WWII Archives

Nazi war propaganda was designed largely by Joseph Goebbels, whose poor view of the German public led to themes of demagoguery rather than reason.

WWII

Joseph Goebbels: Shaping Nazi War Propaganda

By Allyn Vannoy

Nazi war propaganda was designed in large part by the dictates of Joseph Goebbels (29 October 1897-1 May 1945), based on his read of German public opinion. Read more

WWII

Daring POW Escapes: Allied Officers at Austria’s Oflag XVIIA

By Jacqueline Vautrain Collins

Spring had finally arrived in the mountainous area of the Austrian Waldviertel, land of long winters and short summers. Read more

An early World War II 'black program' produced the Bell XP-59A Aircomet, America's first jet plane, but it was too late to fight in the war.

WWII

The Bell XP-59A Fighter Jet: America’s First Jet Plane

By Robert F. Dorr

The planning was done behind closed doors. The work was done at secret facilities. The result? America’s first jet plane—a fighter that might have seen combat in World War II, had things gone differently. Read more

WWII

Taking Guam from Japan in 1944

Above all, the island was defendable.

From Ritidian Point in the north to the extreme southern coastline, Guam is 34 miles long, made in an irregular shape covering 228 square miles, the largest of all Pacific islands between Japan and New Guinea. Read more

Roy Morris Jr. recalls his father's experiences at the Battle of the Bulge and the Ardennes forest.

WWII

Looking Back on the Battle of the Bulge

by Roy Morris Jr.

In the Ardennes region of eastern Belgium, Adolf Hitler rolled the dice for the last time in World War II. Read more

With smoke and dust rising below, a B-29 bomber flies over Osaka in June 1945.

WWII

Low Level, No Guns

By Robert F. Dorr

Major Sam P. Bakshas woke up that morning with the secrets in his head.

Bakshas was one of the men flying B-29 Superfortress bombers from three Pacific islands—Guam, Saipan, and Tinian. Read more

WWII

General Anthony McAuliffe

When word of the German breakthrough in the Ardennes Forest began to move back to the rear echelons of the American command in Western Europe, General Maxwell Taylor, commanding officer of the 101st Airborne Division, was attending a conference in Washington, D.C. Read more

Operation Husky was the start of the Italian Campaign. In the early stages, the Allied invasion of Sicily created a needed diversion to get the Germans redirected from the Soviet Front.

WWII

Operation Husky: The Allied Invasion of Sicily

by Jonas Goldstein

The necessity for another front as a diversion to German operations in the Soviet Union was early recognized by both the Western Allies and the Russians. Read more

A four-year-old French boy, his head in bandages, was treated by GIs behind the battle lines after he was wounded by German shrapnel.

WWII

Normandy’s Little Victims

By Kevin Hymel

War spared no one. As modern armies clashed in France’s Normandy countryside, French civilians found themselves in the crossfire or on the receiving end of bombs and heavy weapons. Read more

WWII

Nicholas Oresko Left a Brave Legacy.

By Mike Haskew

On October 4, 2013, Nicholas Oresko passed away in an Englewood, New Jersey hospital at the age of 96. Read more

An artist's depiction of the German battleships Bismarck and Prinz Eugen firing on battlecruiser HMS Hood and battleship Prince of Wales during the Battle of Denmark Strait, May 23, 1941. Both British ships were hit and Hood was sunk but Prince of Wales, although damaged, survived for a few more months.

WWII

To this day, the cause of the sinking of the HMS Hood during the hunt for the Bismarck is still disputed.

By Mark Simmons

The British Admiralty Board of Enquiry into the loss of the battlecruiser HMS Hood, presided over by Vice Admiral Sir Geoffrey Blake, concluded, “The sinking of Hood was due to a hit from Bismarck’s 15-inch shell in or adjacent to Hood’s 4-inch or 15-inch magazines, causing them to explode and wreck the after part of the ship.” Read more

Seeking cover from incoming German artillery shells on June 6, 1944, men of the 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 82nd Airborne Division run for the chapel in the town of Ste-Mère-Église.

