Winston Churchill

Finland on the Eastern Front: Defense of the VKT Line

In 1941, Finland joined Nazi Germany in its attack on the Soviet Union, resulting in the third war with its giant eastern neighbor in 23 years. Read more

Winston Churchill

The Falaise Gap: Ike vs. Monty and a Failure of Command

With the exceptions of the Normandy invasion and the Battle of the Bulge, few other World War II battles in the European Theater have received more historical scrutiny than the Battle of the Falaise Gap. Read more

Winston Churchill

The Final Offensive

“It is very difficult to be an openly declared, courageous Nazi today, and to express one’s faith freely,” read the editorial in the Völkischer Beobachter newspaper, which further added, “We have no illusions now.” Read more

Winston Churchill

A Brief History of the British Commandos

The Commando role was born of the decision to mount vigorous raiding operations against occupied Europe as British forces were withdrawing from France in 1940. Read more

Winston Churchill

Sub Hunters Over the Bay of Biscay

“Am over enemy submarine in position …”

Cut off in mid-transmission, this contact report came from a U.S. Read more

Winston Churchill

Max Horton: Leading the Charge Against the U-Boats

British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who rode in a cavalry charge in the Sudan in 1898, escaped from the Boers in 1899 and served for six months as a troop leader in the Western Front trenches in 1915-1916, remarked during World War II, “The only thing that ever really frightened me during the war was the U-boat peril.” Read more

Winston Churchill

Fighter Ace Douglas Bader: The RAF’s Legless Legend

Bombed almost daily for several months and in fear of an imminent German invasion, the British were hanging on by their fingernails when September 1940 came. Read more

Winston Churchill

The Big Three in Tehran: The Meeting That Shaped WWII

World War II made a disparate trio of allies —British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, Soviet Marshal Joseph Stalin, and American President Franklin D. Read more

Winston Churchill

How Politics, Blunders, and Betrayal in the European Theater Shaped the Postwar Order

British historian Alan Clark wrote in his book Barbarossa, “Roosevelt’s betrayal of Eastern Europe, whether out of calculation or gullibility, is so notorious as to need no further recapitulation.” Read more

Winston Churchill

The Polish II Corps in Italy

Despite the Nazi conquest of European nations during World War II, individual soldiers from the occupied countries rose again to fight the German Army, and the largest army in exile to fight the Germans was Polish. Read more

Winston Churchill

Sir John Dill and Winston Churchill: A Clash in Strategy

In describing the relationship between British General Sir John Dill and his political superior, Prime Minister Winston Churchill, Dill’s biographer, Alex Danchev, noted, “It was … an association strikingly lacking in empathy or understanding, etched in fundamental disagreement, and scarred by a mutual disaffection welling up at times into personal distaste.” Read more

Winston Churchill

Wingate’s Operation Thursday: Genius or Ineffectual?

The interest in Brigadier Orde Wingate, founder and leader of the Commonwealth Chindits or Special Force, persists to this day, more than 75 years after his fiery death after his B-25 Mitchell bomber crashed in the hills of India. Read more

Winston Churchill

D-Day’s Concrete Fleet: Making the Mulberry Harbors

No Allied amphibious invasion in World War II left such a bitter legacy as Operation Jubilee, the ill-fated British-Canadian raid on the northern French port of Dieppe on Wednesday, August 19, 1942. Read more

Winston Churchill

Portugal during WW2: Covering the Azores Gap

The year 1944 dawned with America already at war for over two years. In an event not marked by history books, the 96th Navy Construction Battalion, Seabees, crossed the Atlantic from Davisville, Rhode Island, on the Abraham Lincoln, a converted banana boat escorted by two destroyers, the USS Ellis and USS Biddle. Read more

Winston Churchill

Miracle at Dunkirk

Following the 76th anniversary of the evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) from the beaches and harbor of Dunkirk, one is amazed at the number of articles and volumes written about the subject. Read more

Winston Churchill

The Supermarine Spitfire and the Battle of Britain

On March 5, 1936, the new Supermarine Type 300 took off from Southampton, England. The plane would soon be called the Spitfire, and along with the Hawker Hurricane it would become Great Britain’s first line of defense. Read more

Winston Churchill

German Military’s Emissary for Peace

Many accounts have been written about the peace mission flight of Deputy Führer Rudolf Hess and his parachute landing in a farm field in Scotland in May 1941 to discuss with the Duke of Hamilton a proposal to end hostilities. Read more

Winston Churchill

The Dieppe Raid: A Tragic Dress Rehearsal

By early 1942, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill was still unable to boast a single victory in the field against Germany. Read more

Winston Churchill

Joseph Stalin’s Kliment Yefremovich Voroshilov: A Soviet Survivor

In the summer of 1941, as the Nazi German blitzkrieg rolled over the Russian Red Army defenses at the embattled city of Leningrad, today once more St. Read more

Winston Churchill

Amphibious Landing at Anzio

As the last days of 1943 slipped away, World War II in Italy ground to a miserable stalemate. Read more