Skip to content
Curated category

Encirclements in World War II

  • 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…
  • Ruhr pocketThe Ruhr pocket ended with a field marshal shooting himself in a forest rather than face Allied captivity. In April 1945, some 317,000 German soldiers were…
  • 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…
  • Falaise pocketOn the 25th of July 1944, American forces launched Operation Cobra near Saint-Lô. This offensive shattered German defenses and pushed troops south into open…
  • Battle of Białystok–MinskField Marshal Fedor von Bock commanded Army Group Center as it prepared to strike from Poland on the 22nd of June 1941. The Wehrmacht's armored forces…
  • Operation UranusOperation Uranus began at 07:20 Moscow time on the 19th of November 1942, when Soviet artillery commanders received a single codeword: "Siren".
  • 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 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 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.
  • 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…
  • Siege of BudapestThe Siege of Budapest lasted exactly fifty days. When it ended on the 13th of February 1945, more than eighty percent of the city's buildings had been…
  • Third Battle of KharkovOn the 2nd of February 1943, the German 6th Army surrendered at Stalingrad. This event freed six Soviet armies under Konstantin Rokossovsky to launch new…