Curated playlist
Conflicts in 1942
- 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 campaign in North Africa. Fought south of El Alamein in the Egyptian desert, it was…
- 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 MoOperation Mo, the Japanese plan to seize Port Moresby and sever Australia's connection to American support, was not improvised. Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, the commander-in-chief of the Combined Fleet, lent his authority to the scheme. Its…
- 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,…
- Continuation WarThe Continuation War placed Finland in one of the strangest positions of the entire Second World War: a small Nordic democracy fighting alongside Nazi Germany, insisting it was not actually an ally. On the 25th of June 1941, Finland…
- 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…
- 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…
- Operation TorchOperation Torch began at dawn on the 8th of November 1942, when Allied forces waded ashore on three separate coastlines across French North Africa at the same moment. The question hanging over every planner in London and Washington was not…
- Doolittle RaidThe Doolittle Raid on the 18th of April 1942 sent 16 Army bombers off the deck of a Navy aircraft carrier to strike the Japanese capital of Tokyo and other cities on Honshu. No American aircraft had ever attacked the Japanese archipelago…
- Indian Ocean raidThe Indian Ocean raid, known to the Japanese as Operation C, lasted just eleven days in April 1942, yet it shook the foundations of British imperial power in Asia. Five aircraft carriers under Admiral Chuichi Nagumo swept out of Staring…
- 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.…
- Operation PedestalOperation Pedestal began with sealed envelopes, handed to the masters of fourteen merchant ships and marked 'Not to be opened until 08:00 hours August 10.' Inside each was a message from First Lord of the Admiralty Albert Alexander,…
- Operation UranusOperation Uranus began at 07:20 Moscow time on the 19th of November 1942, when Soviet artillery commanders received a single codeword: "Siren". What followed was an 80-minute bombardment from 3,500 guns and mortars, directed almost…
- Battle of Buna–GonaThe Battle of Buna-Gona lasted from the 16th of November 1942 to the 22nd of January 1943. It ended with evidence that starving Japanese defenders had cannibalised their own dead. Australian and United States troops had driven Japan back…
- Case BlueCase Blue, known in German as Fall Blau, was the Wehrmacht's grand plan for the summer of 1942 on the Eastern Front. It ran from the 28th of June to the 24th of November 1942. At its heart was a single, staggering ambition: seize the…
- Operation MarsOperation Mars consumed tens of thousands of Soviet lives in under four weeks, then disappeared from official Soviet history for decades. The offensive ran from the 25th of November to the 20th of December 1942, fought around the Rzhev…
- Siege of Sevastopol (1941–1942)On the 4th of July 1942, the last organized defenses of Sevastopol collapsed after 250 days of siege. When German and Romanian forces finally raised their flags over the port city that day, they had fired nearly 50,000 tons of artillery…
- Guadalcanal campaignThe Guadalcanal campaign began on the 7th of August 1942 with 11,000 U.S. Marines wading ashore between Koli Point and Lunga Point on a remote jungle island most Americans had never heard of. By 16:00 the following day, they had seized a…
- Battle of Changsha (1941–1942)The Third Battle of Changsha began on the 24th of December 1941, seventeen days after Pearl Harbor. Japanese General Korechika Anami believed the city was "inadequately defended." His forces cut through Chinese lines at first. His…
- Battle of MadagascarThe Battle of Madagascar began on the 5th of May 1942, when British forces landed on a remote island in the Indian Ocean that most people had never given a second thought. Madagascar was Vichy French territory, officially neutral in the…
- Battle of the Coral SeaThe Battle of the Coral Sea, fought from the 4th to the 8th of May 1942, stands apart from every naval engagement that preceded it. The opposing fleets never sighted each other. Neither side fired a gun directly at the other. All the…
- Dutch East Indies campaignThe Dutch East Indies campaign of 1941-1942 is the reason Pearl Harbor happened. Japan needed oil. Its armed forces and economy together could not produce even 10% of their domestic oil needs. The islands of what is now Indonesia were the…
- Kokoda Track campaignThe Kokoda Track campaign was fought between July and November 1942 in the Australian Territory of Papua, and it nearly cost Australia the war in the Pacific. At its most desperate point, Japanese forces stood within 32 km of Port Moresby,…
- Siege of LeningradThe Siege of Leningrad lasted 872 days. From September 1941 to January 1944, the Soviet Union's second largest city was encircled by German and Finnish forces, cut off from food, fuel, and rescue. A prewar population of 3.2 million people…
- World War II in YugoslaviaWorld War II in Yugoslavia was not one war but several, all happening at the same time. On the 6th of April 1941, the German Luftwaffe bombed Belgrade, and within little more than ten days the Royal Yugoslav Army surrendered…
- Battle of the Kerch PeninsulaThree Soviet armies ceased to exist as fighting forces in the Battle of the Kerch Peninsula. The campaign ran from the 26th of December 1941 to the 20th of May 1942, across the eastern tip of the Crimean Peninsula. Erich von Manstein's…
- Crimean campaignThe Crimean campaign began on the 26th of September 1941, when German and Romanian forces swept onto the Crimean Peninsula as part of Operation Barbarossa. What followed was not a swift conquest. It was a grinding, multi-year struggle that…
- 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 positions east of the Ukrainian city. What followed was one of the most…
- World War IIWorld War II killed between 60 and 75 million people, making it the deadliest conflict in history. Tanks and aircraft reshaped the battlefield, and aircraft carried out the strategic bombing of cities. Aircraft also delivered the only…
- Siege of Malta (World War II)The Siege of Malta was a military campaign that ran from June 1940 to November 1942, pitting the air and naval forces of Italy and Nazi Germany against the defenders of a small British island in the heart of the Mediterranean. At its…
- Battle of Rabaul (1942)The Battle of Rabaul began before dawn on the 23rd of January, 1942, when a South Seas Force of around 5,000 Japanese troops entered Simpson Harbour and started coming ashore on the island of New Britain. The Australian garrison defending…
- Bombing of ChongqingThe Bombing of Chongqing began on the 18th of February 1938 and did not end until the 19th of December 1944. For nearly seven years, the wartime capital of China endured 268 air raids. Some brought a few dozen aircraft. Others brought over…
- 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. By the time they were counted, 3,623 of the 6,086 who had landed were dead, wounded,…
- Winter campaign of 1941–1942The winter campaign of 1941-1942 began on the 5th of December 1941, and the Soviet Union was fighting for its life. Nazi Germany had launched Operation Barbarossa months earlier, driving deep into Soviet territory. Now, as temperatures…