The European Theater of Operations (ETO) during World War II is generally regarded as the area of military confrontation between the Allied powers and Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. The European Theater encompassed the Atlantic, Mediterranean, Eastern Front, Western Front, and Arctic areas of operation.
European Theater
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
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
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
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
“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
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
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
“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
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
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
By early autumn, he was taking 60 pills a day. They ranged from “speed” to the poison strychnine. Read more
European Theater
Malmédy is an attractive and prosperous town situated in eastern Belgium, 15 miles from the German border. Read more
European Theater
“I jammed the throttle wide open and, attacking the Me-109 from the port quarter, fired one burst of four seconds and three bursts of two seconds each,” Pilot Officer William R. Read more
European Theater
In early 1942, the U.S. Eighth Air Force arrived in England firmly entrenched in the belief that continuous and accurate daylight precision bombing was the only way to decisively crush German industrial capacity. Read more
European Theater
The B-17 Flying Fortress was the most celebrated four-engine strategic bomber of World War II, but like many other aircraft that achieved lasting fame, it barely made it into production. Read more
European Theater
When Pearl Witherington Cornioley died quietly in 2008 at the age of 93 in a retirement home in the Loire Valley of France, some who thought they knew her well may have been surprised to learn that she had risked her life during World War II as an agent for the British Special Operations Executive (SOE). Read more
European Theater
In October 1944, Army nurse Lieutenant Frances Slanger of the 45th Field Hospital somewhere in Europe wrote a letter to Stars and Stripes, the Army newspaper, to express her admiration of the American soldier. Read more
European Theater
In one of the most recognized photographs taken by U.S. Army cameramen during World War II, General Dwight D. Read more
European Theater
America was not at war, but American sailors were dying when American-owned ships were torpedoed by German submarines. Read more
European Theater
The second week in April 1940 was a stormy period in the North and Norwegian Seas. The weather deteriorated during April 7, with low cloud cover and fog. Read more
