On 26 June 1948, the Berlin Airlift began in earnest after the Soviet Union cut off land and water routes to the isolated western sector of Berlin. Germany’s capital, Berlin, was deep within the area controlled after WWII by the Soviet Union...
22 June 1941 – Operation Barbarossa, the German attack on the Soviet Union, began. Despite the massive preparations spread over many months and the numerous indications Stalin received from many sources, the Soviet forces were taken almost...
On 11 Dec 1941, Adolf Hitler declared war on the US, bringing America, which had been neutral, into the European conflict. The bombing of Pearl Harbor surprised even Germany. Although Hitler had made an oral agreement with his Axis partner Japan...
On 31 Oct 1941, USS Reuben James (DD-245)—a post-WWI four-funnel Clemson-class destroyer—was the first US Navy ship sunk by hostile action in WWII—this before the US entered the war. Upon the outbreak of war in Europe in September 1939, she joined...
On 2 Oct 1941, the Germans began their surge to Moscow led by the 1st Army Group and Gen. Fedor von Bock. When Hitler first invaded Russia on 22 Jun 40 the Russian peasants greeted his army with bread and salt—the way liberators were treated—Stalin...
On 23 Aug 1939, Germany & the Soviet Union sign a non-aggression pact, stunning the world; the dictators were both playing to their own political needs. When Poland was threatened, Prime Minister Chamberlain made it plain that Britain would come...
On 18 July 1925, 7 months after being released from Landsberg jail, Nazi leader Adolf Hitler published the first volume of his personal manifesto, Mein Kampf. Written during his 9-month stay in prison, Mein Kampf, or “My Struggle,” was a...
On 6 Jun 1944, now known as D-Day, General Dwight Eisenhower, then supreme commander of Allied Expeditionary Forces in WW II gave the go-ahead for the massive invasion of Europe called Operation Overlord. Nazi Germany controlled most of Western...
8 May 1945 marks VE Day—the day WWII ended in Europe as the Germans surrendered. But that wasn’t the only thing that happened of note on 8 May in our nation’s history. On 8 May 1792, Congress passes the second portion of the Militia Act, requiring...
Last week a radical Muslim shot and killed two American airmen at an airbase in Germany. We’re been reassured that this fellow in Frankfurt was most likely a “lone wolf”—to use the same words that Sen. Chuck Schumer used to described the...