An Air Force KC-135 Stratotanker refuels a flight of F-105 Thunderchiefs on their way to strike targets in North Vietnam. Refueling operations in the Vietnam War peaked during Operation Rolling Thunder.

European Theater

German infantrymen march past a PzKpfw. III tank that has momentarily halted during the rapid advance of the Wehrmacht through France and the Low Countries in the spring of 1940. The German onslaught on May 10 shattered the uneasy months of peace that had been labeled the ‘Phony War.’

European Theater

Dunkirk: Debacle in the West

by Matt Broggie

Tanks—seven divisions of them concentrated at one point, the weakest position in the Western defenses—that was what did it.” Read more

European Theater

The Longest Struggle

By Michael D. Hull

For the duration of World War II, from the evening of Sunday, September 3, 1939, to the evening of Monday, May 7, 1945, the Battle of the Atlantic never ceased. Read more

European Theater

Too Many Close Calls

By Flint Whitlock

Clarence M. “Monty” Rincker was born in Cheyenne, Wyoming, on September 8, 1922. When he was a year old, his parents bought a farm in eastern Wyoming and the family moved there. Read more

European Theater

Fighting 80th Division at Bastogne

By Leon Reed

In a letter to his fiancée, Betty Craig, on December 16, 1944, from Helleringen, France, newly promoted Staff Sergeant Frank Lembo of Company B, 305th Engineer Combat Battalion, 80th Division, wrote of a battalion show the night before, complete with Red Cross girls serving donuts and the division band; an upcoming dance; doing laundry; and other pastimes of a soldier experiencing a period of reserve status. Read more

British paratroopers of the 1st Airborne Division, who were tasked with the highway bridge over the Nederrijn at Arnhem, land in an open field at the outset of Operation Market Garden.

European Theater

Hellish Fight at Arnhem

By John E. Spindler

As the clock struck 8:00 p.m. in Arnhem, Holland, Lt. Col. John Frost’s British 2nd Parachute Battalion captured the north end of the road bridge over the Nederrijn River. Read more

Portuguese soldiers board the passenger ship Mouzinho in Lisbon harbor, April 1941. Their destination was the Azores, where they would reinforce the garrison against the threat of German invasion.

European Theater

Portugal’s Political Tightrope

By B. Paul Hatcher

“With the coming of the Second World War, many eyes in imprisoned Europe turned hopefully, or desperately, toward the freedom of the Americas. Read more

Polish troops engage in field exercises in April 1939, just five months before the Nazi invasion of their country and the outbreak of World War II. Some Poles initially thought the Soviet Army was there to help them.

European Theater

Invasion from the East

By John W. Osborn, Jr.

It was a quiet dinner on a side street in Berlin the evening of June 26, 1939, but more than food would be devoured that night. Read more

Reichsfuhrer SS Heinrich Himmler, founder of the Lebensborn Program, talks with a young Ukrainian boy. Many children were essentially kidnapped from occupied countries and given to German parents.

European Theater

Children for Hitler

By Brent Douglas Dyck

By 1936, 18-year-old Hildegard Koch had reached a crossroads in her young life as she finished her schooling. Read more

The first U.S. M4 Sherman enters the German city of Aachen through a hole opened in the railroad station entrance by a tank dozer—German defenders had demolished a viaduct on the main avenue into Aachen, slowing the Americans’ progress.

European Theater

Smashing in to Germany

By William R. Hogan

Task force commander Lieutenant Colonel Samuel Hogan, eager to get any advantage over the entrenched enemy of the 12th Infantry Division, requested a section of M2 flamethrowers from the 23rd Engineer Battalion. Read more

LEFT: Field Marshal Erwin Rommel remains a controversial figure known both as a shrewd, chivalrous, military commander and as Nazi with a potential role in Germany’s atrocities of war. RIGHT: General Dwight D. Eisenhower poses in his eponymous “Eisenhower jacket” or “Ike jacket,”in 1943. The “Wool Field Jacket, M-1944,” as it was officially known, debuted in the European Theater of Operations in November 1944 and was issued to U.S. troops until 1956.

European Theater

Ike vs. the Desert Fox at Normandy

By Flint Whitlock

One of the supreme ironies of World War II was that the outcome of the Allied invasion of France, and ultimately the fate of the European Theater, would be decided by two men—one a highly decorated veteran, the other untested in combat—and it would be the latter that eventually triumphed. Read more

To the Attack by U.S. Coast Guard Chief Boatswain's Mate and combat artist Tore Asplund depicts American soldiers hitting the beach as part of Operation Dragoon in southern France on August 15, 1944. Asplund also painted images of the D-Day invasion at Normandy.

European Theater

The Assault on Pillbox Hill

By Daniel R. Champagne

Staff Sergeant Audie Murphy advanced inland from the beaches of southern France with his rifle platoon until, near the small town of Ramatuelle, intense machine-gun and small-arms fire from a boulder covered hill forced them to hit the dirt. Read more

European Theater

Operation Nordwind: The Last Offensive

By David H. Lippman

Snow and biting cold covered American foxholes in the Vosges and the Alsace plain as GI wristwatches ticked down the last hours of December 31, 1944, awaiting the German attack. Read more

European Theater

Himmler’s Capture

During the last days of the Third Reich and the immediate aftermath of World War II in Europe, the Allied hunt for the high-ranking Nazis closest to the Führer was vigorous. Read more

Sophie Scholl stands behind a fence at the Munich rail station before White Rose members Hans Scholl, Christoph Probst, Alexander Schmorell and Willi Graf depart for the Russian front in July 1942.

European Theater

Hans Scholl

By Kevin Seabrooke

For anyone in Germany who openly opposed Adolf Hitler or the policies of the Nazi party there were three likely outcomes—prison, concentration camp, or execution. Read more

European Theater

Screaming Eagles of Mercy

By Paul Woodadge and Kevin Hymel

Around noon on June 6, 1944, a German soldier wielding a machine gun burst into a small church six miles from Utah Beach in Normandy, France, ignoring the Red Cross flag hanging from the door. Read more

European Theater

‘Bloody Bucket’ at Colmar

By Dr. Walter S. Zapotoczny Jr.

Not long after they landed at Normandy in July 1944, Pennsylvania’s 28th Infantry Division earned a begrudging nickname from their German foes in the hedgerows—the “Bloody Bucket Division,” after their blood-red “Keystone” shoulder patches and vicious fighting tactics. Read more

After Operation Market-Garden failed make it into Germany in September 1944, U.S. Lt. General “Lightning” Joe Collins suggested the Hürtgen Forest might offer a safer route into the Reich through the German Siegfried Line.

European Theater

Into the Hürtgenwald

By Robert A. Lynn

The 1944 invasion of France, the breakout from the beaches, the surprise German counterattack in the Ardennes, and the final reckoning with the Third Reich have all been exhaustively chronicled. Read more

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