Within 48 hours of the amphibious assault, over 130,000 GIs and some 17,000 vehicles came ashore. With more troops and equipment arriving daily, the amount of supplies required to support this force grew exponentially. 

Visitors often ask, “Why is the Museum in New Orleans?” The answer to this simple question requires an understanding of the city’s involvement in World War II, politics, and American memory.

The Allied capture of Rome in June 1944 marked the fall of the first Axis capital but was ultimately overshadowed by the D-Day landings in Normandy.

Early on the morning of June 6, 1944, photojournalist Robert Capa landed with American troops on Omaha Beach. Before the day was through, he had taken some of the most famous combat photographs of World War II.

More than eighty years after the B-24D Liberator named Heaven Can Wait crashed off Awar Point in Papua New Guinea, four of its crew have been accounted for and will finally be returned to the United States.

Through partnership, research, and remembrance, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) and The National WWII Museum help ensure that no family is forgotten and no hero is left behind.

The Oyneg Shabes archive, created by historian Emanuel Ringelblum and other Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto, meticulously documented their lives, suffering, and resistance during the Holocaust, ensuring their stories would survive even as they faced annihilation by the Nazis.

The liberation of Mindanao was, in some respects, an unnecessary campaign militarily, but it had important political implications, as it enabled the United States to fulfill its promise of independence to the Philippines. 

Women warrant officers made up a small portion of the Women’s Army Corps but were trailblazers who created opportunities for women in the US Armed Forces for decades to come.

During the war, nearly 1,100 highly trained women tested, flew, and ferried 12,650 aircraft over 60 million miles as Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP).