On October 1, 1946, in Nuremberg, Germany, judges from the United States, the Soviet Union, Britain, and France delivered their verdicts at the Palace of Justice against the most prominent figures of Nazi Germany. Most of the defendants were present in the courtroom, but one seat remained empty. The man who should have been there … Read more
On June 22, 1941, German forces crossed the Soviet border and launched Operation Barbarossa, the largest invasion in European history. As armored columns advanced eastward, city after city fell and millions of Red Army soldiers were taken prisoner. Nazi propaganda framed the invasion as a crusade against Bolshevism. Among those who welcomed it was an … Read more
The American Civil War is often remembered through images of massive infantry lines and roaring cannon fire, but the conflict could not have been fought without millions of animals. Historians estimate that more than one million horses and mules served during the war, making animal power nearly as central to the conflict as the soldiers … Read more
In the autumn of 1887, a letter arrived for Walter Crane, a 39-year-old copy clerk living alone in a narrow brick house on the eastern edge of Hollowbrook, Pennsylvania. It was delivered on a Tuesday, during a thin gray drizzle, and it came sealed with wax bearing the impression of a leafless tree. His name … Read more
In 1941, the Soviet Union had spent months ignoring warnings from Western powers about German troops massing along its western borders. When Germany and its Axis partners invaded on June 22, 1941, they achieved near-total tactical surprise. Much of the existing Soviet air force was destroyed on the ground, and Soviet armies were initially overwhelmed. … Read more
Joachim Peiper was a lieutenant colonel in the SS, a holder of the Knight's Cross with Oak Leaves and Swords, and one of the most famous and infamous Panzer officers of World War II. According to the popular image, he died with a pistol in his hand, fighting his enemies to his last breath. The … Read more
World War II began on September 1, 1939, after Nazi Germany launched a retaliatory campaign against Poland based on a false accusation that Poles had attacked a German radio station. Poland soon found itself fighting on two fronts when the Soviet Union invaded from the east on September 17. Warsaw officially surrendered to the Germans … Read more
Vidkun Abraham Lauritz Jonssøn Quisling was born on July 18, 1887, in Fyresdal in southern Norway. His father, Jon Lauritz Qvisling, was a Lutheran pastor and genealogist, while his mother, Anna Caroline Bang, came from a wealthy family in the Norwegian town of Grimstad. In 1905, the eighteen-year-old Quisling entered military college. Out of 250 … 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
In 1927, 38-year-old sawmill operator Silas Cormac lived alone in a two-room cabin deep in the Appalachian Mountains, where he had run his family’s timber business for 15 years following his father’s death. The mill had been his entire world, and the solitude suited him. That October, everything changed. The leaves turned wrong colors, the … Read more