WWII

Alexander Palladin12.03.2025

Two weeks ago, a new feature movie, called “North Pole”, was released in Russia. Based on real facts, it is dedicated to the crew of the first Soviet nuclear-powered submarine K-3. Nearly 63 years ago, in mid-July of 1962, it became Soviet Navy’s first submarine to surface in the North Pole area. The vessel was […]

Alexander Palladin28.02.2025

80 years ago, on February 26, 1945, a national mourning was declared in the USSR in memoriam of Alexey Tolstoy, an outstanding writer who passed away just a few months before the Great Victory over Nazi Germany. Official cause of his death was lung cancer, diagnosed a year before. In lots of photos and portraits, […]

Egor Yakovlev09.02.2025

Sergio Leone’s ‘900 Days’ — The Story of a Grand Project on the Siege of Leningrad. Sergio Leone, the author of the best Western films in history, was not very popular in the USSR. Soviet film critics criticized the Italian director for the aestheticization of violence, caustic irony and the lack of a moral compass […]

Egor Yakovlev03.02.2025

On April 30, 1945, street fighting was at its height in Nazi Berlin. Soviet troops were preparing to storm the Tiergarten district, which was defended by the SS. Both soldiers and civilians were dying in the bloody meat grinder in the center of the densely populated city. On this day, Red Army sergeant Nikolai Masalov, […]

Alexander Palladin28.01.2025

On January 27, 1944, the military blockade of Leningrad, the 2nd largest city in the USSR, by German and Finnish troops was finally broken. It lasted for 872 days and ranks as the longest and most lethal siege in world history, causing an estimated 1.5 million deaths. Some historians speak of the siege operations in […]

Yuri Chekalin27.01.2025

German worker August Landmesser, whose wife was Jewish, refused to salute Hitler. This famous photograph was taken in 1936. The photo shows workers giving the Nazi salute during the launch of the training ship Horst Wessel. Only August Landmesser crossed his arms instead of saluting. This photograph is a historical document of that era when […]

Yuri Chekalin15.01.2025

Fyodor Fyodorovich Serpilin, the main character of Konstantin Simonov’s trilogy “The Living and the Dead”, was a composite image. In him, one could guess the features and destinies of the legendary generals-commanders Alexander Gorbatov and Ivan Grishin, but the main prototype was Colonel Semyon Fyodorovich Kutepov, whom the writer Simonov (at that time – a […]

Yuri Chekalin17.12.2024

Amet-Khan Sultan was born in Crimea on October 25, 1920, to a Lak father and a Crimean Tatar mother. Like many young people of the 1930s, he attended an aeroclub, which determined his future fate. Having been drafted into the army in 1939, Amet-Khan was sent to the Kachin Aviation School, from where he graduated […]

Alexander Palladin07.12.2024

In 1982, Charles Higham’s book “The Untold Story of Errol Flynn” was published in the United States. Sent to print on the eve of yet another anniversary of the Japanese attack on the main base of the U.S. Pacific Fleet in Pearl Harbor, it was dedicated to Errol Flynn, Hollywood actor of Australian origin and […]

Alexander Schmidke06.12.2024

The most exotic units participated in the battles on the Leningrad Front, both in their origin, such as the Norwegians, Spaniards and Flemings, and in their military purpose. Mountain rifle units fought on both sides in the swamps and forests of the Leningrad Region, German airborne troops confronted Soviet soldiers on the Nevsky Pyatachok, and […]

Unique Soviet School

Alexey Tolstoy In Memoriam

Sergio Leone’s ‘900 Days’

Prototype on the Liberator Soldier monument in Berlin

German and Finnish Siege Could Not Silence The Voice of Leningrad

The Man Who Refused to Salute Hitler

Who Was The Prototype Of Brigade Commander Serplin?

Amet-Khan Sultan: the Air Ace Who Bacame the Two Times Hero of the Soviet Union

The Unknown Role of Errol Flynn

Unbelievable Tank Rescue At The Leningrad Frontlines

In memory of Alan Simpson

Nuances Make a Truce Workable

Unique Soviet School

Why I’m So Short