European Theater
In the spring of 1945, after more than five-and-a-half years of total, merciless war in Europe––and the deaths of millions of human beings on the battlefields, the bombed-out cities and in the concentration and extermination camps––the carnage and destruction in Europe had finally come to an end. Read more
European Theater
HMS Warspite fought in two world wars and several major battles against a combination of enemies to become the most decorated ship ever to serve the Royal Navy. Read more
European Theater
The vaunted Commandos series is going back to the beginning in the latest entry, appropriately titled Commandos: Origins. Read more
European Theater
One of the most important tasks for Allied troops after the D-Day landing was to seize the city of Caen, nine miles behind Sword Beach. Read more
European Theater
Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Travers Harris, the burly, red-haired chief of Royal Air Force Bomber Command, was an anxious man on the evening of Saturday, May 30, 1942. Read more
European Theater
A thin shaft of moonlight played over the broad, deserted boulevard leading to the suburban Athens home of Greek Prime Minister John Metaxas on the night of October 28, 1940. Read more
European Theater
As an effective naval weapon, submarines were in their infancy when World War I began in August 1914. Read more
European Theater
As the Allied armies in the West closed in on Germany in late September 1944, one question began to dog many of democracy’s leaders. Read more
European Theater
It was 11:45 am, on December 9, 1945, and former U.S. Third Army Commanding General George Smith Patton, Jr., Read more
European Theater
When Albert Einstein arrived in Pasadena, California, in early 1933, he was to take up his duties as visiting professor at the California Institute of Technology for about three months. Read more
European Theater
On a Belgian hillside at the height of the Battle of the Bulge, an American lieutenant watched as a jeep carrying four men dressed in American uniforms stopped on the road in front of him. Read more
European Theater
Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, the infamous “Desert Fox,” was appointed Commander-in-Chief of Army Group B on the Western Front and put in charge of strengthening the Normandy coastal defenses. Read more
European Theater
Aboard one of two LCIs carrying French commandos approaching the Normandy coast, Lieutenant-Commander (Capitaine de Corvette) Philippe Kieffer looked at his watch. Read more
European Theater
In late 1940 and early 1941, German Chancellor Adolf Hitler was concentrating on his next great conquest, the Soviet Union. Read more
European Theater
For the lucky few that got the opportunity, putting on a bathing suit and hitting the waves or pools was a welcome escape from the war. Read more
European Theater
In the early hours of Sunday morning, December 17, 1944, an American brigadier general suffering from piles was heading into the unknown. Read more
European Theater
Editor’s Note: The following is excerpted from Omaha Beach: D-Day June 6, 1944 by Joseph Balkoski (Stackpole Books, 2004; www.stackpolebooks.com). Read more
European Theater
The 80th Infantry Division’s lineage goes back to the First World War. It was first organized at Camp Lee, Virginia, on August 5, 1917. Read more
European Theater
In April 1940, Adolf Hitler’s SS began building a walled compound in occupied Warsaw in which to imprison Jews who had survived the previous autumn’s bitter fighting as the German juggernaut romped through western Poland. Read more
European Theater
By the end of January 1945, Hitler’s desperate Ardennes Offensive had ground to a halt. Though the last-ditch push to the west had inflicted heavy casualties on American forces, it was the German army that suffered irreplaceable losses in men, equipment, and materiel and was no longer capable of offensive operations. Read more
