Curated playlist
Military history of Canada during World War II
- 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…
- Operation OverlordOperation Overlord was the codename assigned to the Allied liberation of German-occupied Western Europe, beginning on the 6th of June 1944. Nearly 160,000 troops crossed the English Channel on that single day. A 1,200-plane airborne…
- Manhattan ProjectThe Manhattan Project built the first nuclear weapons in human history, yet it operated in such secrecy that most of its nearly 130,000 employees had no idea what they were working on. A sprawling research and development program led by…
- Normandy landingsOn the 6th of June 1944, roughly 160,000 troops crossed the English Channel in a single day. They came ashore along a 50-mile stretch of French coastline divided into five sectors: Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno, and Sword. By the end of that…
- Operation Market GardenOperation Market Garden launched on the 17th of September 1944, and for two days it looked like it might actually work. Around 35,000 to 40,000 airborne soldiers dropped from the sky over German-occupied Netherlands while a column of…
- Battle of FranceThe Battle of France began on the 10th of May 1940, and within six weeks an empire that had survived the carnage of the First World War had collapsed. France, the largest army on the continent, with more tanks than Germany and a defensive…
- Allied invasion of ItalyThe Allied invasion of Italy began at half past three in the morning on the 9th of September 1943. A loudspeaker on the beach at Paestum called out in English: "Come on in and give up. We have you covered." The soldiers of the U.S. 36th…
- 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…
- Operation DragoonOperation Dragoon began in the predawn hours of the 15th of August 1944, when 1,300 Allied bombers from Italy, Sardinia, and Corsica roared toward the sun-bleached coastline of Provence. By 06:00 that morning, the bombs were falling. By…
- Western Allied invasion of GermanyThe Western Allied invasion of Germany reached its decisive turning point on the 22nd of March 1945, when American troops crossed the Rhine under a bright moon with almost no resistance at Nierstein. Seven startled German soldiers…
- Battle of BritainThe Battle of Britain earned its name before a single aircraft took to the skies in its defense. On the 18th of June 1940, Winston Churchill stood before the House of Commons and declared: "What General Weygand called the 'Battle of…
- Battle of the AtlanticThe Battle of the Atlantic was, by Winston Churchill's own admission, the thing that frightened him most during the entire Second World War. "I was even more anxious about this battle," he later wrote, "than I had been about the glorious…