world war II

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Major Aleksander Tarnawski: The Unkillable Polish Commando

Major Aleksander Tarnawski: The Unkillable Polish Commando

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On January 8, 2022, Aleksander Tarnawski turned 101 years old. 101 years prior he had entered the world kicking and screaming in Słocin in the Rzeszów poviat in Poland. Like most of the young males of his generation, Aleksander Tarnawski soon found himself swept up in the war.

Yang Kyoungjong: The Reluctant Soldier

Yang Kyoungjong: The Reluctant Soldier

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In 2011, Yang’s story formed the basis for a South Korean movie titled My Way. However, documentary filmmakers in Korea have researched the story and cast doubt on its veracity.

Oberscharführer Franz Staudegger and the Origins of the Tiger Legend

Oberscharführer Franz Staudegger and the Origins of the Tiger Legend

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During World War 2 the German Tiger tank earned an outsized reputation among those who faced it.

Joseph Stalin: The Short-Statured Weatherman who Killed 9 Million People

Joseph Stalin: The Short-Statured Weatherman who Killed 9 Million People

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Stalin was likely personally responsible for the deaths of around 6 million people. His lunatic policies claimed another 3 million lives beyond that.

Panzermeyer and the Ardenne Abbey Massacre

Panzermeyer and the Ardenne Abbey Massacre

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Whether it is spontaneous road rage or a husband spurned, it is the heat of the moment that drives so many people to do so many things they might later regret. Little is more emotionally heated than modern combat.

David Niven: The British Movie Star Commando who Won the Iron Cross

David Niven: The British Movie Star Commando who Won the Iron Cross

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Today’s crop of actors is, with few exceptions, a bunch of vapid amoral losers. Their standard of accomplishment is running about naked and flying on private jets to A-lister conferences while telling the rest of us what we should be sacrificing to battle climate change. By contrast, David Niven was a real-live warrior.

Ernst Barkmann: Panther Ace

Ernst Barkmann: Panther Ace

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The Germans gifted the world with the first examples of the assault rifle, optimized combat submarines, operational jet fighters, and surface-to-surface ballistic missiles. While German military innovations have shaped the world for seventy years, in no place has the Nazi martial mythos been more profoundly manifest than in their tanks. The German Panther and Tiger tanks struck fear in the hearts of Allied servicemen wherever they fought.

SSG Alan Magee: The Luckiest Man in the World

SSG Alan Magee: The Luckiest Man in the World

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That SSG Alan Magee survived being thrown clear of his disabled B17 at more than 20,000 feet without a parachute was a legitimate miracle.

Major Josef “Sepp” Gangl: The Wehrmacht Hero Who Died Fighting for the Allies

Major Josef “Sepp” Gangl: The Wehrmacht Hero Who Died Fighting for the Allies

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Young ideologically naive men always make the best soldiers. WW2 stole life on an unprecedented scale. Major Gangl’s heroic sacrifice was swallowed up in the carnage.

Heinrich “Hein” Severloh: The Penitent Butcher of Omaha Beach

Heinrich “Hein” Severloh: The Penitent Butcher of Omaha Beach

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Heinrich “Hein” Severloh should have been a farmer. Born on June 23, 1923, in the town of Metzingen in Northern Germany, Heinrich was a man of the earth. However, in the Summer of 1941 his country called. Conscripted into the Wehrmacht, Severloh was trained as a dispatch rider and assigned to the 3d Battery