Bob Hope and the road to GI Joe

There was nowhere Bob Hope wouldn’t go to entertain the best audience he ever had-America’s service men and women. By Richard Sassaman. Full story

Trap with a gap

Two months after D-Day, the Allies were poised to capture two German armies near Falaise, France-if they could untangle British-American red tape. By Brian John Murphy. Full story

The way we were back then

Toughened by the Great Depression, and with one foot planted firmly in the world of horses and coal even as they motored into a high-tech future, 1940s Americans knew who they were. Enter their world through this revealing photo essay. By Judy P. Sopronyi

Gridiron war

Pearl Harbor’s bombs nearly sank American football as draft-exempt men tried to fill the cleats of MVPs who went off to war. By Eric Ethier

Ken Burns and the ‘Good’ War

Ken Burns’s PBS series The War presents World War II as earth’s darkest hour-and the Americans who endured it as people whose stories we need to hear. By Tom Huntington. Full story

To top it off, follow wise-cracking Alabama twins in uniform all the way to Germany; visit General Eisenhower’s home in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania; marvel at bewitching actress Dusty Anderson; (don’t!) smoke a cigarette like seemingly everyone else did; and find out how the German song "Lili Marlene" became universally popular in a decidedly anti-German world..