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Articles on World War II

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U.S. Army Rangers prepare to depart England for the D-Day invasion. Photo12/UIG/Getty Images

Rangers led the way in the D-Day landings 80 years ago

The fight up the cliffs of Pointe du Hoc and the battle across Omaha Beach were spearheaded by a relatively new type of unit: Army Rangers.
The Soviet Union’s leading newspaper only mentioned D-Day in small print at the very top of its front page on June 7, 1944. Pravda

Soviet media downplayed the significance of the D-Day invasion

Russian President Vladimir Putin has said D-Day ‘was not a game changer’ in World War II – and Soviet media delivered that message starting the day after the invasion.
The body of socialist leader Giacomo Matteotti is discovered on the outskirts of Rome on August 16 1924, two months after his disappearance. Archivio GBB/Alamy

The murder of Giacomo Matteotti – reinvestigating Italy’s most infamous cold case

One hundred years after the Italian opposition leader’s murder, documents long locked away at the London School of Economics could shed new light on Mussolini’s involvement in his death
Betty Smith’s novel sold millions of copies in the 1940s. Weegee/International Center of Photography via Getty Images

Betty Smith enchanted a generation of readers with ‘A Tree Grows in Brooklyn’ − even as she groused that she hoped Williamsburg would be flattened

No other 20th-century American novel did quite so much to burnish Brooklyn’s reputation. But Smith rarely saw her hometown through rose-colored glasses − and even grew to resent it.
The ruins of a church in Bohorodychne, Donetsk district, Ukraine, on Jan. 27, 2024. Ignacio Marin/Anadolu via Getty Images

The Russia-Ukraine War has caused a staggering amount of cultural destruction – both seen and unseen

In addition to destroyed buildings, there’s an entire underground world – filled with untold numbers of artifacts, bones and ruins – that are exposed and damaged by the digging of trenches.
In this photo released by Sputnik news agency on Feb. 9, 2024, Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks during an interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson at the Kremlin in Moscow. (Gavriil Grigorov, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)

Vladimir Putin justifies his imperial aims in Tucker Carlson interview

Why is there such a Russian focus on the Second World War? Because it’s used to justify authoritarian states, the rule of dictators like Putin and Belarus’s Alexander Lukashenko.

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