From the beginning, this was to be a different kind of war—a war not only of conquest but also of annihilation. 

In a lesser-known operation that presaged the horrors of the deadly Battle of Hürtgen Forest, the XIX Corps broke through the Siegfried Line north of Aachen, Germany, in October 1944.

“No greater fighting combat team has ever deployed for battle,” General Douglas McArthur noted after the war of the 158th Infantry Regiment “Bushmasters,” which was made up predominantly of Mexican Americans and members of the Pima and Navajo tribes from Arizona.

In the span of only a few days in October 1943, the US Army Air Forces was forced to reconsider its entire strategic bombing endeavor in the European theater.

Prior to World War II, there was a thriving American wristwatch industry, but it became a casualty of the war.