Soviet Union
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
Soviet Union
The first time Adolf Hitler ventured into the captured territory of the Soviet Union was six weeks into the campaign on August 4, 1941, when he traveled to Borisov to the headquarters of Army Group Center and its commander, Field Marshal Fedor von Bock. Read more
Soviet Union
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
Soviet Union
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
Soviet Union
“We won because we smothered the enemy in an avalanche of production, the like of which he had never seen, nor dreamed possible.” Read more
Soviet Union
Vasily Emelianenko led an Ilyushin Il-2 Sturmovik, or “Storm Bird,” flight in late June 1942 against a German-held airfield near Artemovsk in eastern Ukraine, flying low up a deep ravine to avoid detection. Read more
Soviet Union
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
Soviet Union
Commander Mitsuo Fuchida, strike leader for Operation Hawaii and 20-year veteran of the Imperial Japanese Navy (Kaigun), strapped himself into the observer’s seat as his Nakajima B5N2 “Kate” torpedo bomber, piloted by Lieutenant Mitsuo Matsuzaki, and lifted off from the carrier Akagi on the black morning of December 7, 1941. Read more
Soviet Union
When Hugo Broch flew his fighter for the Luftwaffe, he probably didn’t imagine he would ever find himself in the cockpit of a Supermarine Spitfire. Read more
Soviet Union
On August 25, 1944, Larry Stevens and the rest of his Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress bomber crew completed their 35th mission over Nazi-occupied Europe. Read more
Soviet Union
It was, as the phrase goes, another perfect day in paradise. As the sun rose above the Pacific in the clear, cloudless sky east of the Hawaiian Islands, on December 7, 1941, the giant U.S. Read more
Soviet Union
In the fall of 1941, the Polish writer Aleksander Wat, recently released from confinement in a Soviet prison, made his way east across the vast expanses of the Soviet Union. Read more
Soviet Union
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
Soviet Union
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
Soviet Union
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
Soviet Union
On July 14, 1940, William Donovan stood on the pier fronting New York harbor and waited to board the Pan Am flying boat named the Lisbon Clipper for a flight that would take him to Portugal and then to London, his ultimate destination. Read more
Soviet Union
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
Soviet Union
Almost from the beginning, the fractious alliance that defeated Nazi Germany was in peril. The United States and Great Britain had long distrusted the communist regime of the Soviet Union, and the feeling was strongly mutual. Read more
Soviet Union
Japan’s road to World War II was a long one. Throughout the late 19th century, the island nation broke out of its feudal past on a path to modernity with a ruthlessness and singlemindedness that would have scared Western nations had they been paying attention. Read more
Soviet Union
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
