WWII Archives

Movie theater poster for the 1951 Allied Artists film based on the amazing life of Claire Phillips, starring Ann Dvorak. Phillips was a consultant on the production.

WWII

“Manila’s Mata Hari”

By Sig Unander

It is a usual evening at Club Tsubaki, wartime Manila’s most exclusive nightspot. On stage, a statuesque brunette in a clinging white dress, olive skin, and raven hair illuminated by a spotlight, is singing a “torch” song in a low, seductive voice, dark eyes flashing. Read more

Forced south along the coast after their sterling performance at the Battle of Abbeville, the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, part of the 51st Highland Division, hold the line at the River Bresle.

WWII

Still Fighting After Dunkirk

By Alan Davidge

Background: When the German army burst through Belgium’s Ardennes Forest in May 1940, it cut the Allies’ front line in half, then turned northwards through France towards the Channel coast. Read more

British commandos sit aboard a Whitworth Whitley aircraft during exercises.

WWII

Operation Biting: ‘The Bruneval Raid’

By Nathan N. Prefer

By January 1942, Britain was still in the fight of her life. Germany had occupied all western Europe, controlled the Mediterranean, and was threatening British colonies in North Africa. Read more

WWII

Letters from Oblivion: Auschwitz and Buchenwald

By Katrina Shawver

Henry Zguda, a Polish Catholic, spent three and a half years interned at Auschwitz and Buchenwald as a political prisoner. Read more

Caught in an attack by U.S. Army Air Forces bombers, a Japanese merchant ship takes hits off the coast of Dutch New Guinea during a June 1944 raid. Codebreaking work by cryptanalysts like Sergeant Joseph Richard helped detect enemy convoy movements.

WWII

Codebreaking Sergeant Richard

By Patrick J. Chaisson

Wewak Convoy 21 was being annihilated, and the Japanese Army could do nothing to stop it.

The first vessel to die was Yakumo Maru. Read more

WWII

The 28th Infantry Division Stands

By Nathan N. Prefer

On September 16, 1944, Adolf Hitler revealed his master plan for reversing Germany’s declining fortunes in the West during World War II. Read more

In this painting by artist Gary Sheahan titled “Birth of the Atomic Age,” scientist Enrico Fermi and his colleagues anxiously proceed with the first sustained nuclear chain reaction in history at the University of Chicago.

WWII

First Sustained Nuclear Reaction

By Eric Niderost

Enrico Fermi’s face was a study in concentration as his fingers deftly moved across the well-worn surface of his slide rule. Read more

U.S. Army Air Forces Boeing B-17 bombers fly in formation en route to a target in Germany. Enemy fighters and antiaircraft fire took a heavy toll on the airmen aboard.

WWII

The Borkum Island Massacre and Trial

By William R. Hogan

On August 4, 1944, a Boeing B-17G Flying Fortress heavy bomber, tail number 43-37909, so new that it did not have a nickname or nose art yet, took off from England on a bombing run over Germany that would end in a crash landing on Borkum Island in the North Sea. Read more

WWII

Major General Edward L. Spears

By Jon Diamond

On May 22, 1940, within a fortnight of being appointed Britain’s prime minister, Winston S. Churchill was confronted with the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), under Lord Gort, retreating from Belgium. Read more

This painting of the nocturnal Battle of the Java Sea shows the torpedoed Dutch light cruiser De Ruyter burning as the cruiser HMAS Perth turns to avoid a collision on February 27, 1942. One night later, the Perth, along with the USS Houston would go down in the Battle of the Sunda Strait.

WWII

Slaughter in the Sunda Strait

By David H. Lippman

It was nearly over. Since Singapore had fallen to the Japanese on February 14, 1942, the Allied forces defending the Dutch East Indies had battled against a Japanese pincer-like movement, which consisted of aircraft carriers, cruisers, destroyers, aircraft, and well-trained “Special Naval Landing Forces”—Japan’s version of American and British Marines. Read more

WWII

Conrad Veidt Lived Out His Anti-Nazi Commitment

The 1942 film Casablanca remains one of the most popular Hollywood creations of all time, immortalizing the characters played by Humphrey Bogart (Rick Blaine) and Ingrid Bergman (Ilsa Lund). Read more

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

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

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