European Theater Archives

Armament on display: HMS Warspite, with her 15-inch guns in the forward position, sails from Gibralter through the Mediterranean enroute to take part in support of Operation Husky, the Allied invasion of Sicily, July 1943. By the time she was decommissioned, Warspite had earned the most battle honors ever awarded to an individual ship in the Royal Navy and the most awarded for actions during World War II.

European Theater

The ‘Grand Old Lady’ Packed a Wallop

By Glenn Barnett

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

Commandos: Origins

By Joseph Luster

The vaunted Commandos series is going back to the beginning in the latest entry, appropriately titled Commandos: Origins. Read more

During the opening hours of Operation Goodwood, a Sherman tank carrying infantrymen, a Sherman flail tank nicknamed a “Crab,” and a halftrack serving as an ambulance await orders to advance on July 18, 1944. Caen was a D-Day objective, but the Allies were required to fight for weeks to capture the town.

European Theater

Capturing Caen

By Alan Davidge

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

Bold Gamble Above Cologne

By Michael D. Hull

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

Italian Blunder in the Balkans

By Roy Morris, Jr.

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

Q-Ships in World War II

By William H. Langenberg

As an effective naval weapon, submarines were in their infancy when World War I began in August 1914. Read more

European Theater

The Many Faces of Adolf Hitler

By Kevin M. Hymel

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

George S. Patton’s bull terrier Wille waits quietly for his late master to return.

European Theater

Patton’s Death

By Blaine Taylor

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

The Plot Against Einstein

By Eric Niderost

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

American soldiers drive by a destroyed German vehicle and the bodies of its former occupants during the Battle of the Bulge. U.S. Army PFC Frank Cohn and his team were suspected of being German spies when they were stopped and interrogated at an American checkpoint in Belgium.

European Theater

‘Vat Goes on Here?’

By Kevin M. Hymel

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

French Commandos Land on D-Day

By John E. Spindler

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

After having failed to conquer his long-time rival Greece, Italian dictator Benito Mussolini asked Axis partner Adolf Hitler for help. Here, German soldiers raise the German war banner atop the Acropolis in Athens after forcing the Greeks to surrender on April 27, 1941. Terrible atrocities by the Germans against the Greek populace followed.

European Theater

The Greek Holocaust

By Nathan N. Prefer

In late 1940 and early 1941, German Chancellor Adolf Hitler was concentrating on his next great conquest, the Soviet Union. Read more

On the coast of Italy, military personnel take time out from their duties at the beach. The water adapted observation plane may have been used for water skiing.

European Theater

Uniformed for R&R

Photo Essay by Kevin M. Hymel

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

In a wooded area near St. Vith an American soldier takes cover and trains his Thompson submachine gun on an enemy position. Savage fighting has already occurred in the area, as evidenced by the burning vehicle and debris littering the scene.

European Theater

Stand at St. Vith

By Charles Whiting

In the early hours of Sunday morning, December 17, 1944, an American brigadier general suffering from piles was heading into the unknown. Read more

A Coast Guard crewman aboard a landing craft is shown at lower right as his human cargo of combat troops exits toward the Easy Red sector of Omaha Beach in Normandy on D-Day. This photo was taken while the Americans were under tremendous German fire from the bluffs visible in the distance.

European Theater

Omaha Beach H-Hour D-Day June 6, 1944

By Joseph Balkoski

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 Blue Ridge Division in Europe

By Andy Adkins & Madeline Hanson

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

Soldiers watch from a distance as the Warsaw Ghetto burns.

European Theater

Warsaw 1943: A War of Desperation

By Kelly Bell

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

American soldiers rush to cross the captured Ludendorff railroad bridge over the Rhine River at Remagen, Germany, captured largely intact, by Combat Command B from the 9th Armored Division. The German officers in charge of defending, then destroying, the bridge at Remagen were court martialed and shot.

European Theater

The Bridge at Remagen

By Victor Kamenir

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