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
The commander of the U.S. Third Army, General George Patton, Jr., took no great pleasure in the end of the war in Europe; he already knew that despite his lobbying of many influential figures in Washington, D.C., Read more
European Theater
On a cold, dark December morning in 1944, B Company, 1st Battalion, 15th Regiment began the slow ascent up Hill 351. Read more
European Theater
When Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany on January 30, 1933, the world changed forever.
Not only was Hitler determined to pay back Germany’s enemies for his country’s defeat during the Great War, but he was also determined to rid Germany and the rest of Europe of persons whom his twisted Aryan ideology believed were “inferior” or “subhuman.” Read more
European Theater
“In the early hours of 8 February 1945, I climbed into my command post, which consisted of a small platform halfway up a tree,” Lt. Read more
European Theater
On Tuesday, June 6, 1944, at nearly three in the morning, Chicago-native Lieutenant John E. Peters safely landed Snooty, his Douglas C-47 Skytrain, on the massive 5,800-foot runway at Greenham Common airfield in southern England. Read more
European Theater
By January 1942, Britain was still in the fight of her life. Germany had occupied all western Europe, controlled the Mediterranean, and was threatening British colonies in North Africa. Read more
European Theater
The black uniformed German panzer crews climbed into their Panther tanks at 10 pm on June 8, 1944. Read more
European Theater
The GIs defending Pillbox No. 9 watched in despair as a weak January sun set behind them. Read more
European Theater
The political and military reasons for launching Operation Goodwood have been discussed in virtually every book written about the Normandy campaign. Read more
European Theater
Early on the morning of Sunday, October 15, 1944, a platoon of the U.S. 442nd Regimental Combat Team’s 100th Infantry Battalion (Separate) waited on a hill for its first action in the rugged Vosges Mountains of eastern France. Read more
European Theater
On July 28, 2018, at the Doubletree Hilton Hotel near Dulles Airport, outside Washington, D.C., Mariusz Winiecki, a 42-year-old Polish professor, told an audience of Americans about his experiences growing up in the small town of Szubin, 150 miles southeast of Warsaw. Read more
European Theater
During the 12 years of the highly militarized society of the Third Reich, some 20 million Germans—men and women as well as children—donned a uniform of one kind or another. Read more
European Theater
As summer neared its end in early September 1944, the U.S. Army raced across northern France toward the German border. 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
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
“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 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
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
