WWII Archives

WWII

Night Fighting Corsairs

By Robert F. Dorr and Fred L. Borch

Just before it was drawn into World War II, the United States began developing a night fighter version of one of its most famous warplanes. Read more

WWII

By dawn on June 9, 1944, the men of the Company C, 1st Battalion, 325th Glider Infantry Regiment, of the 82nd Airborne Division found themselves engaged in a fierce firefight with German troops at the village of Cauquigny just west of the Merderet River in Normandy’s Cotentin Peninsula. Read more

Soldiers of the U.S. 75th Infantry Division tramp through the snow in the Colmar Pocket sector in the Alsace region. The pocket, which consisted of 850 square miles on the west side of the Rhine River, was the last piece of German-held territory on French soil.

WWII

Destruction Of The Colmar Pocket

By Christopher Miskimon

On January 25, 1945, every officer in Company B of the 15th Infantry Regiment of the American 3rd Infantry Division became a casualty in the fight for the “Colmar Pocket” except Lieutenant Audie Murphy. Read more

WWII

The Fairey Swordfish Torpedo Bomber

By Phil Zimmer

Radar, atomic bombs, jet engines and early cruise missiles were among the numerous technological advances of World War II. Read more

German officers and enlisted personnel stand in front of Oflag 64, a former reform school for boys that was converted into a somewhat unique prison camp for American officers during World War II.

WWII

Life In a Unique Nazi POW Camp

By Duane Schultz

On July 28, 2018, at the Doubletree Hilton Hotel near Dulles Airport, outside Washington, D.C., Mariusz Winiecki, a 42-year-old Polish professor, told an audience of Americans about his experiences growing up in the small town of Szubin, 150 miles southeast of Warsaw. Read more

WWII

The Allies’ Armored Workhorse

By Michael D. Hull

Early on the gray, chilly afternoon of Tuesday, December 26, 1944, a column of mud-stained Sherman medium tanks, armored cars, and half-tracks of the U.S. Read more

After German forces overran their country in September 1939, tenacious Poles, such as these shown in Hungary, escaped the continent to reconstitute their forces in Britain and prepare for the day they could strike back at the Nazis.

WWII

Polish Army’s Heroic Stand at Falaise

By Alan Davidge

Poland does not always get the recognition it deserves for helping to defeat Nazi Germany and end the war in Europe. Read more

WWII

Lucky All The Way!

By Susan Zimmerman

During World War II, many of England’s Royal Air Force (RAF) Class A airfields were made available to the U.S. Read more

WWII

Delaying Action at Enchenberg

By Allyn Vannoy

The 44th Infantry Division, part of the U.S. Seventh Army’s XV Corps, was pushing elements of the battered German 25th Panzergrenadier Division back toward the German frontier in the Vosges Mountains during early December 1944. Read more

A German submarine rolls on a heavy sea during a mission in the Atlantic. Painting by Olaf Rahardt, 2000.

WWII

Cloak and Dagger Mounties

By John Mancini

In the early morning of Monday, November 9, 1942, the german U-boat U-518 surfaced off the bleak Quebec coast. Read more

With smoke rising and the barrel of their Bofors gun hot from rapid discharging, the weapon’s crew fires over open sights during support for British and Canadian troops in Operation Veritable. This photo was taken in the Netherlands at Nuttderden on the road to Kleve, as British and Canadian troops moved forward.

WWII

Devils in the Forest

By William E. Welsh

The German paratroopers marched the captured Canadian officer through the dark forest to the damp underground bunker that served as their platoon headquarters. Read more

WWII

Nuremburg Prosecutor

By Blaine Taylor

On March 23, 1991, at a reunion of the postwar Nuremberg International Military Tribunal staffers in Washington, I had occasion to meet the former American prosecutor, Brigadier General Telford Taylor. Read more

In this 1941 portrayal of the Battle of Britain, artist Paul Nash said his painting was “an attempt to give the sense of an aerial battle in operation over a wide area, and thus summarizes England’s great aerial victory over Germany.” It symbolically depicts the aerial conflict that lasted from July 10, 1940 to October 31, 1940, with outnumbered, free-flying British fighters battling the orderly ranks of German aircraft.

WWII

The Battle of Britain: WWII’s Most Consequential Campaign?

By Matthew J. Benedetti

Two decades after the carnage of the Great War, the world was again plunged into the cauldron of armed conflict. Read more

Polish soldiers, attached to the British Eighth Army in Italy, slog along a flooded road.

WWII

Blood In The Soil

By Glenn Barnett

In 1939 the one thing that Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin could agree on was the partition of Poland. Read more

WWII

Third Reich Women at War

By Paul Garson

During the 12 years of the highly militarized society of the Third Reich, some 20 million Germans—men and women as well as children—donned a uniform of one kind or another. Read more

A Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress bomber flies over a body of water. Corporal Joseph Hartman survived a terrible ordeal following a mid-air collision aboard a B-17, which was followed by an incredible odyssey.

WWII

Sole Survivor

By Phil Scearce

On December 1, 1942, a 431st Bomb Squadron Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress named Omar Khayyam – The Plastered Bastard took off from a base codenamed Cactus on a photo-reconnaissance mission toward enemy-held Bougainville Island in the Pacific. Read more

WWII

WWII: German Rations and Feeding the Troops of the Third Reich

By G. Paul Garson

It was Napoleon Bonaparte who purportedly said, “An army travels on its stomach.” Toward the goal of feeding his particular army’s stomach more efficiently, in 1795 the French general came up with an interesting solution to the problem. Read more

WWII

Lend-Lease on the High Seas

By Glenn Barnett

At high tide on the night of March 28, 1942, an American-built British destroyer disguised as a German torpedo boat steamed boldly up the estuary of the Loire River in occupied France. Read more

A young soldier of the armored forces trains with a Springfield Arsenal .30-06 M1 Garand rifle at Fort Knox, Kentucky, in early 1942. Soldiers liked the rifle’s rugged construction and dependable operation. A skilled marksman could hit targets at a range of 450-500 yards.

WWII

America’s trusty M1 Garand rifle was “Woven into the fabric of the nation.”

By David J. Little

After the Great War, in which American troops were sent into combat with either the bolt-action M1903 Springfield rifle or the bolt-action British Enfield, planners in the War Department realized that, if the United States were ever drawn in combat again, they would need a far superior weapon. Read more

Early in the attempt to defeat the Soviet Union, German aircraft controlled the skies. Here three Junkers Ju-87 Stuka dive bombers fly high over their target city of Novgorod. The dive bombers proved effective as airborne artillery against ground targets, but the growing number of Soviet fighters soon took their toll of the Luftwaffe.

WWII

Struggle for Stalin’s Skies

By Kelly Bell

On February 3, 1943, Lieutenant Herbert Kuntz of the 100th Bomber Group made the last flight by any German pilot over the Soviet city of Stalingrad. Read more

WWII

From Around the Network

The Tokyo War Crimes Trials

The Last Flight of Nelson King

Stand-up Fight at Peachtree Creek

Churchill the Warlord