WWII

Getting Goosebumps

This year I feel deeply honored to have been chosen by the Smithsonian Institution to lead three 70th anniversary D-Day trips to England and France (one took place in May; the other two are scheduled to take place in September and October). Read more

WWII

SoldatenKaffee: Indonesia’s Nazi-Themed Cafe

By Mike Haskew

Soldatenkaffee, named after a café frequented by German soldiers in Nazi-occupied Paris during World War II, is, thankfully, one of a number of choices for luncheon fare in Bandung, Indonesia. Read more

Behind their sand-bag reinforced foxhole, three U.S. Marines point their rifles in the direction of a suspected Japanese attack on Edson’s Ridge.

WWII

Serendipity … and the Rest of the Story

We recently received several interesting communiqués from our readers. I’ll share three of them with you.

From Dan Paschen: “There I was, thumbing through your magazine (Fall 2013) at Barnes & Noble … and on page 6 was a photo of my uncle, Lt. Read more

Hitler and Eva Braun dining at a tea house in 1942. One assassination scheme involved poisoning Hitler’s tea.

WWII

The details of Operation Foxley, a British attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler, were a closely guarded secret for decades.

By Peter Kross

The sniper was perched under a craggy bluff overlooking German Führer Adolf Hitler’s alpine mountain retreat at Berchtesgaden in Bavaria. Read more

During a pause in the action near the town of Valletri, Italy, on May 29, 1944, Pfc. Edward J. Foley of the 143rd Infantry Regiment, 36th Division, cleans his Springfield M1903A4 sniper rifle. The remarkable service life of the M1903 rifle extended through the Vietnam era and beyond.

WWII

Forgotten Substitute

By John Emmert

Decades of feature films and years of video games have created an image of the World War II American GI and Marine slugging it out against Axis foes with the M1 Garand semiautomatic rifle and the Thompson submachine gun, with the occasional M1 carbine thrown in for good measure. Read more

A picture taken by the ROV of the driver’s position on the DUKW. The instrument gauges are still visible although a portion of the dashboard has fallen off. The rubber-coated steering wheel is still largely intact.

WWII

The Lost DUKW of Lake Garda

By Jeff Patton, Colonel, USAF (Ret.)

The editorial in the Summer 2013 issue of WWII Quarterly concerned the search for an amphibious DUKW that sank with 25 men aboard on April 30, 1945, in Lake Garda, northern Italy’s largest lake. Read more

De Gaulle, now a colonel in command of the 507th Tank Regiment, watches military maneuvers in eastern France in 1938.

WWII

In Desperation And Triumph

By Michael E. Haskew

Paris was in tumult. The French 2nd Armored Division had rolled into the City of Light on August 25, 1944, ending four years of harsh Nazi occupation. Read more

WWII

Director Frank Capra

By Herb Kugel

In his 1971 autobiography, The Name Above the Title, prestigious Hollywood film director Frank Capra claimed that on Monday morning, December 8, 1941, the day after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, two U.S. Read more

Luftwaffe Field Marshal Erhard Milch, far left, with Hermann Goring, Adolf Hitler, and SA Stabschef Viktor Lutze. Milch, who otherwise would have been considered a “half-Jew” or Mischlinge, was “aryanized” by Hitler, who claimed the power to change an individual’s ethnicity.

WWII

Hitler’s Jewish Soldiers

By Bryan Mark Rigg

On September 15, 1944, as Allied armies squeezed Germany from east and west, and the Third Reich needed all the experienced, able-bodied soldiers it could find, a strange but far from unusual letter was being written. Read more

WWII

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From Around the Network

A Pyrrhic Parachute Victory in Crete

Kenneth S. Davis’ ‘FDR: The War President 1940-1943’

Why The Nazi Atomic Bomb Never Happened

Confederate Major General Earl Van Dorn