On August 10, 1943, General Dwight Eisenhower sat in his headquarters in Algiers reading the most damaging report he had received since taking command of Allied forces in the Mediterranean. Two medical officers had submitted formal complaints about General George S. Patton. The complaints described incidents at two evacuation hospitals in Sicily. Patton had physically … Read more
Joachim Peiper was a German SS officer and the main perpetrator of a series of atrocities committed between mid-December 1944 and mid-January 1945. These killings became known as the Malmedy massacre, during which SS officers and soldiers deliberately participated in the killing, shooting, and torturing of some 350 unarmed American soldiers and about 100 Belgian … Read more
LONDON — For nearly a century, Britain has cherished a single image: the shy prince and the smiling girl at Westminster Abbey in April 1923, the bride who saved a stammering duke and steadied a reluctant king. Newly examined correspondence, royal biographies, and archival records now reveal that the marriage at the heart of that … Read more
In July 1943, on a road in central Sicily, a single German machine gun position had brought an American advance to a halt for six hours. The gun sat on top of a rocky cliff about 70 meters above the road. Every approach to the cliff base was covered. Every attempt to move up the … Read more
At 12:30 p.m. on November 22, 1963, shots rang out in Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas. President John F. Kennedy was struck by two bullets and rushed to Parkland Memorial Hospital. At 1:00 p.m., doctors pronounced him dead. Ninety-eight minutes later, at 2:38 p.m., Lyndon Baines Johnson stood in the cramped 16-foot cabin of the … Read more
WAR DEPARTMENT PRESS DESK, EUROPEAN THEATER — A two-sentence notation buried at the bottom of the third page of a routine supply inspection report reached the desk of Lt. Gen. George S. Patton Jr. on a Thursday morning in April 1945, and within hours it had triggered a chain of official actions that would eventually … Read more
In October 1914, a British admiral with more than four decades of distinguished service was forced from his post as First Sea Lord. The charge against him was not incompetence but birth: he had been born in the German Grand Duchy of Hesse rather than on British soil. Within three years, his family would erase … Read more
Sarah Ferguson has been a fixture of the British tabloids since the day she got engaged to a prince in 1986. The papers called her Freebie Fergie almost from the start. Four decades later, the nickname has changed, but the coverage never really stopped. She was born Sarah Margaret Ferguson on October 15, 1959, in … Read more
WAR DEPARTMENT PRESS DESK, EUROPEAN THEATER — A two-sentence notation buried at the bottom of the third page of a routine supply inspection report reached the desk of Lt. Gen. George S. Patton Jr. on a Thursday morning in April 1945, and within hours it had triggered a chain of official actions that would eventually … Read more
On June 3, 1944, Salzburg hosted a lavish wedding while the Second World War entered its fifth year. Millions had already perished across Europe, and the Allied invasion of Nazi-occupied Europe was only days away. Adolf Hitler presided over the ceremony at Mirabell Palace. The celebration then moved to the Eagle's Nest high in the … Read more