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Hitler

The Battle of the Bulge Begins: December 16, 1944

on Fri, 12/16/2011 - 19:54

In World War Two’s waning days, during the fall of 1944, Adolf Hitler ordered up one last role of the dice designed to stave off final defeat. This plan sought to punch through the densely forested, hilly, but lightly guarded Ardennes and reach Antwerp – thereby cutting off numerous Allied armies in a massive pocket similar to what his armies had accomplished four years prior.

German plans called for Sepp Dietrich’s Sixth SS Panzer Army to lead the assault through the Ardennes; as the northern army of the three German assault army’s.

New Pictures of Carnage at Dunkirk

on Tue, 11/15/2011 - 17:43

A slew of new pictures of the often forgotten dark side of the Dunkirk rescue operation, taken by a German soldier after the battle, provide chilling evidence of the scope of the disaster suffered by Allied forces following the German invasion of Western Europe in May, 1940.

Within ten day of the German invasion, tanks from the 2nd Panzer Division had crossed the Somme River and reached the English Channel at Abbeville, completing the encirclement of approximately 1.7 million British, French, Dutch, and Belgian soldiers in an enormous pocket 120 miles long and 72 miles wide.

For their part,

September 1938 - The Dismemberment of Czechoslovakia

on Thu, 08/18/2011 - 21:45

Following the Third Reich's Anschluss, or political union, with Austria Hitler looked to Czechoslovakia for his next conquest. As a pretext for war the German media, under Goebbels direction, emitted a constant propaganda stream heightening tensions in the area by calling for protecting the German minority in Czechoslovakia. Goebbels agitations focused on the Sudetenland, a Czechoslovakian region running along the German border and home to most of Czechoslovakia's ethnic Germans.

German Pre D-Day Defensive Efforts in Occupied France

on Thu, 08/18/2011 - 21:33

Initially Germany approached the problems inherent in defending occupied France as largely one of preventing special operations conducted by the British. Such a German approach was understandable given Britain's best units remained tied down in North Africa during 1941-43. Nonetheless, Hitler's declaration of war on the United States, coupled with Barbarossa's defeat and the Soviet Union's resilience meant it was only a matter of time before the Anglo-American armies struck Nazi occupied Western Europe.

The April 1940 German Invasion of Denmark and Norway

on Thu, 08/18/2011 - 21:26

Scandinavia took on ample significance to both Germany and Britain late in the winter of 1939-1940. The subsequent events in Scandinavian waters during the spring of 1940 would prove even more strategically significant following France's capitulation in June of 1940. The following will explain why.

Following the outbreak of the Second World War, a politically weakened Neville Chamberlain had brought one of his leading dissenters, Winston Churchill, into his cabinet as First Lord of the Admiralty; in an attempt to silence Churchill's politically damaging critiques of Chamberlain's leadership.

Hitler's Manufactured Pretext for War

on Wed, 08/17/2011 - 21:04

The Second World War ended well over 60 million lives in six of the most horrific and brutal years in history. Today, we remember the war's beginning, exactly seventy years ago this September, mostly from the perspective of the German war machine's blitzkrieg across Poland. However, what is often forgotten is that even a tyrant such as Hitler still sought political cover for his war of expansion and extermination in Eastern Europe.

August, 1942 - The Red Army vs. German Army Group Center

on Wed, 08/17/2011 - 20:59

The 1941-45 war fought between Germany and Russia ranks as the bloodiest war fought in human history. Yet, in spite of this historically significant and horrific distinction, modern descriptions of the war often remain grounded in myth or distortion.

The Manstein Plan vs. Case Yellow

on Wed, 08/17/2011 - 19:59

On October 9, 1939 Hitler issued Directive No. 6; a document, that among other things, advanced German plans to attack France later that same fall. Given the code name "Fall Gelb - Case Yellow" the plan Hitler's General Staff had prepared for invading France unimaginatively involved a virtual repetition of the World War One attack into Belgium; an attack to the west into Belgium in the first stage followed by a move to the southwest into France's interior in the second stage.

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