Italian Campaign
Twenty-four hours earlier, Grazzi had hosted a gala reception for Metaxas and Greece’s figurehead king, George II, at the Italian consulate following a performance of Giacomo Puccini’s opera, Madame Butterfly. Read more
Italian Campaign
It was early in 1945 when the Battle of Po Valley officially began: from their hiding places in the valley below, the soldiers looked up at the wall of shale looming more than 3,000 feet above them. Read more
Italian Campaign
A fuming John Steinbeck vented his frustration over World War II to a friend on March 15, 1943. Read more
Italian Campaign
In the last days of March 1945, a soldier named Carl Getzel sat on a hill outside the city of Aschaffenburg and watched as it was slowly destroyed. Read more
Italian Campaign
On a June morning in 1942, a battalion of American soldiers stepped down from a train at Fort William in the northern highlands of Scotland. Read more
Italian Campaign
In September 1942, two patrols of armed jeeps and trucks of the Long Range Desert Group (LRDG) raided the German airfield at Barce. Read more
Italian Campaign
As the last days of 1943 slipped away, World War II in Italy ground to a miserable stalemate. Read more
Italian Campaign
By the autumn of 1943, the Allied armies fighting in Italy had discovered that Winston Churchill’s description of Italy as the “soft underbelly of Europe” had been a falsehood of monumental proportions. Read more
Italian Campaign
On June 22, 1940, the British prime minister, the formidable Winston Churchill, directed that an airborne force of at least 5,000 men was to be formed. Read more
Italian Campaign
A big challenge faced Maj. Gen. Brian G. Horrocks, an infantryman, when he was cross-posted to take command of the British Army’s 9th Armored Division in March 1942. Read more
Italian Campaign
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
Italian Campaign
For the Allied armies in Italy, the final winter of World War II was one of planning, replenishment, and the continuing effort to make existence in a war-ravaged land in the midst of snow and ice as bearable as possible. Read more
Italian Campaign
There was a time, in January 1944, when everyone in America had heard of Captain Henry T. Waskow from Belton, Texas. Read more
Italian Campaign
The first published photo of one of the odd—but highly versatile —frontline vehicles of World War II appeared on the cover of the July 1942 edition of German Propaganda Minister Dr. Read more
Italian Campaign
On August 3, 1943, the day that General George S. Patton, Jr., learned that his superior, General Dwight D. Read more
Italian Campaign
In the words of a veteran of the China-Burma-India Theater, retired Technical Sergeant Edward Rock Jr., [they] “served without a word of complaint or lack of courage. Read more
Italian Campaign
Ernie Pyle did not want to go to Okinawa. He was too old, too tired, and—some said—too jaded for yet another American invasion of ferocious enemy territory. Read more
Italian Campaign
The fight at Monte La Difensa on December 3, 1943, was swift but brutal as members of the First Special Service Force, a combined unit of U.S. Read more
Italian Campaign
The attempted crossing of the Rapido River in Italy by two infantry regiments of the U.S. 36th Division in January 1944 was one of the costliest failed attacks made by American forces during World War II. Read more
Italian Campaign
On April 21 1945, the Polish 2nd Corps captured the Italian city of Bologna and from the city’s highest tower flew the flag of Poland. Read more
