WWII History January 2009

Operation Barbarossa: Holding the Line at Smolensk

By Victor Kamenir

After crushing the first-line Soviet armies in brutal three-week cauldron battles at the border, the steamroller of German Army Group Center continued deeper into Soviet territory during the opening days of Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union, which began on June 22, 1941. Read more

WWII History January 2009

The USS Panay: First Step on the Road to War

By Eric Niderost

Around 10 o’clock on the morning of December 13, 1937, New York Times correspondent Hallett Abend received an unexpected visitor: Rear Admiral Tadao Honda of the Imperial Japanese Navy. Read more

WWII History January 2009

Nomads of War: The Long Range Desert Group

By John W. Osborn, Jr.

“The problem,” a member said, “is to make yourself so much master over the appalling difficulties of nature—heat, thirst, cold, rain, fatigue—that, overcoming these you yet have physical energy and mental resilience to deal with the greater object, the winning of the war.” Read more

WWII History January 2009

FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and the Nazi Saboteur

By David Alan Johnson

It was just about midnight on June 12, 1942, and the Abwehr (Nazi Germany’s intelligence agency) hoped that Dasch and his three men, along with another four-man group to be put ashore on the coast of Florida, would be able to destroy factories of the Aluminium Company of America (ALCOA) located in the United States. Read more

WWII History January 2009

Sergeant Anton Schmid: Saint in a Feldwebel’s Uniform

By Michael D. Hull

After the German Army’s invasion of Russia in June 1941 and the capture of the historic Lithuanian city of Vilnius late that month, Abba Kovner and a group of friends took refuge in a Dominican convent on the city’s outskirts. Read more

WWII History January 2009

Army Mules: The Beast of Burden in War

By Christopher Miskimon

In the words of a veteran of the China-Burma-India Theater, retired Technical Sergeant Edward Rock Jr., [they] “served without a word of complaint or lack of courage. Read more