World War 2: Stories, Combatants & Facts

The Ghost Army Who Fooled the Germans

Created in early 1944 with the impending invasion of Europe in mind, a special unit was formed, officially called the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops and nicknamed the Ghost Army. It would become the first mobile multimedia tactical deception unit in the U.S. Army. This unique and top-secret unit used visual,…

SAS Raid on Sidi Haneish

By early 1942, the tide was starting to turn for the British in North Africa. As over 70% of supplies going to General Rommel’s Afrika Korps and his Italian allies were being sunk crossing the Mediterranean. As a result, the Germans employed more Luftwaffe aircraft to move supplies and these…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

Top 5 American Tanks of World War 2

Before World War II, the United States Army thought the mission of the tank was to support infantry. The job of fighting other tanks was assigned to the tank-destroyer class of vehicles. These vehicles were fast and had powerful guns but sacrificed a lot of armor to achieve such a…

World’s First ATV – The Kettenkrad

First developed in 1939 the Sd.Kfz. 2 known as the Kettenkraftrad was a light tracked vehicle, known for short as the Kettenkrad. It is clearly a very different-looking vehicle. Unlike many other tracked vehicles of its time like Sd.Kfz. 251 half-track, the Kettenkrad’s front steering ability utilized a single motorcycle…

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…

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…

Rommel’s Kampfstaffel

Erwin Rommel was rightly called the “Desert Fox” for his brilliant handling of the German Afrika Korps for the series of seesaw battles against British Commonwealth forces in the Western Desert in North Africa. Erwin Rommel, Fritz Bayerlein, and other German and Italian officers in North Africa, 22 June 1942…

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…

M3-M3A1 “Grease Gun”

In 1941, the US military began looking for an alternative for the Thompson submachine guns. In December of 1942, they adopted a new submachine gun, the M3. Built from an all-steel construction using mainly stamped parts, it fired from an open bolt and had simple controls. At first, soldiers were…

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…

Operation Greif – Nazi in Disguise

Ardennes Counteroffensive Even though the Normandy landings in June of 1994 allowed the Allies to establish a foothold in Northern France, Belgium, and its immediate surroundings, the situation in the rest of Europe was still far from secure. Supply lines opened up through the channel at Normandy, but the further…

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…

Horrific Experiments of Unit 731

Unit 731 was the brainchild of the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II. It was a biological and chemical warfare research unit that conducted experiments on prisoners with the aim of developing deadly weapons. It’s written that at its base in China – remember the Japanese were at war…

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…

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…

Yugoslav Resistance – Partisans and Chetniks

After the invasion of Yugoslavia in April 1941, the kingdom is carved up by the four antagonists: Germany, Italy, Hungary, and Bulgaria. What was one country is now divided into nine different territories. Large parts are occupied or annexed, such as Slovenia by Germany and Italy, parts of Serbia by…

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,…

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…

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.

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…

The Soviet Cook Who Captured a German Tank with an Ax

It’s the 2nd of July 1941. At a field kitchen in a forest near Dünaburg, Latvia. Ivan Pavlovich Sereda calmly peels potatoes for the evening soup. Graduate from culinary college, Sereda is assigned to the 91st Tank Regiment, 46th Tank Division of the 21st Mechanized Corps as a cook. It’s…

Schwerer Gustav – The Largest Gun Ever Built

Schwerer Gustav, or the “Heavy Gustav,” was the largest and most powerful gun used in World War II. It was initially commissioned by Hitler to destroy the French Maginot Line; however, it was actually only used extensively in the siege of Sevastopol on the Eastern Front. Dismantled by the Germans…