the Balkans
The Gothic Wars Battle of Adrianople
By Ludwig Heinrich DyckIn 376 AD the Goths appeared on the lower Danube frontier of the Roman Empire. They came as a whole tribe, with warriors, women and children. Read more
the Balkans
Rampage on the Riviera: Operation Dragoon
By Glenn Barnette and André BernoleEarly 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
Belgrade Blitz
By John W. Osborn, Jr.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
The Bid to Break Turkish Neutrality in WWII
By Greg WagmanMaybe 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
The Bulgarian Legion
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
The Siege of Shipka Pass
By Victor KamenirIn 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
Balkan Bedlam: Special Forces in WWII Albania
By John W. Osborn, Jr.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
How the Cossacks Were Betrayed by Britain in World War II
By Blaine TaylorAn 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
Turning Back the Turks
By Louis CiotolaPeering 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
March to Destruction: Nicopolis 1396
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
France & World War I’s Triple Entente
by Michael HaskewThe 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
Austria-Hungary and the Triple Alliance
by Michael HaskewThe 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
The Kingdom of Italy & the Triple Entente
by Michael HaskewWhen 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
