Curated playlist
Conflicts in 1943
- Allied invasion of SicilyThe Allied invasion of Sicily, known formally as Operation Husky, began on the night of the 9th and the 10th of July 1943 with one of the largest amphibious operations in the history of World War II. More than 26 beaches stretched along…
- Gilbert and Marshall Islands campaignThe Gilbert and Marshall Islands campaign was a series of engagements fought from August 1942 to February 1944, in the Pacific theatre of World War II between the United States and Japan. On a tiny speck of coral called Betio, part of an…
- Smolensk operationThe Smolensk operation, codenamed Suvorov, began at 04:40 on the 7th of August 1943, when Soviet artillery opened a preliminary bombardment along the wooded approaches to the city. Two hours later, infantry went forward. On the first day…
- 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…
- 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…
- Battle of ChangdeThe Battle of Changde began on the 2nd of November 1943, when Japanese General Isamu Yokoyama sent roughly 60,000 troops marching on a Chinese city in Hunan province. Six Japanese divisions moved in from the north and the east. Defending…
- Battle of the DnieperThe Battle of the Dnieper began on the 26th of August 1943, when Red Army divisions started moving along a 1,400 kilometer front. That front stretched from Smolensk to the Sea of Azov. At one point almost four million troops were engaged,…
- 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…
- 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. It unfolded across the flat, mined plains of southwestern Russia in the summer of 1943, as…
- 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…
- Bombing of Hamburg in World War IIThe Bombing of Hamburg in World War II reached its most devastating expression in the last week of July 1943, when a campaign code-named Operation Gomorrah killed an estimated 34,000 people, wounded 180,000 more, and destroyed 60% of the…
- Italian Civil WarOn the night between 24 and the 25th of July 1943, the Grand Council of Fascism approved a motion of no confidence against Benito Mussolini. Dino Grandi had promoted this motion to end the prime minister's leadership. King Victor Emmanuel…
- 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…
- Dnieper–Carpathian offensiveThe Dnieper-Carpathian offensive, fought from late December 1943 to early May 1944, was one of the largest military operations in the history of the Second World War. It stretched across a front of 1,200 kilometers and drew nearly…
- Gran Sasso raidOn the 12th of September 1943, German paratroopers and SS commandos landed gliders on a mountain plateau more than two thousand metres above sea level in central Italy. Their target was a single man in a remote hotel. The operation,…
- Operation KeOperation Ke was the largely successful withdrawal of Japanese forces from Guadalcanal, concluding a six-month struggle that had defined the Pacific War's first year. Between the 14th of January and the 7th of February 1943, Imperial…
- Operation CartwheelOperation Cartwheel, launched in 1943, had a single declared objective: neutralize the Japanese base at Rabaul. That base sat on the northeastern tip of New Britain. Japan had turned it into the nerve center of its entire South Pacific…
- 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…
- 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…
- 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 expected. Soviet forces had swept through German lines for weeks. They had retaken…