-
Battle of France/Miracle of Dunkirk
- May 27,1940-Jun 4,1940
- the biggest evacuation in military history.
- evacuation of Allied soldiers during World War II from the beaches and harbour of Dunkirk, in the north of France -As there were not enough ships to transport the huge masses of men stranded near the beaches, the British Admiralty called on all British citizens in possession of any seaworthy vessels to lend their ships to the effort.
-
Battle of Britain
-Jul 10, 1940 – Oct 31, 1940
-The British developed an air defence network that would give them a critical advantage in the Battle of Britain.
-Nearly 3,000 men of the RAF took part in the Battle of Britain – those who Winston Churchill called ‘The Few’. Men came from all over the Commonwealth and occupied Europe – from New Zealand, Australia, Canada, South Africa, Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), Belgium, France, Poland and Czechoslovakia. -
Battle of Leningrad
-September 8,1941–January 27,1944
- A prolonged military blockade undertaken from the south by the German Army Group North, Spanish Blue Division and the Finnish Army in the north
-The death toll from the siege of Leningrad varies anywhere from 600,000 to 2,000,000 That makes the siege ten times deadlier than death from the atomic bombs
- Hitler's original plan suggested to his generals that they should surround the city and and then strategically bombard it with artillery and from the air. -
Operation torch
-Nov 8,1942–Nov 10,1942
- French sailors scuttled many of their navy ships to prevent Hitler from capturing them.
-The French joined up with the Allied forces in North Africa and built a strong force.
-The British convinced the Americans that attacking North Africa would allow the Allied forces to control southern Europe without encountering the Germans. -
Battle of Stalingrad
-1942 – February 2, 1943
-Largest confrontation of World War II in which Germany and its allies fought the Soviet Union for control of the city of Stalingrad in Southern Russia.
- was a result of Hitler’s decision to invade the Soviet Union without any declaration of war.
- The German offensive operation was known as Operation Barbarossa. -
D-Day
-June 1944 to August 1944
-the largest single day amphibious invasion of all time.
-Nazi leader Adolf Hitler was asleep when word of the invasion arrived
-he newly developed drug penicillin went with troops on D-Day and saved thousands of lives.
-Terence Otway,whose unit was tasked with taking the vital Merville battery.He sent 30 members of the AF to local pubs to see if any troops would divulge the top secret plan–none did
-D-day is believed to have been "the begging of the end of WW1" -
Battle of the Bulge
-Dec 16, 1944 – Jan 25, 1945
-The Battle of the Bulge was the last major German offensive campaign on the Western Front during World War II.
- Battle of the Bulge is the third-most lethal American battle by estimated number of americans killed
-A lack of resources and fierce American resistance eventually halted the German advance. -
Battle of Berlin
-Apr 16, 1945 – May 2, 1945
-the final major offensive of the European theatre of World War II.
-Capturing the German capital of Berlin would be of enormous symbolic and political importance. Stalin wanted his forces to do it, while Churchill wanted to stop them.
-Propaganda minister Goebbels labeled the city “Fortress Berlin”, but it was not much of a fortress. Its defenders were 90,000 children of the Hitler Youth and old men of the Volkssturm, Germany’s equivalent of the Home Guard.
