Allies

Operation Fustian: Airborne Assault on the Bridges to Catania

By Mark Simmons

‘‘As I floated down, the whole dropping zone seemed to be on fire; tracer bullets had set the tinder-dry stubble alight. Read more

Allies

Japanese American National Museum

By Mason B. Webb

Shortly after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, many Japanese Americans, especially those living on the West Coast, were suspected of being possible spies, saboteurs, and disloyal Americans. Read more

Allies

Rankin C: The Occupation of Germany

By Michael E. Haskew

Almost from the beginning, the fractious alliance that defeated Nazi Germany was in peril. The United States and Great Britain had long distrusted the communist regime of the Soviet Union, and the feeling was strongly mutual. Read more

Allies

The Curtiss SB2C Helldiver: An Unpopular and Flawed Allied War Machine

By Robert F. Dorr

It sent Japanese warships to the bottom of the ocean. It pulverized fortifications on Japan’s home islands. Read more

Allies

Tom Harrisson: An Anthropologist’s War in Borneo

By John W. Osborn, Jr.

World War II in the Pacific was fought in thousands of remote locations. The island of Borneo was the site of one of the least known clandestine operations of the conflict, led by an adventurous, but arrogant, anthropologist. Read more

Allies

Moe Berg: Baseball Player in the OSS

By Peter Kross

In 1920, a young, handsome Jewish boy from New Jersey took the train from Grand Central Station to Princeton, New Jersey, where he would enroll that fall. Read more

Allies

Operation Bagration: Soviet Triumph in the East

By Henrik Lunde

Operation Bagration, the largest operation of World War II, has never been adequately acknowledged in the West to the same extent as a number of smaller campaigns. Read more

Allies

Leslie Howard: The Actor’s Mysterious Fate on BOAC Flight 777

By Blaine Taylor

By June 1, 1943, British actor Leslie Howard, 50, was one of the most famous actors in the world, one of the leading male stars of one the greatest box-office draw movies of all time, the 1939 blockbuster Gone with the Wind. Read more

Allies

101st in Operation Market-Garden: Taking the Bridge at Best

By Richard A. Beranty

On the veranda of his temporary headquarters in a Dutch country house outside Veghel, Holland, renowned Luftwaffe General Kurt Student played lunch host to an old comrade, the chief of staff of the German Seventh Army. Read more

Allies

Shot Down Behind Enemy Lines: An 82nd Airborne Stick’s Survival at Market-Garden

By Jan Bos

It was a beautiful September day over Holland. Gradually, a faint rumble began to grow, and the sunny sky was darkened. Read more

Allies

The USO Turns 75: American soldiers’ “Home Away From Home”

By John Provan

Almost every American veteran has fond memories of a Track-Side Free Canteen, or a USO center at some train station or airport situated at locations around the world, or a “USO Camp Show” that provided entertainment close to the front lines, during every conflict since World War II. Read more

Allies

Concentration Camp Liberators Reveal Their Silent Trauma

By Leila Levinson

Down in the basement of my father’s medical office a Nazi helmet stood guard. It sat on top of the pea-green Army trunk, CAPT R LEVINSON stenciled in white letters under a beaten-up leather handle. Read more

Allies

Wretched Misconduct of the Red Army

By Martin K.A. Morgan

The vast Soviet War Memorial in Berlin’s Treptower Park commemorates 5,000 Red Army soldiers who fell in battle in the city in April and May 1945. Read more

Allies

Target: America’s West Coast

By Steven D. Lutz

It seemed like just another ordinary day at sea. Early on December 7, 1941, a U.S. Army-chartered cargo vessel, the 250-foot SS Cynthia Olson, under the command of a civilian skipper, Berthel Carlsen, was plying the Pacific waters about 1,200 miles northeast of Diamond Head, Oahu, Hawaii, and over 1,000 miles west of the Tacoma, Washington, port from which she had sailed on December 1. Read more

Allies

National Museum of the Pacific War

By Mason B. Webb

The small (population 12,000), central-Texas town of Fredericksburg, about an hour’s drive west of Austin and a little more than that northwest of San Antonio, may seem an odd location for the National Museum of the Pacific War until one realizes that Fredericksburg is the hometown of Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz––the Eisenhower of the Pacific Theater. Read more

Allies

Finland on the Eastern Front: Defense of the VKT Line

By Henrik O. Lunde

In 1941, Finland joined Nazi Germany in its attack on the Soviet Union, resulting in the third war with its giant eastern neighbor in 23 years. Read more

Allies

Healing War’s Legacy on the Solomon Islands

By Eileen Natuzzi, M.D.

The downwind approach of my Boeing 737 into Honiara International Airport goes over Iron Bottom Sound, with Savo Island off in the distance. Read more

Allies

The Winds Message Controversy: The Intelligence That Predicted Pearl Harbor?

By Peter Kross

The Japanese strike on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941—a “Day of Infamy,” as President Franklin D. Roosevelt described it—left the American Pacific Fleet in almost total ruin, plunged the United States into World War II, and set off a controversy regarding the events that led up to the attack that is still being hotly debated. Read more

Allies

George C. Marshall: The Indispensable Man

By Eric Hammel

George Catlett Marshall was the greatest American military man of his age. If the United States Army had kicked off the 20th century with the specific intent of constructing a chief of staff to lead it to victory in World War II, it could not have done a better job than what chance provided in the triumphs and travails over the 40 years that molded George Marshall. Read more

Allies

Daylight Precision Bombing: Dangerous Doctrine of the Eighth Air Force

By Herb Kugel

The Eighth Air Force—the “Mighty Eighth”—became the stuff of U.S. Air Force legend when its fleets of unprotected Boeing B-17 “Flying Fortress” heavy bombers flew massive air raids against the heavily guarded German industrial heartland during the period between the end of January through the middle of October 1943. Read more