European Theater Archives

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

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

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

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

From Around the Network

Imperial Ambition Denied

The famous painting, Washington Crossing the Delaware, has had its share of historical detractors.

Return to Manassas

Battle of the Bulge Tank Duel On Christmas Eve