WWII Archives

A throng of mesmerized children attempts to squeeze between smiling SS guards to deliver the Nazi salute during a party rally. Children were intensely indoctrinated in the Third Reich and made to practice the salute along with a “Heil Hitler!” to increase their devotion to the regime.

WWII

The Madman of the Mountain: Adolf Hitler’s Personal Life

By Charles Whiting

Adolf Hitler loved children. Before the war consumed all his energies he entertained children at his holiday home on the “mountain” all the time. Read more

Manning a twin Bofors antiaircraft gun on the deck of the Queen Mary, a crew is put through its paces by an officer during gunnery training at sea.

WWII

RMS Queen Mary’s War Service: Voyages to Victory

By Eric Niderost

The late summer of 1939 saw Great Britain teetering on the brink of war with Hitler’s Germany. The years of appeasement and vacillation, of meekly acquiescing to Hitler’s insatiable territorial demands, were over at last. Read more

A flight of famed North American P-51 Mustang fighters flies in tight formation.

WWII

P-51 Mustang: The Untamed Beast of the Skies

By Sam McGowan

If a single airplane has captured the public imagination more than any other, it is undoubtedly the North American P-51 Mustang fighter. Read more

Japanese marines prepare to open fire with machine guns on the outnumbered Chinese position at Sihang Warehouse in October 1937. National Archives

WWII

Chinese Alamo: Last Stand at Sihang Warehouse

By Eric Niderost

On October 27, 1937, the Zhabei district of Shanghai began to burn, an enormous conflagration that stretched for five miles and filled the northern horizon from end to end, almost as far as the eye could see. Read more

Real paratroopers or fake? The Allies were inspired to use dummy parachutists from the Germans, who deployed decoys during their 1940 attack on the Belgian fortress of Eben-Emael. (Shown here are real Americans during Operation Market Garden.)

WWII

Operations Titanic’s Paradummies

By Richard L. Baker

Using parachutes to insert large forces behind enemy lines quickly fostered the idea of also using decoys to sow doubt and confusion. Read more

A Polish tank commander salutes as his unit passes in review during a ceremony in Scotland prior to deployment to Normandy. Polish units made a significant contribution to the Allied offensive in Western Europe. (National Archives)

WWII

Poles in the West: Fighting in the Falaise Pocket

By Major General Michael Reynolds

The dismemberment of Poland by the German and Soviet armies in September and early October 1939 saw the temporary destruction of the Polish armed forces. Read more

Soldiers drive jeeps onto waiting LCTs at a British port in preparation for the Normandy landings on June 6, 1944.

WWII

The D-Day Invasion: The Road to Operation Overlord

By Michael D. Hull

Soon after the tattered British Expeditionary Force was miraculously rescued from Dunkirk in June 1940, planners at the War Office in London began dreaming of returning to the German-occupied European continent. Read more

WWII

The Thunder of Operation Gallop

By Pat McTaggart

As Adolf Hitler’s vaunted Sixth Army lay in its death throes in the ruins of Stalingrad, German forces to the west of the city faced their own kind of hell. Read more

Marching along on the Eastern Front at the head of his men, SS officer Leon Degrelle was a foreign-born politician who became a decorated military leader and saw extensive combat with German forces in World War II.

WWII

Was Leon Degrelle a Traitor of Belgium, or a German Army Hero?

By Richard Rule

Leon Degrelle was born in 1906 in Belgium to a prosperous family in the French-speaking region of Wallonia. Read more

WWII

Was It Right to Drop the Atomic Bomb on Hiroshima & Nagasaki?

By Sam McGowan

The most controversial decision of the 20th century—probably in all of history—was the one reportedly made by President Harry S. Read more

WWII

WWII Secrets: The Mysterious Inga Arvad

By Peter Kross

Shortly before Pearl Harbor, an attractive Danish journalist arrived in the United States to pursue a writing career. Read more

WWII

Night Battle: The Barroom Brawl Off Guadalcanal

By David Alan Johnson

November 13, 1942, was a Friday, which sailors aboard the cruiser USS San Francisco noted with anxiety. Read more

Red Army scouts report the findings of a recent foray to locate the Germans in the northern Caucasus. The Germans were not uniformed against the harsh Russian winter and suffered tremendous casualties as a result.

WWII

Russian Commanders: Marshal Semyon M. Budenny

By Blaine Taylor

At 8 am on the cold, blustery morning of November 7, 1941, the 24th anniversary of the Russian Communist Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, a dashing lone horseman galloped out of the Spassky Gate of the Kremlin onto snow-covered Red Square. Read more

With infantry charging alongside, a motorcycle unit of the Red Army roars into action against German positions in July 1942. The submachine gun appears to be the weapon of choice for these soldiers.

WWII

Leningrad & Tikhvin: Nazi Winter Repulse During Operation Barbarossa

By Pat Mc Taggart

The men of Field Marshal Wilhelm Ritter von Leeb’s Heeresgruppe Nord (Army Group North) had little sleep during the night of June 21, 1941. Read more

Shown rolling along a dirt road in northwest Europe on November 29, 1944, a captured German Panther tank is in use by the British 4th Coldstream Guards, 6th Guards Tank Brigade. (Imperial War Museum)

WWII

How the Allies Used Captured German Tanks and Vehicles

By Christopher Miskimon

Geijsteren Castle sits north of the Dutch town of Venlo on the banks of the Meuse River. In late 1944, the castle was a strongpoint in the local German defenses and under attack by elements of the British Sixth Guards Tank Brigade. Read more

A mannequin wearing the uniform of a technical sergeant in the American 359th Infantry Regiment mans the equipment in the Hoffmann Museum’s “radio corner.”

WWII

Luxembourg’s Hoffman Museum

By Raymond E. Bell, Jr.

You won’t find the familiar little triangular signs, “Warnung Minen!” hanging on barbed wire today in Western Europe, with one exception. Read more

Efficient and aggressive, Japanese troops rush into Hong Kong in early December 1941. Reports of widespread atrocities were received as the invaders took control of the city. (Imperial War Museum)

WWII

Tragedy at Hong Kong: The Ordeal of C Force

By Jerome M. Baldwin

By the 1930s the security Hong Kong had enjoyed since its acquisition by the British Empire in 1842 was a memory. Read more

The Duke of Windsor, fourth from right, accompanies the Viscount Gort and a contingent of British Army officers during an inspection of troops in France early in World War II.

WWII

The Duke and Duchess of Windsor: A Dark Royal Secret?

By Peter Kross

One of the most interesting yet little known aspects of World War II was the role played by the Duke of Windsor, previously King Edward VIII of England, and his covert relationship with Adolf Hitler’s Germany. Read more

WWII

Hell’s Own Cesspool: Okinawa in WWII

By John Walker

On Easter morning, April 1, 1945, the Pacific island of Okinawa trembled beneath an earthshaking bombardment from American combat aircraft overhead and ships steaming offshore in preparation for an amphibious landing of unprecedented magnitude. Read more

WWII

‘Bat Bombs’: WWII’s Project X-Ray

By Allan T. Duffin

Imagine thousands of bats—silent, gray-furred, vigilant—huddled in the rafters of your home or office, each carrying a tiny device no larger than a thimble. Read more

WWII

From Around the Network

Attack on The Merville gun battery during D-Day

Manhattan’s First Terror Attack: Decades Before 9/11

Shoot your way through World War II in three new games.

Cowboy of the Royal Air Force