Sep 16th, 2010 at 12:00PM:
The Italian army gets a bad rap.
Sure, it made a poor showing in World War Two, but it was Italian Communist partisans who finally bagged Mussolini. Plus the Italians fought in one of the toughest fronts of the First World War, high in the Alps against the Germans and Austro-Hungarians. They endured freezing conditions on top of glaciers for months on end. One of the favorite tactics was to ...Click on a label to read posts from that part of the world.
worldwartwo posts
Military museums in Rome
Sep 16th, 2010 at 12:00PM:
The Italian army gets a bad rap.
Sure, it made a poor showing in World War Two, but it was Italian Communist partisans who finally bagged Mussolini. Plus the Italians fought in one of the toughest fronts of the First World War, high in the Alps against the Germans and Austro-Hungarians. They endured freezing conditions on top of glaciers for months on end. One of the favorite tactics was to ...The East Highland Way: hiking Scotland's newest trail
Aug 19th, 2010 at 11:30AM:
I'm in Ft. William on the west coast of Scotland, the starting point for many popular long-distance hikes, including Scotland's newest trail--the East Highland Way. Over the next six days I'll be walking 76 miles past lochs, mountains, historic sites, and remote countryside. The hike is so new there isn't even a guidebook yet, but Kevin Langan, who established the route and is writing a ...The animals that helped win World War Two
Jul 20th, 2010 at 12:30PM:
Animals have always been used in war, but historians tend to dismiss them as living equipment and say little about their experiences. A new exhibition at The National World War II Museum in New Orleans seeks to right that imbalance by focusing on the war effort of animals on both sides of the conflict.
Loyal Forces: Animals in WWII features life-sized mannequins of horses and mules with ...WWII submarine struggles to survive
Jul 12th, 2010 at 9:00AM: England's last submarine built during World War Two needs £1.5 million ($2.7 million) to avoid ending up on the scrapheap of history.
The HMS Alliance was launched just weeks before the end of the war and never saw action. It is the last surviving Amphion class submarine specially designed for long-range Pacific warfare. While it missed the big show, it saw active service until 1973. Now ...London museum airbrushes out Churchill's cigar
Jun 18th, 2010 at 1:00PM: While there have been a lot of angry comments here on Gadling about Egypt's smoking ban and the even stricter smoking ban in Finland, neither country has tried to pretend people didn't smoke in the past. Now someone at the Winston Churchill's Britain at War Experience, a London museum, seems to have decided dead people could get lung cancer and airbrushed out a cigar from a photo of Winston ...Schindler's List factory becomes museum
Jun 12th, 2010 at 3:00PM: During World War Two, German industrialist Oskar Schindler saved some 1,200 of his Jewish workers from extermination. His enamelware and munitions factories were considered vital for the German war effort and he claimed his workers all had special skills vital for the operation of his factories, whether they had or not. Many of his "skilled mechanics" were in fact children or handicapped people.
...The swastika: symbol of peace and harmony
May 8th, 2010 at 1:30PM: Sixty-five years ago today German President Karl Dönitz declared an unconditional surrender to the Allied forces, ending the war in Europe. Berlin had fallen to the Soviets, Hitler had killed himself a week before, and the Third Reich was dead.
The scars from that terrible conflict are slow to heal, and symbols used by the Nazis still cause controversy. When the Hamburg Radisson Hotel ...Celebrating the Battle of Britain
May 7th, 2010 at 10:30AM: This year marks the 70th anniversary of the Battle of Britain, an epic struggle for the skies between the Royal Air Force and the Luftwaffe.
The Imperial War Museum at Duxford is celebrating this key victory of World War Two with a host of activities. A photographic exhibition runs to the end of the year and shows what life was like at the RAF Duxford base. There's a series of flight ...The bureaucracy of genocide
May 7th, 2010 at 9:00AM: The typical image of a Nazi is a jackbooted thug gunning down innocent people. While there were all too many killers like that in the Third Reich, the majority of Nazis were civilians. It takes a lot of people to run a government and an army, and many Nazis never personally killed anyone. They were educated, middle-class bureaucrats who loved their children, were kind to their neighbors, and spent ...Cambridge, England honors fallen American soldiers
Jul 1st, 2009 at 8:00AM:
Arlington National Cemetery has no parallel, yet for some families, it's not enough. If yours is not resting in Arlington, then the national treasure takes a back seat to the bit of earth that matters more to you. As many people as Arlington serves, there are large U.S. cemeteries elsewhere that are profound in the numbers they protect. This becomes clear when the enormity of the Cambridge ...Museum Junkie: Manchester exhibit on life as a POW
May 27th, 2009 at 4:00PM: A fascinating exhibit on life as a POW has opened at The Imperial War Museum North in Manchester, England.
The exhibition, called "Captured: The Extraordinary Life of Prisoners of War", combines pictures, artifacts, and real-life anecdotes to give a glimpse into the experiences of prisoners of war from all armies during the Second World War (1939-45). It also features the only known film of German ...Sculpture Projects Munster: An Every 10 Year Outdoor Sculpture Exhibit
May 28th, 2007 at 12:46PM: Munster, Germany was almost totally destroyed during World War II. If there is any indication that "Art Saves Lives," as I used to see on art pins sold in the Mariposa Gallery in Albuquerque, New Mexico, the Sculpture Project Munster, is it. Every ten years this outdoor sculpture exhibit pulls in artists' work from different countries to infuse vibrancy into the human experience. There are 37 ...
