up operations, resulting in the liberation of a large swath of Nazi-occupied Soviet territory. Read more

Red Army

Red Army Airborne

By Victor Kamenir

The official history of Russian and Soviet airborne forces began on August 2, 1930, when 12 parachutists were dropped during maneuvers in the Moscow Military District. Read more

Red Army

Fleeing to Fight

By John Osborn Jr.

“They had lost their country but kept their honor,” future British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan said of General Wladyslaw Anders and the Polish II Corps, men in the strange position of trying to win the liberation of their homeland by fighting in Italy. Read more

Red Army

Joseph Stalin’s Paranoid Purge

By John W. Osborn, Jr.

Officer corps expect to suffer heavy losses in war. The entire 1914 class of France’s St. Read more

Red Army

The Deadly Defector from the USSR

By Todd Avery Raffensperger

“I’ve come to you from Moscow. The Central Committee of the Communist Party has ordered your liquidation.” Read more

Red Army

Operation Uranus: Marshal Georgi Zhukov’s Stalingrad Trap

by Pat McTaggart

In the fall of 1942, in a prelude to the now-famous Operation Uranus, the Red Army had its back to the wall once again. Read more

Red Army

The Freckleton Air Disaster: The Story Behind the Tragedy in Lancashire

By James R. Hedtke

Wednesday, August 23, 1944, was a day of triumph for the Allies in their struggle against the Axis powers. Read more

Red Army

WWII Vehicles: The T-34 Russian Tank

By Arnold Blumberg

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

Red Army

Georgy Zhukov and Ivan Konev: The Race to Berlin

by Michael Haskew

On orders from Soviet Premier Josef Stalin, the offensive that resulted in the capture of the Nazi capital of Berlin in April 1945, developed into a race between the army groups of two Soviet commanders, Marshal Georgy Zhukov and Marshal Ivan Konev. Read more