Category: Odd Facts
How Foreign Conscripts Helped Hitler Defend ‘Fortress Europe’ on D-Day
(Originally published in MilitaryHistoryNow.com on June 6, 2012) ONE OF THE ironies of the June, 1944 Normandy campaign is that Third Reich, a regime so deeply obsessed with racial purity, would hold its Atlantic Wall in Europe…
D-Day 1943? – Three Allied Plans to Invade France Long Before Operation Overlord
“How might the course of the war (and history itself) have unfolded differently had these generals had their way? No one can be sure, but here is what the Normandy campaign might have looked like.”…
Flying Colours – A Short but Vivid History of Warplane Insignia
“The colourful crosses, roundels and stars that adorned early warplanes were more than just decorations.” THE ARMIES THAT MARCHED OFF TO WAR in 1914 had long since shed the flashy garb and colourful banners of the 19th…
From “Overlord” and “Desert Storm” to “Dracula” and “Mermaid Dawn” — The Cryptic History of Codenaming Military Operations
“Designating operations by their objectives or points on a map didn’t offer much in the way of security.” HAD IT NOT been for the direct intervention of Winston Churchill, the 1944 invasion of Normandy might…
The St. Albans Raid – The Confederate ‘Invasion’ of Vermont
In the fall of 1864, Vermont seemed far removed from the bloody battlefields of the American Civil War. Although as many as a tenth of the state’s 300,000 residents were in uniform, the actual fighting…
Hitler’s Holdouts – Meet the Last German Troops to Surrender in WW2
“Small pockets German troops refused to give up and in some cases fought on for days, even weeks, before finally calling it quits.” IT WAS JUST after 2:30 a.m. on May 7, 1945 when Generaloberst Alfred Jodl, commander of what…
