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Curated playlist

Military operations of World War II involving Germany

  • Operation CrusaderErwin Rommel was not even in Africa when Operation Crusader began. A deception plan had him expecting December.
  • Operation QueenMore than 4,500 aircraft bombed the Siegfried Line in 1944, yet American soldiers barely advanced.
  • Operation KutuzovOperation Kutuzov borrowed the name of the general who drove Napoleon out of Russia.
  • Leningrad–Novgorod offensiveOn January 14, 1944, 220,000 shells opened the Soviet push to end the Leningrad siege.
  • Vyborg–Petrozavodsk offensiveMoscow wanted Finland's army destroyed and Finland out of the war. Neither goal was fully met in the 1944 offensive.
  • First Jassy–Kishinev offensiveHistorian David Glantz argues Soviet historians erased a failed 1944 offensive for nearly sixty years.
  • Case AntonFrench sailors sank their own fleet at Toulon rather than let German troops seize it. It was November 1942.
  • Silesian offensivesThe Soviet push on Berlin was delayed about two months in 1945 to protect its flanks.
  • AdlertagAdlertag, German for Eagle Day, was the opening day of Unternehmen Adlerangriff, or Operation Eagle Attack, the Luftwaffe's plan to destroy Britain's Royal Air Force. Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring had promised Hitler results within days,…
  • Falaise pocketPilots flying over the Falaise pocket smelled the carnage from hundreds of feet up.
  • Operation PanzerfaustGermany stopped Hungary from quitting the war in October 1944 with a kidnapping and four Tiger II tanks.
  • Battle of the DnieperIn 1943, Red Army soldiers crossed the Dnieper River on fishing boats and rafts made from barrels and trees.
  • Operation UranusA Soviet general once wrote to Stalin asking him to cancel Operation Uranus. Stalin refused.
  • Vienna offensiveThe Vienna offensive of 1945 reached a city that had already endured continuous bombardment for a full year. Many of its buildings and facilities were damaged or destroyed before a single Soviet soldier arrived. The assault was carried out…
  • KanalkampfOn 4 July 1940, German Stukas bombed Portland harbor with no RAF fighters in sight. It was part of the Kanalkampf.
  • Operation MarsWas Operation Mars a real Soviet offensive or a costly diversion to protect Stalingrad? Historians still disagree.
  • Liberation of ParisThe first troops to break into central Paris in August 1944 were mostly Spanish Republicans.
  • Operation BagrationOperation Bagration began exactly three years after Germany invaded the Soviet Union.
  • 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 AchseOne coded word, "Achse," turned German troops on Italy on September 8, 1943.
  • Second Jassy–Kishinev offensiveIn August 1944, a Soviet attack collapsed the German-Romanian front in Romania within two days.
  • Vistula–Oder offensiveWhy did the Red Army stop 43 miles from an essentially undefended Berlin in early 1945?

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