European Theater Archives

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

European Theater

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

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

An abandoned German weapons carrier lies smashed along a roadside as soldiers of the British Eighth Army search for German snipers in Acquino on May 27, 1944.

European Theater

Eternal City Liberated

By Michael E. Haskew

Italy was unforgiving. German resistance to Allied operations had been brutal since the Salerno landings in the autumn of 1943, and by the following spring frustration had mounted upon frustration. Read more

American soldiers splash ashore at Anzio, Italy, during an end run expected to compromise the German defenses of the Gustav Line. The landings failed to achieve the desired results and remain controversial to this day.

European Theater

Prudence or Paralysis?

By Steve Ossad

Hitler called it an “abscess.” British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, the chief sponsor and loudest cheerleader for the endeavor, grudgingly proclaimed it “a disaster.” Read more

European Theater

The MG-42 Light Machine Gun

By Arnold Blumberg

Whether fighting in the mountains of the Italian peninsula, assaulting Nazi defensive positions along the vast Russo-German Eastern Front, or clashing with German Army opponents from Normandy to the Elbe River, from 1942 to 1945, Allied soldiers in World War II faced a determined enemy armed with the most effective machine gun produced during that struggle: the Maschinengewehr 42, or the MG 42 for short. Read more

The German flagship SMS Cöln takes fire from Commodore William Goodenough’s cruisers. Having suffered severe damage, her crew decided to scuttle her in the hope that they would be picked up by ships in close proximity. Sadly, all but one man perished at sea.

European Theater

Race to Victory

By John Protasio

Commodore Reginald Tyrwhitt of the Royal Navy was in a grave predicament on August 28, 1914. His force was near the German base at Heligoland Bight. Read more

European Theater

Achtung! Panzers in Normandy

By Michael E. Haskew

The ongoing debate between German Field Marshals Erwin Rommel and Gerd von Rundstedt over how best to use the German Army’s elite panzer divisions against the coming Allied invasion ultimately reached no clear conclusion. Read more

Adolf Hitler gives a stiff Nazi salute to seven men killed in an assassination attempt in Munich during the 1939 anniversary observances of the failed Munich Beer Hall Putsch of 1923.

European Theater

A Sting In Venlo

By David H. Lippman

Sir Alexander Cadogan did not believe it.

He had been given a report from Admiral Sir Archibald “Quex” Sinclair, head of MI6, on October 6, 1939, that German generals were reaching out to the British Embassy in The Hague in neutral Holland, to orchestrate a coup against Adolf Hitler that would replace the Nazi regime with a military junta, which would then make peace. Read more

An American soldier gently removes the detonator from an S-mine, which was capable of severely injuring any man unfortunate enough to step on it. The Germans defending Mount Porchia planted thousands of land mines to impede Allied progress.

European Theater

“I’m Going Up That Mountain!”

By Patrick J. Chaisson

Red-hot grenade fragments sliced through First Lieutenant Bill Munson’s left arm and shoulder, causing him to fall backwards onto the lip of a German machine gun nest. Read more

European Theater

American Airborne In Operation Torch

By Michael E. Haskew

Only two years after the U.S. Army officially sanctioned the formation of an airborne arm, American paratroopers were committed to a vast offensive against Axis forces on the coast of French North Africa. Read more

European Theater

RCAF Pilot Bill Ash, The Cooler King

By James Reynolds

For Allied soldiers, sailors, and airmen interned in enemy prison camps during World War II, escaping was regarded as their unwritten duty. 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

Americans troops enter Messina on August 17, 1943. Despite Adolf Hitler’s orders to fight to the last man, Kesselring skillfully employed hundreds of antiaircraft guns to cover the withdrawal of 40,000 Germans to the mainland.

European Theater

Drive to Messina

By Phil Zimmer

Sergeant Alfred Johnson peered from behind a boulder on a rock-strewn hillside at Piano Lupo about six miles inland from the southern coast of Sicily. Read more

European Theater

Desperate Days On Hill 314

By Alan Davidge

When the 230th Field Artillery Battalion was attached to the 30th Infantry (“Old Hickory”) Division in Mortain, France, on August 6, 1944, many of its men had already received their baptism of fire in Normandy. Read more