Sublime

Stalin was untroubled. Confident that his attacking force of 120,000 men, 600 tanks and 1,000 guns could overwhelm the Mannerheim Line, he ignored his generals’ warnings about the restricted approaches to Finland. Tanks and vehicles were obliged to advance on narrow axes between lakes, forests and swamps. Though the Finns had little artillery and f

On June 22, 1944, the third anniversary of Hitler’s invasion of Russia (BARBAROSSA), Stalin fulfilled the pledge he made at Teheran and launched the Red Army in what would prove to be the greatest Allied offensive of the war. From Leningrad to the Crimea, along a front of eight hundred miles, Russian forces moved against the overextended German lin

Winston Churchill,

Early in the morning of May 20, 1941, Harald finally went to war. His first mission was the spectacular invasion of Crete. Allied forces wanted to build a bomber base on their remaining bastion in Greece, and the Germans wanted to prevent this at all costs. Dubbed Operation Mercury, it was the first largely airborne operation in military history. I

Six German armies—1.9 million men, 14,000 guns, 1,000 tanks and 1,390 aircraft—participated in Hitler’s Operation Typhoon, the “decisive” assault on Moscow.

Finally, Gerow made no effort to equip his troops with the latest armored equipment developed by the British to breach minefields, neutralize fortifications, and surmount obstacles.

Eisenhower is to blame for the broad-front strategy that stretched Allied lines so thin that German armor had little difficulty breaking through. With a candor that is rare among military commanders, Ike later accepted full responsibility.

Two days later, on 18 December, Operation Autumn Mist was launched against the weakest sector of Hodges’s First U.S. Army. It achieved absolute tactical and strategic surprise, a breakthrough on a forty-mile-wide front as panic-stricken American troops broke and fled in disarray in the path of the SS panzers; because of thick fog, the Allied air fo