Campaigns

The invasion of Poland

1 September to 6 October 1939

Germany invaded on 1 September 1939, with armoured columns converging on Warsaw. Britain and France declared war but did not attack in force. On 17 September the Soviet Union invaded from the east. Warsaw surrendered on 28 September after heavy bombing, and the last Polish field forces laid down their arms on 6 October.

The cost. About 16,000 German dead. About 66,000 Polish soldiers dead and 694,000 captured by Germany. An estimated 10,000 to 25,000 civilians died in the siege of Warsaw.

The Battle of France

10 May to 25 June 1940

German infantry and engineers forced the Meuse at Sedan on 13 May, and the panzers reached the Channel a week later, cutting off the Allied armies in Belgium. More than 330,000 troops escaped from Dunkirk. Paris was occupied on 14 June, and France signed an armistice on 22 June.

The cost. About 27,000 German dead. About 50,000 to 90,000 French dead and 1.8 million captured.

The Battle of Britain

July to October 1940

The Luftwaffe set out to destroy the Royal Air Force as the first step towards an invasion. Eagle Day, 13 August, opened the main assault. Radar, Fighter Command's control system and Britain's aircraft factories kept the squadrons flying, and on 7 September the bombers turned on London. By the end of October the daylight battle was lost, and the Blitz went on by night.

The cost. About 1,500 RAF aircrew and 2,600 German airmen killed. About 23,000 British civilians died in the bombing by the end of 1940.

The invasion of Yugoslavia and Greece

6 to 30 April 1941

Germany attacked Yugoslavia and Greece on 6 April 1941, bombing Belgrade on the first morning. Yugoslavia surrendered on 17 April. In Greece, German armour went through the mountain passes and around the Metaxas Line, forcing British and Commonwealth troops into retreat. Athens fell on 27 April, and most of the British force was evacuated by sea.

The cost. About 1,300 German dead. About 13,000 Greek dead since the Italian invasion of October 1940. Thousands of civilians were killed in the bombing of Belgrade.

The invasion of Britain

Planned for September 1940 · never fought

No German army crossed the Channel. The Luftwaffe failed to win control of the air over Britain, and on 17 September 1940 Hitler postponed the invasion indefinitely. The invasion barges were dispersed, and German planning turned east, towards the Soviet Union.

Operation Barbarossa

22 June to December 1941

The largest invasion in history began on 22 June 1941. Three German army groups took the Red Army by surprise. Minsk fell within a week and Smolensk by mid-July, and vast encirclements took prisoners by the hundred thousand. But the Soviet Union did not collapse, and by autumn the German timetable had slipped.

The cost. About 200,000 German dead by December. More than 800,000 Soviet soldiers dead and over 3 million captured, most of whom died in captivity. Behind the front, SS killing squads began the mass murder of Soviet Jews.

The encirclement of Kiev

23 August to 26 September 1941

Hitler turned Guderian's panzers south from the road to Moscow. They made first contact with Kleist's armour on 14 September and closed the ring by 16 September, trapping four Soviet armies that Stalin had refused to withdraw. Kiev fell on 19 September and the pocket was cleared within a week. It was the largest encirclement of the war, and it cost the Germans weeks before Moscow.

The cost. About 700,000 Soviet casualties, more than 600,000 of them killed, missing or captured. Days after the city fell, nearly 34,000 Jews were murdered at Babi Yar.

The Battle of Moscow

2 October 1941 to 7 January 1942

Operation Typhoon opened on 2 October with huge encirclements at Vyazma and Bryansk. Then the autumn rain turned the roads to mud, and the frost that followed froze engines and guns. Tula never fell. German patrols came within about 30 kilometres of the Kremlin, and on 5 December the Red Army, reinforced from the east, struck back.

The cost. Estimates run from 650,000 to over a million Soviet casualties, and 170,000 to 400,000 German.

The Second Battle of Kharkov

12 to 28 May 1942

On 12 May the Red Army attacked out of the Izyum salient to retake Kharkov. Five days later Kleist's armour struck the base of the salient from the south, under the plan called Fridericus. Stalin refused to halt the offensive until too late. By 22 May the pocket was closed, and the road to Stalingrad and the Caucasus lay open.

