Which event began first, the Western Allied invasion of Germany or the Battle of Aachen?
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Western Allied invasion of Germany The Western Allied invasion of Germany was coordinated by the Western Allies during the final months of hostilities in the European theatre of World War II. The Allied invasion of Germany started with the Western Allies crossing the Rhine River in March 1945 before fanning out and overrunning all of western Germany from the Baltic in the north to Austria in the south before the Germans surrendered on 8 May 1945. This is known as the "Central Europe Campaign" in United States military histories.
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Battle of Aachen The Battle of Aachen was a major combat action of World War II, fought by American and German forces in and around Aachen, Germany, between 2–21 October 1944. The city had been incorporated into the Siegfried Line, the main defensive network on Germany's western border; the Allies had hoped to capture it quickly and advance into the industrialized Ruhr Basin. Although most of Aachen's civilian population was evacuated before the battle began, much of the city was destroyed and both sides suffered heavy losses. It was one of the largest urban battles fought by U.S. forces in World War II, and the first city on German soil to be captured by the Allies. The battle ended with a German surrender, but their tenacious defense significantly disrupted Allied plans for the advance into Germany.
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OB West The German Army Command in the West ("Oberbefehlshaber West" (German: initials OB West) was the overall command of the Westheer, the German Armed Forces on the Western Front during World War II. It was directly subordinate to German Armed Forces High Command. The area under the command of the OB West varied as the war progressed. At its farthest extent it reached the French Atlantic coast. By the end of World War II in Europe it was reduced to commanding troops in Bavaria.
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Battle of Sidi Bou Zid The Battle of Sidi Bou Zid ("Unternehmen Frühlingswind" /Operation Spring Breeze) took place during the Tunisia Campaign from 14–17 February 1943, in World War II. The battle was fought around Sidi Bou Zid, where a large number of American units were mauled by German and Italian forces. It resulted in the Axis recapturing the strategically important town of Sbeitla in central Tunisia. The success at Sidi Bou Zid was reversed by April by counter-attacks by British and American forces. The battle was planned by the Germans to be a two-part offensive-defensive operation against US positions in western Tunisia.
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Battle of Broodseinde The Battle of Broodseinde was fought on 4 October 1917 near Ypres in Flanders, at the east end of the Gheluvelt plateau, by the British Second and Fifth armies and the German 4th Army. The battle was the most successful Allied attack of the Battle of Passchendaele. Using "bite-and-hold" tactics, with objectives limited to what could be held against German counter-attacks, the British devastated the German defence, which prompted a crisis among the German commanders and caused a severe loss of morale in the German 4th Army. Preparations were made by the Germans for local withdrawals and planning began for a greater withdrawal, which would entail the loss for the Germans of the Belgian coast, one of the strategic aims of the British offensive.
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German invasion of Denmark (1940) The German invasion of Denmark was the fighting that followed the German army crossing the Danish border on 9 April 1940 by land, sea and air.
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Kingdom of Germany The Kingdom of Germany or German Kingdom (Latin: "Regnum Teutonicum" , "Teutonic Kingdom"; German: "Deutsches Reich" ) developed out of the eastern half of the former Carolingian Empire. Like Anglo-Saxon England and medieval France, it began as "a conglomerate, an assemblage of a number of once separate and independent... "gentes" [peoples] and "regna" [kingdoms]." East Francia ("Ostfrankenreich") was formed by the Treaty of Verdun in 843, and was ruled by the Carolingian dynasty until 911, after which the kingship was elective. The initial electors were the rulers of the stem duchies, who generally chose one of their own. After 962, when Otto I was crowned emperor, the kingdom formed the bulk of the Holy Roman Empire, which also included Italy (after 951), Bohemia (after 1004) and Burgundy (after 1032).
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German occupation of Belgium during World War II The German occupation of Belgium (French: "Occupation allemande" , Dutch: "Duitse bezetting" ) during World War II began on 28 May 1940 when the Belgian army surrendered to German forces and lasted until Belgium's liberation by the Western Allies between September 1944 and February 1945. It was the second time that Germany had occupied Belgium in under thirty years.
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Order of battle for Operation Barbarossa This is the order of battle for Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union during World War II. It was fought between the German-led Axis Forces and the Soviet Forces. The operation started on June 22, 1941, and ended on December 5, 1941, at the conclusion of Operation Typhoon.
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Battle of Kiev (1941) The First Battle of Kiev was the German name for the operation that resulted in a very large encirclement of Soviet troops in the vicinity of Kiev during World War II. This encirclement is considered the largest encirclement in the history of warfare (by number of troops). The operation ran from 7 August to 26 September 1941 as part of Operation Barbarossa, the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union. In Soviet military history, it is referred to as the Kiev Strategic Defensive Operation, with somewhat different dating of 7 July – 26 September 1941.
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Belgian Army order of battle (1914) This is the order of battle for the Belgian army on the outbreak of war in August 1914, at the start of the German invasion of Belgium.
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Operation Battleaxe Operation Battleaxe was a British Army operation during the Second World War in June 1941, to clear eastern Cyrenaica of German and Italian forces and raise the Siege of Tobruk. It was the first time during the war that a significant German force fought on the defensive but the operation failed as British forces attacked strong defensive positions created by German General Erwin Rommel. The British lost over half of their tanks on the first day and only one of the three attacks succeeded.
