WWII Archives

Two American soldiers of the 96th Infantry Division engage stubborn Japanese defenders on the island of Okinawa. One of them is seen firing his M-1 Garand rifle at a distant target, while the other is in the process of reloading his weapon. The bloody fight for Okinawa lasted 82 days.

WWII

Hell on Hacksaw Ridge

By Nathan N. Prefer

It was called the Maeda Escarpment, after the nearest native village. An escarpment, according to the dictionary, is “a steep slope in front of a fortification” or “a long cliff.” 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

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

Six steward’s mates who received Bronze Stars for heroism pose aboard the USS Intrepid around the gun they manned until a Japanese kamikaze dive-bomber crashed into their position, July 28, 1945.

WWII

My War On Two Fronts

By J. (Joseph) Conklin Lanier, II

How I, then a teenager of African descent, found myself thousands of miles away from my placid, rural Mississippi home and on a dangerous volcanic island known as Iwo Jima in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, where tens of thousands of men met violent deaths, is a journey at which I still marvel today, some 65 years later. Read more

WWII

Patton’s War for Sicily’s Beaches

By Kevin M. Hymel

“Only God and the Navy can do anything until we hit the shore,” Lt. Gen. George S. Read more

WWII

For All The Wrong Reasons

By Edward G. Miller

Hürtgen Forest. Chilling rain, freezing fog, mud, impenetrable forest. Unremitting misery for GIs and Landsers alike. War correspondent Ernest Hemingway famously called it “Passchendaele with tree bursts.” 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

A little girl hands a flower to a lieutenant of the 110th Infantry Regiment, 28th Infantry Division, as flag-waving Luxembourgers welcome the liberating Yanks to their village, September 1944. Unfortunately, the celebration was premature; the Germans launched a counteroffensive that became known as the Battle of the Bulge three months later and nearly drove the Americans out of Luxembourg. Tom Myers was a soldier in the 110th Infantry whose unit was caught up in the chaos.

WWII

The Fight for Weiler

By Allyn Vannoy

IN a house in a small, nameless Belgian village, 26-year-old Sergeant Tom Myers, a newly assigned member of the 5th Armored Division, was upstairs changing his filthy uniform for a fresh one. Read more

San Francisco residents snap up the latest editions of the city’s newspapers and try to separate fact from rumor amid a swirl of information related to enemy activity in the early days of the war. The Japanese made numerous attempts to bring the war home to the U.S. West Coast, including submarines surfacing off the coast to shell targets or attempting to launch attack aircraft.

WWII

War on the West Coast

By Glenn Barnett

Throughout World War II, the Imperial Japanese Navy dreamed of taking the war to the West Coast of the United States. Read more

WWII

Barbarossa: Hitler’s Great Blunder

By Frank Johnson

By April 1941, just over a year and a half into World War II, Nazi Germany was the master of Europe. Read more

U.S. Navy Lieutenant Alex Vraciu holds up six fingers signifying the number of Japanese aircraft that fell to his guns during an eight-minute span on a single mission.

WWII

The Setting Sun

By David H. Lippmann

Once again, the Japanese regarded an upcoming naval engagement as the “decisive battle,” but it had been two years since her aircraft carriers and battleships had emerged from their Inland Sea lairs to menace the United States Navy. Read more

Robert Capa’s famous blurry image of the 1st Infantry Division’s amphibious landings at the Easy Red/Fox Green sectors of Omaha Beach indelibly captures the fear and chaos of the D-Day invasion. Four rolls of Capa’s film were rushed back to LIFE magazine’s London office, where a darkroom mistake ruined all but 11 images.

WWII

“A Hell of a Good Place to Die”

By Christopher Miskimon

Corporal Michael Kurtz stood on the deck of an attack transport ship sitting off the Normandy coast. Gazing out over the ship’s railing in the pre-dawn hours, he could see the ship’s crew working the davits and ropes for the landing craft. Read more

Keith Ferris’s painting, Fortresses Engaged, shows two German fighters attacking head-on through a formation of B-17s of the 100th Bomb Group.

WWII

The Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress Flew Deep into Enemy Territory

By John Emmert

Second Lieutenant John Bosko was flying his seventh mission on August 24, 1944. He was reasonably seasoned as far as bomber commanders went but was unaware of his target’s macabre reputation. Read more

Arthur Beaumont’s depiction of the Japanese first wave attack that destroyed several VMF-211 aircraft and killed 23 Marines. A total of 52 U.S. military personnel died during the 16-day battle and over 400 were taken prisoner.

WWII

Wake Island: Japan’s First Setback

By Nathan N. Prefer

It didn’t look like much—just a speck in the vast ocean. Most travelers spent only a night in the Pan American Hotel and never ventured far from the small adjoining airfield. Read more

WWII

Faces of War

A Photo Essay By Eric Hammel

Noted chronicler of the Pacific Theater Eric Hammel recently spent three years sorting, scanning, cleaning, selecting, and captioning United States Marine Corps World War II photos for six pictorial books. Read more

A British M4 Sherman medium tank races past a knocked-out German PzKpfw. IV tank during the desperate fight for control of the crossroads and communications hub of Caen during the weeks after D-Day. Allied planners had projected that Caen would be in British hands on D-Day itself; however, a month of bitter fighting was required for Allied forces to capture the town.

WWII

Panzer Fury at Caen

By Kelly Bell

The black uniformed German panzer crews climbed into their Panther tanks at 10 pm on June 8, 1944. Read more

New recruits wearing soft headgear board a C-47 for their first practice jump.

WWII

How Paratroopers Earned Their Wings

Photo Essay By Kevin M. Hymel

Every American soldier who jumped into North Africa, Europe, the Philippines, and other combat zones around the globe during World War II had to first learn his trade at Fort Benning, Georgia. Read more

WWII

The M-3 Stuart Light Tank Series

By Christopher Miskimon

Thirteen Panzerkampfwagen IV tanks advanced down the Chouigui-Mateur road in an attack against the newly arrived American First Armored Division. Read more

A German soldier surveys an antiaircraft defense gun on the bank of the Rhine near the Ludendorff Bridge, January 1945.

WWII

A “Bright Opportunity” At Remagen

By Flint Whitlock

It was March 7, 1945––a gray, overcast day with a nasty chill in the air, the kind of day in which a soldier at the front wished he could relax in front of a toasty fire with a canteen cup full of hot coffee and think about home. Read more

Two 100-pound Siberian Huskies await takeoff from a Canadian airfield. A flight surgeon, with protective gear and mask, is responsible for getting them out of the plane.

WWII

Raining Dogs! U.S. Army Parachute Animals in World War II

By Michael Dolan and Kevin Hymel

The U.S. Army trained dogs for a number of tasks during World War II. From checking for mines to guarding prisoners of war, the dogs performed admirably, but a few special dogs actually earned jump wings. Read more