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

Follow-on troops of the Royal Marine Commandos, lugging their equipment, come ashore at Juno Beach, Normandy.

European Theater

A “Light-Hearted War”

By Mark Simmons

Vice Admiral Norman Denning said of Ian Fleming, the “ideas man” who worked at British Naval Intelligence, that a lot of his proposals “were just plain crazy.” 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

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

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

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

The Third Reich kept up a steady barrage of music of one style or another, from the constant thump of marching boots and military bands, to street recitals, to radio broadcasts of German classical music, to light romantic fare—all part of the “emotion over intellect” campaign that Nazi Party ideology promoted. A constant soundtrack engulfed citizens and soldiers with a litany of songs that also served to promote morale and military aggressiveness and whose lyrics sought to drum in Nazi political and racist propaganda.

European Theater

Off Duty, German Style

By G. Paul Garson

War has been described as long periods of extreme boredom punctuated by brief moments of extreme terror. Read more

Members of the U.S. 1st Infantry Division march ashore at Gela, Sicily, while an LST burns off shore on the first day of Operation Husky in this 1943 painting by Navy war artist Mitchell Jamieson. Soldiers injured during the fighting can be seen being evacuated to hospital ships. Sicily became the stepping stone for the invasion of the Italian mainland.

European Theater

Sicilian Slugfest

By Flint Whitlock

The island of Sicily, lying in the Mediterranean Sea between Tunisia and the toe of the Italian peninsula, is no stranger to war and conquest. Read more

European Theater

Bloody Aachen

By Richard Rule

By the time of the waning of the summer of 1944 in western Europe, General Dwight D. Eisenhower’s victorious Allied armies had forged a battle line from the Dutch province of Maastricht in the north to Belfort near the Swiss border in the south. Read more

Paratroopers of the 101st Airborne Division march into Bastogne, Belgium, on December 19, 1944. Combat veteran Private Brad Freeman, a mortarman with the division’s East Company, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, passed through the town, thinking to himself, “Here we go again.”

European Theater

Easy Company Mortarman in Bastogne

By Kevin Hymel

When word reached 21-year-old Private Bradford “Brad” Freeman in Mourmelon-le-Grand, France, that the entire 101st Airborne Division was being put on 24-hour alert for movement to the front, he was neither surprised nor shocked. Read more

Weary GIs move inland after landing in Sicily in July 1943 in this contemporary painting, Red Beach at Gela, 1700, by Mitchell Jamieson.

European Theater

The Big Red One in World War II

By Steven Weingartner

The outbreak of World War II on September 1, 1939, found the United States in an isolationist mood that precluded, for the time being, any direct involvement in the conflict. Read more

Using black ink and crayon, Eigener drew German tanks advancing across a stark landscape during a Wehrmacht advance. He titled this sketch “Panzer Angriff,” or “Tank Attack.”

European Theater

German Soldier’s Sketchbook

By Flint Whitlock

It’s called Mein Skizzenbuch (My Sketchbook)—a 72-page booklet of pencil drawings and watercolors by noted German war artist Ernst Eigener, a soldier with Propaganda Co. Read more

Erwin Wickert (center), with, from left, Shinzaku Hogen, a future Japanese ambassador to Vienna, according to Wickert, and Adam Vollhard, who wrote for the German News Agency in Tokyo.

European Theater

Decades of Diplomacy

By Sherri Kimmel

I am riding a borrowed bike along the Rhine, passing the Schaum-Hof, where last night I dined on a deck overlooking the river with a stately Dutch lady friend of a friend. Read more

Searchlights stab into the darkness as Royal Navy warships illuminate Italian cruisers during the Battle of Cape Matapan. Prince Philip served aboard the battleship HMS Valiant during the decisive naval victory over Mussolini’s fleet.

European Theater

Prince Philip’s War

By Michael E. Haskew

The son of Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark and Princess Alice of Battenberg, Prince Philip was the last of five children and a great-great grandchild of Queen Victoria. Read more

European Theater

Axis Collapse in Normandy

By Robert L. Durham

German panzergrenadiers surrounded Hill 314 just east of Mortain in Normandy on August 7, 1944, trapping several companies of the 2nd Battalion of the U.S. Read more

A single German soldier stands guard over several American prisoners, captured in the confusion on D-Day. At least some of these prisoners were airborne, and Charlie Lefchik shared a similar journey to a prisoner of war camp.

European Theater

Riding the German Rail

By Richard A. Beranty

The large number of Allied prisoners being funneled south to Rennes, France, following the D-Day invasion swelled the German transit camp to capacity so the decision was made to transport the men to permanent locations inside Germany. Read more

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    Military History

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    European Theater

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