WWII Archives

Soldiers of the 290th Infantry Regiment, 75th Infantry Division march through a Belgian woods during the Battle of the Bulge. It was in a forest like this that Staff Sergeant Darrell Bush tried to carry a fellow scout off the battlefield until he took a bullet from Germans firing down from the trees.

WWII

Infantryman in Bastogne

By Kevin M. Hymel

Staff Sergeant Darrell Bush had just carried a wounded soldier on his back to the rear when five enemy bullets seemed to hit him simultaneously. Read more

WWII

Joe Rochefort: Unsung Hero of World War II

Eighty years ago this month, the U.S. Navy inflicted the decisive defeat of World War II in the Pacific against the marauding Japanese. Read more

British troops, just rescued from the beach at Dunkirk on May 31, 1940, reflect desperation and relief after their ordeal on the European continent. Operation Dynamo did succeed beyond the expectations of its organizers.

WWII

Within days of Nazi Germany’s invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, and the British declaration of war two days later, the vanguard of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) arrived on the continent of Europe. Read more

WWII

Resurgent U.S. Navy

By Christopher Miskimon

The United States Navy entered World War II well before Pearl Harbor and long before the rest of the nation. Read more

Japanese soldiers ride atop Type 89 I-Go medium tanks during their push toward the Philippine capital of Manila in this photo taken on December 22, 1941. A car lies toppled on its side after being removed from the roadway. Obstacles to the advance were brushed aside as the Japanese moved swiftly across the island of Luzon to confront the American and Filipino defenders in their last-ditch defensive positions at Bataan and Corregidor.

WWII

Bataan and Corregidor: Valor Without Hope

By Michael D. Hull

They had no armor, no air support, and little hope, but the American and Filipino troops on Luzon and the Bataan peninsula waged a fighting retreat that was the longest and most gallant in U.S. Read more

A U.S. Navy airship patrols the Atlantic Ocean above a convoy in June 1943. Airships were serving regularly in anti-submarine patrols during the Battle of the Atlantic.

WWII

U.S. Navy Airships vs. German U-boats in the Atlantic

By Eric Niderost

Kapitanleutnant Volker Simmermacher gazed intently through his attack periscope, sizing up the target that so far seemed oblivious to his presence. Read more

SAS veterans of the Desert War photographed just after completing a three-month patrol. Their Jeeps are armed with machine guns and include Jerry cans containing fuel and water.

WWII

SAS: Owning The Desert

By Frank Johnson

Second Lieutenant David A. Sterling of the Scots Guards was serving with Lt. Col. Robert E. “Lucky” Laycock’s No. Read more

Traversing the rugged terrain of the interior of Burma, tanks of the 19th Indian “Dagger” Division roll down a dirt path while infantrymen pause to glance at the armored vehicles. General William Slim, commander of the British 14th Army, led his forces from the brink of total defeat to victory over the Japanese in the China-Burma-India Theater.

WWII

Out of Defeat, a Hard-Won Triumph

By Michael D. Hull

One ominous day in mid-May 1942, Lt. Gen. William J. Slim stood on the Imphal Plain, high in the Assam hills of northeastern India, and watched columns of tattered, malaria-ridden British, Indian, and Burmese soldiers straggle across the frontier from Burma. Read more

Soldiers of the U.S. 5th Infantry Division, part of General George S. Patton’s Third Army, march through the snowy streets of the town of Ettelbruck, Luxembourg, in January 1945. These soldiers were involved in the Allied counteroffensive that reduced the bulge formed by the German Ardennes Offensive. Some of these soldiers are wearing white sheets as camouflage.

WWII

Flattening the Bulge

By Patrick J. Chaisson

Corporal Thomas B. Tucker stood shivering in the bitterly cold night air as he looked down on a ribbon of water that separated his unit from the enemy’s front-line positions. Read more

WWII

Eaker and the Mighty Eighth

By Michael D. Hull

Forty-eight Wright Cyclone aero engines coughed into life on the hardstands at windswept Polebrook Airfield in Northamptonshire, England, early on the afternoon of Monday, August 17, 1942. Read more

WWII

Gray Wolves and the Ides of March

By Kelly Bell

Adolf Hitler and his military commanders were feeling a new and unsettling emotion early in 1943—desperation. A year earlier, they had seemed on top of the world as their forces ruled a region that surpassed Rome at its greatest. Read more

A tank crew of the 2nd Cavalry Regiment waits patiently for a French woman and her cow to cross a rain soaked road near the town of Luneville in the fall of 1944. The regiment was a component of the 4th Armored Division and played a key role in disrupting a German attempt to cut the 4th Armored off and destroy it. A derelict German helmet lies in the roadway.

WWII

Cavalrymen Stand at Luneville

By Allyn Vannoy

Lieutenant Wessling did not believe that his two 75mm assault guns could effectively deal with the German panzers. Read more

WWII

Fork-tailed Devil

By David H. Lippman

Technically and visibly, it was unique among World War II fighters. The P-38 stood on tricycle landing gear, with its twin Allison engines in separate booms and the pilot sitting in his cockpit in a cupola between the booms. Read more

After completing a reconnaissance mission in the jungles of Guadalcanal, a group of U.S. Marines poses for a photographer while delivering a Japanese prisoner for interrogation. The Marine at right has taken a Japanese sword as a souvenir. Prisoners were rarely taken in the Pacific, as Japanese soldiers preferred suicide to captivity.

WWII

Bare-knuckle Brawl at Guadalcanal

By Michael E. Haskew

Even after their stunning defeat at Midway in early June 1942, senior commanders of the Imperial Japanese armed forces were resolute in their grand plan to extend their defensive perimeter in the Pacific. Read more

WWII

During the Second Happy Time, the destroyer USS Roper struck a blow against marauding U-boats.

British Prime Minister Winston Churchill once admitted that the only issue to trouble him to the extent that he thought World War II might be lost was the uncertainty of the Battle of the Atlantic and the U-boat peril that threatened to starve the British Isles into submission. Read more

Polish troops engage in field exercises in April 1939, just five months before the Nazi invasion of their country and the outbreak of World War II. Some Poles initially thought the Soviet Army was there to help them.

WWII

Invasion from the East

By John W. Osborn, Jr.

It was a quiet dinner on a side street in Berlin the evening of June 26, 1939, but more than food would be devoured that night. Read more

An Afrika Korps antiaircraft gun crew scans the sky for enemy planes in 1941. Homeland antiaircraft units were also raised in Germany to augment the air defenses against massive Allied bombing raids.

WWII

Defending the Skies Above the Reich

By Allyn Vannoy

During the Allied air campaign against the Third Reich in World War II, well over a million tons of bombs were dropped on German territory, killing nearly 300,000 civilians and wounding another 780,000. Read more

$The three leaders with advisors during the Yalta Conference. The relationship between Churchill and Stalin was at times fractious, but the leaders managed to maintain the alliance that eventually defeated Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan.$

WWII

The Uneasy Alliance

By Jon Diamond

In the Grand Alliance volume of Winston S. Churchill’s memoirs of the Second World War, the British prime minister lambasted his new ally, Josef Stalin, after Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union, began on June 22, 1941. Read more

American OSS officers accompanied by Chetnik guerrillas on the move from the original evacuation airstrip in Pranjani, Serbia in anticipation of Soviet Red Army advances, September 10, 1944. The OSS officers were part of OSS operations Halyard and Ranger.

WWII

Hazardous Balkan Air Rescue

By Kevin Morrow

Black puffs from flak bursts began blossoming in the air around Lieutenant Tom Oliver’s Consolidated B-24 Liberator bomber high over the town of Bor, Yugoslavia. Read more