American personnel faced a humanitarian catastrophe when they liberated Buchenwald Concentration Camp. 

Brash, beautiful, and driven, aviatrix Jackie Cochran rose from a childhood of poverty to record-breaking heights in aviation.

Geneviève Guilbaud has lived a life of remembrance, an existence always directed against the forgetting and trivialization of the horrors of Nazism.

Known to her enemies as “Lady Death,” Lyudmila Pavlichenko is recognized as the most successful female sniper in history with a total of 309 confirmed kills.

In the bloodiest battle in Marine Corps history, 27 Marines and sailors were awarded the Medal of Honor for action on Iwo Jima. No other campaign surpassed that number.

Felice and Lilly’s story is one of contradictions. One a bohemian writer in the Jewish underground; the other wife to an ardent Nazi, a “good German” Hausfrau, and mother of four. The two women fell in love in wartime Berlin.

In December 1944, Harriet Pickens and Frances Wills became the first African American WAVES officers.

Medgar Evers was one of more than a million African Americans who served in the US military during World War II. He returned home only to face daily discrimination and paid the ultimate price for his fight against inequality.
 

C.L.R. James (1901-1989) called for mass resistance to Mussolini’s invasion of Ethiopia in 1935.

In the bloodiest  battle in Marine Corps history, 27 Marines and sailors were awarded the Medal of Honor for action on Iwo Jima. No other campaign surpassed that number.

Edward Carter was one of seven African Americans who had their earlier awards upgraded to the Medal of Honor on January 13, 1997. Like all but one of the veterans, he did not live to see this honor.

This new series features master’s student papers from the University of New Orleans. The first submission delves into American memory of World War II.