Articles Archive

American soldiers of the 92nd Infantry Division move into the town of Moninoso, Italy, in April 1945. The 92nd was one of several Black outfits of the U.S. Army that served in the Italian campaign during World War II.

Belated Medals of Honor Righted Injustices

By Christopher Miskimon

The squat, gray brick Castle Aghinolfi sat on high ground over-looking a coastal road on Italy’s west coast. Read more

Polish troops engage in field exercises in April 1939, just five months before the Nazi invasion of their country and the outbreak of World War II. Some Poles initially thought the Soviet Army was there to help them.

Invasion from the East

By John W. Osborn, Jr.

It was a quiet dinner on a side street in Berlin the evening of June 26, 1939, but more than food would be devoured that night. Read more

An Afrika Korps antiaircraft gun crew scans the sky for enemy planes in 1941. Homeland antiaircraft units were also raised in Germany to augment the air defenses against massive Allied bombing raids.

Defending the Skies Above the Reich

By Allyn Vannoy

During the Allied air campaign against the Third Reich in World War II, well over a million tons of bombs were dropped on German territory, killing nearly 300,000 civilians and wounding another 780,000. Read more

$The three leaders with advisors during the Yalta Conference. The relationship between Churchill and Stalin was at times fractious, but the leaders managed to maintain the alliance that eventually defeated Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan.$

The Uneasy Alliance

By Jon Diamond

In the Grand Alliance volume of Winston S. Churchill’s memoirs of the Second World War, the British prime minister lambasted his new ally, Josef Stalin, after Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union, began on June 22, 1941. Read more

American OSS officers accompanied by Chetnik guerrillas on the move from the original evacuation airstrip in Pranjani, Serbia in anticipation of Soviet Red Army advances, September 10, 1944. The OSS officers were part of OSS operations Halyard and Ranger.

Hazardous Balkan Air Rescue

By Kevin Morrow

Black puffs from flak bursts began blossoming in the air around Lieutenant Tom Oliver’s Consolidated B-24 Liberator bomber high over the town of Bor, Yugoslavia. Read more

The crew of a British Sopwith Camel flying at 10,000 feet downs the first Gotha on British soil during a night raid on London in January 1918. Germany reinvigorated its strategic bombing campaign late in the war by using Gotha aircraft instead of zeppelins.

Germany’s Gotha Heavy Bombers

By Eric Niderost

It was the early-morning hours of June 13, 1917, when a group of German aircraft began its final preparations for a very special mission, which amounted to the first fixed-wing bombing of London. Read more

British Paratrooper, 1st Airborne Division, Arnhem 1944

By William E. Welsh, Illustration by Johnny Shumate

The British Air Ministry established the British Airborne forces on June 22, 1940, at the request of Prime Minister Winston Churchill. Read more

British infantry prepares to assault German positions on Menin Road Ridge. The British squandered valuable time preparing for the Passchendaele offensive, giving the Germans ample time to improve their defenses.

Hard-Won Victory at Passchendaele

By Mike Phifer

British soldiers fixed their bayonets and waited tensely in the trenches for the order to go over the top. Read more

A Federal battery fords a tributary of the Rappahannock on the day of battle. At the outset of the campaign, Jackson hoped to defeat the newly established Federal Army of Virginia one corps at a time.

Bloody Collision at Cedar Mountain

By David A. Norris

In the shadow of Cedar Mountain on the southern outskirts of Culpeper, Virginia, Major General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson deployed the troops at the head of his column of march against a reinforced Union corps on August 9, 1862. Read more

Second Lieutenant Ernest “Red Eagle” Childers

By William F. Floyd, Jr.

After three years of brutal warfare in World War II, the Italians in July 1943 overthrew fascist leader Benito Mussolini in the hope of obtaining a separate armistice with the Allies. Read more

Greek Hoplite (8th – 4th century B.C)

By William E. Welsh

Illustration by Peter Connolly

The Greek hoplite was a heavily armored infantryman who fought in a phalanx formation. Read more

U.S. Marines cautiously advance after landing on February 19, 1945. U.S. forces needed the tiny island as a stepping stone for a possible invasion of Japan.

The Grinding Horror of Iwo Jima

By Joshua Shepherd

For the men of the 28th Marine Regiment, the morning of February 19, 1945, brought a sobering moment of truth. Read more

Chariot of Fire

By Alan Davidge

The year 1942 started disastrously for Britain, just as 1941 had ended badly for the United States. Japan’s entry into the war not only devastated the U.S. Read more

Constructed on the platform of the M4 Sherman tank, the M10 “Wolverine” tank destroyer sported a 76mm high-velocity gun that had better armor-piercing capability than the Sherman’s standard 75mm gun, but a fatal flaw was the slow, hand-cranked turret. Here an M10 crosses a stream somewhere on the Belgium-German border, March 1945.

Sergeant Dean Kenney and the M10 Tank Destroyer

by Gen. Raymond E. Bell Jr.

The tank-destroyer branch of the U.S. Army was possibly the shortest-lived of all the Army’s branches in World War II. Read more

Flying “The Jug”

By Janis Allen

BACKSTORY: 2nd Lt. Edwin Cottrell served in the U.S. Army Air Forces from August 1942 through 1945, then enlisted in the Air Force Reserves in 1950 and completed 28 years in uniform, retiring as a colonel in the Air Force. Read more

Throwing Heroes Under the Bus

Here at WWII Quarterly, and in all my book writing, I spend a lot of time advancing my deeply held belief that military heroes—men and women who, over the decades, have put their lives on the line (and sometimes gave their lives in the process) to serve their country for a higher ideal and the causes for which they fought—deserve our enduring praise. Read more

As museum visitors emerge from the trench-like entrance of the Nation Overseas Gallery, cast figures, lighting effects, imagery, and sounds of distant battle recreate a setting based on a famous photograph of the Meuse-Argonne Offensive.

The long-awaited National Museum of the U.S. Army is a stunning tribute to America’s oldest branch of service.

by LTC Adam Morgan

After many years of planning, fundraising and construction, the spectacular, long-awaited National Museum of the United States Army was finally opened on Veterans Day, 2020, promptly shut down due to Coronavirus restrictions, and has reopened. Read more

The Legacy of Justice Jackson

A few weeks ago, I was able to take a long-delayed summer vacation, this time to New England, where I took in the Maine Maritime Museum and Bath Iron Works (where many American warships were constructed in WWII—and are still being built). Read more