The cost. About 277,000 Soviet casualties, some 171,000 of them killed, missing or captured. About 20,000 to 30,000 German casualties.

The Battle of Stalingrad

23 August 1942 to 2 February 1943

The Sixth Army reached the Volga on 23 August, the day German bombers set the city ablaze. The fight went on street by street and factory by factory, with the Soviet 62nd Army clinging to a strip along the river. From 19 November two Soviet pincers encircled the attackers. The last of them surrendered on 2 February 1943.

The cost. More than a million Soviet casualties. About 800,000 Axis casualties, with 91,000 taken prisoner, of whom about 6,000 came home. Tens of thousands of civilians died.

The drive to the Caucasus

25 July 1942 to January 1943

Army Group A crossed the Don in late July 1942, racing for the Soviet oil fields. Maikop fell on 9 August, its wells already wrecked, and German mountain troops planted a flag on Mount Elbrus on 21 August. Then fuel ran short and the mountains slowed everything. The army never reached Grozny or Baku, and with the Sixth Army trapped at Stalingrad it had to pull back.

The cost. Hundreds of thousands of casualties on both sides. Of the oil the campaign was fought for, Germany got almost none.

The Third Battle of Kharkov

February to March 1943

After Stalingrad the Red Army drove west, taking Rostov and then Kharkov in mid-February 1943. Manstein let the Soviet spearheads overextend, then struck their flanks with reformed panzer divisions. Kharkov was retaken on 15 March and Belgorod soon after. The spring thaw then stopped both sides, leaving the bulge around Kursk.

The cost. Tens of thousands of casualties on both sides, with the Soviet losses far the heavier.

Operation Citadel

5 to 16 July 1943

Operation Citadel attacked both sides of the Kursk bulge on 5 July 1943, into some of the deepest defences ever built. The northern pincer stalled within days. In the south, the armour came close to Prokhorovka, where a vast tank battle was fought on 12 July. With the Allies landing in Sicily and the Red Army striking elsewhere, Hitler called it off.

The cost. About 54,000 German and 178,000 Soviet casualties. It was the last German strategic offensive in the east.

The invasion of Sicily

10 July to 17 August 1943

Operation Husky landed Patton's Seventh Army and Montgomery's Eighth Army on 10 July 1943. Patton swept west to Palermo while the British fought slowly past Etna. On 25 July Mussolini was overthrown. Patton reached Messina on 17 August, but the Axis had already taken more than 100,000 men and much equipment across the strait.

The cost. About 25,000 Allied casualties. About 165,000 Axis casualties, most of them Italian prisoners.

The Battle of the Dnieper

August to December 1943

After Kursk, the Germans fell back behind the Dnieper and called it the Panther Line. It was never finished. Soviet troops crossed the river on rafts and in small boats on a wide front from late September, holding bridgeheads under fire. Kiev was freed on 6 November. A German counter-attack retook Zhitomir, but the line had been broken for good.

The cost. Well over a million Soviet casualties. German losses are uncertain, but ran to hundreds of thousands.

The Anzio beachhead

22 January to 4 June 1944

Allied troops landed at Anzio on 22 January 1944, but paused to dig in instead of driving inland. On 16 February the German counter-attack, Operation Fischfang, drove down the road from Albano and came close to splitting the beachhead. Massed guns and naval fire stopped it. The stalemate lasted until May, and Rome fell on 4 June.

The cost. About 43,000 Allied and 40,000 German casualties in the whole battle.

Operation Bagration

22 June to 19 August 1944

On 22 June 1944, three years to the day after the invasion, the Red Army attacked Army Group Centre. Hitler's orders to hold fixed fortress towns left whole corps to be surrounded at Vitebsk and Bobruisk. Minsk was freed on 3 July. In two months the front moved some 500 kilometres west, to the edge of Warsaw.

The cost. About 180,000 Soviet soldiers dead or missing. About 400,000 German casualties. It was the worst defeat in German military history.

The Battle of Normandy

6 June to 25 August 1944

On 6 June 1944 about 156,000 Allied troops landed in Normandy, by sea on five beaches and by air behind them. The fight in the hedgerows and around Caen lasted far longer than planned. American forces broke out at St-Lô in late July, and much of the German army in Normandy was destroyed in the Falaise pocket. Paris was free by 25 August.

