European Theater Archives

Paratroopers of the 82nd Airborne Division ride aboard a transport aircraft en route to their drop zones near the Salerno beachhead during the Allied invasion of the Italian mainland September 13-14, 1943. Members of the 504th and 505th Parachute Infantry Battalions were dropped to support the push inland. Members of the509th were deployed behind enemy lines to break up German communications at Avellino.

European Theater

Desperate Venture at Avellino

By Nathan N. Prefer

The Fifth U.S. Army was in trouble and dropping 600 paratroops at Avellino to disrupt the communications of the 16th Panzer Division seemed like a sound solution. Read more

Field Marshal Erwin Rommel (right) inspects members of an assault gun battalion standing in front of their guns—10.5cm leFH 18 (Sf.) auf Geschützwagen 39H(f)—a self-propelled howitzer designed by Alfred Becker—in Normandy, France, a month before the Allied invasion. Only 48 were produced during the war.

European Theater

Students of World War II know the name Percy Hobart—a British general who raised and trained several armored divisions and who invented all sorts of unique and unusual weapons of war—swimming tanks, flail tanks (for exploding landmines), a flame-throwing tank, a tank that laid down its own roadway, and many other odd-but-useful devices. Read more

Their foxhole reinforced with logs, a pair of American soldiers of the 99th Infantry Division watch and wait for a German attack during the Battle of the Bulge. The heroic stand at Lanzerath by 20 year old Lt. Bouch and the 21 men under his command slowed the advance of Kampfgruppe Peiper.

European Theater

Hold at All Costs

By Brent Dyck

After D-Day, the Allied armies slowly advanced across Europe and pushed the German army back. Paris was liberated on August 25, 1944, the Belgian capital of Brussels fell on September 3, and the important port of Antwerp was taken two days later. Read more

British commandos sit aboard a Whitworth Whitley aircraft during exercises.

European Theater

Operation Biting: ‘The Bruneval Raid’

By Nathan N. Prefer

By January 1942, Britain was still in the fight of her life. Germany had occupied all western Europe, controlled the Mediterranean, and was threatening British colonies in North Africa. Read more

European Theater

Letters from Oblivion: Auschwitz and Buchenwald

By Katrina Shawver

Henry Zguda, a Polish Catholic, spent three and a half years interned at Auschwitz and Buchenwald as a political prisoner. Read more

A German soldier surveys an antiaircraft defense gun on the bank of the Rhine near the Ludendorff Bridge, January 1945.

European Theater

A “Bright Opportunity” At Remagen

By Flint Whitlock

It was March 7, 1945––a gray, overcast day with a nasty chill in the air, the kind of day in which a soldier at the front wished he could relax in front of a toasty fire with a canteen cup full of hot coffee and think about home. Read more

Soldiers of the U.S. 75th Infantry Division tramp through the snow in the Colmar Pocket sector in the Alsace region. The pocket, which consisted of 850 square miles on the west side of the Rhine River, was the last piece of German-held territory on French soil.

European Theater

Destruction Of The Colmar Pocket

By Christopher Miskimon

On January 25, 1945, every officer in Company B of the 15th Infantry Regiment of the American 3rd Infantry Division became a casualty in the fight for the “Colmar Pocket” except Lieutenant Audie Murphy. Read more

A German submarine rolls on a heavy sea during a mission in the Atlantic. Painting by Olaf Rahardt, 2000.

European Theater

Cloak and Dagger Mounties

By John Mancini

In the early morning of Monday, November 9, 1942, the german U-boat U-518 surfaced off the bleak Quebec coast. Read more

With smoke rising and the barrel of their Bofors gun hot from rapid discharging, the weapon’s crew fires over open sights during support for British and Canadian troops in Operation Veritable. This photo was taken in the Netherlands at Nuttderden on the road to Kleve, as British and Canadian troops moved forward.

European Theater

Devils in the Forest

By William E. Welsh

The German paratroopers marched the captured Canadian officer through the dark forest to the damp underground bunker that served as their platoon headquarters. Read more

European Theater

Nuremburg Prosecutor

By Blaine Taylor

On March 23, 1991, at a reunion of the postwar Nuremberg International Military Tribunal staffers in Washington, I had occasion to meet the former American prosecutor, Brigadier General Telford Taylor. Read more

Polish soldiers, attached to the British Eighth Army in Italy, slog along a flooded road.

European Theater

Blood In The Soil

By Glenn Barnett

In 1939 the one thing that Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin could agree on was the partition of Poland. Read more

European Theater

Massacre At Malmédy

By Nathan N. Prefer

The surrender did not begin well. As First Lieutenant Virgil Lary stood in the road next to a snow-covered field just south of Malmédy, Belgium with his hands raised, one of the German tankers poked his head out of the hatch and fired twice at him with his pistol. Read more

European Theater

Operation Husky: Allied Power Struggle

By William Dennis

By the summer of 1943, American forces felt that they had proven that they were as good as anything the enemy could throw at them. Read more

This post-World War II cinematic recreation of the Italian manned torpedoes in action was said to be referencing the attack on British shipping in the port of Gibraltar in 1943.

European Theater

Italy’s Daredevil Torpedo Riders

By Chuck Lyons

On a dark night in September 1941, moving at periscope depth, an Italian submarine edged into Gibraltar Bay near the British harbor. Read more

Seize the Day by Jim Dietz shows men from the 505th Regiment, 82nd Airborne in Sainte-Mère-Église, the parachute of trooper John Steele still hanging from the church tower in the background.

European Theater

Target: Sainte-Mere-Eglise

By Flint Whitlock

The night of June 5/6, 1944, was pretty much like every other night since the Germans had occupied Normandy and the Cotentin Peninsula in the summer of 1940: dark, quiet, chilly, and mostly boring. Read more

European Theater

The Power of Cloth

By G. Paul Garson

The evolution of the Nazi-era military wardrobe followed from a long history of European uniforms in general and Imperial German uniforms in particular. Read more

The Cromwell tank of Captain Roy Dunlop and another just to the rear with smoke billowing from it are shown near Point 213 after being immobilized by Tiger tanks east of Villers-Bocage. Both British tanks belonged to A Squadron, County of London Yeomanry.

European Theater

Tigers Triumphant at Villers-Bocage

By Michael E. Haskew

On D-day, June 6, 1944, the British 3rd Infantry Division was the first to land on Sword Beach. Read more

Brigadier General Ted Roosevelt reads mail while serving in Italy in January 1944. The son of President Theodore Roosevelt, he named his Jeep “Rough Rider” in honor of his late father and his exploits during the Spanish-American War.

European Theater

Teddy Roosevelt, Jr. Led At Utah Beach

By Michael D. Hull

Famed war correspondent Ernie Pyle reported in August 1944, that one of his favorite U.S. Army officers was a regimental colonel who shared Lt. Read more

European Theater

Montgomery’s Bridge Too Far

By Michael D. Hull

Operation Market-Garden, British Field Marshal Bernard L. Montgomery’s imaginative and daring plan—reluctantly endorsed by his superior, General Dwight D. Read more

European Theater

Looking for the Luftwaffe

By Joseph Frantiska, Jr.

Chain Home, or ‘CH’ was the codename given to the system of early warning radar stations located along the Europe facing coasts of the United Kingdom (UK) before and during World War II to locate and follow aircraft. Read more

European Theater

From Around the Network

A Graveyard of Ships at Bikini Atoll.

African American Revolutionary War Heroes: Crispus Attucks

With Third Army Across Europe

Not War, But Murder: The Clash at Cold Harbor