In a Copenhagen studio in 1862, Prince Christian of Denmark posed with his family against a painted backdrop. The photograph shows a respectable royal household of middle rank, arranged in the stiff formal style that thousands of European families adopted that year. Christian stands in the back row in dress uniform, flanked by his two … Read more
On the afternoon of December 19, 1944, at 21st Army Group headquarters in Zonhoven, Belgium, the Battle of the Bulge was three days old. German panzers had punched through American lines in the Ardennes with a force and speed that surprised everyone, including the Germans who planned it. American divisions had been overrun. Commanders had … Read more
In May 1913, Adolf Hitler was a 24-year-old failed artist living in Vienna. He had inherited the last of his father's estate, money earned during Alois Hitler's 30 years in the Austrian customs service. Hitler used that small sum to move from Vienna to Munich, in Bavaria. In Vienna he had lived in men's shelters … Read more
Am 22. Juni 1941 um vier Uhr morgens überschritten drei Millionen deutsche Soldaten die sowjetische Grenze. 150 Divisionen, 3000 Panzer und 2000 Flugzeuge griffen gleichzeitig an. Es war die größte Invasion der Kriegsgeschichte, und die Rote Armee wurde völlig überrascht. Allein in der ersten Woche nahmen die Deutschen bei Minsk 300.000 sowjetische Soldaten gefangen. Bis … Read more
For nearly thirty years, Dodi Fayed has existed in the British tabloid imagination as a kind of ghost. He is remembered less as a man than as a single photograph and a single adjective: Egyptian playboy, party boy, the boyfriend in the car. That version erases almost everything. It leaves out his childhood, his mother, … Read more
In April 1919, a British dreadnought called HMS Marlborough dropped anchor off the port of Yalta on the Black Sea coast of Crimea. The White Army was collapsing inland, and Bolshevik columns were moving south fast. The ship had been dispatched personally by King George V of England to rescue his aunt before the Reds … Read more
New York was holding its breath. For three weeks, Italian crews and Irish gangs had been cutting pieces from one another, and the violence was creeping closer to Harlem. A bookmaker had vanished in Hell’s Kitchen. A warehouse had burned near the river. Two Italian collectors were found dead in a car with the engine … Read more
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
The most famous claim about the Queen Mother and Prince Philip is that she hated him more than anyone alive. It is a story that has been repeated in tabloid headlines and television dramas for decades. It also rests almost entirely on one badly chosen word: hatred. The truth is more complicated, and more interesting. … Read more
A threat against Big Meech’s mother triggered a response that became legend in Detroit’s underworld. The man, a dealer operating out of Cleveland, had moved weight in territories that weren’t his, made money, and grew comfortable enough to talk recklessly. He sent a specific, personal threat through an intermediary, aimed directly at Meech’s mother. It … Read more