✦ The Archives of the Forgotten ✦
The stories Google won't surface. The names the textbooks missed. The courage history almost buried.
Explore 22 rare accounts from the Second World War.
Patch of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team. The flame torch symbol represented their motto: "Go for Broke." (U.S. Army)
▸ 442nd Regimental Combat Team; Senator Daniel Inouye (Company E)
While their families were confined in American internment camps under Executive Order 9066, Japanese American soldiers of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team became the most decorated unit in American military history. In October 1944, they suffered over 800 casualties rescuing 211 men of the "Lost Battalion" trapped in the Vosges Mountains — 800 lives risked to save 211, by men whose own country had imprisoned their parents.
Read Full Account →What small personal act did the Norwegian saboteurs at Vemork perform for the only civilian they encountered in the basement during Operation Gunnerside?
True accounts of valor, sacrifice, treachery, and survival that rarely appear in mainstream history.
Tuvia, Zus, and Asael Bielski, Otriad Bielski, Naliboki Forest
Three Jewish brothers — Tuvia, Zus, and Asael Bielski — fled to the Naliboki Forest in occupied Belarus in 1942 and organized a partisan group that ultimately s...
Jozef Gabčík & Jan Kubiš, SOE-trained Czech paratroopers
Reinhard Heydrich chaired the Wannsee Conference, architected the Holocaust, and was considered the most dangerous man in the Third Reich after Hitler. In May 1...
Fritz Kolbe ("George Wood"), German Foreign Ministry; Allen Dulles, OSS Bern
In August 1943, German Foreign Office official Fritz Kolbe walked unannounced into the British legation in Bern and offered to hand over top secret Nazi communi...
Raoul Wallenberg, First Secretary, Swedish Legation Budapest
Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg arrived in Budapest in July 1944 with a brief to protect Hungarian Jews. He personally invented the Schutzpass protective pass...
Soldiers of the 853rd Engineer Aviation Battalion (HMT Rohna)
On November 26, 1943, a German guided missile sank the troop transport HMT Rohna off Algeria, killing 1,015 American soldiers — the largest loss of American tro...
Sophie Scholl (b. May 9, 1921 – d. February 22, 1943) and Hans Scholl, White Rose
On February 18, 1943, Munich university student Sophie Scholl and her brother Hans were caught distributing anti-Nazi leaflets by shoving a stack off a balcony....
Joachim Rønneberg and the six-man Gunnerside team, SOE/Kompani Linge
In February 1943, six Norwegian saboteurs trained by British SOE parachuted into the mountains of Telemark, skied for days in Arctic conditions to reach the Vem...
442nd Regimental Combat Team; Senator Daniel Inouye (Company E)
While their families were confined in American internment camps under Executive Order 9066, Japanese American soldiers of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team becam...
Pastor André Trocmé & Magda Trocmé, village of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon
The tiny Huguenot village of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon in the Auvergne region sheltered an estimated 3,000 to 5,000 Jewish and other refugees during the German occu...
The brutal war between Germany and the Soviet Union — the largest land conflict in human history, largely unknown in the West.
1 storiesDisasters, atrocities, and catastrophes that the wartime censor suppressed or that history has simply allowed to fade.
1 storiesThe beaches, the airdrops, the Rangers at Pointe du Hoc — the stories behind June 6, 1944 that you won't find in standard histories.
3 storiesIsland hopping, kamikaze pilots, jungle warfare, and the stories from the Pacific war that rarely make it into European-focused histories.
0 storiesPartisans, underground networks, and ordinary citizens who risked everything to fight Nazi occupation from within.
5 storiesDeception operations, double agents, codebreakers, and the shadow war that decided the fate of the overt one.
6 storiesBears, stray dogs, children, clerks, and conscientious objectors who found themselves at the hinge of history.
1 storiesMen and women who displayed extraordinary courage, received little recognition, and whose names deserve to be remembered.
5 stories