History Forum / War History / World War II / February 2008

The attack on Pearl Harbor is often referred to in English as
"Operation Z", but I can't find how that was derived.  I have a theory
on this:
My guess would be that "Operation Z" is a pretty heavily distorted

I am currently in the process of writing a piece of interactive
fiction based in Darwin, Australia during the February 1942 raids. The
player starts the game in the role of a gunner as part of a crew
operating a QF 3.7 anti aircraft gun. I have read quite a few books

I'm building a model of a Willys MA, and wish to depict one of the
1,500 sent to the Soviet Union.
Has anyone seen a photo of such a vehicle?
Is there a record of what the Red Army referred to the jeep as?

What Holocaust camps or related places were preserved for history?
One is Auschwitz and you can see the front gate in Schindler's List.

Germany, Japan, England, Russia, Italy.... What did they have to give
their troops more of a reason to fight?
Craig

British historian Tony Judt concluded the 2007 Hannah
Arendt lecture:  "After 1945 our parents' generation set
side the problem of evil because -for them-it contained
too much meaning. The generation that will follow us is in

I know next-to-nothing about the USS Ranger -- except that it was considered
too small to
be effective (according to a Ballantines book at least).
Was the USS Ranger confined entirely to the Atlantic during WW2? Was it used

Somebody was selling a video on ebay some years back that supposedly
included a section showing the executions at Nuremberg in 1946 of the top
German leaders.
That ebay auction is the only indication I have seen that the executions

The Japanese had the I-400 submarine/carriers and Germany had the
enigmatic VS-5 torpedo boat/sub and also this weird hydrofoil/sub
proposal called the Manta:
http://strangevehicles.greyfalcon.us/Manta.htm

Aside from ultra-heavy tanks and massive artilley, what other colossal
projects did the Axis and Allies have during WW2?
The British had the NLE (aka Nellie) giant trench digger as a counter
to the German insane Midgard-Schlange projekt:

Hello - I am not a regular on this group but was doing a bit of
research into WW2 and thought this might be a good place to get some
extra insight into the invasion of France.
My basic question is:  why did Germany invade France?

This article
http://www.winstonchurchill.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=101
asserts that contrary to a widely accepted
story, Winston Churchill did in fact read

Did the Allied plans for post-war Japan deviate greatly after (the Cold War
and) the outbreak of the Korean War ?

I'm just about ready to quit attempting to ask this question, but did
the Chinese attempt any indigenous a/c during the war besides the Chu
X-PO fighter that failed?
Also, what happened to the five German He-111CH bombers provided to

Had Belgium not been attacked as early or if the Renard fighters had
been available in numbers in 1940, how well do you think they would
have performed against the Me Bf 109s?
Some photos here of R.37 and R.38: