WWII Archives

WWII

The Magnificent Jeep

By Michael D. Hull

General of the Army George C. Marshall called it America’s greatest contribution to modern warfare. General Dwight D. Read more

WWII

Surviving France’s Shame: French General Maxime Weygand in WWII

By Blaine Taylor

“What General Weygand has called the Battle of France is over,” intoned British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. “The Battle of Britain is about to begin.” Read more

WWII

“Is Paris Burning?” Liberating the City of Light

By Kelly Bell

By the late summer of 1944, the Third Reich was almost surrounded. Two years earlier Adolf Hitler had ground 10 European countries under his heel along with vast expanses of North Africa and Soviet Russia. Read more

Brian G. Horrocks survived a grievous wound and led the British forces in North Africa and Western Europe.

WWII

Brian G. Horrocks: Bernard Montgomery’s Frontline General

By Michael D. Hull

A big challenge faced Maj. Gen. Brian G. Horrocks, an infantryman, when he was cross-posted to take command of the British Army’s 9th Armored Division in March 1942. Read more

WWII

Airborne Close Encounter

By Chris Blenheim

At midnight, the jumpers of 2nd Battalion, 517th Parachute Regimental Combat Team, as well as the 596th Parachute Combat Engineer Company, still dripping from the paint-spray line, shuffled across Ombrone Airfield to the waiting C-47s of Serial 6 and climbed aboard. Read more

Hungarian Jews arrive at Auschwitz in May 1944. Healthy young people were sent to work in the factory, while the aged, sick, and children went to their deaths in the gas chambers.

WWII

The Wannsee Conference & Hitler’s ‘Final Solution’

By Blaine Taylor

It is, perhaps, not as well known as other prewar and wartime gatherings of the World War II era, but the quietly held meeting of top Nazi bureaucrats at a secluded villa on Lake Wannsee in the Berlin suburbs on January 20, 1942, was just as much a landmark event as others with higher profiles. Read more

WWII

The Ill-Fated Goettge Patrol: Richard Tregaskis

by John Wukovits

The heated reaction by the Marines to the slaughter at the Goettge Patrol, answered in kind by the Japanese, led to some of the fiercest combat seen in the war. Read more

WWII

U.S. VIII Bomber Command: From Savannah to Glory

By Sam McGowan

When World War II in Europe came to an end, the Eighth Air Force was the most famous unit in the U.S. Read more

WWII

Red Army Generals: Ivan D. Chernyakhovsky

By Steven L. Ossad

The American jeep holding the 3rd Belorussian Front Commander, General Ivan Danilovich Chernyakhovsky, drove quickly through the city of Mehlsack, just outside Königsberg. Read more

The bloody battle for Okinawa is displayed in graphic detail in this painting. In the last major land battle of the Pacific War, Okinawa was fiercely defended by the Japanese, who developed fortified defensive lines in the southern section of the island. Offshore, kamikaze aircraft assaulted U.S. naval vessels.

WWII

Final Conflict on Okinawa

By Dr. Carl H. Marcoux

Although neither side was aware of it at the time, the battle for Okinawa would be the last major battle of World War II. Read more

WWII

A Pyrrhic Parachute Victory in Crete

By Richard Rule

In May 1941, General Kurt Student’s elite paratrooper forces descended like an anvil on the British garrison defending Crete. Read more

WWII

Fallschirmjagers: The German Paratrooper Corps

By Richard Rule

Between 1940 and 1945, the outstanding fighting spirit and courage of the elite German paratroop forces earned the admiration of friend and foe alike. Read more

WWII

The Me 262 and the Beginning of the Jet Fighter Age

By Phil Zimmer

The Germans knew the bombers were coming, and they prepared even as the U.S. 457th Bomber Group first assembled in the early morning sunlight over faraway London. Read more

WWII

Sergeant Major Stan Hollis: The Victoria Cross on D-Day

By Michael D. Hull

A chill breeze cut through the early morning haze, and the storm-swollen sea was rough off the coast of northern France on Tuesday, June 6, 1944. Read more