At Remagen, Germany, on March 7, 1945, the Ludendorff Bridge was the last intact bridge across the Rhine. German engineers rigged it with explosives to demolish it as American troops of the 9th Armored Division approached. But a combination of factors — damaged firing wires, weak explosives, and the…
In 1945, a 17-year-old Czech boy named Jiri Vavra watched as a damaged German Tiger II tank was abandoned on the outskirts of Prague during the uprising. With no experience driving a tank, he and several friends managed to start it and drove it through the streets, providing what firepower they had …
American photographer Robert Capa is famous for his D-Day photos — but fewer people know about his lesser-known colleague, American photographer Walter Rosenblum, who documented the liberation of the Dachau concentration camp. Rosenblum, a Jewish immigrant from Austria, had a personal stake in what …
The people of Reading, Pennsylvania learned about the devastation in the French town of Thury-Harcourt, Normandy, which had been completely destroyed during the Battle of Normandy — 85% of the buildings were leveled. Reading organized a massive fundraising effort through churches, schools, and local…