WWII

Warfare History Network, home of the foremost WWII History and WWII Quarterly magazines, is your best source for military history online. Here you’ll find our in-depth and vivid accounts of the greatest war in history, from Pearl Harbor to the Battle of the Bulge; from the desperate fighting on the Eastern Front to Iwo Jima and the Battle of Midway. Our vast collection of rare photographs, battle maps, illustrations and meticulously researched articles will give you new insight into the battles, leaders, weapons, and much more.

WWII

Stubborn Defense at Rechicourt

By Christopher Miskimon

First Lieutenant James H. Fields, a 24-year-old from Houston, Texas, led the 1st Platoon of Company A, 10th Armored Infantry Battalion. Read more

Major Charity Adams (center) commanded the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion, the only all-black, all-female Women’s Army Corps unit to serve overseas during World War II. PFC Romay Johnson remembered her as a strict officer.

WWII

A Black WAC in the U.S. Army

By Kevin M. Hymel

Although Private First Class (Pfc) Romay C. Johnson served in war-torn England and France during World War II, it was her tumultuous voyage across the Atlantic Ocean that she remembered most vividly. Read more

WWII

Athens In Agony

By John W. Osborn, Jr.

“No other two races have left such a mark on the world” as the Jews and the Greeks, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill once wrote. Read more

WWII

Across the Wide River

By David H. Lippman

Major Julian A. Cook stood on the ninth floor of a power plant west of the Dutch city of Nijmegen and stared north across the 400 yards of the fast-moving Waal River at German defensive positions on the other side—the square turn-of-the-century Dutch Fort Hof van Holland, its machine-gun emplacements, 20mm guns, and dug-in troopers of the 10th SS Panzer Division. Read more

WWII

Another Way to Bomb Germany

By Glenn Barnett

An old English adage states that “It’s an ill wind that blows no one any good.”

Such was the case when a gale pounded England on the night of September 17, 1940. Read more

In artist Jack Fellows’ painting, “Sakai-7 August 1942,” Japanese fighter ace Saburo Sakai flies toward the scene of aerial combat in the skies above Guadalcanal in the Solomons Islands.

WWII

Zero Ace Over Guadalcanal

By Allyn Vannoy

Flight Petty Officer Saburo Sakai was anxious to engage the American carrier pilots for the first time, testing his skills against what he had been told were the best opponents he would come up against. Read more

General George S. Patton Jr., left, assigned command of the fictitious First U.S. Army Group, jokes with Omar Bradley and Bernard Montgomery. Montgomery would command the D-Day ground forces.

WWII

Operation Fortitude: The Great Deception

by Brent Douglas Dyck

The Allied invasion of Normandy in France on June 6, 1944, known as D-Day, was the largest amphibious operation in modern history. Read more

In the autumn of 1944, Japanese soldiers and troops of the anti-British Indian Liberation Army launch an attack in Burma. Allied forces suffered stinging defeats in the China-Burma-India Theater (CBI) but eventually turned the tide despite disagreements between senior commanders General Joseph Stilwell and Field Marshal Archibald Wavell.

WWII

Stilwell Versus Wavell in the CBI Theater

By Jon Diamond

The initial command structure in the China-Burma-India (CBI) theater of World War II produced a sharp contrast and clash of wills between two of the principal Allied leaders: British Field Marshal Archibald Wavell, and his American counterpart, Lieutenant General Joseph W. Read more

Italian tanks advance through Karrin Pass in British Somaliland during their offensive of 1940. Although the Italians were initially victorious, their occupation collapsed following a British counteroffensive launched later in the year.

WWII

Italy’s Short-lived Success in Somaliland

By John W. Osborn, Jr.

ONE of World War II’s least known campaigns was fought over one of the most desolate places on earth. Read more

Twenty-two members of the Nazi regime on trial at Nuremberg for their part in war crimes. This, the first of 13 tribunals, lasted 11 months—from November 1945 until October 1946. Ten men were hanged; three committed suicide in prison.

WWII

Was There Justice at Nuremberg?

By Blaine Taylor

After Imperial Germany lost the Great War (1914-1918), the Treaty of Versailles punished her severely in terms of ruinous restitution payments to the victors, economic sanctions, the loss of territory and colonies, the forced abdication of Kaiser Wilhelm II, and the heavy restrictions imposed on her armed forces. Read more

British soldiers hoist a lightweight, inflatable dummy Sherman tank. Soldiers in the U.S. Army’s top-secret “23rd Headquarters Special Troops” unit, also known as the “Ghost Army,” were detailed to deceive the Germans about Allied troop build-ups and positioning and draw the enemy away from the actual Allied intentions.

WWII

Deception in WWII

by Mason B. Webb

For Operation Neptune/Overlord, the Allies had 6,939 naval vessels, 11,590 aircraft, and 156,000 infantrymen and airborne soldiers (both parachute and glider) ready to participate in the D-Day invasion of northern France on June 6, 1944. Read more

From their position inside a ruined house, two solders from the 4th Infantry Division’s 22nd Infantry Regiment fire on a German tank with a 3.5-inch rocket launcher, commonly called a “bazooka,” during the Battle of the Bulge, December 1944.

WWII

The Cold Shoulder

By Allyn Vannoy

Army commanders understand that the key to dealing with an enemy breakthrough is to slow the enemy’s advance and prevent the breach from widening—that is, “holding the shoulders.” Read more

A Tiger tank of Waffen SS division Das Reich goes into action against Soviet forces in the southern part of the Kursk salient. Its 88mm gun could penetrate the armor of a Soviet T-34 at 1,800 yards.

WWII

Last Lunge in the East

By Victor Kamenir

Soviet machine-gunner Mykhailo Petrik and his platoon comrades lay in their makeshift bunker on the open steppe land 30 miles northwest of Belgorod awaiting the enemy’s advance on the first day of the titanic clash at Kursk. Read more