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A Polish crowd welcomes a Soviet ISU-152 tank to Warsaw. Their enthusiasm was likely short-lived. (Twitter.com) On this day in 1945, units of the Soviet Red Army launched the Vistula-Oder Offensive, an effort to capture strategic Polish population centres including Warsaw and Kraków near the end of WWII. Under the command of Soviet Marshals Georgy…
M113s like the ones pictured above were lightly armoured but struggled to manoeuvre in the dense, difficult terrain of Vietnam. (Wikimedia Commons) On this day in 1963, the Battle of Ấp Bắc took place in Vietnam's Định Tường province. ARVN (Army of the Republic of Vietnam) troops from South Vietnam had detected a large force…
A German machine-gunner moves towards the front lines during the winter of 1944. (GFP) On this day in 1944, remnants of the German army attacked the advancing Allies in the final German offensive of WWII. Codenamed Operation Nordwind by the OKH (High Command of the German Army), the operation was inspired largely by Hitler's misguided…
The Battle of Gaugamela. (Wikimedia Commons) Most people know that Alexander the Great - King of Macedon, legendary military leader - was a wildly successful general who conquered huge swaths of Eurasia and the Mediterranean and kicked off the Hellenistic Age, a renaissance of Greek culture. Through a series of impressive military victories, Alexander and…
Mongolian soldiers during the Battle of Khalkhin Gol. (Wikimedia Commons) The Western narrative of WWII often forgets much of what happened in the far East. Although the Pacific Campaign gets a considerable amount of American attention, many readers and researchers focus largely on the North African and European theatres. Most sources agree that WWII began…
The aftermath of the battle. (Wikimedia Commons) In the early 1400s, Anglo-French relations were in a pretty bad place. New English King Henry V - who succeeded his father Henry IV in 1413 - faced mounting pressure to stabilize his own kingdom and settle issues of succession with the French crown. Henry claimed ownership of…
Mary, Queen of Scots sails away from France to a tumultuous future. (New Historian) On this day in 1542, 6 day-old Mary Stuart became Mary, Queen of Scots with the passing of her father, King James V of Scotland. Mary spent most of her younger years in France and was married to the 12 year-old…
An IDF Chieftain tank rolles past destroyed Egyptian military vehicles. (Popular Historia.se) In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Israel was an emerging power player in Middle Eastern politics. Although surrounded by relatively unfriendly neighbours (Egypt, Syria, and Jordan), the small Mediterranean nation had held its own in local conflicts since 1948 with the aid…
Knights of a chivalric order engage in "friendly" competition. (Wikimedia Commons) On this day in 1408, Hungarian King Sigismund von Luxembourg founded the Order of the Dragon, a chivalric order dedicated to protecting Central Europe from foreign incursions. Knights and important figures from the Holy Roman Empire, Wallachia, Aragon, Moldova, Hungary and the Serbian Despotate…
Chechen militants with a Russian Hind they've shot down. (Wikimedia Commons) On this day in 1994, troops from the newfound Russian Federation entered Chechnya, a federal republic within Russia. The intervention - ordered by Boris Yeltsin, Russia's first president - came as a result of ongoing civil war and unrest emanating from the Chechen capital…
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