In December 1944, during the frozen misery of the Battle of the Bulge, soldiers of General George S. Patton Jr.'s Third Army found a wounded German SS officer slumped against a shattered oak tree. He was bleeding into the snow, but it was not his wounds that stopped them. Around his neck hung a necklace … Read more
The woman who drove Dwight D. Eisenhower through three years of world war, who sat beside him at Allied headquarters from North Africa to Normandy, and who allegedly loved him enough to believe he would leave his wife for her, died in a small apartment in Southampton, New York, in January 1975, having spent three … Read more
A Portland high school teacher found an old photograph in a thrift store that led her to uncover a buried family secret connecting her great-great-grandmother to one of the most influential Black leaders in American history. Sarah Mitchell was browsing a thrift store on Southeast Hawthorne Boulevard on a rainy Saturday when she spotted an … Read more
Moren McCormick spent five years on television playing Marcia Brady, the picture-perfect teenage daughter of America’s favorite blended family. Off camera, the young actress was quietly unraveling behind the wholesome image she projected to millions of viewers. While reruns of *The Brady Bunch* made her face a permanent fixture in American living rooms, McCormick’s real … Read more
EASTERN FRANCE — A single American rifleman armed with a bolt-action Springfield and a woodchuck hunter’s instincts stopped an entire German infantry advance on September 14, 1944, killing 34 enemy soldiers at ranges the U. S. Army had officially declared impossible. Corporal Daniel Keller, a 28-year-old dairy farmer from Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, fired from a … Read more
On the night of March 22, 1945, a telephone rang in a Luxembourg command post. George S. Patton picked it up and delivered a report with the calm of a man describing routine business. "Ike, quick update. We crossed the Rhine tonight. Assault boats, minimal casualties. Thought you'd want to know." On the other end, … Read more
The concentration camp system of the Second World War was run by SS commandants who imposed reigns of terror, brutality, and mass killing. Some camps were so large that different commandants ran specific parts of the site. Yet many of these men were married, and their wives sometimes lived with them just a short distance … Read more
SUPREME HEADQUARTERS, ALLIED EXPEDITIONARY FORCE — The Western Alliance came within minutes of catastrophic collapse in January 1945, not under German fire, but under the weight of a single British field marshal’s ambition, as three American generals drafted resignation letters that would have shattered the Allied command structure on the eve of the Rhine crossing. … Read more
Princess Victoria Elizabeth Augusta Charlotte was born on July 24, 1860, at the New Palace in Potsdam, then part of the Kingdom of Prussia. She was the eldest daughter and second child of Prince Frederick William of Prussia, later Emperor Frederick III, and Victoria, the Princess Royal of Great Britain. Through her mother, she was … Read more
THIRD ARMY HEADQUARTERS, Germany — April 1945 — An SS officer spat in General George S. Patton’s face, and the American commander’s response has become one of the most talked-about moments of the Second World War. The confrontation occurred in the final weeks of the European campaign, when a high-ranking Nazi prisoner was brought to … Read more