In the dimming light of a crisp October evening in 1940, the Battle of Britain was drawing to a dramatic close. The roar of aircraft engines had become a familiar backdrop to daily life for the British people, who had endured months of relentless…
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On October 30, 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt approved $1 billion in Lend-Lease aid to Allied nations, marking a pivotal point in the United States’ role in World War II. This decision expanded the scope of the Lend-Lease Act, passed by Congress in March…
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On October 20, 1944, General Douglas MacArthur made good on his promise and waded ashore on Leyte Island in the Philippines. Nearly three years prior, the charismatic general had been forced to leave the islands after the Japanese invasion, but he made a promise…
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On October 8, 1939, just weeks after the invasion of Poland, Nazi Germany officially annexed large portions of the country, marking a significant moment in the early stages of World War II. This act followed the German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939,…
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On September 19, 1944, the United States Army entered a dense, forbidding tract of woodland along the German–Belgian border known as the Hürtgen Forest. What began that morning as a push to clear the area for the advance into the Rhineland would spiral into…
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When the guns fell silent in Europe on May 8, 1945, the question of how to commemorate the Allied triumph over Nazi Germany loomed over the victorious powers. The Soviet Union, which had borne the brunt of the war on the Eastern Front and…
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September 3, 1939, the world drew battle lines, and World War II officially began following England and France’s declaration of war against the Nazis following Hitler’s invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939. The invasion was a brazen act of aggression, violating international norms…
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The morning of September 2, 1945, dawned over Tokyo Bay with a clarity that belied the devastation of the preceding years. Aboard the battleship USS Missouri, anchored proudly among a fleet of Allied warships, representatives of the major warring powers assembled to witness the…
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On the evening of August 31, 1939, as summer drew to a close in Europe, a strange broadcast crackled over the airwaves of a small German radio station near the Polish border. The message, supposedly issued by Polish saboteurs, declared that the station had…
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On August 25, 1945—just ten days after Japan announced its surrender and brought the Second World War to a close—an American intelligence officer named John Birch was killed in China under circumstances that soon became freighted with political meaning. To his comrades, he was…
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