World War II Battles (Meaning and Explanation)

We explain what were the main battles of World War II.

At the beginning of the war, the *Blitzkrieg* German allowed rapid advances.

What was World War II?

World War II was a military conflict that affected much of the world and faced the axis powers (Led by Germany, Italy and Japan) With the allies (Headed by the United Kingdom, France, the Soviet Union, the United States and China).

Throughout the war, which It began in September 1939 and ended in September 1945the sides had variations in their conformation. For example, France was conquered by Nazi Germany in 1940 and was divided into an occupied zone and a collaborative regime until 1944, and the Soviet Union and the United States entered war with the powers of the axis only in 1941.

World War II battles were fought in several scenariosmainly the Western Front (in western Europe), the Eastern Front (in Eastern Europe), the Mediterranean front (which included North Africa and southern Italy) and the fronts of East Asia and the Pacific.

In Europe, the war ended with the defeat of Germanywhich was forced to sign the surrender on May 7 and 8, 1945. Anyway, The end of the war just came with Japanese surrender on September 2, 1945shortly after the American launch of two atomic bombs.

See also: Military Chiefs of World War II

The Battle of France (1940)

Shortly after invading Poland in September 1939, the Wehrmacht (German armed forces) began the occupation of Denmark and Norway. In May 1940, decided to apply the Blitzkrieg or “lightning war” to invade the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Belgium and France.

Before the rapid German advance, which demonstrated the ineffectiveness of the French defensive system known as “Maginot Line”, British and French troops had to be evacuated from Dunkerque, In northern France, towards England. On June 14, German troops entered Paris.

THE MARISCAL GOVERNMENT Philippe Pétain signed the armistice on June 22 and France was divided into a German occupation zone and a collaborative regime based in Vichy. Meanwhile, from exile, General Charles de Gaulle called the French to resist and became leader of the Free France movement.

“Lightning war” (Blitzkrieg). The Blitzkrieg It was the new military tactics introduced by the German army at the beginning of World War II. Its main novelty was the use of tanks armored divisions, the PANZERDIVISIONENwhich allowed to penetrate very quickly into enemy defense systems.

Motorized artillery and infantry followed the rapid advance of the tanks. The system was completed with air support, particularly the Junkers Ju 87 Stuka attack aircraft, which prevented the enemy from sending reinforcements to the front and terrified their troops.
These tactics were used with enormous success in the victorious campaigns of the first years of the war.

The battle of England (1940)

After the French defeat against Germany, the United Kingdom was in the position of the only leader of the allies. The British prime minister, Winston Churchill, was willing to do everything possible to defeat Adolf Hitler, who had reached almost absolute control over Europe.

The fire test was The battle of England, a series of air fighting starring the Luftwaffe (German Air Force) and the Royal British Air Force. It began in July 1940 with German attacks on ships and British ports and in August it became an offensive against air bases, airplane factories and radar stations.

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Hitler's goal was to weaken the British Air Force and invade England from the occupied area of France. However, British aviation was superior in speed and, together with the use of radar, allowed the defense to be successful. When the Luftwaffe bombed civil areas in London, the Royal British Air Force replied with a bombing on Berlin.

From now on, The luftwaffe dedicated himself to bombing citiesincluding London, in night attacks that continued a few months and were known in the United Kingdom as Blitz. However, The operation to invade England was abandoned in October 1940.

See also: World War II aircraft

The fine-Soviet war (1939-1940)

The fine-Soviet war, also known as the Winter War, lasted From November 1939 to March 1940. It began three months after the start of World War II but a year and a half before the Soviet Union went into war with Nazi Germany.

After signing the Pact of German-Soviet aggression in August 1939, The Soviet Union demanded in Finland various territories and military facilities. The refusal of the Finnish government precipitated the Soviet aggression. Before the world surprise, the Finnish defense paralyzed the massive attack of the Iosif Stalin troops.

However, the resistance lasted a short time and, finally, on March 12, 1940 Finland signed a peace that meant the loss of the western region of Carelia and the construction of a Soviet naval base on the Hanko Peninsula.

The battle of Stalingrad (1942-1943)

The German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 achieved important conquests but failed in its attempt to occupy Moscow and Leningrad. Unable to launch an offensive of the same magnitude in 1942, Hitler chose to move on to a limited attack instead of consolidating the attached annexations.

The attack went south in order to access the Caucasus oil. Initially, German “lightning war” was a success and Wehrmacht's troops advanced safely. However, there was a time when the German army was divided into two forces, with two objectives: an objective was to occupy the city of Stalingrad in the Volga, a key point towards the Ural Montes (the natural border between Europe and Asia, which the Nazis wanted to dominate), and another goal was to continue the advance towards the south, towards the Caucasus.

This division of forces was fatal since Nazi troops found a growing Soviet resistance. Hitler decided to concentrate on occupying Stalingrad. His army attacked the Soviet house by house and arrived in the city center.

However, the army of the German general Friedrich Paulus, increasingly exhausted and demoralized In the middle of Russian winter, he could not prevent the wrapping maneuver of the Sovietcommanded by General Georgy Zhukov. On November 23, the German army was totally surrounded. More than a quarter of a million German soldiers and other axis countries had been surrounded. Hitler ordered Paulus to continue resistance.

Finally, on January 31, 1943, Paulus signed the surrender. The battle had just finished He marked a turning point in the war. From now on, the German army continued backward in the Eastern Front until its complete defeat in 1945.

