Battles of WW2

Description

Battle

During this 5-month-long battle, the German 6th army was encircled and destroyed. It was both a strategic and very symbolic Soviet victory, and it alone resulted in more German casualties than the entirety of all fighting on the Western Front combined.

This decisive naval battle is often considered to be the turning point in the Pacific Front against the Japanese. The American victory was largely attributed to intel - American codebreakers were able to intercept and decrypt Japanese transmissions detailing their plans for a trap.

This was the only land battle during the war that was fought on US soil against enemy combatants.

This battle, carried out during the later stages of the war, was a German counterattack against the encroaching Western Allies through the Ardennes. It was Hitler's (rather unrealistic) hope that this battle would result in a complete enough destruction of Allied forces that Germany could exclusively focus on the Soviets.

This battle between the Germans and the Soviets, which saw over 10 000 tanks fielded between both sides at its height, is widely considered to be the largest tank battle in history.

This battle, sometimes nicknamed the "Polish Thermopylae" saw an estimated 900 Polish soldiers hold out against an estimated 41,000 German infantry and accompanying armor for three days.

Believed to be the deadliest battle fought in China during the war, this assault on what today is a major global city is sometimes referred to as the "Stalingrad on the Yangtze".

After being surrounded at a port town in northeastern France, Allied forces fought off encircling German forces until military ships and volunteer civilian vessels could evacuate them as part of Operation Dynamo.

In this Battle, Canadian Private Léo Major singlehandedly mounted an assault on a Dutch village under German occupation. During his assault, he contacted members of the Dutch resistance, organized them into patrols, and successfully drove out the occupying force of approximately 1500 enemy soldiers.

This battle began in late January of 1944 with a series of naval landings under the codename "Operation Shingle", and ended in early June of the same year with the fall of Axis controlled Rome.

Japanese forces based in occupied Manchuria attacked Soviet positions in Mongolia in a border skirmish. Marshal Georgy Zhukov was named Hero of the Soviet Union for his decisive victory here.

This 82 day battle was the bloodiest of the Pacific Theatre, and saw the largest naval invasion in the Pacific and the destruction of numerous ships and aircraft on both sides, including the infamous battleship, Yamato.

This rather bizarre battle saw German forces under Major Josef Gangl team up with with elements of the American 23rd Tank Battalion to repel an SS attack against a medieval castle where high value French prisoners (including Charles de Gaulle's sister) were being held.

Often regarded as the worst American defeat in the war, this battle, part of the larger Guadalcanal Campaign, was a surprise night attack against an allied screening force by a Japanese strike fleet, sinking one Australian and three American cruisers.

This aerial battle saw the German Luftwaffe attempt and fail to wrest air superiority over the United Kingdom and the English Channel from the Royal Air Force following the fall of France.

In the two battles bearing this name, Erwin Rommel's Afrika Korps were defeated by Commonwealth forces, leading to what is regarded as the beginning of the end of the Western Desert Campaign, securing Britain's hold over Egypt.