WWII

WWII

Decades of Diplomacy

By Sherri Kimmel

I am riding a borrowed bike along the Rhine, passing the Schaum-Hof, where last night I dined on a deck overlooking the river with a stately Dutch lady friend of a friend. Read more

WWII

Hard Charging Landings

By Kevin M. Hymel

To naval aviators, any landing they could walk away from was a good landing. The escort aircraft carrier USS Charger trained men in good landings, but bad landings were also part of the education. Read more

WWII

Korea Under the Rising Sun

By Allyn Vannoy

The first recorded encounter between American forces and Koreans in the Central Pacific during World War II came at Tarawa Atoll in November 1943. Read more

WWII

Out of Ashes

By Michael E. Haskew

As French resistance to the Nazis collapsed following the lightning invasion of May 10, 1940, General Charles de Gaulle chose exile in Great Britain, cloaking himself in the mantle of guardian of his nation’s honor. Read more

WWII

The Sinister Valley

By David H. Lippman

On February 8, 1945, Lt. Gen. Sir Brian Horrocks climbed onto a platform halfway up a tree. Read more

WWII

The Miracle of Bletchley Park

By Hervie Haufler

Great Britain’s military intelligence leaders learned from their experience in World War I that the kinds of minds capable of breaking codes are a rare commodity and are often not likely to blossom in a military atmosphere. Read more

WWII

Tyler Perry’s new film, The Six Triple Eight, is based on a WWII History magazine article

After years of obscurity, the untold story of the 6888th Postal Directory Battalion will captivate audiences worldwide with the release of the feature film The Six Triple Eight. Read more

WWII

The Battle of Hürtgen Forest: Army Rangers vs Fallschirmjägers

By James Marino

Mired in combat during the Battle of Hürtgen Forest of Germany, an American soldier wrote in December 5, 1944: “The road to the front led straight and muddy brown between the billowing greenery of the broken topless firs, and in the jeeps that were coming back they were bringing the still living. Read more

WWII

Hellfire on the Hornet’s Nest: Flamethrower Tanks at Bougainville

By Steve Zaloga

U.S. portable flamethrowers were first used in combat during the Guadalcanal campaign in January 1943. It quickly became apparent that the exposed flamethrower operator was vulnerable to Japanese small arms fire. Read more

WWII

Bloody Aachen

By Richard Rule

By the time of the waning of the summer of 1944 in western Europe, General Dwight D. Eisenhower’s victorious Allied armies had forged a battle line from the Dutch province of Maastricht in the north to Belfort near the Swiss border in the south. Read more

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

The 93rd Infantry Division: The African-American Soldiers in the Pacific

By Stephen D. Lutz

On August 2, 1945, two weeks prior to Japan’s surrender, the highest ranking Japanese officer captured during the war in the Pacific was taken on the island of Morotai, Dutch New Guinea. 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

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

WWII

Forgotten Substitute

By John Emmert

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