Western Front

Meat Grinder at Yelnya

The smell of victory was in the air as the forces of Field Marshal Fedor von Bock’s Army Group Center continued to drive deep into the Ukraine during the final week of June 1941. Read more

Western Front

Battle of Amiens: Putting the Allies on the Road to Victory

At the start of the Battle of Amiens, Sergeant Paul Maze was in a forward observation post not a thousand yards from the front, peering into the darkness for any signs of enemy activity. Read more

Western Front

Who Won the Battle of Verdun, WWI’s “Operation Judgment”

Operation Gericht—which means “judgment” or “tribunal”—was the German offensive of the Battle of Verdun. The operation was the brainchild of Erich von Falkenhayn, chief of the German general staff as the year 1915 was coming to a close. Read more

Western Front

World War I Weapons: Germany’s Big Guns

World War I’s stalemate on the Western Front ushered up varied solutions. The Allies developed tanks for traversing no man’s land to get at the enemy. Read more

Western Front

Waffen SS General Felix Steiner’s WWII Legacy

“Where is Steiner?” Adolf Hitler demanded as his Thousand Year Reich crumbled around him in April 1945. “Is he attacking yet?” Read more

Western Front

Smokescreens: Fighting for Metz

With the defeat of the German Seventh Army and the closing of the Falaise Gap in the summer of 1944, the Allies pursued the retreating enemy across France. Read more

Western Front

Locating Enemies on the Western Front

All wars give rise to change and innovation. In the early years of the 20th century, a short but nasty territorial war erupted between Russia and Japan. Read more

Western Front

WWII: German Rations and Feeding the Troops of the Third Reich

It was Napoleon Bonaparte who purportedly said, “An army travels on its stomach.” Toward the goal of feeding his particular army’s stomach more efficiently, in 1795 the French general came up with an interesting solution to the problem. Read more

Western Front

Dutch Debacle

By John W. Osborn, Jr.

When world war engulfed Europe for the second time in a generation, the Netherlands placed its faith in the diplomatic delusion that it could remain neutral like it had during World War I. Read more

Western Front

World War I Doughboys’ Bloody Baptism

As the fateful day drew to a close, the exhausted World War I soldiers of the German 25th and 82nd Reserve Divisions huddled in their trenches. Read more

Western Front

Mobile Gaming: Civil War: 1864 Just Released

1864 was an important year in the American Civil War. On May 31, Maj. General’s cavalry unit seized the vital crossroads at Cold Harbor, marking one of the final battles in Ulysses S. Read more

Western Front

New Game Releases: Company of Heroes: The Western Front Armies

Company of Heroes 2 made a decent splash when it arrived in June of last year, placing players on the Eastern Front of World War II. Read more

Western Front

West Point Museum and Hyde Park: New York’s Greatest Military History Museums

The West Point Museum, located in Olmsted Hall and adjacent to the Visitor Center at the United States Military Academy, about an hour’s drive north of New York City, contains what is considered to be the oldest and largest diversified public collection of military artifacts in the Western Hemisphere. Read more

Western Front

The Christmas Truce of 1914: Fact and Fiction

The German offensive into France and Belgium had ground to a halt as armies on both sides constructed sophisticated trenches to escape the murderous artillery and machine guns of a 20th c. Read more

Western Front

Military Book Reviews: George S. Patton and Erwin Rommel

American General George S. Patton, Jr., and German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel both demonstrated the masterful employment of armored forces in many World War II military campaigns. Read more

Western Front

What Made The Bren Gun One of the Most Iconic British WWII Weapons

While all the combatant nations engaged in World War I fielded machine guns during the conflict, the British Army’s Vickers was arguably the best medium machine gun of the war, while their Lewis gun—an American design but perfected by the English—was the most effective light machine gun. Read more

Western Front

Harry Truman on the Western Front

In the darkness and driving rain on August 29, 1918, German artillery shells smashed down on American artillerymen fighting on a fir-clad slope in the Vosges Mountains in Alsace. Read more

Western Front

Tank Killers on the Western Front

The Somme offensive, which began on July 1, 1916, had by late that month deteriorated into a series of small, costly actions. Read more

Western Front

WWI Author: The Writings of Wilfred Owen

When news began to circulate through the city of Bordeaux, France, in August 1914 that war had broken out with Germany, 21-year-old Englishman Wilfred Owen was as surprised as most. Read more

Western Front

German Antiaircraft Defenses

During the Allied air campaign against the Third Reich in World War II, well over a million tons of bombs were dropped on German territory, killing nearly 300,000 civilians and wounding another 780,000. Read more