WWII
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
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
WWII
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
WWII
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
WWII
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
WWII
The British Air Ministry established the British Airborne forces on June 22, 1940, at the request of Prime Minister Winston Churchill. Read more
WWII
After three years of brutal warfare in World War II, the Italians in July 1943 overthrew fascist leader Benito Mussolini in the hope of obtaining a separate armistice with the Allies. Read more
WWII
For the men of the 28th Marine Regiment, the morning of February 19, 1945, brought a sobering moment of truth. Read more
WWII
The year 1942 started disastrously for Britain, just as 1941 had ended badly for the United States. Japan’s entry into the war not only devastated the U.S. Read more
WWII
BACKSTORY: 2nd Lt. Edwin Cottrell served in the U.S. Army Air Forces from August 1942 through 1945, then enlisted in the Air Force Reserves in 1950 and completed 28 years in uniform, retiring as a colonel in the Air Force. Read more
WWII
Here at WWII Quarterly, and in all my book writing, I spend a lot of time advancing my deeply held belief that military heroes—men and women who, over the decades, have put their lives on the line (and sometimes gave their lives in the process) to serve their country for a higher ideal and the causes for which they fought—deserve our enduring praise. Read more
WWII
by LTC Adam Morgan
After many years of planning, fundraising and construction, the spectacular, long-awaited National Museum of the United States Army was finally opened on Veterans Day, 2020, promptly shut down due to Coronavirus restrictions, and has reopened. Read more
WWII
A few weeks ago, I was able to take a long-delayed summer vacation, this time to New England, where I took in the Maine Maritime Museum and Bath Iron Works (where many American warships were constructed in WWII—and are still being built). Read more
WWII
The number of World War II survivors continues to grow smaller. This spring, two of them made the news.
The first, of course, was Prince Philip, husband of the United Kingdom’s Queen Elizabeth, who died on April 9, 2021. Read more
WWII
In 1944, Germany’s once victorious armies were in retreat on all fronts. Germany’s borders were threatened, and the American Army already occupied the German city of Aachen, the ancient city of Charlemagne and one-time capital of the Holy Roman Empire. Read more
WWII
By Alan Davidge
That France made an early exit from hostilities at the start of World War II is well known. Read more
WWII
After the tumultuous liberation of Paris and the German Army’s eastward flight from France, Allied hopes rose high in the late summer and autumn of 1944. Read more
WWII
Howard Linn was a member of the 492nd Bombardment Group—the “Hard Luck” group of the Eighth Air Force. Read more
WWII
May 3, 1944: The nondescript army bus slowed to make a turn off the Mount Vernon Memorial Parkway just outside suburban Alexandria, Virginia. Read more
WWII
September 1943 was an extraordinary month for the Royal Italian Army. On the 8th, General Dwight Eisenhower and Marshal Pietro Badoglio announced Italy’s surrender to the Allies. Read more
