Military History

Joseph Stilwell was born on March 19, 1883, in Palatka, Florida and grew to know more about China than anyone else in the United States Army. Two decades before World War II, he spent four years studying Chinese art, literature, and language, and its military history. Years later, his two daughters gained similar interests. One was a musician wh...

Claire Lee Chennault organized an ace group of volunteer American fighter pilots who risked their lives in China before the United States and Japan were at war. His Flying Tigers made military history even before the war officially started for the United States. They then struck one of the first blows against Japan after its attack on Pearl Harb...

On December 28, 1941, British and American leaders agreed to create a unified command for Allied forces in the Far East. After formal assent of the other governments involved, General Sir Archibald P. Wavell (Commander-in-Chief for India) became head of ABDACOM (American, British, Dutch and Australian Command).

Robert Lucas was an Austrian Jewish writer and journalist (born Robert Ehrenzweig, 8 May 1904 in Vienna) that became well known through his work at the German Service of the BBC and his intellectual “fight” against Hitler and Nazi Germany during World War II.

On the 20th of December in 1941, at an icebound airfield outside the city of Kunming in China's Yunnan province, were scattered some 50 American Curtiss P-40 Warhawk fighters, marked with the blue and white star of China and a row of vicious looking shark's teeth painted under their noses.

Campo 21 (P.G. 21) at Chieti, on the Adriatic coast near Pescara, was typical of the prison camps operated by the Italian armed forces during World War II. The camp comprised eight single-story barracks, each in a U-shape, with additional buildings serving as cookhouse, mess hall, hospital, guard barracks, and administrative office.

According to international law, chaplains are considered to be protected personnel who are not subject to internment as POW’s. They are to be released as soon as possible by their captors and returned to their own forces. Many chaplains, however, have elected to stay with their captive flocks and have provided essential solace to POW’s facing th...

A large prison-camp complex opened by the Japanese during World War II to house POWs captured in Singapore, Changi was set on nearly 16 square kilometers of undulating hills at the eastern end of Singapore.