The Battle of Kursk (1943)

In the summer of 1943, After the defeat in Stalingrad, the German troops launched an attack near the Soviet city of Kursk in which more than nine hundred thousand men and two thousand seven hundred tanks participated.

The Soviets knew how to maneuver to resist the German onslaught, who found anti -tank defenses and mined fields. In mid -July, The Soviet army counteratacious and won the victory.

Kursk's battle was the biggest tank battle in history: About six thousand tanks, two million soldiers and more than four thousand planes participated in it. Marked a decisive moment then ended the offensive capacity of German troops on the eastern front and opened the way to the great Soviet offensives of the 1944 and 1945.

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The battle of Midway (1942)

The American victory in Midway inclined the balance in favor of the allies.

In Oriental Asia and the Pacific, the Empire of Japan expanded successfully since before the beginning of the war. On December 7, 1941 he attacked the American Naval Base of Pearl Harbor, in Hawaii. This fact caused the entrance of the United States into the war and, especially, its intervention in the Pacific Front.

The Japanese expansion was arrested in the Midway Aeronaval Battle that was fought between June 4 and 7, 1942. The combat aircraft of the Japanese imperial navy began an attack against the US bases on the Midway Islands that was intercepted by the United States Navy planes.

The American victory meant for Japan the destruction of four aircraft carriers, a heavy cruise and more than three hundred planes, in addition to the death of around three thousand men. From this moment on, the Empire of Japan was weakened and lost the initiative. The allies achieved successive victories, such as the Guadalcanal campaign between August 1942 and February 1943 and the offensives of 1944.

In 1945, the allies won in the battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa, which left a elevated balance of fatal victims, both Japanese and American. The war in the Pacific Front ended when the United States threw atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the Soviet Union declared war on Japan. The surrender was signed on September 2, 1945.

It can serve you: attack on Pearl Harbor

The battle of El Alamein (1942)

In August 1942, Bernard Law Montgomery was appointed commander of the VIII British Army in Egypt. The United Kingdom Prime Minister Winston Churchill ordered a massive supply of troops, weapons and ammunition With the intention of going back to the Army of the German Marshal Erwin Rommel.

Montgomery used prudent tactics and made different maneuvers to deceive Rommel. Finally, On October 23, 1942, British troops triggered the attack.

After several days of hard fighting, especially complex by the mines fields prepared by the Germans, On November 3, Rommel's troops had to retire Despite Hitler's repeated orders that they had to resist at all costs.

The battle of El Alamein was key in the outcome of war in North Africa. Anglo-American landing in Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia a few days later allowed the definitive defeat of Afrika Korps German and its Italian allies, and the ally control of North Africa. This control allowed the subsequent attack on Italy that led to the fall of Benito Mussolini in July 1943.

The Battle of Monteassino (1944)

The Benedictine Abbey of Monteassino was in a strategic place 130 kilometers south of Rome. After the allied landing in southern Italy, German troops used the abbey as a point from which to stop the allied advance to the north.

From January until May 1944, German paratrooper troops resisted the repeated attacks of New Zealand, British, Canadian, French, American and Poles and Indian groups framed in the British Army.

The battle was the complete destruction of one of the most famous monasteries in Europe, founded by Benito de Nursia in the seventh century, especially by the action of allied bombing. After overcoming German resistance, allied troops continued their advance towards Romewhich was taken on June 4, 1944.

See more in: Normandy landing

The maquis and the popular insurrection of Paris (1944)

Within Europe occupied by Nazi Germany, various armed resistance groups emerged who used all kinds of tactics to harass the German occupants.

THE BATTLE OF THE ARDENAS (1944-1945)

After the Normandy invasion in June 1944, the Allied troops starred in a rapid advance towards northern France and Belgium throughout the summer. However, the impulse decreased in autumn, when the troops commanded by General Dwight Eisenhower had to cover a front of more than 600 kilometers from the North Sea to the Swiss border.

The Germans launched a counteroffensive surprise in December 1944 In the wooded Belgian region of the Ardenas, while the bad weather prevented ally aviation from intervening. However, Despite a small initial advance, in January 1945 the Germans had to go back After hard fighting. Hitler's army had used much of his resources in the latter and desperate attempt to recover the initiative in the Western Front.

The Battle of Berlin (1945)

After hard bombings and fighting, the Red Army got the surrender of Berlin.

The last great battle in Europe during World War II was The confrontation between the Red Army and the German troops in Berlin in April and the beginning of May 1945. The Red Army had been advancing in the East since 1944. In January 1945 he arrived in Warsaw, the capital of Poland, and in April he had already concentrated a great military force on the outskirts of Berlin.

The Soviet troops besieged Berlin and submitted it to a constant bombing. The defense of the city was in charge of military forces that included young people recruited from the Hitler youth (a youth group of the Nazi party). Simultaneously, US and British forces advanced victorious by various German cities from the west.

The tanks and red army troops entered the city and filed fighting against German defenders. They also committed crimes against the civilian population. Finally, On April 30, 1945 Hitler took his life in his bunker and on May 2 the city defenders surrendered. The unconditional surrender of Germany was signed on May 7 and 8, 1945.

The battle of Berlin caused the death of almost one hundred thousand Soviet soldiers and a similar number of German soldiers, in addition to tens of thousands of dead German civilians.

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References

Beevor, A. (2012). World War II. Past and present.
Hughes, Ta & Royde-Smith, JG (2023). World War II. Britannica Encyclopedia. https://www.britannica.com/
Stone, N. (2013). Brief history of World War II. Ariel.