Skip to content
Curated category

Battles of World War II involving Germany

  • Battle of Alam el HalfaThe Battle of Alam el Halfa lasted just seven days, from the 30th of August to the 5th of September 1942, and yet it settled the fate of the entire Axis…
  • 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…
  • Battle of Nuremberg (1945)The Battle of Nuremberg lasted five days in April 1945, and it cost the United States four of those days just to capture a city center that was already…
  • Battle of UmanThe Battle of Uman began on the 15th of July 1941 and lasted just over three weeks, yet in that time the Wehrmacht encircled and destroyed two entire Soviet…
  • 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…
  • Omaha BeachOmaha Beach was one of five Allied beach landing sectors during the amphibious assault component of Operation Overlord on the 6th of June 1944.
  • Operation SonnenblumeOperation Sonnenblume, which translates to Operation Sunflower, began in February 1941 with a question no British commander had seriously asked: what if the…
  • Smolensk operationThe second Smolensk operation began on the 7th of August 1943. General Andrei Yeremenko commanded the Kalinin Front while Vasily Sokolovsky led the Western…
  • Battle of Smolensk (1941)The Battle of Smolensk began on the 10th of July 1941, roughly 400 kilometers west of Moscow, and what unfolded over the next two months would alter the…
  • 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…
  • Battle of the BulgeThe Battle of the Bulge began at 05:30 on the 16th of December 1944, when 1,600 German artillery pieces opened fire along an 80-mile front in the forested…
  • German invasion of GreeceThe German invasion of Greece began in the early hours of the 28th of October 1940, not with German troops but with an Italian ultimatum delivered by…
  • Battle of Białystok–MinskThe Battle of Białystok-Minsk began on the 22nd of June 1941, the moment Germany launched Operation Barbarossa against the Soviet Union.
  • First Battle of KharkovIn the fall of 1941, Kharkov stood as a vital rail and air link connecting Ukraine to Crimea, the Caucasus, the Dnieper region, and the Donbass.
  • German invasion of the NetherlandsThe German invasion of the Netherlands began in the pre-dawn hours of the 10th of May 1940. Within five days, the main Dutch forces had surrendered.
  • Operation Northwind (1944)Adolf Hitler spoke to division commanders at his Adlerhorst command complex on the 28th of December 1944. He declared that this attack had a very clear…
  • German invasion of Denmark (1940)The German invasion of Denmark on the 9th of April 1940 lasted approximately six hours, making it one of the shortest military campaigns of the Second World…
  • Battle of KurskThe Battle of Kursk holds a distinction no other engagement in all of recorded warfare can claim: it is the single largest battle in human history.
  • Battle of Kiev (1941)The Battle of Kiev produced what historians have called the largest encirclement in the history of warfare by number of troops.
  • Battle of KönigsbergThe Battle of Königsberg took four days, but a siege had gripped the city since late January 1945 long before that. Soviet forces of the 3rd Belorussian…
  • Invasion of YugoslaviaThe invasion of Yugoslavia began on the 6th of April 1941. German-led Axis forces attacked the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in what became known as the April War…
  • Battle of BerlinAt 8:30 in the morning on the 22nd of April 1945, ninety-six shells fell on the centre of Berlin in the space of a few minutes.
  • Battle of CreteThe Battle of Crete began at 08:00 on the 20th of May 1941, when dozens of Junkers Ju 52 aircraft disgorged German paratroopers into the skies above Maleme…
  • Battle of the Kerch PeninsulaOn the evening of the 25th of December 1941, Soviet forces packed into small fishing trawlers and began crossing the Kerch Strait from the Taman Peninsula.
  • Capture of HamburgThe Western Front collapsed in the spring of 1945. Army Group B, led by Walter Model, fell to American forces near the Rhine River.
  • Second Battle of KharkovThe Second Battle of Kharkov began at 6:30 in the morning on the 12th of May 1942, with a concentrated hour-long artillery bombardment crashing into German…
  • Dieppe RaidThe Dieppe Raid took place on the 19th of August 1942, and within ten hours it was over. More than 6,000 men had crossed the English Channel in the night.
  • Third Battle of KharkovThe Third Battle of Kharkov began on the 19th of February 1943, when Field Marshal Erich von Manstein launched a counterstrike that few in the Red Army…