Curated playlist
Conflicts in 1943
- Allied invasion of SicilyA corpse helped Allied forces invade Sicily in 1943. Fake papers on it pointed German forces toward Greece.
- Gilbert and Marshall Islands campaignOn Betio, a tiny coral island, Japan built over 100 machine gun nests and 500 pillboxes.
- Smolensk operationOn the first day of the Smolensk operation, Soviet troops gained just 4 kilometers.
- Continuation WarFinland fought beside Nazi Germany but insisted it was not an ally. Its leaders said "co-belligerent" instead.
- North African campaignGerman commanders in North Africa read a US attaché's secret reports.
- Battle of ChangdeIn 1943, about 8,000 Chinese soldiers held Changde against two Japanese divisions.
- Battle of the DnieperIn 1943, Red Army soldiers crossed the Dnieper River on fishing boats and rafts made from barrels and trees.
- Battle of Buna–GonaThe Battle of Buna–Gona ended with evidence that starving Japanese defenders had eaten their own dead.
- Battle of KurskBefore the Battle of Kursk, one Soviet front dug 4,200 kilometres of trenches. Stalin knew the attack was coming.
- Guadalcanal campaignTwo Japanese battleships fired 973 shells at Henderson Field, yet planes flew from it the next day.
- Bombing of Hamburg in World War IIIn July 1943, British bombers dropped foil strips to blind German radar over Hamburg. Only 12 aircraft were lost.
- Italian Civil WarThe Italian Civil War left even its own veterans unsure how they had ended up on the side they chose. Nuto Revelli, who became a partisan commander, wrote of the night of the 25th of July: "If on the night of the 25th of July I had been…
- Siege of LeningradBesieged Leningrad played a symphony on the day Hitler had picked for a victory banquet. It was aimed at enemy lines.
- World War II in YugoslaviaYugoslavia's army surrendered in eleven days in April 1941. The war that followed lasted four more years.
- Dnieper–Carpathian offensiveSpring mud helped the Red Army win a huge battle in Ukraine. Most German tanks could not move in it, but the T-34 could.
- Gran Sasso raidGerman gliders landed on a mountain plateau in 1943 to snatch Mussolini from a hotel. The raid ended within minutes.
- Operation KeNearly 36,000 Japanese troops went to Guadalcanal, and only about 11,000 were alive when Operation Ke began.
- Operation CartwheelAllied forces made Japan's Rabaul base harmless without ever storming it. Operation Cartwheel bypassed it instead.
- World War IIHistorians still disagree about the day World War II began. Most choose 1 September 1939, when Germany invaded Poland.
- Bombing of ChongqingChina's wartime capital, Chongqing, endured 268 air raids over nearly seven years.
- Third Battle of KharkovA German counterstrike in February 1943 trapped Soviet spearheads that had just retaken Kharkov.