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 Michael E. Haskew
In October 1942, at an obscure railroad whistlestop in the wastes ofthe Egyptian desert, the tide of World War II turned. True enough, Nazi spearheads had failed to take Moscow, capital of the Soviet Union, before the grueling winter of 1941 set in. However, the Germans had   More »

By John J. Domagalski
General Alexander Patch had been thinking about moving some troops to the southwestern part of Guadalcanal since taking command of all American ground forces on the embattled island on December 9, 1942. Little more than a month later his soldiers were cautiously pushing the remaining Japanese troops   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 Walter Holden

During World War II, Terry de la Mesa Allen and Theodore Roosevelt, Jr.,were ”relieved” during a victorious campaign. These two men commanded the lst Infantry Division of the United States Army, which, even their strongest critics admitted, under the two generals’ “inspirational leadership,” was by far the best   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 »

By Pat McTaggart
Colonel General Walter Model was a rising star in the German Army in early 1943. The son of a music teacher, Model was born on January 24, 1891, in Genthin, Saxony-Anhalt. In 1909, he joined the Kaiser’s army as an officer candidate, but the harsh training almost made   More »

Relatively few U.S. generals lost their lives in World War II.   More »

The penny pocket can opener was a well-known and useful piece of GI gear during World War II.   More »

The Vicomte de Turenne served France admirably, leading its armies to victory in many of the great wars of the 17th century.   More »