WWII

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

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

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

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

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

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

After crossing the English Channel to Normandy, U.S.- supplied M4 Sherman tanks of the 1st Polish Armoured Division’s 10th Armoured Brigade assemble near Caen before the start of Operation Totalise, August 8, 1944.

WWII

The 1st Polish Armoured Division Served with Honor

By William Stroock

Polish Major General Stanislaw Macze, commander of the 1st Polish Armoured Division stood tall and watched as General Guy Simonds, II Canadian Corps, delivered very harsh news to the half dozen German generals and admirals of the 1st Parachute Army, General Erich Straub commanding. Read more

WWII

Massacre At Malmédy

By Nathan N. Prefer

The surrender did not begin well. As First Lieutenant Virgil Lary stood in the road next to a snow-covered field just south of Malmédy, Belgium with his hands raised, one of the German tankers poked his head out of the hatch and fired twice at him with his pistol. Read more

Captured Japanese photo of American and Filipino soldiers and sailors taken prisoner after the fall of Corregidor, May 6, 1942.

WWII

Joe Johnson’s Ordeal

By Marcus Brotherton

Private Joe Johnson wakes on the floor of the Pasay schoolhouse, a few miles south of downtown Manila, capital of the Philippines. Read more

Two Type XXI U-boats lie under construction at the shipyards in Bremen, Germany in this photo taken after the submarines were captured by Allied troops in 1945.

WWII

The Wonder of the Walter Boat

By Phil Zimmer

German engineer Hellmuth Walter stretched his shoulders, rubbed his face, and eased his hat back on his head as he walked down the wooden dock toward a covered deck. Read more

Seize the Day by Jim Dietz shows men from the 505th Regiment, 82nd Airborne in Sainte-Mère-Église, the parachute of trooper John Steele still hanging from the church tower in the background.

WWII

Target: Sainte-Mere-Eglise

By Flint Whitlock

The night of June 5, 1944, was pretty much like every other night since the Germans had occupied Normandy and the Cotentin Peninsula in the summer of 1940: dark, quiet, chilly, and mostly boring. Read more

WWII

Tracings Of Barbarossa

By Kevin M. Hymel

Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, showed the world the extent of Nazi brutality. Read more