PN1501

The history books say the Battle of Stalingrad ended on the morning of February 2, 1943, with the surrender of the last pocket of German troops in the northern part of the city. That account, however, leaves out a remarkable and largely ignored chapter of the battle. Considerable numbers of German troops did not lay … Read more

When Adolf Hitler celebrated his 50th birthday on April 20, 1939, the newly completed Chancellery Building in Berlin hosted a grand event. A long line of people waited, some for up to three hours, to personally deliver gifts to the Führer. One of the most notable gifts was a Walther PPK 7.65 mm automatic pistol, … Read more

On September 7, 1191, a Crusader army marched along a flat coastal strip between the Mediterranean Sea and an oak forest that no longer exists. Arrows rained down on the column from horseback riders who circled, fired, and vanished into the dust before a crossbow bolt could answer. The men at the back of the … Read more

On September 7, 1191, a Crusader army of roughly 25,000 men marched along a flat coastal strip between the Mediterranean Sea and an oak forest that no longer exists. For two weeks, they had been under constant attack by Saladin's mounted archers. The arrows came from horseback, fired by riders who circled, loosed their volleys, … Read more

On May 19, 1536, Anne Boleyn, Queen of England, knelt on a scaffold built specifically for her death. She was about to become the first English queen ever executed. Her execution was not simply the removal of an inconvenient wife. It was a calculated campaign of psychological warfare that would haunt her daughter Elizabeth for … Read more

Behind the imposing facade of the Third Reich—its banners of power, racial purity, and iron discipline—lay private lives marked by insecurity, sexual repression, and intimate confusion. The men who dictated the moral and reproductive rules of the regime often failed to live by them. Rudolf Hess, one of Hitler's most devoted followers, maintained a romantic … Read more

When the guns fell silent on May 8, 1945, Europe faced a question no one had ever had to answer at such scale. What do you do with a country of 80 million people when at least half of its adults had participated, in one way or another, in the Nazi regime? The official answer … Read more

Hermann Göring, the former Reichsmarschall and one of the most powerful figures in Adolf Hitler's regime, faced the twilight of his life at the Nuremberg tribunal in 1946. Subjected to lengthy interrogations, he was determined to defend his role and secure a place in German history. According to the prison psychiatrist Dr. Douglas Kelley, Göring … Read more