PN1501

On July 20, 1944, Adolf Hitler met with Italy's fascist leader Benito Mussolini, just hours after German military officers tried to assassinate him at the Wolf's Lair, his East Prussian headquarters in Rastenburg. The plot was the culmination of efforts by several groups within the German resistance who hoped Hitler's death would trigger an anti-Nazi … Read more

At 2:00 in the afternoon on July 3, 1863, the ground was still shaking at Gettysburg. For nearly two hours, more than 150 Confederate cannons had been firing into Cemetery Ridge. It was the largest artillery bombardment the North American continent had ever heard. The noise was so enormous that people in Pittsburgh, 180 miles … Read more

On June 27, 1876, a column of soldiers on horseback crested a ridge in the Montana Territory. They were looking for George Armstrong Custer and the 7th Cavalry. What they found instead was a field. The smell reached them first — sweet, thick, wrong. It was the smell of some 200 bodies swelling under a … Read more

Before sunrise on a spring morning in 1788, on a small branch of Tick Creek in what is now Shelby County, Kentucky, a young man stepped out of a cabin door to gather firewood. His name was Benjamin Ballard, and he was in his late teens. He did not know that fifteen men had been … Read more

The Waffen SS was the elite of the German army during the Second World War, with a reputation for carrying out extremely daring operations. The armed forces of the SS were present from the invasion of Poland to the fall of Berlin into the hands of the Red Army. Accused of committing countless war crimes, … Read more

Few figures in the history of the American frontier inspire as much fascination as Doc Holliday, the sharp-tongued dentist turned gambler who became one of the most feared gunfighters of the Old West. Known for his deadly skill with a pistol and his loyal friendship with Wyatt Earp, Holliday walked the thin line between legend … Read more

On May 8, 1945, Europe lay in ruins. The war machine of the German Third Reich had collapsed, leaving behind unprecedented destruction and rivers of blood. Deep in Bavaria, inside a bombed-out government building, a tense scene unfolded in an American command post. A high-ranking officer of the Schutzstaffel, the feared SS, had just been … Read more

In January 1945, the Soviet Union launched a massive offensive across the Vistula, sweeping aside German defenses and bringing Red Army units to within a few kilometers of Berlin by the end of that month. Amid this military catastrophe, Heinrich Himmler was appointed commander-in-chief of Army Group Vistula on January 24. His orders were to … Read more