World War II With Tom Hanks | HISTORY

Before D-Day, Allied forces battled across the region’s deserts to secure the Mediterranean and prepare for the invasion of Europe.

After his first battle in North Africa exposed U.S. weaknesses, Eisenhower regrouped, hired General Patton and led major military victories.

On the 70th anniversary of his death get the facts on the famed “Desert Fox.”

To craft legal discrimination, the Third Reich studied the United States.

How many were killed, how many children were sent to the site and the numbers of people who attempted to escape are among the facts that reveal the scale of crimes committed at Auschwitz.

Estimates suggest that Nazis murdered 85 percent of the people at Auschwitz. Here are the stories of three who survived.

Allied troops entering former Nazi territory at the close of World War II confronted heartbreaking scenes of unthinkable atrocities.

In a decisive victory, inexperienced U.S. troops stopped a Japanese juggernaut.

After terrorizing trans-Atlantic ships in World War I, German U-boats grew even more fearsome in World War II.

Get the facts behind a secret meeting between Roosevelt and Churchill that produced a cornerstone of the post-war world order.

The Battle of Midway was an epic WWII clash between the U.S. Navy and the Imperial Japanese Navy that played out six months after the attack on Pearl Harbor. The U.S. Navy’s decisive victory in the air-sea battle (June 3-6, 1942) dashed Japan’s hopes of neutralizing the United States as a naval power and effectively turned the tide of World War II in the Pacific.

The mighty clash between Japanese and U.S. naval forces in June 1942 ended in a stunning—and surprising—Allied victory.

The Rape of Nanjing, or the Nanjing Massacre, was the 1937 sacking of Nanjing by invading Japanese forces during the Second Sino-Japanese War.

The surprise Japanese assault inflicted heavy losses but failed to strike a decisive blow.

On December 7, 1941, a surprise Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor shocked America. These are the stories of veterans who were there.

From the man who led the evacuation of USS Arizona to the fighter pilot who took to the skies in his pajamas, learn the stories of eight of the many servicemen who distinguished themselves on one of the darkest days in American military history.

Even as millions of Nazi troops massed on his border, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin remained convinced that Adolf Hitler wouldn’t betray him.

Explore eight facts about the brutal and often overlooked Russian front of World War II.

From planning to logistics to weather, how Hitler's Nazi forces fumbled the largest invasion of World War II.

Where is Dunkirk? Dunkirk is located in the north of France, on the shores of the North Sea near the Belgian-French border. The Strait of Dover, where the distance between England and France is just 21 miles across the English Channel, is located to the...

America's largest industry shifted from making cars to bombers, tanks and more—at unparalleled speed.

As Hitler bombed London, its citizens set up makeshift beds in rail cars, on escalators and even in tunnels to get a night's sleep.

The Nazis and Soviets were mortal enemies. Why did they sign a nonaggression pact—and why didn't it last?

The Nazi offensive began with a bang—many of them—and led to a global conflict that would span six years.

The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was a non-aggression pact signed in 1939 by former enemies Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union shortly before World War II broke out.

All changed the course of the war. Some changed the course of the world.

Genocide and atomic weapons only tell part of the story.

From the Battle of the Atlantic to the Battle of Okinawa, see a timeline of World War II's battles.

World leaders. Generals. Industrialists. Strategists. Spies. See who had an outsized impact on the fate of the world.