WWII Quarterly

Winter 2013

Volume 4, No. 2

COVER: A soldier from the 1st SS Panzer Grenadier Division poses in front of destroyed American vehicles during the Battle of the Bulge.
Photo: National Archives

Tokyo night raid, May 26, 1945. The United States hoped that such massive destruction would compel the Japanese to surrender.

Winter 2013

WWII Quarterly, Editorial

Death & Destruction

The aerial photos of the aftermath were stunning. Miles and miles of destroyed homes, apartments, businesses. Fires burning out of control. Read more

Winter 2013

WWII Quarterly, Tragedies

The British Liner Queen Mary

By Chuck Lyons

Not all those who died in World War II died in combat. There were also illness, heart attacks, cancer, friendly fire … and accidents. Read more

Winter 2013

WWII Quarterly, Museums

Battleship Cove and the USS Massachusetts

By Mark D. van Ells

Many associate Massachusetts with the Kennedy family, and its influence is evident at Battleship Cove. The World War II record of the Kennedys is a distinguished one. Read more

Winter 2013

WWII Quarterly

The Lions of Carentan Part III: Operation Cobra

By Volker Griesser

Background: In this, the third and final installment of a three-part series excerpted from The Lions of Carentan, the 2011 book by a respected German military historian, Fallschirmjäger Regiment 6 (FJR 6) has been pushed out of Ste.-Mère-église, Read more

Winter 2013

WWII Quarterly

Voices of the Bulge, Part I

By Michael Collins & Martin King

BACKSTORY: Unternehmen Wacht-am-Rhein (Operation Watch on the Rhine), better known in the West as the Battle of the Bulge, had its beginnings following the failed assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler’s life by Colonel Count Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg and a group of other high-level plotters who felt that their Führer was not only leading Germany to defeat but also its doom, and thus had to be eliminated. Read more

Winter 2013

WWII Quarterly

Saga of a Volksdeutscher: German Pole Goes to War

By Allyn Vannoy

As Russian and German tanks exchanged fire, German Corporal Erwin Engler realized that if he was to get his wound treated, to even survive—if he was to ever see his family again back in what had been the Polish Corridor—he was going to have to make a dash across open ground to reach the safety of a wooded area. Read more

Winter 2013

WWII Quarterly

Holding New Guinea: A First Defeat For Japan’s Land Forces

By John Brown

One blazing hot day in mid-January 1942, Cornelius “Con” Page, an Australian plantation manager and coastwatcher on Tabar Island 20 miles north of New Ireland reported on his radio a Japanese aircraft passing Tabar and heading for Rabaul on the Australian-administered island of New Britain. Read more

Winter 2013

WWII Quarterly

The Brazilian Expeditionary Force Invades Italy

By Nathan N. Prefer

The term “United Nations” was in large part derived from the large number of nations that joined in common cause between 1939 and 1945 to defeat the Axis powers of Germany, Japan, and Italy during World War II. Read more