Warfare History Network, home of the foremost WWII History and WWII Quarterly magazines, is your best source for military history online. Here you’ll find our in-depth and vivid accounts of the greatest war in history, from Pearl Harbor to the Battle of the Bulge; from the desperate fighting on the Eastern Front to Iwo Jima and the Battle of Midway. Our vast collection of rare photographs, battle maps, illustrations and meticulously researched articles will give you new insight into the battles, leaders, weapons, and much 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
Staff Sergeant Chester B. Opdyke, Jr., crouched down at the tree line. He could see his objective, a crossroads village named Barrigada, shimmering in the hot August sun across a large open field just 300 yards away. 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
For Soviet Premier Josef Stalin and the people of the Soviet Union, the capture of Berlin was of great political and symbolic importance. 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
By Flint Whitlock
The mission was top secret. The heavy cruiser USS Indianapolis (CA-35) had just delivered the last parts of the atomic bomb from California to the island of Tinian and was heading, unescorted, to Guam when it was intercepted by a Japanese submarine, the I-58, and torpedoed on July 30, 1945. Read more
WWII
Concentrated against the beaches of Normandy on June 6, Operation Overlord landed 9 army divisions plus support troops on five beaches in anticipation of a breakout across France and toward Berlin. Read more
WWII
An estimated 1.2 million people were employed by the German ground-based air-defense system by the end of the war in Europe. 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
On Tuesday, June 6, 1944, at nearly three in the morning, Chicago-native Lieutenant John E. Peters safely landed Snooty, his Douglas C-47 Skytrain, on the massive 5,800-foot runway at Greenham Common airfield in southern England. Read more
WWII
IN a house in a small, nameless Belgian village, 26-year-old Sergeant Tom Myers, a newly assigned member of the 5th Armored Division, was upstairs changing his filthy uniform for a fresh one. Read more
