European Theater

European Theater

Sergeant Major Stan Hollis: The Victoria Cross on D-Day

A chill breeze cut through the early morning haze, and the storm-swollen sea was rough off the coast of northern France on Tuesday, June 6, 1944. Read more

European Theater

Heinz Guderian: Author of the Blitzkrieg

Hitler was enraged as he stalked his way around the room during the waning months of World War II. Read more

European Theater

The Fight for Singling

After four months and a 600-mile advance from the beaches of Normandy into Brittany and then through eastern France, the spearhead of Lt. Read more

European Theater

Means of Grace, Hope of Glory

They carried no weapons, only holy books and rudimentary vestments, a crucifix or a Star of David and sometimes a little Communion kit. Read more

European Theater

Tactical Thunder: The Ninth Air Force

As the landing craft carrying the invading Allied ground forces of Operation Overlord motored toward the Normandy beaches on June 6, 1944, they were protected and supported by the largest aerial armada the world has ever seen. Read more

European Theater

The Miracle of Bletchley Park

Great Britain’s military intelligence leaders learned from their experience in World War I that the kinds of minds capable of breaking codes are a rare commodity and are often not likely to blossom in a military atmosphere. Read more

European Theater

Bridging the Rhine at Remagen: Infantryman Paul Priest Recalls the Historic Crossing

As Allied troops advanced along a broad front toward Nazi Germany in the winter of 1945, the United States Army was eager to capture an intact bridge over the Rhine River to allow its troops and heavy equipment to advance rapidly into Germany. Read more

European Theater

Combat Fatigue: How Stress in Battle was Felt (and Treated) in WWII

Eugene Sledge knew a thing or two about combat fatigue. It was September 15, 1944, on a tiny spit of land called Peleliu: the Japanese opened up with heavy mortar fire just as the Marines moved off the beach and started inland. Read more

European Theater

The Trains That Fueled the Normandy Breakout

Historian Christian Wolmar concludes that the two world wars could not have been fought to such devastation without military railways, in his book Engines of War. Read more

European Theater

Pegasus Bridge: Operation Deadstick’s Glider Assault

On a darkened airfield at 2230 hours on June 5, 1944, a reinforced company of British gliderborne infantry, D Company of the Second Battalion, Oxford & Buckinghamshire Light Infantry (Ox & Bucks), boarded gliders, prepared to start the invasion of France. Read more

European Theater

Bitter Fight at Gela

The smoke had barely cleared from the battlefields of North Africa when the victorious Allies turned their attention northward to Europe. Read more

European Theater

Battle of the Scheldt Estuary

As the Allied armies advanced across Western Europe in the summer of 1944, the First Canadian Army undertook the task of clearing the coastal areas and opening the Channel ports. Read more

European Theater

WWII Aircraft: The Arado Ar-234 Blitz Jet

When the Arado Ar-234 Blitz jet bomber first appeared in the skies of Europe, most Allied airmen did not know what it was. Read more

European Theater

Daredevil Tankers Turn the Tide at the Bulge

“Peiper must be stopped!”

Lieutenant General Courtney M. Hodges, commanding the U.S. First Army, looked up from his maps and saw chaos everywhere. Read more

European Theater

George C. Marshall: Architect of Victory

President Franklin D. Roosevelt was disturbed in the autumn of 1938 by the Munich agreement, at which the rights of Czechoslovakia were signed away, and by reports of mounting air strength in Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany. Read more

European Theater

Hitler’s Lebensborn Children: Kidnappings in German-Occupied Poland

In the summer of 1943, Malgorzata Twardecki, a single mother living in Nazi-occupied Poland, received an ominous order to bring her five-year-old son to the local town council office by 6 the following morning. Read more

European Theater

Operation Plunder: Crossing the Rhine

“I am busy getting ready for the next battle,” Field Marshal Sir Bernard Law Montgomery wrote his son David in early March 1945. Read more

European Theater

Behind Enemy Lines: Escape at the Bulge

The sound of German artillery shells shrieking overhead from across the Siegfried Line was not the wakeup call Technical Sergeant Robert Walter of 3rd Platoon, L Company, 3rd Battalion, 393rd Infantry Regiment expected to receive on the morning of December 16, 1944.  Read more

European Theater

Patton’s Last Command

The October light was beginning to fade as the U.S. Army limousine sped along the autobahn in the American Zone of Occupied Germany. Read more

European Theater

Adolf Hitler: On the Eve of the Battle of the Bulge

By early autumn, he was taking 60 pills a day. They ranged from “speed” to the poison strychnine. Read more