Articles tagged as Warfare | Smithsonian Magazine

Waiting three years for his visa to come through, Wahdat rarely left his home.

The Tragic Fate of the Afghan Interpreters the U.S. Left Behind

These men risked their lives for the U.S. military. Now many would like to come to America but are stranded — and in danger

November 2016

Anthropologists have long debated the origins of human violence.

Can Resource Scarcity Really Explain a History of Human Violence?

Data from thousands of California burial sites suggests that a lack of resources causes violence. But that conclusion may be too simplistic

October 19, 2016

The Bizarre Tale of the Middle East’s First Space Program

In Lebanon, reminders of what could have been still stand

October 17, 2016

Cool Finds

Capsules Reveal Once Highly Classified Pieces of WWII Air Campaign

Two shipping barrels opened by the Commemorative Air Force contain one of the more intriguing technologies of the second world war

October 13, 2016

Scores of lives were lost while building the 816 Nuclear Plant, a long-abandoned nuclear project now open to the public.

Cool Finds

Tour the World’s Biggest Manmade Cave in China

The 816 Nuclear Plant stands as a reminder of a paranoid past

October 5, 2016

Brigadier General Courtney Whitney, government section, Far East Command; General Douglas MacArthur, Commander-in-Chief, United Nations Command, and Major General Edward Almond (at right, pointing), Commanding General, X Corps in Korea, observe the shelling of Incheon from the USS Mount McKinley.

The Redacted Testimony That Fully Explains Why General MacArthur Was Fired

Far beyond being insubordinate, the military leader seemed to not grasp the consequences of his desired strategy

September 28, 2016

April 5, 2014, Maarat al-Numaan, Idlib. At the time I made this picture, the area was controlled by Jamal Marouf’s Syrian Revolutionaries Front (SRF), but was still contested by Syrian Government forces from their Wadi Deif and Hamadiyah bases about 2K away. SRF, which had recently displaced ISIS from the area, was itself displaced by Al Qaeda Affiliated Jabhat al Nusra (JAN) later in 2014. Wadi Deif and Hamadiyah bases were captured by Islamist rebels including JAN and Ahrar ash-Sham in December of 2014.

Photographer Nish Nalbandian on Bearing Witness to the Violence in the Syrian Civil War

In a new book, “A Whole World Blind,” the American photographer documents the tragedy in the Middle East

September 15, 2016

Aleppo, Syria, in 2010. Since 2012, the city has been home to a fierce battle in Syria's civil war.

Will the once-regal city survive this moment in the spotlight?

September 8, 2016

Fuselage from Flight 93, Shanksville, Pennsylvania, September 11, 2001

Remembering 9/11, From a Scrawled Note to a Scrap of Fuselage

How objects both ordinary and extraordinary help us reflect on the devastation

September 8, 2016

A foundry in Phonsavan, Xieng Khouang province in Laos has processed over 85,000 live bombs to date. The country is still riddled with unexploded ordnance—a legacy of the United States' nine-year secret war.

Decades later, a once-secret war still threatens Laotians

September 8, 2016

Bakers are going to great lengths to preserve a little bit of normalcy

September 7, 2016

Soon, saying that Nazi death camps were Polish could earn you three years in prison

August 18, 2016

Explorers believe the Nazis stashed an armored train full of gold and weapons in tunnels in Poland’s Owl Mountains

August 17, 2016

Learn to Be a Viking (Without the Pillaging) in Ribe, Denmark

Travel back in time in this Viking village

July 29, 2016

Australian press photographer Gary Ramage photographs British troops in Afghanistan in 2010.

Updated Law of War manual removes references that equate journalism to participation in hostilities

July 22, 2016

New Research

Study Shows Knights Were Pretty Spry in Their Suits of Armor

Researchers studied the range of motion of fighters in suits of armor, finding they were heavy but allowed freedom of movement

July 8, 2016

Antoine de Saint-Exupery in Montreal, Canada in May 1942.

Cool Finds

Amateur Historian Digs up Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s Press Pass From the Spanish Civil War

The celebrated author of “The Little Prince” once covered the Spanish Civil War

July 6, 2016

USMT workers set up telegraph lines during the Civil War.

Cool Finds

You Can Help Decode Thousands of Top Secret Civil War Telegrams

Volunteers will transcribe and tease out the messages of of nearly 16,000 communiques

June 28, 2016

A drawing of one of the Athenian ship sheds built in the harbors of Piraeus

Cool Finds

Archaeologists Uncover Massive Naval Bases of the Ancient Athenians

Researchers have excavated ship sheds in the city of Piraeus that held triremes from the pivotal Battle of Salamis

June 17, 2016

The Castle Bravo test at Bikini Atoll was more than 1,000 times more powerful than the bomb the United States dropped on Hiroshima.

New Research

The Marshall Islands Are Becoming Less Nuclear

A new study finds that the abandoned nuclear test sites aren’t much more radioactive than Central Park

June 7, 2016