European Theater

European Theater

D-Day Battle for Easy Red & Fox Green Beaches

Forming the very tip of the Allied spearhead that thrust onto the heavily fortified Omaha beachhead at Normandy was the U.S. Read more

European Theater

World War II Odyssey Across Europe

Roy Altenbach, a soldier from a German-speaking family in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, was assigned to the 47th Medium Maintenance Company, 22nd Ordnance Battalion. Read more

European Theater

Operation Cobra: Get a Move On!

Company B’s jeeps, armored cars, and self-propelled guns stood lined up on a narrow road, their crewmen anxious to move out. Read more

European Theater

Erwin Rommel’s War Photos: Images the Desert Fox Took Himself

The name Field Marshal Erwin Rommel—associated with tank warfare in Europe and North Africa during World War II—might conjure up mental images of the famous “Desert Fox” riding in a panzer, reviewing maps, or commanding battles. Read more

European Theater

Hitler’s Death in the Führerbunker

By Flint Whitlock

His world was literally crashing down in flames around him.    Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich, which he had created out of nothing but his own will—an empire that he had once boasted would last for a millennium—was on fire and being torn apart by shot and shell, besieged on all sides. Read more

European Theater

Captured at the Bulge

Private Leon Goldberg pulled the trigger on his heavy, water-cooled M-1917 Browning machine gun and fired bursts of .30-caliber rounds into the attacking German infantry. Read more

European Theater

D-Day Capture of Les Moulins Draw

 Twelve Landing Craft Vehicle Personnel (LCVPs) carrying Captain William Callahan’s F Company and Captain Eccles Scott’s G Company—some 400 men—slapped the English Channel’s rough waves as they approached Omaha Beach’s Les Moulins Draw. Read more

European Theater

The M29 Weasel: The WWII Track Vehicle Never Used as Intended

The M29 Weasel was a machine conceived by a bizarre British chemist obsessed with ice for a unit that did not exist and a mission that never occurred. Read more

European Theater

Easy Company Mortarman

The green light lit up the inside of the Douglas C-47 Skytrain’s fuselage, and 20 paratroopers from Easy Company’s Stick 70, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division charged out the door. Read more

European Theater

Ordnance: The Piper L-4 “Eyes in the Sky”

Despite being caught up in the tide of isolationism prevalent duringthe interval between the world wars, the United States Army was lucky enough to have Congressional funding for the further development and expansion of its fledgling air arm, known initially in 1926 as the Army Air Corps and in 1941 renamed the Army Air Forces. Read more

European Theater

Italian War Criminal Rodolfo Graziani

The town of Affile in Italy’s Lazio region erected a mausoleum to Italian Army Marshal Rodolfo Graziani in August 2012. Read more

European Theater

The Battle of Hürtgen Forest: A Tactical Nightmare for Allied Forces

Gray skies hung low and a steady drizzle dripped through the tall, dense fir trees near the German-Belgian border on the morning of Thursday, November 16, 1944, during the Battle of Hürtgen Forest. Read more

European Theater

D-Day Landing at Omaha Beach

As their landing craft plunged through heavy surf on the morning of June 6, 1944, it was obvious to the men of Company A, 116th Infantry Regiment, U.S. Read more

European Theater

Was Justice Served After the Malmedy Massacre?

It was a dismal day, Sunday, December 17, 1944, just hours after the Germans had broken through the thinly held American lines in the Ardennes Forest along rugged terrain of the Western Front. Read more

European Theater

Heroic Warsaw Airlift

Warsaw was burning. Captain Jack Van Eyssen first saw it as a dull glow on the night horizon, 35 miles distant. Read more

European Theater

Junkers Ju-87 Stuka: What Made the Luftwaffe Vulture so Fearsome

One of the deadliest and most effective airplanes of the Axis powers, the Junkers Ju-87 Stuka, owed its origin to a fearless World War I ace and, ironically, to innovative American aviation visionaries in the peaceful early 1930s. Read more

European Theater

The Battle of Carentan: “You’re Gonna Die Here!”

“Move out!” shouted Lieutenant Richard “Dick” Winters to the men of Easy Company. It was 6 o’clock on the morning of June 12, 1944, and Easy Company’s paratroopers braced themselves to attack the southern section of Carentan. Read more

European Theater

Ireland in World War II: The Swastika vs. The Shamrock

The south of Ireland, officially known as Eire and often referred to by many residing there as the “Free State,” declared its neutrality when World War II erupted suddenly in September 1939. Read more

European Theater

Fighting Across Europe with the 101st Airborne

“Oui.” It was one of the few words 101st Airborne paratrooper Norwood Thomas knew in French, and it served him well on the morning of June 6, 1944. Read more

European Theater

Stalling Hitler’s Panzers at Mortain

A column of German Mark V Panther tanks advanced through a thick fog north of the French town of Mortain, blindly firing their machine guns. Read more