Some of the war’s most savage fighting occurred on the Eastern Front, where the Axis powers had set out to conquer the Balkan Peninsula and the immense reaches of the Soviet Union.

In the late 1930s, the U.S. military began developing small boats that could carry troops from ships to open beaches. Andrew Jackson Higgins of New Orleans, who had been manufacturing shallow-water work boats to support oil and gas exploration in the Louisiana bayous, adapted his Eureka Boat to meet the military’s specifications for a landing craft. Designated the Landing Craft Personnel (Large), or LCP(L), it was used in the invasions of Guadalcanal and North Africa in 1942. He was, according to Dwight D. Eisenhower, "the man who won the war for us."