Curated playlist
Battles and operations of World War II involving India
- Battle of YenangyaungIn Chinese, the Battle of Yenangyaung carries a second name: the Great Victory at Yenangyaung. That title signals, from the outset, whose soldiers turned the situation around. The battle lasted from the 16th to the 19th of April 1942,…
- Battle of GazalaThe Battle of Gazala lasted less than four weeks, from the 26th of May to the 21st of June 1942, yet it handed Erwin Rommel the greatest victory of his career. A port city fell in a single day. An entire garrison of 33,000 men was…
- Operation CrusaderOperation Crusader began on the 18th of November 1941, and its target did not even know it was happening. Generalleutnant Erwin Rommel, commanding the Axis forces in North Africa, was away from the front when the British Eighth Army…
- Operation CompassOperation Compass began on the night of the 9th of December 1940 with a force of about 31,000 soldiers, 120 guns, 275 tanks, and sixty armoured cars advancing through the Egyptian desert toward an Italian army more than twice its size.…
- Second Battle of El AlameinAt 21:40 on the 23rd of October 1942, a thousand guns opened fire simultaneously along a 40-mile front in the Egyptian desert near the railway halt of El Alamein. The Second Battle of El Alamein had begun. Over the next 13 days,…
- Italian invasion of EgyptThe Italian invasion of Egypt began on the 13th of September 1940, when an army of tens of thousands crossed from Libya into British-held territory with one prize in mind: the Suez Canal. The operation had a name, Operazione E, and a…
- Spring 1945 offensive in ItalyOperation Grapeshot opened on the 6th of April 1945, when the 15th Allied Army Group unleashed a rolling artillery barrage against German positions along the Senio river in northern Italy. Within 26 days, every Axis soldier in Italy would…
- Arakan campaign (1942–1943)The Arakan campaign of 1942-1943 began with a single, strategic prize in mind: Akyab Island. Fighters and transport aircraft flying from its all-weather airfield could reach most of Central Burma. Medium bombers could range as far as…
- Fall of SingaporeOn the afternoon of the 15th of February 1942, British Lieutenant-General Arthur Percival walked toward the Ford Motor Factory in Singapore bearing a white flag of truce and a Union Jack. He was about to hand over 85,000 soldiers to a…
- First Battle of El AlameinOn the 1st of July 1942, at three in the morning, German infantry advanced east across the Egyptian desert toward a railway station so unremarkable it had no strategic value of its own. That station was El Alamein. But 106 kilometres…
- Anglo-Soviet invasion of IranThe Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran began before dawn on the 25th of August, 1941, when Royal Air Force aircraft crossed into Iranian airspace and dropped bombs on Tehran and Qazvin. The attack had a name: Operation Countenance. It would be…
- North African campaignThe North African campaign of World War II began on the 11th of June 1940 and did not end until the 13th of May 1943 - nearly three years of brutal fighting across some of the most inhospitable terrain on earth. Desert, heat, and vast…
- Malayan campaignThe Malayan campaign began at 04:00 on the 8th of December 1941, when seventeen Japanese bombers struck Singapore in the colony's first ever air raid. Within ten weeks, more than 130,000 Allied soldiers would be dead, wounded, or captured.…
- Battle of ImphalThe Battle of Imphal began in March 1944 with a Japanese army crossing the Chindwin River, convinced it could destroy the Allied forces in northeast India and reshape the entire war. The city of Imphal, capital of Manipur, sat at the heart…
- Battle of KohimaThe Battle of Kohima came down, at one point, to a tennis court. In April 1944, British and Japanese soldiers occupied trenches on opposite sides of a small rectangle of flat ground beside a colonial administrator's bungalow in the Naga…
- Operation U-GoOperation U-Go began on the 6th of March, 1944, when Japanese forces crossed into northeast India on one of the most audacious bets of the Second World War. The man behind it, Lieutenant-General Renya Mutaguchi, had once called this same…
- Battle of Hong KongThe Battle of Hong Kong began on the 8th of December 1941, at almost the exact moment Japan struck Pearl Harbor. Within seventeen days, a British Crown Colony that had stood for a century fell to the Empire of Japan. The garrison defending…
- East African campaign (World War II)On the 9th of May 1936, the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini proclaimed the formation of Italian East Africa from Ethiopia after the Second Italo-Abyssinian War. This new colony combined the colonies of Italian Eritrea and Italian…