Soviet Union

The Big Three in Tehran: The Meeting That Shaped WWII

World War II made a disparate trio of allies —British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, Soviet Marshal Joseph Stalin, and American President Franklin D. Read more

Soviet Union

Fighting on the Volkhov Front: The First Soviet Counteroffensive at Leningrad

The great city of Leningrad was being strangled, its people dying by the thousands.

Death came in many ways. Read more

Soviet Union

Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler’s Drive to the Don

Rostov was the key to the Caucasus and the rich Soviet oil fields that lay along the Black and Caspian Seas. Read more

Soviet Union

The Real Hirohito/Emperor Showa

He was the longest-reigning monarch and head of state in the 20th century, and the third-longest in history behind King Louis XIV of France (72 years) and England’s Queen Victoria (64 years). Read more

Soviet Union

Was General Patton Murdered? New Light on an Old Conspiracy

When one thinks about the major conspiracy theories of the post-World War II era, one is drawn to the assassinations of President John F. Read more

Soviet Union

A Masterful German Defense at the Battle of Seelow Heights

The officers huddled in a candlelit cellar in an abandoned farmhouse midway between the Oder River and Berlin. Read more

Soviet Union

Engineering Excellence, Political Dysfunction: Mercedes-Benz in WWII

Few would argue that Daimler-Benz is one of the most prominent and highly regarded motor vehicle manufacturers in automotive history. Read more

Soviet Union

Leningrad & Operation Spark: Breaking the Nazi Stranglehold

With the German Sixth Army in its death throes at Stalingrad in January 1943, Stavka, the Soviet High Command, sought to capitalize on the disaster by unleashing massive offensives along the entire German-Soviet front. Read more

Soviet Union

The Red Army’s Bloody Clash at Izyum

During the winter of 1941, both the Red Army and the German Wehrmacht experienced a terrifying bloodletting. Adolf Hitler’s seemingly invincible armies, having advanced hundreds of miles inside the Soviet Union, were slowed by the October muddy season that had turned all but a few roads into almost impassible quagmires. Read more

Soviet Union

Joseph Stalin’s Kliment Yefremovich Voroshilov: A Soviet Survivor

In the summer of 1941, as the Nazi German blitzkrieg rolled over the Russian Red Army defenses at the embattled city of Leningrad, today once more St. Read more

Soviet Union

Soviet Partisans: The Rag-Tag Scourge Along WWII’s Eastern Front

The concept of Soviet partisans participating in Russia’s wars was nothing new in 1941. During Napoleon’s invasion of the country in 1812, small bands of civilians harassed the French and their allies both before and after the retreat from Moscow. Read more

Soviet Union

Soviet Soldiers by Sea: The Soviet Naval Infantry

The year 1943 began badly for the German Army on the Eastern Front. After a great struggle at Stalingrad, German Field Marshal Friedrich Paulus surrendered himself and his Sixth Army on January 31. Read more

Soviet Union

General Andrei Vlasov & Hitler’s Third Reich

Andrei Andreievich Vlasov, one of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin’s favorite generals, played a key role in saving Moscow from Adolf Hitler’s armies during the winter of 1941-1942. Read more

Soviet Union

“Convoy is to Scatter”: Arctic Convoy Disaster

British Prime Minister Winston Churchill had made the promise to Soviet Premier Josef Stalin, and Admiral Sir John Tovey of the Royal Navy had to keep it: to sail three convoys loaded with critical supplies from Britain to Russia every two months, with 25 to 35 ships in each convoy. Read more

Soviet Union

Vyacheslav M. Molotov: Steel’s Hammer

The arrival of Vyacheslav M. Molotov, the People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs of the Soviet Union, in Berlin on a rainy November 12, 1940, was a solemn, strained occasion. Read more

Soviet Union

“Do You Recognize My Voice?”: The Question That Ended Operation Valkyrie

At 12:40 PM on a hot, sultry July 20, 1944, German Führer and Reich Chancellor Adolf Hitler, 55, was seated on a wicker stool in a conference hut at his principal Eastern Front headquarters at Wolf’s Lair, Rastenburg, East Prussia, for the mid-day wartime map meeting. Read more

Soviet Union

The Nuremberg Tribunal: Otto Ohlendorf and the Einsatzgruppen Face Judgment

To plead Superior Orders one must show an inexcusable ignorance of their illegality. The sailor who voluntarily ships on a pirate craft may not be heard to answer that he was ignorant of the probability that he would be called upon to help in the robbing and sinking of other vessels … a man who sails under the flag of skull and crossbones cannot say that he never expected to fire a cannon against a merchantman,” wrote Judge John L. Read more

Soviet Union

WWII Weapons: The Hetzer Tank Destroyer

By 1943 it was obvious to the Germans that their tank production could not keep pace with battlefield losses. Read more

Soviet Union

The S.S. Bremen: Last Voyage of a Luxury Liner

After docking in New York on August 28, 1939, only four days before the outbreak of World War II, Captain Adolf Ahrens of Germany’s North German Lloyd shipping line was faced with a decision. Read more

Soviet Union

Stanislaw Sosabowski: Poland’s Premier Paratrooper

Stanislaw Sosabowski started his military career in the anti-Hapsburg Polish underground movement in 1907, served in the Austrian Army in World War I, and rose to the command of the Polish Parachute Brigade in World War II. Read more