The cost. More than 200,000 Allied casualties and about 300,000 or more German. Some 20,000 French civilians were killed.

Operation Market Garden

17 to 25 September 1944

Montgomery's plan dropped three airborne divisions to seize the bridges of the Netherlands, with British armour racing up a single road to join them. Most bridges around Eindhoven and the bridge at Nijmegen were won, but the road was too slow and two SS panzer divisions lay at Arnhem. The British paratroops there held out for nine days. Fewer than a quarter got out.

The cost. About 17,000 Allied and between 3,000 and 13,000 German casualties. In the famine that followed in the occupied Netherlands, about 20,000 people died.

The Battle of the Bulge

16 December 1944 to 25 January 1945

Three German armies attacked through the Ardennes on 16 December 1944, under low cloud that kept Allied aircraft on the ground. St. Vith held out for days and fell on 21 December, and Bastogne was surrounded but never taken. German spearheads ran out of fuel short of the Meuse. When the skies cleared, the attack was doomed.

The cost. About 19,000 Americans killed, among some 89,000 casualties. Between 67,000 and 125,000 German casualties. About 3,000 Belgian and Luxembourg civilians died.

The Vistula-Oder Offensive

12 January to 2 February 1945

From bridgeheads on the Vistula, the Red Army attacked on 12 January 1945 with an overwhelming advantage in men, tanks and guns. Warsaw, by then a ruined city, was freed on 17 January. Soviet troops reached Auschwitz on 27 January. By early February they were on the Oder, some 70 kilometres from Berlin. Fortress Poznan held out until 23 February.

The cost. About 194,000 Soviet casualties. Hundreds of thousands of German casualties and prisoners, while millions of German civilians fled west.

The Battle of Berlin

16 April to 2 May 1945

The Red Army attacked over the Oder on 16 April 1945 and took the Seelow Heights after three days of costly assaults. By 25 April Berlin was surrounded, and the old men and boys of its last defence were fighting in the streets. Hitler killed himself on 30 April. The city surrendered on 2 May, and Germany on 8 May.

The cost. About 81,000 Soviet and Polish dead. Perhaps 100,000 German soldiers dead, and as many as 125,000 civilians.

The invasion of America

This never happened · never fought

No Axis army ever reached the American mainland, though Japan held two Alaskan islands in 1942 and 1943. Germany had no fleet that could have carried an army across the Atlantic, and by 1945 it could not even defend its own cities. Germany surrendered on 8 May 1945, eight weeks before the date of this battle. Twelve days after that date, the first atomic bomb was tested in New Mexico.

Operation Barbarossa

22 June to December 1941

The largest invasion in history began on 22 June 1941. Three German army groups took the Red Army by surprise. Minsk fell within a week and Smolensk by mid-July, and vast encirclements took prisoners by the hundred thousand. But the Soviet Union did not collapse, and by autumn the German timetable had slipped.

The cost. About 200,000 German dead by December. More than 800,000 Soviet soldiers dead and over 3 million captured, most of whom died in captivity. Behind the front, SS killing squads began the mass murder of Soviet Jews.

The Battle of Moscow

2 October 1941 to 7 January 1942

Operation Typhoon opened on 2 October with huge encirclements at Vyazma and Bryansk. Then the autumn rain turned the roads to mud, and the frost that followed froze engines and guns. Tula never fell. German patrols came within about 30 kilometres of the Kremlin, and on 5 December the Red Army, reinforced from the east, struck back.

The cost. Estimates run from 650,000 to over a million Soviet casualties, and 170,000 to 400,000 German.

The Moscow counter-offensive

5 December 1941 to 20 January 1942

On 5 December, with the German army exhausted and frozen outside Moscow, the Red Army counter-attacked on a wide front. Klin and Kalinin were retaken in mid-December. Hitler ordered his troops to stand fast and dismissed several senior generals. By January the Germans had been pushed back as much as 250 kilometres, but the line did not break.

The cost. About 370,000 Soviet casualties in the counter-offensive. Well over 100,000 German casualties, many from frostbite.

The Second Battle of Kharkov

12 to 28 May 1942

On 12 May the Red Army attacked out of the Izyum salient to retake Kharkov. Five days later Kleist's armour struck the base of the salient from the south, under the plan called Fridericus. Stalin refused to halt the offensive until too late. By 22 May the pocket was closed, and the road to Stalingrad and the Caucasus lay open.

