By Jon Diamond
Admiral Isoruku Yamamoto was not the only gambler in Imperial Japan’s military hierarchy. Lt. Gen. Tomoyuki Yamashita, appointed commander of the Imperial Japanese Army’s (IJA) 25th Army on November 2, 1941, to lead the invasion of Malaya and Singapore, also took risks to capture the prized British territory   More »

By William E. Welsh
In the valley south of the hill known in Czech as Bitna Hora, a vast host assembled by the Austrian Hapsburgs advanced toward the ranks of the Protestant rebels blocking the path to Prague, the capital of Bohemia. A sea of red, green, yellow, and gold banners   More »

By Steve Ossad

Afew months after the Normandy campaign and with other fronts competing for the American public’s attention, Lt. Col. S.L.A. “Slam” Marshall, a hard-living Chicago newspaperman, World War I veteran, and deputy historian in the European Theater, hand carried the first of the War Departmemt campaign publications, Omaha Beachhead,to   More »

By Kevin M. Hymel
“Bombs away!”called out the bombardier of the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress bomber Great Speckled Bird, signaling the release of a full bombload over an enemy target. He was wrong. Two stubborn bombs refused to fall, remaining in their bomb bay racks.
The bomber’s radioman, Technical Sergeant Thomas Fitzpatrick,   More »

By Michael Hull
As powerful, fast-moving German panzer and infantry columnsrampaged across Belgium, Holland, Luxembourg, and into northern France early in May 1940, the British held their breath and watched apprehensively from across the narrow English Channel.
The lightning “blitzkrieg” advance split the retreating French and British armies, and the outlook was   More »

By Adam Lynch
During any war, combating countries predictably issue reports andcreate publicity more favorable to their own side. Often the difference is subtle, but sometimes it is profound. A perfect example occurred during World War II as Germany unleashed its V-1 and V-2 onslaught against England. Both governments were well   More »

By Don Hollway
In he face of disaster, few military commanders in history maintained the British stiff upper lip as well as Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington. In mid-June 1815 he attended a ball given by Charlotte Lennox, Duchess of Richmond, in her Brussels home. Her guest list included all   More »

By Michael D. Hull
When German dictator Adolf Hitler loosed his troops into Poland on Friday, September 1, 1939, he hoped that a lightning conquest would result in a negotiated peace with Great Britain and France.
Hitler’s previous territorial moves during the appeasement years had failed to provoke the two nations into   More »

Winston Churchill’s Britain not only had to fend off the powerful Luftwaffe but also defeat isolationism in America.   More »

By Duane Schultz

First Lieutenant Gilbert B. Hadley—he liked to be called “Gib”—wasburied back home in Kansas in 1997, some 54 years after he was killed in action on August 1, 1943. “He looked like Clark Gable,” a Kansas City newspaper wrote about Gib when he was young. He “could talk   More »