WWII Archives

One of the B-24 assembly lines at Ford’s Willow Run (Michigan) plant, where one bomber was produced every hour.

WWII

Willow Run Bomber Plant

Samantha L. Quigley

They said it couldn’t be done. Doubters chided Henry Ford for declaring that his Willow Run Bomber Plant could turn out a B-24 Liberator heavy bomber every hour. Read more

WWII

K Rations Created the World’s Best Fed Army

By Richard Beranty

K Rations remain one of the great icons of World War II. Soldiers either loved them or hated them. Read more

WWII

Patton’s Last Command

By Alexander Lovelace

The October light was beginning to fade as the U.S. Army limousine sped along the autobahn in the American Zone of Occupied Germany. Read more

WWII

Combat Photographers: Shooting the War

By Susan Zimmerman

Much of what we know today about World War II are the visual images—both still and moving—that combat photographers took to document all phases of this costly human tragedy. Read more

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

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