Ancient history

• Mikhail Devyatayev, the Soviet prisoner who escaped in World War II by stealing a German plane

  The city of Kazan, capital of the Republic of Tatarstan (Russia), has a medieval historic center outside of which the local cemetery is located. In it there is a monument in memory of the Second World War and, next to it, an artistic tomb on whose tombstone you can read the name of Mikhail Devyataye

• Aimo Koivunen, the Finnish soldier who starred in the first documented case of Pervitin overdose in combat

  Some time ago we dedicated an article to Pervitin, a drug that soldiers used during World War II for its stimulating and euphoric effect, basically composed of methamphetamine. Commonly used in the Wehrmacht but also in other armies (Allies included), as such or under other commercial names, Perviti

• The pilot who crashed his plane into a German bomber to save Buckingham Palace

  On May 1, 2005, thanks to a thorough study at the City of Westminster Archives Center (the archive of the City of London, which contains documentary collections on the history of the urban center plus Marylebone and Paddington), the remains could be located and recovered. of an iconic World War II a

• The Pied Piper of Saipan, the marine who convinced the Japanese to surrender

  It may not sound familiar to you because it is not one of the classic films that come to mind when we talk about the war genre. But whoever has seen Hell to eternity He must have thought that his plot was nothing more than another fantasy about American exploits in World War II:a soldier who single-

• The French resistance at Lille buying time for the British to be evacuated at Dunkirk

  If we talk about World War II battles, the names of some that are already an inevitable reference will come to mind, from Stalingrad to Berlin, passing through El Alamein, Pearl Harbor, Guadalcanal, The Ardennes and several other very famous ones. But there were others that are not as well known, ev

• Maria Oktiábrskaya, the Soviet woman who paid for the manufacture of a tank and personally drove it to avenge the death of her husband

  Although the participation of women in the Second World War was more active than it may seem a priori , her role was fundamentally in the rear, working in the war industry or holding auxiliary positions in logistics, for example. Of course, there was no shortage of cases of partisans and guerrilla

• The Rosenstraße protests, when German women saved their Jewish husbands by taking on the Nazi regime

  In 2003, the German Margarethe von Trotta, director, screenwriter, actress and wife of the famous writer Volker Schlöndorf, won the David de Donatello Award (the most important award in Italy in the cinematographic sector) in the category of best European film with her film Rosenstraße (The street o

• The myth of Die Glocke, the mysterious Nazi bell that annulled gravity

  Imagine that the Germans had developed a powerful secret weapon at the end of World War II. Another one to add to a long list but this time something completely different from the conventional, conceptually speaking, a system that would allow gravity to be canceled in their aircraft and even, accord

• The amazing story of Judy, the dog imprisoned in a World War II concentration camp

  We have already spoken here other times about the participation of animals in war. We saw some famous horses, the use of flaming pigs against elephants, the conquest of a city using cats... The case that we are going to see today is a little different because its protagonist did not stand out so muc

• Wolfskinder, German orphaned children in Soviet territory after World War II

  Abandoned and forgotten. An orphan girls tale of survival in World War II is the title of an autobiographical book whose author, Evelyne Tannehill, recounts how her family was separated during World War II after Russian troops kicked them out of the farm where they lived by the Baltic, in East Pruss

• Operation Countenance, the Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran during World War II

  Since the 1930s, the use of cars and trucks had become so widespread that oil became one of the sources of wealth for the economy and, consequently, when the Second World War broke out, it was a fundamental strategic factor for almost all types of vehicles, whether land, air or sea. This need to e

• X Force, the Chinese Army unit that helped the Allies retake Burma in World War II

  Politics makes strange bedfellows . This well-known phrase that is usually attributed by system to Winston Churchill could also be applied to war; after all, Clausewitz said that war is the continuation of politics by other means and, indeed, there are historical cases that are quite strange. One of

• Trümmerfrauen, the women who cleared German cities after World War II

  It may seem trivial, but clearing up a country half demolished by bombing is a titanic task for which the normal work of contracted companies is not enough. At the end of the Second World War, one of the fundamental tasks was to clear the urban terrain of ruins in order to begin to rebuild and even

• Operation Roundup, the frustrated Allied plan to land in France two years before Normandy

  Everyone knows what Operation Overlord was. , although it is generally known more as D-Day, the Normandy landings carried out during the summer of 1944 to definitively tip the balance of World War II towards the Allied side. What is no longer so familiar is that this mission was almost a pain in t

• Eddie Chapman, the double agent who saved London from the V-1 during World War II

  Reviewing World War II filmography I remembered a 1966 British production, which I saw many years ago, entitled Triple Cross . Directed by Terence Young (author of some of the films in the Bond saga such as 007 vs. Dr. No or From Russia with love ) and starring Christopher Plummer, tells the true st

• Comet Line, the allied soldiers evasion network created by a young Belgian nurse

  You may have heard of the Underground Railroad , a clandestine network dedicated to organizing the flight of black slaves from the southern states of the US to the northern states and Canada, and whose name was due to the railway terminology that its members used in code. The model set the standard

• Filthy Thirteen, the World War II paratroop unit that inspired the movie "Gallows Twelve"

  Do you remember Twelve from the gallows (The Dirty Dozen , 1967)? Lee Marvin plays a major of the OSS (Office of Strategic Services, the precedent of the CIA) who, during World War II, is commissioned to gather a group of dangerous inmates to form them as guerrillas with the aim of assaulting a mans

• When France and Great Britain proposed their union in 1956

  Can you imagine republican France paying homage to Queen Elizabeth II and her foreign policy conditioned to the interests of the Commonwealth, in which she would be integrated? Well, apparently it was something that was raised in 1956, during a visit by the French Prime Minister to London, according

• Theodore Roosevelt Jr, the only general to land with his men in the first wave of D-Day

  If I say that today we are going to talk about Theodore Roosevelt and his participation in the Second World War, more than one person will turn their heads remembering that the 26th president of the United States died in 1919 and, therefore, could not take part in that contest. It is true, but addin

• Martha Ellis Gellhorn, the only woman to land in Normandy on D-Day

  Probably many readers will know who Martha Ellis Gellhorn was but, for those who dont, tell them that she is not one of those characters that sometimes get shoehorned into war movies. She was the only woman known to have landed in Normandy on D-Day covering World War II as a reporter, just as she ha