The cost. About 277,000 Soviet casualties, some 171,000 of them killed, missing or captured. About 20,000 to 30,000 German casualties.

The Battle of Stalingrad

23 August 1942 to 2 February 1943

The Sixth Army reached the Volga on 23 August, the day German bombers set the city ablaze. The fight went on street by street and factory by factory, with the Soviet 62nd Army clinging to a strip along the river. From 19 November two Soviet pincers encircled the attackers. The last of them surrendered on 2 February 1943.

The cost. More than a million Soviet casualties. About 800,000 Axis casualties, with 91,000 taken prisoner, of whom about 6,000 came home. Tens of thousands of civilians died.

Operation Uranus

19 to 23 November 1942

On 19 November 1942, Soviet armies broke through the Romanian Third Army north of Stalingrad, and the next day struck south of the city. Tanks seized the Don bridge at Kalach by a ruse on 22 November. The two arms met near Sovetsky the next day, closing the ring around the German Sixth Army in only four days.

The cost. The Romanian Third and Fourth Armies were shattered. More than 250,000 Axis troops were trapped in the pocket.

Operation Little Saturn

16 to 30 December 1942, with follow-on offensives to February 1943

Operation Little Saturn struck the Italian Eighth Army on the middle Don on 16 December 1942, ending any hope of relieving Stalingrad. Tanks raided the airfield at Tatsinskaya that fed the pocket. The Red Army drove on to Rostov and Kharkov in February, but its lines had overstretched, and Manstein's counter-stroke took Kharkov back in March.

The cost. The Italian Eighth Army was destroyed, with about 114,000 men lost. About 95,000 Soviet casualties, more than 20,000 of them killed.

Operation Citadel

5 to 16 July 1943

Operation Citadel attacked both sides of the Kursk bulge on 5 July 1943, into some of the deepest defences ever built. The northern pincer stalled within days. In the south, the armour came close to Prokhorovka, where a vast tank battle was fought on 12 July. With the Allies landing in Sicily and the Red Army striking elsewhere, Hitler called it off.

The cost. About 54,000 German and 178,000 Soviet casualties. It was the last German strategic offensive in the east.

The Battle of the Dnieper

August to December 1943

After Kursk, the Germans fell back behind the Dnieper and called it the Panther Line. It was never finished. Soviet troops crossed the river on rafts and in small boats on a wide front from late September, holding bridgeheads under fire. Kiev was freed on 6 November. A German counter-attack retook Zhitomir, but the line had been broken for good.

The cost. Well over a million Soviet casualties. German losses are uncertain, but ran to hundreds of thousands.

Operation Bagration

22 June to 19 August 1944

On 22 June 1944, three years to the day after the invasion, the Red Army attacked Army Group Centre. Hitler's orders to hold fixed fortress towns left whole corps to be surrounded at Vitebsk and Bobruisk. Minsk was freed on 3 July. In two months the front moved some 500 kilometres west, to the edge of Warsaw.

The cost. About 180,000 Soviet soldiers dead or missing. About 400,000 German casualties. It was the worst defeat in German military history.

The Vistula-Oder Offensive

12 January to 2 February 1945

From bridgeheads on the Vistula, the Red Army attacked on 12 January 1945 with an overwhelming advantage in men, tanks and guns. Warsaw, by then a ruined city, was freed on 17 January. Soviet troops reached Auschwitz on 27 January. By early February they were on the Oder, some 70 kilometres from Berlin. Fortress Poznan held out until 23 February.

The cost. About 194,000 Soviet casualties. Hundreds of thousands of German casualties and prisoners, while millions of German civilians fled west.

The Battle of Berlin

16 April to 2 May 1945

The Red Army attacked over the Oder on 16 April 1945 and took the Seelow Heights after three days of costly assaults. By 25 April Berlin was surrounded, and the old men and boys of its last defence were fighting in the streets. Hitler killed himself on 30 April. The city surrendered on 2 May, and Germany on 8 May.

The cost. About 81,000 Soviet and Polish dead. Perhaps 100,000 German soldiers dead, and as many as 125,000 civilians.