WWII Archives

A flight of Supermarine Spitfire fighters is a breathtaking sight in the sky above Europe. The Spitfire received tremendous credit for defeating the Luftwaffe during the Battle of Britain.

WWII

Deadly Thoroughbred Unleashed

By Michael D. Hull

Fast, graceful, and deadly, the British Supermarine Spitfire was one of the most recognizable and famous fighter planes of World War II. Read more

WWII

1st Special Service Force Fight for Mt. La Difensa

By Christopher Miskimon

Dusk came early as they boarded the convoy of trucks, their olive-drab forms softened by baggy trousers and heavy field jackets. 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

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

WWII

The Largest Plot to Kill Hitler? – Operation Valkyrie

by Blaine Taylor

For Nazi Party Führer (Leader) and German Reich Chancellor Adolf Hitler, July 20th, 1944 dawned as a routine working day at his principal wartime military headquarters, the Wolfsschanze (Fort Wolf) in the East Prussian forest of Rastenburg, some three hundred air miles from Berlin, in what is today Poland. Read more

WWII

Hollywood Delivers the Story of the 6888th Battalion

By D.C. Montana

When Hollywood’s Tyler Perry heard a story about the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion, the U.S. Army’s only all-female, all-Black unit of the Women’s Army Corps (WAC) to go overseas in World War II, he knew he had to make a movie about it. Read more

WWII

The Jablunkov Incident

By Peter Zablocki

At around 9:30 p.m. on August 25, 1939, a German Opel staff car burst into the courtyard of the temporary headquarters of the Abwehr (German Military Intelligence) near the Slovakian and Polish border. Read more

A group of medics around a seriously wounded soldier perform an emergency foot amputation. Medics saved many lives on and near the battlefield during World War II.

WWII

Medics: Battlefield Mercy

By Allyn Vannoy

Men of the Medical Detachment of the 2nd Battalion, 274th Infantry Regiment, 70th Infantry Division, arrived in France in December 1944, and within days found themselves in action in Alsace-Lorraine as the unit was sent to help blunt the German offensive—Operation Nordwind. Read more

WWII

Private SNAFU

By Peter Zablocki

Bumbling Army Private Snafu was the title character of a series of 26 short cartoons sanctioned by the U.S. Read more

A flight of Soviet IL-2 Stormoviks attack a German oil depot in the Crimea. Their mission: Protect the last Soviet stronghold at Sevastopol.

WWII

Dueling Aces in Sevastopol

By Christer Bergström and Andrey Mikhailov

In June 1942, the Black Sea port of Sevastopol on the Crimea was the scene of some of the fiercest fighting of World War II. Read more

WWII

Operation Olive: Autumn Assault in Italy

By Allyn Vannoy

Allied forces had been fighting their way up the Italian peninsula since landing at Salerno on September 9, 1943. Read more

WWII

Draper Kauffman’s Underwater Demolition Team

By Patrick J. Chaisson

Lieutenant Commander Draper Kauffman was crawling across a moonlit beach on enemy-held Tinian Island when he first noticed the sound of voices. Read more

Assisted by a Japanese POW (left), Japanese soldiers emerge from a cave to surrender to American troops on April 5, 1945, a full 10 days after the island had been declared secure. After the U.S. Marines fought a bitter battle to take Iwo Jima, the 147th Regiment of the U.S. Army was tasked with rooting out some 3,000 diehard Japanese troops that had continued to resist.

WWII

The Army ‘Cave Men’ of Iwo Jima

By James Bilder

After 36 days of ferocious combat, the island of Iwo Jima was declared “secure” by departing U.S. Marines on March 26, 1945. Read more

WWII

Seven World War II Book Reviews for Winter 2025

By Christopher Miskimon Full Reviews

The Strategists: Churchill, Stalin, Roosevelt, Mussolini and Hitler–How War Made Them and How They Made War (Phillips Payson O’Brien, Dutton Books, New York NY, 2024, 544 pp., Read more

WWII

Hell at 21,000 Feet

By Patrick J. Chaisson

Four miles above the snow-covered city of Steyr, Captain Jack Horner peered down through his Norden bombsight in a desperate attempt to identify the target. Read more

WWII

The Iron Cross

By Stephen Thomas Previtera

In most people’s mind the Iron Cross is inescapably linked to the Third Reich. Indeed, Adolf Hitler was responsible for adding a “marching swastika” front and center, to the decoration’s black core in 1939. Read more

Major Charity Adams and Captain Abbie Campbell inspect the ranks of the 6888th Central Postal Battalion in England. The WACs of the battalion were proud of their service record in Europe.

WWII

The Six Triple Eight Big Screen Debut

After years in obscurity, the story of the 6888th Postal Directory Battalion is coming to selected theaters and to Netflix in December with the release of the feature film, The Six Triple Eight. Read more

Following an extensive modernization, the battleship HMS Warspite sails past the battlecruiser HMS Hood at Grand Harbor, Valletta, Malta, in 1938. The tiny Mediterranean island became a bastion of British resistance to the Nazis during World War II as aircraft and submarines attacked German supply convoys bound for North Africa. However, the Maltese endured heavy bombing and reached the brink of starvation in the process.

WWII

Malta: Bastion in the Mediterranean

By Martin J. Dougherty

More or less in the center of the Mediterranean Sea, Malta became one of the most strategic locations in all of World War II. Read more

6th South African Armoured Division M4 Shermans firing at Monte Sole during the breakthrough to Bologna, April 1945. After early victories in North Africa, the South African contingent was kept in reserve until after the fall of Rome, June 4, 1944. The men then really proved their mettle.

WWII

Fighting from Tobruk to Milan

By Brig. Gen. (Ret.) Raymond E. Bell

The contribution of the Union of South Africa’s armed forces to the winning of World War II is little known outside South Africa itself. Read more

Maltese civilians inspect the ruins of the opera house in Valletta after heavy Axis aerial blitz, April 7, 1942. The British called Malta “the most-bombed island in the world.”

WWII

Linchpin of the Mediterranean

By Mark Simmons

It was the humid season on Malta that September of 1943. The hot Sirocco winds from North Africa blow from August to October across the cool sea, raising humidity. Read more

Members of the U.S. 1st Infantry Division march ashore at Gela, Sicily, while an LST burns off shore on the first day of Operation Husky in this 1943 painting by Navy war artist Mitchell Jamieson. Soldiers injured during the fighting can be seen being evacuated to hospital ships. Sicily became the stepping stone for the invasion of the Italian mainland.

WWII

Sicilian Slugfest

By Flint Whitlock

The island of Sicily, lying in the Mediterranean Sea between Tunisia and the toe of the Italian peninsula, is no stranger to war and conquest. Read more

WWII

From Around the Network

Morgan’s Northern Strike

17th century Ottoman Janissary Musketeer

WWII Letters: Corporal James. G. Delaney

Warfare’s Unsung Pigeon