OSS: The Forerunner of the CIA

    In 1940, the British set up an organization known as the Special Operations Executive or SOE. This was responsible for intelligence gathering and secretive operations throughout Europe. Come 1942 after some training from the British in the previous year, the Office of Strategic Services or OSS was created in the…

    The KV-2 that single-handedly held up the entire 6th Panzer Division for a day

    The Eastern Blitzkrieg After the annexation of Austria, Czechoslovakia, and ultimately Poland, the United Kingdom and France decided to go to war to prevent Germany from becoming a world power once again. While this happened, Adolf Hitler had signed a secret peace treaty with Stalin. Both nations took over half…

    MG 42 – Hitler’s Buzzsaw

    The design of the MG 42 began in 1937 by Mauserwork to substitute the MG 34. Although it possessed a reasonable rate of fire, the MG 34 had several fundamental drawbacks such as sensitivity to extreme weather conditions, dirt, and mud, and the high-quality metal alloys resulted in skilled labor…

    Operation Barbarossa Begins

    June 22, 1941, Operation Barbarossa begins. This Operation is the German invasion of the Soviet Union, and they are invading with the largest invasion force in the history of warfare. In the early morning of the 21st, a submarine commander in the Soviet Red Navy reports the sighting of a…

    War Dogs of World War 2

    Sicily, July 1943. American soldiers are pinned down by heavy fire from an Italian pillbox. Time to bring forward their top weapon. What will it be? A bazooka? A flamethrower? How about a Sherman tank? No. This weapon has four legs, sharp teeth, and answers to the name Chips.

    British Commandos

    Commandos are actually used by the British before Dunkirk. Looking into unconventional warfare for the Military Intelligence Research department, researchers were interested in a different type of soldier. By the spring of 1940, they have approval to recruit 10 new ‘guerrilla companies’ from other army units. British troops lined up…

    American Traitors – The Incredible Story of Martin James Monti

    American citizens serving in Germany’s notorious SS, fact or fiction. Well, a little bit of both actually. During the war the Germans particularly the SS recruited vary widely and from all of the occupied territories they conquered. They also recruited from amongst their enemies and it’s well known that the…

    The Heroic Stand of Audie Murphy at Holtzwihr

    It’s January 26th, 1945. Just after 2:00 PM. The newly appointed company commander, Audie Murphy, and more than three dozen American GIs lay down on the snow-covered ground near the town of Holtzwihr in Alsace, France. In the distance, thundering booms from the German artillery are followed by eerie hissing…

    SuperKiwi Charles Upham

    New Zealand-born Charles Upham was and still remains the only combatant to receive two Victoria Crosses. During World War II while the nazis swept across Europe and Africa, Upham would enlist with the New Zealand Army and set sail in early 1941. In March 1941, second lieutenant Upham found himself…

    Simo Häyhä – The World’s Most Successful Sniper in History

    The invading Soviet soldiers grew to be straight-up terrified of Häyhä. Having to patrol the blanched Finnish wilderness with the knowledge that Häyhä could be out there waiting dipping them with a spectacular long distant shot earned him the nickname Belaya Smert, which is Russian for White Death. However, Häyhä’s…

    Léo Major – The Sole Savior of Zwolle

    It’s the night of April 13, 1945, in Zwolle in the Netherlands. Canadian soldiers from the Régiment de la Chaudière cautiously approach the city under the cover of darkness. Crouching low beside the road, the commanding officer asks for two volunteers. For those who dare to step forward, the mission…

    Battle of Lanzerath Ridge – 18-man I&R platoon vs. 500 German paratroopers

    On December 16 of 1944, 18 American soldiers from a reconnaissance platoon faced off against a German advance, outnumbered 27-to-one in what would come to be known as the Battle of Lanzerath Ridge. The day-long confrontation saw the 18 soldiers battle 500 German paratroopers with such ferocity that the German…

    Fall of Tobruk 1942

    In June of 1942, the German forces under the command of General Erwin Rommel were on the run from the British 8th Army. The Allies had recently liberated Tobruk from a famous eight-month siege in which the heroic actions of the 9th Australian maintained the port in Allied hands against…

    Battle of Aachen – First German City to Fall in WW2

    Following D-Day and the Battle of Normandy in the summer of 1944. The German Army in the West collapsed and retreated towards the defenses of the Westwall, known more popularly in the West as the Siegfried Line. Westwall – Siegfried Line The Allied armies followed hot on their heels, hoping…

    Operation Tidal Wave – Blowing Up Hitler’s Gas Station

    Before entering World War II, the U.S Army Air Corps, which in 1941 became the Army Air Forces, developed and perfected a particular attack method. It consisted of high-altitude, daylight mass precision bombings of enemy military and industrial structures. This doctrine combined with the British Royal Air Force’s specialty on…

    Flak-Bait – The Bomber Plane that Survived a Total of 207 Missions

    The most impressive thing about the twin-engine bomber is the amount of flak it absorbed while still somehow staying in the sky. As it conducted flights across Belgium, France, Germany, and the Netherlands the aircraft was shot over a thousand times, twice the plane managed to return to base with…

