Bernard Montgomery Archives

M-4 Sherman tanks of the 11th Armored Division await the call to advance near Eterville on June 30, 1944. Three weeks after Operation Overlord had begun, the fighting near Caen was bitter.

Bernard Montgomery

Operation Jupiter: The Fight for the Key to Normandy

By Jon Latimer

The Allied landings in Normandy on June 6, 1944, produced a bitter struggle for control of the invasion beachhead. Read more

In the close quarters of a rubble-strewn street in Aachen, American soldiers fire a 57mm antitank weapon against a distant German target. Urban warfare became a new concept for Allied armies, and they adapted during the advance into Germany. (National Archives)

Bernard Montgomery

The Battle of Aachen: Breaking Down the Door to Europe in WWII

By Flint Whitlock

By the autumn of 1944, German resistance in the West was quickly crumbling as the British and Americans approached the German border 233 days ahead of schedule. Read more

Bernard Montgomery

The Forgotten American Airborne of Operation Market-Garden

By Major General Michael Reynolds (ret.)

“In the years to come everyone will remember Arnhem, but no one will remember that two American divisions fought their hearts out in the Dutch canal country,” wrote U.S. Read more

American tanks and armored gun carriers drive over snow-covered terrain to Samree during the Battle of the Bulge. Capture of the city opened the way to Houffallize, heart of the Bulge.

Bernard Montgomery

The End of the Battle of the Bulge

By Arnold Blumberg

Wednesday, December 27, 1944, found the military situation in the Ardennes Forest of Belgium stalemated. After 12 days of unrelenting struggle, the American and German forces on this part of the Western Front found themselves locked in brutal combat, unable to drive each other back. Read more

Bernard Montgomery

Hell in a Small Place: the Canadian Paratroopers of Operation Varsity

By Bernd Horn

In the hut no one spoke, no one joked. The assembled British and Canadian paratroop commanders awaited the briefing from their brigade commander on their next major operation. Read more

Cronkite and General Eisenhower tour German bunkers in Normandy after the war.

Bernard Montgomery

Walter Cronkite: The War As He Saw It

by Eric Niderost

Walter Cronkite is the acknowledged dean of American journalists, an icon whose distinguished career spanned 60 years. Cronkite is best known as the anchorman and managing editor of The CBS Evening News, a position he occupied from 1962 to 1981. Read more

British soldiers put their backs into moving pieces of a Bailey Bridge built on pontoons over the Weser River in Germany, 1945.

Bernard Montgomery

The British Bailey Bridge

By Mike McLaughlin

I was always fascinated by the mastery of water,” Sir Donald Coleman Bailey reflected, long after the end of World War II. Read more

Bernard Montgomery

WWII Spies: Oreste Pinto

By Robert Whiter

Two men were seated on either side of a paper-strewn table inside an office of MI5, the British intelligence service, in the Royal Victoria Patriotic School at Clapham, London, shortly after the fall of France in the spring of 1940. Read more

Rocket-firing British Typhoons lay down a deadly barrage on German armor attempting to escape through the Falaise Gap in Normandy following the American breakout at St. Lo.

Bernard Montgomery

Closing the Falaise Pocket

By Mike Phifer

After almost two months of bloody and desperate fighting, the Allies had failed to break through the German defenses that had been limiting their hold on Normandy since D-Day. Read more

Bernard Montgomery

General Omar Bradley: Dwight D Eisenhower’s Indispensible Lieutenant

By Cole Kingseed

Great commanders need great subordinates. In the campaigns in the Mediterranean and European Theaters of World War II, General Dwight D. Read more

A Polish tank commander salutes as his unit passes in review during a ceremony in Scotland prior to deployment to Normandy. Polish units made a significant contribution to the Allied offensive in Western Europe. (National Archives)

Bernard Montgomery

Poles in the West: Fighting in the Falaise Pocket

By Major General Michael Reynolds

The dismemberment of Poland by the German and Soviet armies in September and early October 1939 saw the temporary destruction of the Polish armed forces. Read more

Bernard Montgomery

The Battle of Ortona: Italy’s Stalingrad

By Mike Phifer

“Where the hell have you been?”

Major Bert Kennedy, acting commander of Canada’s Hastings and Prince Edward Regiment of the 1st Canadian Infantry Brigade, asked Lieutenant Farley Mowat of the intelligence section. Read more

North Africa : Rommel, nicknamed the "Desert Fox", commanding the Afrika Korps, consults battle plans with his staff Date: 1941 Source: Explorer Archives. Original photographed by Desmarteau.

Bernard Montgomery

Field Marshal Erwin Rommel: The “Desert Fox”

by Mike Haskew

Born on November 15, 1891, in Heidenheim, Germany, Erwin Rommel was a hero of World War I, receiving the Pour le Mérite, or Blue Max, for his actions on the Italian Front. Read more

Bernard Montgomery

Night of the Bloody Tiger: German Raid on a D-Day Exercise

By Michael D. Hull

Operation Bolero, the marshaling of Allied forces for the planned 1944 invasion of Normandy, was in full swing by late 1943, and much of England had been turned into a great armed camp. Read more

Operation Market Garden, a bold plan to end the war quickly, was an allied disaster in Holland. But the 82nd Airborne Division held firm.

Bernard Montgomery

Operation Market Garden: the 82nd Airborne Division’s Pivotal Role

By Martin K.A. Morgan

By mid-August 1944, roughly one month before the now-famous Operation Market Garden, the U.S. Army’s 82nd Airborne Division had been fighting off and on for over a year. Read more

In this March 11, 1945, image, troops and M4 Sherman tanks of the U.S. First Army cross the Ludendorff railroad bridge to the eastern bank of the great Rhine River. The last natural barrier along the western frontier of Germany, the Rhine was also crossed by Allied armies in other locations.

Bernard Montgomery

Assault on Ludendorff Bridge: The First Allied Crossing of the Rhine

By Jon Diamond

On a cold March evening in the Goldenrod Café in West Point, Nebraska, Mary Timmermann, a waitress there, picked up the telephone receiver when her boss told her it was Omaha calling long distance for her. Read more

In jackboots and civilian clothes, Irma Grese (along with Bergen-Belsen commandant Josef Kramer, right) stands in the courtyard of the prison at Celle during their war-crimes trial, June 1945.

Bernard Montgomery

Why Was Irma Grese, the Beast of Belsen, so Hated?

By Cynthia Southern

“She was one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen. Her body was perfect in every line, her face clear and angelic, and her blue eyes the gayest, the most innocent eyes one can imagine. Read more

Bernard Montgomery

The Irish Brigade in WWII

By Tim Newark

It was a letter in the London Times that caught the attention of British wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill. Read more

Bernard Montgomery

Commandos Crack Hitler’s Atlantic Wall

By Mark Simmon

After successfully fighting seasickness during the crossing of the English Channel, Lance-Corporal Ted Brooks of Number 48 (Royal Marine) Commando arrived on Nan Red Beach—which formed the left flank of Juno Beach—on the morning of June 6, 1944. Read more

Bernard Montgomery

Flying For the Luftwaffe

By Jack Hildebrandt wih M.M. Harris

It was November 1, 1944. I, Feldwebel (Technical Sergeant) Gustav Jack Lothar Carl Herbert Julius Hans Jergen Hildebrandt von Lengerke (aka “Jack” Hildebrandt), had just completed a successful strafing run against British General Bernard “Monty” Montgomery’s advancing army along the southern end of the Dutch-Belgian border. Read more

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