the Balkans
Early in 1944, German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, the defeated hero of North Africa and now head of Army Group B in France, was tasked with strengthening the Atlantic Wall defenses against Allied invasion. Read more
the Balkans
It was the most exciting scene Associated Press correspondent Robert St. John had yet witnessed in the career he had abandoned for five years to farm in New Hampshire then returned to when he sensed that war was coming. Read more
the Balkans
Maybe the Turks were just bad at picking the winning side. In World War I the Central Powers were defeated by the Allies, so in October 1939 they switched to ally with Britain and France. Read more
the Balkans
Anticipating the inevitable war with the Ottoman Empire, the Russian government approved creation of a military formation recruited from native Bulgarian volunteers. Read more
the Balkans
In the summer of 1875, the Christian Slavic populations of Bosnia and Herzegovina rose up in rebellion against their Muslim Ottoman Turkish rulers in response to high taxes and depredations by the local Turkish administration. Read more
the Balkans
When British Prime Minister Winston Churchill created the Special Operations Executive (SOE) to organize guerrilla resistance against the Nazis, he famously ordered it to set Europe on fire. Read more
the Balkans
An estimated four million Red Army soldiers were captured by the Germans during the six months after the launching of Operation Barbarossa, the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, on June 22, 1941. Read more
the Balkans
Peering out over the horizon, Austrian commander Prince Eugene of Savoy could see an army of Turks, the dreaded masters of southeastern Europe for the past three centuries, crossing the Tisza River near the town of Zenta on their way to pillage Transylvania. Read more
the Balkans
A delegation from the Kingdom of Hungary seeking military aid to fight the Ottomans undertook a diplomatic mission in the spring of 1395 to a number of great cities in France and Burgundy. Read more
the Balkans
The French nation was stunned by the catastrophic defeat its army suffered at the hands of a Prussian-led German coalition in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71. Read more
the Balkans
The emergence of Germany as the dominant power in Central Europe in the 1870s and the unification of Italy in the mid-19th century despite Austrian efforts to prevent it combined to quell the immediate territorial aspirations of the dual monarchy of Austria-Hungary on the Italian peninsula and in the Balkans. Read more
the Balkans
When the Triple Alliance was concluded between Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy in the spring of 1882, Italy was, like Germany, a young nation recently unified after years of military conflicts and occupation by various European powers. Read more