    Werwolf: SS Stay-Behind Organization

    The idea of creating some kind of behind the lines German resistance organization originated with Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler. The original concept was something akin to Otto Skorzeny’s commandos, highly trained and well-armed uniform formations rather than Nazi partisans. Heinrich Himmler taking target practice with a Luger P08 pistol Himmler chose…

    The Story of the Dreaded Reinhard Heydrich

    Reinhard Tristan Eugen Heydrich was born as the second of three children on March 7, 1904 in Halle an der Saale. His father was a versatile musician, opera singer, and composer who founded the First Halle Conservatory for Music, Theater, and Teaching in 1899 and was director of it. Reinhard…

    The man who refused to salute Hitler

    If you frequent the internet and especially websites such as Facebook, Twitter, or Reddit, you have undoubtedly seen the following picture. Initially, there’s nothing too special about it except that it shows what appears to be a crowd of fanatical Nazis giving the Hitler salute. And it wasn’t until the…

    5 Most Brilliant High Commanders of World War 2

    Sun Tzu, one of the world’s most legendary military strategists, wrote: "Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” The most brilliant commanders put both into practice to achieve devastating victories. This was as true in ancient China as it was…

    Famous Soviet Sniper Who Killed 309 Nazis in World War II: Lyudmila Pavlichenko

    “I am writing this at the request of the Soviet Antifascist Youth Committee… I’m Ukrainian. I was born in the town of Bila Tserkva, not far from Kyiv, 26 years ago. I am a most ordinary-looking girl, medium height, and dark brown hair, which I used to wear long. I…

    Heinrich Severloh: The Beast of Omaha

    Heinrich Severloh was born into a farming family in northern Germany. At the age of 19, he was conscripted into the Wehrmacht in July 1942. He would initially serve in the 19th Light Artillery Replacement Division before being transferred to the 321st Artillery Regiment, he would train for a few…

    Nazi Germany’s Master Interrogator Hanns Scharff

    Imagine that you’re in the middle of the Second World War and a Prisoner of War is brought to you. You know he has knowledge of an imminent bombing raid, and your superiors task you with the interrogation and making sure that the prisoner spills the beans. How do you…

    Kurt Knispel – The Ace of Panzer Aces

    Kurt Knispel is according to the books, the best tank ace with the most so-called kills, yet he is also the most forgotten Panzer Ace of them all. In this article, we will take a closer look at the actions of this forgotten yet incredible Panzer Ace. What is astonishing…

    Virginia Hall – The most feared allied spy in World War 2

    The most feared allied spy in World War 2 was a woman. She was an American named Virginia Hall who worked as an undercover agent. But her career almost never happened. At just 27, Hall lost her leg in a hunting accident. Undeterred, Hall spent a year learning to walk…

    Battle of Kursk – The Largest Tank Battle of World War 2

    Preparing the Offensive The Fuhrer and the military command believed that during the first months of Operation Barbarossa, the city of Moscow would fall to the unstoppable German forces. But they quickly discovered that they had underestimated the Soviet population. Despite successfully encircling and crushing multiple Soviet Armies that surpassed…

    Vasily Zaitsev – Sniper Hero of Stalingrad

    “Shoot with a steady aim and look your prey in the eye. You’re not a boy anymore.” Those are the words his grandfather had said to Vasily when he turned 12 in 1927. Zaitsev came from a family of hunters, living on the bank of the river Saram-Sakal, in the…

    The Women Who Flew For Hitler

    Hanna Reitsch and Melitta von Stauffenberg were the only two women to serve the Nazi Third Reich as test pilots during the Second World War. These women were in many ways similar. They were both brilliant pilots, they had a very strong sense of honor and duty for their nation,…

    Operation Haudegen – The last German soldiers to surrender after World War 2

    On the 7th of May 1945, German General Alfred Jodl signed the unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany at the Allied headquarters in Reims, France. It meant the Second World War had come to an end, at least, in the European theater of war. But… the war didn’t end for a…

    Ghost Plane of the Libyan Desert: Lady Be Good

    Following years of fighting across the harsh terrain of North Africa, in May 1943, the German and Italian forces which still remained there surrendered to the Allies. A month earlier the 514th Squadron of the 9th Air Force was stationed at the Soluch Air Base near the town of Benghazi…

    Dietrich von Choltitz – General who refused to burn Paris to the ground

    Hitler's Third Reich was rapidly crumbling before his very eyes; the vast empire that had once spanned from Tripoli to Rome to Kyiv was now shrinking, drawing ever so close to Berlin. Also, Paris was still under Nazi control, but not for long. By the summer of 1944, Allied forces…

    German Bf-109 Spares a Heavily Damaged American B-17 Bomber

    It’s December the 20th, 1943 and in the freezing air high above Germany, 2nd Lieutenant Charles “Charlie” Brown is at the controls of his B-17 F, Ye Olde Pub. Nearly the entire 8th Air Force’s Bomb Group are headed towards Bremen to take out the Focke-Wulf plant on the outskirts…
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