European Theater
Stephan H. Lewy was young, militarily inexperienced, and A Most unlikely American soldier. Yet when he reached Utah Beach 30 days after D-Day, he was all business as a staff sergeant in U.S. Read more
European Theater
Tanks—seven divisions of them concentrated at one point, the weakest position in the Western defenses—that was what did it.” Read more
European Theater
General Dwight D. Eisenhower enjoyed visiting troops in the field. After the Battle of Normandy and the race across France, the Supreme Allied Commander toured the front in mid-November, 1944. Read more
European Theater
By mid-December 1944, the 3rd Battalion, 33rd Armored Regiment, Third Armored Division “Spearhead” had seen plenty of action. Read more
European Theater
The Germans called it the “Komet” and the “Devil’s Broomstick,” for the incredible speed with which it reached its altitude of 30,000 feet, achieving 0.84 Mach while doing so. Read more
European Theater
When a friend from Wolsey, South Dakota, asked Alven Baker why he was joining the army in 1941 and not another branch of the service, he replied, “To capture Adolf Hitler.” Read more
European Theater
Staff Sergeant Darrell Bush had just carried a wounded soldier on his back to the rear when five enemy bullets seemed to hit him simultaneously. Read more
European Theater
Within days of Nazi Germany’s invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, and the British declaration of war two days later, the vanguard of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) arrived on the continent of Europe. Read more
European Theater
Kapitanleutnant Volker Simmermacher gazed intently through his attack periscope, sizing up the target that so far seemed oblivious to his presence. Read more
European Theater
Corporal Thomas B. Tucker stood shivering in the bitterly cold night air as he looked down on a ribbon of water that separated his unit from the enemy’s front-line positions. Read more
European Theater
Adolf Hitler and his military commanders were feeling a new and unsettling emotion early in 1943—desperation. A year earlier, they had seemed on top of the world as their forces ruled a region that surpassed Rome at its greatest. Read more
European Theater
Lieutenant Wessling did not believe that his two 75mm assault guns could effectively deal with the German panzers. Read more
European Theater
It was a quiet dinner on a side street in Berlin the evening of June 26, 1939, but more than food would be devoured that night. Read more
European Theater
During the Allied air campaign against the Third Reich in World War II, well over a million tons of bombs were dropped on German territory, killing nearly 300,000 civilians and wounding another 780,000. Read more
European Theater
The British Air Ministry established the British Airborne forces on June 22, 1940, at the request of Prime Minister Winston Churchill. Read more
European Theater
First Lieutenant William Parks of the 101st Airborne Division left a snow-camouflaged helmet liner behind when the storied Screaming Eagles moved out following the American victory in the Battle of the Bulge in January 1945. Read more
European Theater
When the first shell hit in the dimly lit interior of the German ship, a subdued chorus came from the 29 ships’ officers held prisoner on board. Read more
European Theater
While the eyes of the world remained on Normandy during the difficult days that followed the D-Day landings of June 6, 1944, a scant nine weeks later another amphibious invasion of France took place. Read more
European Theater
Before World War II, the Belgian port city of Antwerp was one of the world’s great ports, ranking with those of Hamburg, Rotterdam, and New York. Read more
European Theater
It’s a plain, old, pale yellow, three-story building in a small town (fewer than 20,000 inhabitants) north of Salzburg, Austria. Yet this architecturally unremarkable building stands in the center of a recent political firestorm. Read more
