Soviet Union

Soviet Navy Over Berlin

By Victor Kamenir

On July 22, 1941, exactly one month after invading the Soviet Union, German aviation conducted its first air strike on Moscow. Read more

Soviet Union

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

Soviet Union

Maskirovka: The Hidden Key to Soviet Victory

By Phil Zimmer

Promoted to full colonel in the German Army and an award of the prestigious Knight’s Cross were significant accomplishments, even in the waning days of World War II. Read more

Soviet Union

Adolf Galland: Winged Knight of the Luftwaffe

By Michael D. Hull

On a bright spring day in 1944, a Luftwaffe Focke-Wulf 190 fighter encountered a formation of U.S. Read more

Soviet Union

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

Soviet Union

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

Soviet Union

WWII Spies: the Soviet Cambridge Network

by Peter Kross

In the modern era, the majority of those accused of spying have done so for monetary purposes—the quick acquisition of wealth as opposed to ideological or philosophical reasons. Read more

Soviet Union

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

Soviet Union

The Red Air Force Night Witches: Flight of the Rodina

by George Tipton Wilson

During the last weekend of September 1938, the attention of the world’s capitals was transfixed by the diplomatic pas de deux Adolf Hitler and Neville Chamberlain were enacting to determine the fate of Czechoslovakia and ultimately the world. Read more

Soviet Union

Gottfried P. Dulias: Surviving the Soviet Gulag

By Gottfried P. Dulias

Gottfried P. Dulias was a young Luftwaffe pilot who had seen plenty of action in the skies above the Eastern Front. Read more

Soviet Union

Heroes of the Red Duster: The British Royal Merchant Navy

By Michael D. Hull

None of the Allied services engaged in World War II was in action longer or suffered a higher percentage of casualties than the British Merchant Navy. Read more

Soviet Union

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

Soviet Union

Operation Barbarossa: Holding the Line at Smolensk

By Victor Kamenir

After crushing the first-line Soviet armies in brutal three-week cauldron battles at the border, the steamroller of German Army Group Center continued deeper into Soviet territory during the opening days of Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union, which began on June 22, 1941. Read more

Soviet Union

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

Soviet Union

Free France Resurgent: Charles de Gaulle in World War II

By Glenn Barnett

On the evening of June 16, 1940, Marshal Henri Philippe Pétain was appointed Prime Minister of France. It was a critical time. Read more

Soviet Union

Hero of Verdun: Marshal Henri Philippe Pétain

By Blaine Taylor

“I’ve been old in all my ranks,” said Henri Philippe Pétain, created Marshal of France on December 8, 1918, at age 62. Read more

Soviet Union

‘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

Soviet Union

Naval Mines: Why They Were the Great Military Equalizer

by Victor J. Kamenir

During World War II, naval mines were used extensively in the Baltic Sea. Their low cost provided weaker German and Finnish fleets with an effective force multiplier in negating Soviet numerical and qualitative advantages. Read more

Soviet Union

George S. Patton’s End Run: The Story of His Final Days

By Major General Michael Reynolds

By early 1945, less than a year before General George S. Patton’s mysterious death, Adolf Hitler’s armies were almost exhausted. Read more

Soviet Union

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