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
A wily British scientist, a secret weapon, and a daring daytime Bombing raid helped break the back of the deadly German E-boat attacks on the Allied ships that supported the early D-Day landings at Normandy. Read more
European Theater
The Allied planning for Operation Overlord had been ongoing for more than two years. Vast quantities of supplies and hundreds of thousands of fighting men and their machinery of war had crowded southern England. Read more
European Theater
By Patricia Overman
“Flying supply missions with the 435th Troop Carrier Group, or any tactical group of IX Troop Carrier Command, is a combination of taking a physical beating and sweating out land and aerial war hazards”
—Michael Seaman, Warweek Staff Writer, Stars and Stripes, April 29, 1945
By April 1945 the Allied Armies were racing east as German resistance crumbled. Read more
European Theater
European Theater
It was the humid season on Malta that September of 1943. The hot Sirocco winds from North Africa blow from August to October across the cool sea, raising humidity. Read more
European Theater
The 809th Tank Destroyer Battalion was an independently attached unit of the U.S. Army. The battalion was activated on March 18, 1942, at Camp Forrest, Tennessee, and remained in the United States through most of the war. Read more
European Theater
Whether fighting in the mountains of the Italian peninsula, assaulting Nazi defensive positions along the vast Russo-German Eastern Front, or clashing with German Army opponents from Normandy to the Elbe River, from 1942 to 1945, Allied soldiers in World War II faced a determined enemy armed with the most effective machine gun produced during that struggle: the Maschinengewehr 42, or the MG 42 for short. Read more
European Theater
The Messerschmitt Bf-109 fighter plane dove out of the sky with machine guns firing. The pilot’s target—a pontoon bridge being stretched across Germany’s Werra River by American engineers. Read more
European Theater
“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
European Theater
The United States had not yet entered World War II when Time magazine noted that the Army had created two new armored divisions. Read more
European Theater
The ongoing debate between German Field Marshals Erwin Rommel and Gerd von Rundstedt over how best to use the German Army’s elite panzer divisions against the coming Allied invasion ultimately reached no clear conclusion. Read more
European Theater
The sunrise on February 16, 1944, dawned foggy over the Via Anziate—the only highway between Anzio and Rome. Read more
European Theater
In a desperate bid to avoid another war in Europe, both Britain and France signed the notorious Munich Agreement in 1938, which annexed the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia to the Nazis. Read more
European Theater
When the 230th Field Artillery Battalion was attached to the 30th Infantry (“Old Hickory”) Division in Mortain, France, on August 6, 1944, many of its men had already received their baptism of fire in Normandy. Read more
European Theater
It took the HMS Queen Elizabeth, the world’s largest passenger liner, only five days to transport 15,000 men of the 106th Infantry Division from New Jersey to Glasgow, Scotland, making port on November 17, 1944. Read more
European Theater
As the clock struck 8:00 p.m. in Arnhem, Holland, Lt. Col. John Frost’s British 2nd Parachute Battalion captured the north end of the road bridge over the Nederrijn River. Read more
European Theater
Lieutenant Wessling did not believe that his two 75mm assault guns could effectively deal with the German panzers. Read more
European Theater
Ordered to “hold at all costs,” 300 American soldiers defended the small Luxembourg town of Hosingen during the first three days of the Battle of the Bulge. Read more
European Theater
Fearless, demanding, and inspirational, General George Smith Patton, JR., was generally recognized as the U.S. Army’s outstanding field commander by the end of World War II. Read more
European Theater
“Who are these men? What do they want?” snapped the imperious Field Marshal Sir Bernard Law Montgomery to the four German officers drawn up in front of his caravan, saluting him under a Union Jack. Read more
