Although the turning points of the American Civil War and World War II occurred in the middle of those conflicts, the outcome of the Great War was not decided until the last months of the war. The Ludendorff Offensives had pushed both sides into a deadly race against time that pitted German tactical successes against […]

Dr. Kuehn’s talk will dispute the claim that the Battle of Midway is the turning point of the Pacific War and offer an argument that the campaign on Guadalcanal from August 1942 to early February 1943 constitutes the actual turning point in the war. This presentation examines the campaign from this vantage point and emphasizes […]

Few years in modern history have been as eventful as 1941. For most Americans, the December 7 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor resonates as the year’s signal event, an action that thrust the United States into World War II. For the Soviet Union and its clients, Operation Barbarossa, the sudden Nazi attack of June 22, […]

In an effort to thwart the ambitions of his political rivals, the Hohenstaufen ruler Frederick Barbarossa invaded Italy in 1167 with the goal of driving all the way to Sicily. Following successful sieges in northern Italy, he took his army to Rome: he captured the city on July 24 and then stirred its citizens into […]

Civil War fans often point to Antietam or Gettysburg as the turning point of the war, but overlooked is the night of April 6, 1862, when Ulysses S. Grant’s Army of the Tennessee was teetering on the edge of annihilation on the banks of the Tennessee River. The day had begun with a surprise attack […]

President Carter had a visceral dislike of the CIA and its use of covert missions. However, he overcame his initial perception when he saw an opportunity to use the CIA and its covert action as a means to increase the pressure on the political and social systems of the Soviet Union. Using the tenets of […]