Waffen-SS

Operation Jupiter: The Fight for the Key to Normandy

By Jon Latimer

The Allied landings in Normandy on June 6, 1944, produced a bitter struggle for control of the invasion beachhead. Read more

Waffen-SS

A Scout in Patton’s Third Army

By Kevin M. Hymel

The Messerschmitt Bf-109 fighter plane dove out of the sky with machine guns firing. The pilot’s target—a pontoon bridge being stretched across Germany’s Werra River by American engineers. Read more

Waffen-SS

British Paratrooper at Arnhem: An Interview With James Sims

By Eric Niderost

Q: Could you give us a little personal background before we talk about your war experiences?

SIMS: I was born on April 29, 1925, at Sheffield in Yorkshire. Read more

Waffen-SS

The German SS at Rzhev: Loyal to Their Deaths

By Ludwig Heinrich Dyck

Early in December 1941, Operation Typhoon, the German drive on Moscow, withered in the face of tenacious Soviet resistance and one of the worst Russian winters in living memory. Read more

Waffen-SS

How Did Benito Mussolini Die? The Story Behind Il Duce’s Last Moments.

By Wil Deac

It was shortly before seven o’clock on the rain-drenched morning of April 27, 1945, the day before the death of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. Read more

Waffen-SS

Hitler’s ‘Swimming Car’: The German Type 166 Schwimmwagen

By Blaine Taylor

In the spring of 1940, as the German armed forces were sweeping across Western Europe, famed automobile designer Dr. Read more

Waffen-SS

The Volkswagen Beetle

By Albert Mroz

The Volkswagen, or “People’s Car,” that so many millions have known for more than half a century had its genesis in Nazi Germany. Read more

Waffen-SS

Bloody Fight for Hill 351: Skirmish in the Colmar Pocket

By Dan Champagne

On a cold, dark December morning in 1944, B Company, 1st Battalion, 15th Regiment began the slow ascent up Hill 351. Read more

Waffen-SS

The Thunder of Operation Gallop

By Pat McTaggart

As Adolf Hitler’s vaunted Sixth Army lay in its death throes in the ruins of Stalingrad, German forces to the west of the city faced their own kind of hell. Read more

Waffen-SS

Was Leon Degrelle a Traitor of Belgium, or a German Army Hero?

By Richard Rule

Leon Degrelle was born in 1906 in Belgium to a prosperous family in the French-speaking region of Wallonia. Read more

Waffen-SS

The Hitler Jugend SS Panzergrenadier and the Uniform of the Hitler Youth

By Johnny Shumate The paramilitary wing of the Nazi Party known as the Sturmabteilung established the Hitler Jugend in 1926 for the purpose of indoctrinating German youth into Nazi ideology. Read more

Waffen-SS

Hitler’s Waffen-SS and the Last Battle in Berlin

By Christopher Miskimon

In the predawn hours of April 24, 1945, SS-Brigadeführer Gustav Krukenberg received orders from Army Group Vistula defending Berlin to immediately lead the remnants of the 57th Battalion of the 33rd Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS Charlemagne from its staging area at the SS training camp at Neustrelitz to the German capital. Read more

Waffen-SS

The Waffen-SS: Evolution of Armed Evil

By Allyn Vannoy

In 1933, before the Waffen-SS, there was a portion of the Nazi Party’s Schutzstaffel (SS), armed and trained along military lines and served as an armed force. Read more

Waffen-SS

Baptism of Fire: The SS in Poland

By Blaine Taylor

At the mention of the letters “SS,” an image springs to mind of ruthless German troops, the epitome of the Nazi/Aryan ideal: tall, strong, blond-haired, and blue-eyed, enthusiastically ready to fight and die for Germany and their beloved Führer, Adolf Hitler. Read more

Waffen-SS

Polish Cavalry Myth Debunked: CNBC vs the Polish Embassy

Jim Cramer, host of CNBC’s Mad Money show, made a mistake on May 11th when he jokingly parroted a common misconception about the German invasion of Poland. Read more

Waffen-SS

Battle of Graignes: An HQ Company’s Heroic Last Stand in Normandy

By Martin K.A. Morgan

Some 16 million Americans served during World War II, and tens of thousands of sons of the State of Louisiana served in every branch of the U.S. Read more

Waffen-SS

The Guns of Finger Ridge: Airborne Artillery on the Defense in Market-Garden

By Joseph S. Covais

On September 17, 1944, a massive but hastily planned airborne invasion of the Netherlands was launched. Codenamed Market-Garden, the operation called for three Allied airborne divisions (British 1st and American 82nd and 101st) to land along a narrow corridor reaching from advanced positions along the Dutch-Belgian border to a bridgehead on the northern bank of the Rhine River at Arnhem. Read more

Waffen-SS

Battle of Reipertswiller: The 157th Infantry’s Heroic Stand During Operation Nordwind

By Christopher Miskimon

By mid-January 1945, the famous Battle of the Bulge, a massive and fatal failure for the Third Reich, was virtually over. Read more

Waffen-SS

The Volkssturm: Last-Ditch Militia of the Third Reich

By Blaine Taylor

On October 18, 1944—the 131st anniversary of the Battle of the Nations’ victory over Napoleon in 1813—Reichsführer-SS (National Leader) Heinrich Himmler stepped up to a microphone to make a national radio address announcing the formation of the Nazi Party-controlled Volkssturm, or People’s Militia. Read more

Waffen-SS

The Demyansk Pocket: Disaster For Germany’s Scandinavian Volunteers

By Henrik Lunde

On the surface it may seem odd that men of conquered nations would eagerly sign up to fight for their masters, but that is exactly what happened in Scandinavia in the 1940s. Read more