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On April 12, 1865, four days after surrendering the Army of Northern Virginia at Appomattox, Robert E. Lee began his journey home to Richmond. He traveled with a small escort as a paroled prisoner of war, riding his favorite horse, Traveller, through the burned-out streets of the Confederate capital. When Lee reached the brick house … Read more

In April 1945, American forces were processing a German administrative building in a small town in southern Germany. The building had been used by Wehrmacht officers, who had fled a week earlier when they heard the Americans were coming. They left behind files, equipment, and personal belongings. An American lieutenant named Robert Davidson was cataloging … Read more

Hanna Reitsch, the most decorated female aviator in history and a devoted servant of Adolf Hitler, died in Frankfurt on August 24, 1979, but newly resurfaced accounts of her life are forcing a fresh reckoning with one of the most disturbing figures of the twentieth century — a woman who proposed a suicide pilot program … Read more

In the spring of 1958, a private dining room off Mulberry Street in Manhattan became the stage for one of the most consequential confrontations in organized crime history. Three million dollars in cash sat between two men like a bridge that would never be crossed. A 48-hour ultimatum hung in the air, and the only … Read more

In April 1945, Germany was in its final weeks of collapse. Three days earlier, the Third Army had broken through a small town, and fighting still flickered on its edges. Broken windows, collapsed roofs, and civilians trying to survive were left behind. General George S. Patton was traveling to inspect new supply lines when his … Read more

In January 1945, inside a freezing command tent in the Saar region, a 21-year-old scout named Private First Class Jack Miller returned from a 12-hour foot patrol. He was holding a pair of rabbit-fur-lined gloves his mother had knitted for him. Aerial reconnaissance had just reported that the main highway through the mountain pass was … Read more

On May 6, 2023, an 83-year-old man in morning dress took his seat inside Westminster Abbey and watched a woman he had once called his wife be crowned queen. He had married her half a century earlier, on a summer morning with the household cavalry lining the aisle. He had lost her slowly to the … Read more