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Battle of Radom The Battle of Radom, also known as the Battle of Iłża, was part of the Invasion of Poland during the Second World War. It lasted from 8 September 1939 to 9 September 1939. Polish troops of the Prusy Army, under General , defended the city of Iłża and the road from Sandomierz to Radom. The Poles were not ready to meet head on overwhelming German XV Army Corps (General Hermann Hoth), and were easily defeated after two days of fighting. Prusy Army, in the aftermath of the battle, ceased to exist. Some of the army's units joined other tactical groupings of the Polish armed forces.
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Battle of Cherbourg The Battle of Cherbourg was part of the Battle of Normandy during World War II. It was fought immediately after the successful Allied landings on June 6, 1944. Allied troops, mainly American, isolated and captured the fortified port, which was considered vital to the campaign in Western Europe, in a hard-fought, month-long campaign.
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Battle of the Border The Battle of the Border (Polish: "Bitwa graniczna" ) refers to the battles that occurred in the first days of the German invasion of Poland in September, 1939. The series of battles ended in a German victory, as Polish forces were either destroyed or forced to retreat.
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Hindenburg Line The Hindenburg Line ("Siegfriedstellung" or Siegfried Position) was a German defensive position of World War I, built during the winter of 1916–1917 on the Western Front, from Arras to Laffaux, near Soissons on the Aisne. In 1916, the German offensive at the Battle of Verdun had been a costly failure. The Anglo-French offensive at the Battle of the Somme had forced a defensive battle on the Germans, leaving the western armies ("Westheer") exhausted. On the Eastern Front, the Brusilov Offensive had inflicted huge losses on the Austro-Hungarian armies in Russia and forced the Germans to take over more of the front. The declaration of war by Romania had placed additional strain on the German army and war economy. Construction of the Hindenburg Line in France was begun by the Germans in September 1916, to make a retirement from the Somme front possible, to counter an anticipated increase in the power of Anglo-French attacks in 1917.
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Operation Barbarossa Operation Barbarossa (German: "Unternehmen Barbarossa") was the code name for the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union, starting Sunday, 22 June 1941, during World War II.
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American airborne landings in Normandy The American airborne landings in Normandy were the first American combat operations during Operation Overlord, the invasion of Normandy by the Western Allies on June 6, 1944, during World War II. Around 13,100 American paratroopers of the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions made night parachute drops early on D-Day, June 6, followed by 3,937 glider troops flown in by day. As the opening maneuver of Operation Neptune (the assault operation for Overlord) the two American airborne divisions were delivered to the continent in two parachute and six glider missions.
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Battle of Saint-Lô The Battle of Saint-Lô is one of the three conflicts in the , which took place between July 9–24, 1944, just before Operation Cobra. Saint-Lô had fallen to Germany in 1940, and, after the Invasion of Normandy, the Americans targeted the city, as it served as a strategic crossroads. American bombardments caused heavy damage (up to 95% of the city was destroyed) and a high number of casualties, which resulted in the martyr city being called "The Capital of Ruins", popularized in a report by Samuel Beckett.
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First Battle of Jaunde The First Battle of Jaunde involved the attempted British and French assault on the German capital of Jaunde during the Kamerun Campaign of the First World War. Due to a lack of coordination, difficult terrain, adverse weather conditions, and stiff German resistance, the attack was forced to retreat in late June 1915. Another assault on the capital would not be conducted until later that year.
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Second Battle of the Aisne The Second Battle of the Aisne (French: "Bataille du Chemin des Dames" or "Seconde bataille de l'Aisne" , 16 April – mid-May 1917) was the main part of the Nivelle Offensive, a Franco-British attempt to inflict a decisive defeat on the German armies in France. The strategy was to conduct sequenced offensives from north to south, by the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) and several French army groups. General Robert Nivelle planned the offensive in December 1916, after he replaced Joseph Joffre as Commander-in-Chief of the French Army. The objective of the attack on the Aisne was to capture the prominent 80 km , east–west ridge of the Chemin des Dames, 110 km north-east of Paris, and then attack northwards to capture the city of Laon. When the French armies met the British advancing from the Arras front, the Germans would be pursued towards Belgium and the German frontier. The offensive began on 9 April, when the British attacked at the Battle of Arras. On 16 April, the "Groupe d'armées de Reserve" (GAR) attacked the Chemin des Dames and the next day, the Fourth Army of "Groupe d'armées de Centre" (GAC), near Reims to the south-east, began the Battle of the Hills.
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Battle of Alam el Halfa The Battle of Alam el Halfa took place between 30 August and 5 September 1942 south of El Alamein during the Western Desert Campaign of the Second World War. "Panzerarmee Afrika"—a German–Italian force commanded by "Generalfeldmarschall" Erwin Rommel—attempted an envelopment of the British Eighth Army, commanded by Lieutenant-General Bernard Montgomery. In the last major Axis offensive (Operation Brandung/"Unternehmung Brandung") of the Western Desert Campaign, Rommel had planned to defeat the Eighth Army before Allied reinforcements made an Axis victory in Africa impossible.