European Theater
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
European Theater
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
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
European Theater
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
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
European Theater
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
European Theater
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
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
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
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
European Theater
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
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
European Theater
Backstory: My father, Karl Fuchs, was a German soldier in World War II who fought and died on the Eastern Front. Read more
European Theater
Most of the action during the Battle of Britain in the late summer of 1940 took place over southern England where Royal Air Force Spitfires and Hurricanes began to dominate dogfights against their German rivals. Read more
European Theater
The 782nd Tank Battalion spent two years training stateside as part of the U.S. Read more
European Theater
It took the HMS Queen Elizabeth, the world’s largest passenger liner, only five days to transport 15,000 men of the 106th Infantry Division from New Jersey to Glasgow, Scotland, making port on November 17, 1944. Read more
European Theater
Despite their gallant service in the Civil War, on the Western frontier, and in the Spanish-American War, black soldiers were used mostly for labor and given only a limited fighting role when the U.S. Read more
European Theater
As a late summer sun finally dipped below the horizon, Captain William L. Koob, Jr., came to realize that his unit had been abandoned on the battlefield. Read more
European Theater
BACKSTORY: Wilhelm Lubbeck served as an enlisted man in the 58th Infantry Division on the Eastern Front during Germany’s 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union before being promoted to lieutenant. Read more
European Theater
When the men of the newly arrived 106th Infantry “Golden Lions” Division arrived on the front lines near St. Read more
Military History
