WWII

WWII

World War II Odyssey Across Europe

Roy Altenbach, a soldier from a German-speaking family in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, was assigned to the 47th Medium Maintenance Company, 22nd Ordnance Battalion. Read more

WWII

Hitler’s Wonder Weapons

Imagine that you are an Allied soldier in the ETO. You are in your foxhole on the front line, looking and listening for any sign that the Germans are about to attack your position. Read more

WWII

Desperate Los Baños Raid

Henry Muller had an important job. He was the intelligence officer of the 11th Airborne Division, known in military parlance as the G-2. Read more

WWII

Operation Cobra: Get a Move On!

Company B’s jeeps, armored cars, and self-propelled guns stood lined up on a narrow road, their crewmen anxious to move out. Read more

WWII

Erwin Rommel’s War Photos: Images the Desert Fox Took Himself

The name Field Marshal Erwin Rommel—associated with tank warfare in Europe and North Africa during World War II—might conjure up mental images of the famous “Desert Fox” riding in a panzer, reviewing maps, or commanding battles. Read more

WWII

Hitler’s Death in the Führerbunker

By Flint Whitlock

His world was literally crashing down in flames around him.    Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich, which he had created out of nothing but his own will—an empire that he had once boasted would last for a millennium—was on fire and being torn apart by shot and shell, besieged on all sides. Read more

WWII

Battle of the Java Sea: Desperate Delaying Action

The ships left just before sunset on February 26, 1942, passing out of a harbor jammed with wreckage, battered docks, fires, the stench of burning oil, and Dutch women, children, and old men—most of them relatives of the crews heading out—waving their men goodbye and good luck. Read more

WWII

WWII Pioneers of Skip Bombing

By September 1942, after numerous aerial strikes against the advancing Imperial Japanese Navy, the Battle of the Coral Sea in May, and numerous attacks against enemy convoys along the New Guinea coast in the summer of that year, Maj. Read more

WWII

Book Reviews: WWII’s Mission Impossible, generals in the making, and more

The Winter Line was the German Army’s defensive position in Southern Italy in late 1943. Set into high mountains which dominated the surrounding terrain, numerous Allied attacks against it failed, always with heavy casualties. Read more

WWII

P-40 Fighter Pilot: Fighting for His Life

The four Curtiss P-40 Warhawks plummeted 10,000 feet over NewGuinea’s coastline to ambush their quarry. Flight leader 1st Lt. Read more

WWII

Captured at the Bulge

Private Leon Goldberg pulled the trigger on his heavy, water-cooled M-1917 Browning machine gun and fired bursts of .30-caliber rounds into the attacking German infantry. Read more

WWII

Night Battleship Action Off Guadalcanal

Rear Admiral Willis Augustus Lee has been called, among other things, “one of the best brains in the Navy.” Read more

WWII

A D-Day Theme Park?

In the midst of numerous observations around the globe to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II, the most cataclysmic collective event in human history, comes a puzzling—if not downright troubling—business venture that calls into question just how future generations may perceive the events of the great conflict. Read more

WWII

D-Day Capture of Les Moulins Draw

 Twelve Landing Craft Vehicle Personnel (LCVPs) carrying Captain William Callahan’s F Company and Captain Eccles Scott’s G Company—some 400 men—slapped the English Channel’s rough waves as they approached Omaha Beach’s Les Moulins Draw. Read more

WWII

The M29 Weasel: The WWII Track Vehicle Never Used as Intended

The M29 Weasel was a machine conceived by a bizarre British chemist obsessed with ice for a unit that did not exist and a mission that never occurred. Read more

WWII

Easy Company Mortarman

The green light lit up the inside of the Douglas C-47 Skytrain’s fuselage, and 20 paratroopers from Easy Company’s Stick 70, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division charged out the door. Read more

WWII

Ordnance: The Piper L-4 “Eyes in the Sky”

Despite being caught up in the tide of isolationism prevalent duringthe interval between the world wars, the United States Army was lucky enough to have Congressional funding for the further development and expansion of its fledgling air arm, known initially in 1926 as the Army Air Corps and in 1941 renamed the Army Air Forces. Read more

WWII

Adolf Hitler’s Last Birthday.

On April 20, 1945, Adolf Hitler observed his 56th, and last, birthday. There was little to celebrate. The so-called “Thousand Year Reich” was in its death throes after only 12. Read more

WWII

Italian War Criminal Rodolfo Graziani

The town of Affile in Italy’s Lazio region erected a mausoleum to Italian Army Marshal Rodolfo Graziani in August 2012. Read more

WWII

U.S. Paratrooper Left for Dead at Nijmegen

As Gene Metcalfe floated down toward the earth in his parachute, the first thing he saw below him was a German soldier walking down a path with girl on his arm. Read more