Anzio Archives

From urban combat to fighting in flat, open fields, from tank-vs.-tank duels, to aerial bombardments to ceaseless artillery barrages, the action at Anzio took on every dimension. Here an American GI uses his carbine to keep German forces at bay during the battle for Anzio that lasted from January to May 1944.

Anzio

The 45th Infantry Division’s Desperate Defense at Anzio

By Christopher Miskimon

The sunrise on February 16, 1944, dawned foggy over the Via Anziate—the only highway between Anzio and Rome. Read more

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Colonel William O. Darby and the U.S. Army Rangers

By William E. Welsh

On the morning of Friday, February 18, 1944, fresh groups of German panzergrenadiers backed by tanks swept south from their defensive positions at Anzio and overran American forward positions at Aprilia, eight miles north of the landing beaches. Read more

Anzio

Lucian K. Truscott: The Soldier’s General

By Nathan N. Prefer

In his Maxims of War, Napoleon Bonaparte wrote, “It is exceptional and difficult to find in one man all the qualities necessary for a great general. Read more

In August 1944, the Allies followed up the massive Normandy Invasion with another in southern France known as Operation Dragoon.

Anzio

Rampage on the Riviera: Operation Dragoon

By Glenn Barnette and André Bernole

Early in 1944, German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, the defeated hero of North Africa and now head of Army Group B in France, was tasked with strengthening the Atlantic Wall defenses against Allied invasion. Read more

Anzio

Key to the Eternal City

By Nathan N. Prefer

They had been staring at it for the past four months. That small, rubble-strewn town of Cisterna di Littoria in central Italy just inland from the ports of Anzio-Nettuno, had become their nemesis. Read more

Anzio

Battle of Graignes: An HQ Company’s Heroic Last Stand in Normandy

By Martin K.A. Morgan

Some 16 million Americans served during World War II, and tens of thousands of sons of the State of Louisiana served in every branch of the U.S. Read more

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The M2 4.2-Inch Chemical Mortar

By Christopher Miskimon

In the last days of March 1945, a soldier named Carl Getzel sat on a hill outside the city of Aschaffenburg and watched as it was slowly destroyed. Read more

U.S. Rangers scramble up a hillside near Chiunzi Pass under a smoke screen.

Anzio

Leading the Way: William Orlando Darby’s Rangers in World War II

By Michael D. Hull

On a June morning in 1942, a battalion of American soldiers stepped down from a train at Fort William in the northern highlands of Scotland. Read more

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Vladimir Peniakoff: Popski’s Private Army

By John Brown

In September 1942, two patrols of armed jeeps and trucks of the Long Range Desert Group (LRDG) raided the German airfield at Barce. Read more

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Amphibious Landing at Anzio

By Mike Haskew

As the last days of 1943 slipped away, World War II in Italy ground to a miserable stalemate. Read more

In December 1943, the First Canadian Infantry Division was ordered to capture the Italian port town of Ortona.

Anzio

Little Stalingrad: The Struggle for Ortona

By Jerome Baldwin

By the autumn of 1943, the Allied armies fighting in Italy had discovered that Winston Churchill’s description of Italy as the “soft underbelly of Europe” had been a falsehood of monumental proportions. Read more

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Royal Navy Destroyers

by Glenn Barnett

No class of ship in World War II saw more service than the destroyers of the Royal Navy. Read more

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Barrier at Monte Cassino

By John Brown

The Gustav Line, stretching across Italy at its narrowest part between Gaeta and Ortona, was a formidable system of defenses, some of it in coastal marshes but mainly in mountainous country through which ran fast-flowing rivers. Read more

Felix Sparks led elements of the 45th Division through heavy fighting and the liberation of Dachau.

Anzio

A Fighting Foot Soldier of the 45th

By Christopher Miskimon

The morning of February 16, 1944, dawned foggy over the Via Anziate in Anzio, Italy. The 45th Infantry Division’s 2nd Battalion, 157th Infantry Regiment had advanced overnight to take positions on the west side of the roadway, assuming its place on the front line. Read more

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Bill Mauldin’s Willie and Joe

Roy Morris Jr.

Among the thousands of American soldiers slogging through the miserable winter of 1944 in southern Italy after the Allied landing at Anzio were two GIs who existed only on paper, but who became as real to their readers as the mud-covered, K-ration-eating guys sitting next to them in their foxholes. Read more

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Americans Faced Blown Out Bridge During Retreat To 38th Parallel

By Marc D. Bernstein

December 7, 1950 dawned bitter cold in the remote mountains of North Korea. More than 14,000 U.N. Read more

Soldiers of the Polish 2nd Corps participate in the final assault on Monte Cassino on May 18, 1943.

Anzio

Walking in the Footsteps of Heroes

By Flint Whitlock

I wrote previously about my guided three D-Day tours in the summer of 2014. I repeated the tour-guiding experience in May and June this year for the Minnesota World War II History Roundtable during a tour of Fifth Army battlefields in Italy. Read more

From Around the Network

Officer Henri Laperrine

The Dahlgren Affair: Kilpatrick-Dahlgren Raid on Richmond

The Teller Mine and other German WWII Land Mines: The Hidden Danger

A War Worth Remembering.