Last month I began an in-depth look at what was happening outside Stalingrad while what has become one of the most remembered battles of the Second World War was waged in the streets and ruins of the city.
Articles
on: Nov 15 2016 - 8:46pm
on: Oct 6 2016 - 6:43pm
Seventy-four years ago one of the Second World War's most important battles raged in the Russian city of Stalingrad. That fighting still attracts the attention of history enthusiasts to this day, but what is often forgotten is that what was happening outside Stalingrad had an enormous impact on events inside the city.
General of Panzer Troops Friedrich Paulus's Sixth Army and Colonel General Hermann Hoth's Fourth Panzer Army spent September of 1942 battering the Soviet Southeastern Front's
on: Sep 14 2016 - 2:56pm
By Mandy Smithberger*
The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program is the most expensive procurement program in Pentagon history. It’s been plagued by schedule delays, gross cost overruns, and a slew of underwhelming performance reviews. Last month the Air Force declared its variant “ready for combat,” and most press reports lauded this as a signal that the program had turned a corner.
on: Feb 19 2016 - 4:04pm
I have previously written about the circumstances surrounding the Red Army's spring 1944 siege of Tarnapol, as well as a general overview of the siege. Here I would like to delve deeper into the composition of the beseiged garrison, and the German relief effort's operations - using Schwere Panzerjager-Abteilung 653's employment in the relief force to help explain why the Germans failed.
During the March-April 1944 offensive launched by Marshal of the Soviet Union Georgy Zhukov's 1st Ukrainian
on: Mar 27 2015 - 12:36pm
By Mandy Smithberger*
Inside-the-Beltway wisdom holds that the $1.4 trillion F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) program is too big to cancel and on the road to recovery. But the latest report from the Defense Department’s Director of Operational Test and Evaluation (DOT&E) provides a litany of reasons that conventional wisdom should be considered politically driven propaganda. The press has already reported flawed software that hinders the ability of the plane to employ weapons, communicate
Topics: Aircraft, DOD, F-35, JSF, JSF IOC, Lockheed Martin, Military Budget, Pentagon
on: Feb 27 2015 - 4:53pm
Last month I posted a short write-up on Auschwitz, which I visited in September of last year. In addition, at the website's World War II gallery I posted fourteen photo's I took at Auschwitz, and corresponding detailed descriptions amply illustrating these German initiated crimes against humanity. In addition, I have also published a detailed look at the former German concentration camp at Terezin in the Czech Republic (which I visited in 2013) and repeated articles, book reviews, and pictures
Topics: 1st Ukrainian Front, 3rd Guards Tank Army, Germany, Hungary, Mass Rape, NKVD, Poland, Red Army, War Crimes, World War II
on: Jan 10 2015 - 3:06am
Yes we know Christmas was two weeks ago. But given all of the 100 year retrospectives on the famous First World War "Christmas Truce" of 1914 we thought our readers should know that in actuality the Christmas period was for many First World War Western Front combatants hardly as peaceful as the mainstream media would lead one to believe.
By Bryan J. Dickerson*
For many British and German soldiers, Christmas 1914 was a time to temporarily halt the incessant killing of the First World War.
on: Jan 3 2015 - 3:06am
Early in December 1941 German led Axis forces had driven to the gates of Moscow. However, the Red Army counter-attacked their overextended enemy. Soviet armies drove the Wehrmacht and its Axis allies back across the entirety of the front, and put the nail in Operation Barbarossa's coffin. Nevertheless, by early in January 1942 most of the initial Soviet counterstrokes had fizzled to a halt, and for good reason.
In just over six months of warfare the Soviet Union had lost control over 40
Topics: Crimea, Demyansk, Eastern Front, German Sixteenth Army, Hitler, January 1942, Konev, Red Army, Rzhev, Stalin, Steven Mercatante, Wehrmacht, World War II, Zhukov
on: Aug 20 2014 - 5:19pm
By Bryan J. Dickerson*
Of all the U.S. Army units to serve in Czechoslovakia during 1945, none was as combat experienced as the 1st Infantry Division. From the assault landing at Oran, Algeria on 8 November 1942 to V-E Day in north-west Czechoslovakia on 8 May 1945, the “Big Red One” spent an astonishing 443 days in combat across two continents.
Topics: 1st Infantry Division, 634th Tank Destroyer Battalion, 745th Tank Battalion, 7th Field Artillery Battalion, 9th Armored Division, Big Red One, CCA, Combat Command, Czechoslovakia, ETO, Flossenbürg Concentration Camp, Fort Riley Kansas, Germany, M-10, M4 Sherman Tank, May 1945, Normandy, Oran, Order of Battle, Patton, Prague, US Army, US Third Army, V Corps, WWII
on: Jul 25 2014 - 4:35pm
As we approach the 70th anniversary of the Warsaw Uprising I thought it would be appropriate to set the stage for the brave but doomed efforts of the Polish Resistance to free their city from Nazi occupation. Late in July of 1944 and as the Red Army approached Warsaw's outskirts it must have seemed as if the Soviet war machine was unstoppable. Alas, this would prove not to be true.
Even though much of the blame for the failure of the Polish Resistance to overcome their Nazi overlords must be
Topics: 19th Panzer Division, 1st Belorussian Front, 1st Polish Army, 1st Ukrainian Front, 2nd Belorussian Front, 2nd Tank Army, 4th Panzer Division, Armor, Chuikov, German Ninth Army, German Second Army, Konev, Lublin, Panther, Panzer Mark V, Parachute-Panzer Division Herman Goering, Praga, Rokossovsky, Second World War, Sherman, T-34, Tank, Totenkopf, Vormann, Warsaw, Weiss, Wiking, World War II, Zhukov
