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Operation Sea Lion, also written as Operation Sealion, was Nazi Germany's code name for their planned invasion of the United Kingdom. It was to have taken place during the Battle of Britain, nine months after the start of the Second World War. Following the Battle of France and that country's capitulation, Adolf Hitler, the German Führer and Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, hoped the British government would accept his offer to end the war. He considered invasion a last resort, to be used only if all other options had failed.
Operation Barbarossa was the invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany and many of its Axis allies, starting on Sunday, 22 June 1941, during the Second World War. It was the largest military operation in history, with around 10 million combatants taking part. The operation, code-named after Frederick Barbarossa, a 12th-century Holy Roman Emperor and Crusader, aimed to achieve Nazi Germany's key strategic goal of conquering the western Soviet Union. This would support the Axis war effort by acquiring the oil reserves of the Caucasus, the rich agricultural resources of Ukraine and Byelorussia, and the forced labour the conquered people. The ultimate goal of Generalplan Ost was the genocidal extermination, deportation, and enslavement of the native Slavic peoples to create more Lebensraum for Germans to repopulate the conquered lands.
The Axis powers, originally called the Rome–Berlin Axis, was a military coalition that initiated World War II and fought against the Allies. Its principal members were Nazi Germany, the Kingdom of Italy, and the Empire of Japan. Alongside Italy, Romania and Hungary may also be considered among "the Reich's main allies". The Axis were united in their far-right positions and general opposition to the Allies, but otherwise lacked comparable coordination and ideological cohesion.
The Battle of Crete, codenamed Operation Mercury, was a major Axis airborne and amphibious operation during World War II to capture the island of Crete. It began on the morning of 20 May 1941, with multiple German airborne landings on Crete. Greek and other Allied forces, along with Cretan civilians, defended the island. After only one day of fighting, the Germans had suffered heavy casualties and the Allied troops were confident that they would defeat the invasion. The next day, through communication failures, Allied tactical hesitation, and German offensive operations, Maleme Airfield in western Crete fell, enabling the Germans to land reinforcements and overwhelm the defensive positions on the north of the island. Allied forces withdrew to the south coast. More than half were evacuated by the British Royal Navy and the remainder surrendered or joined the Cretan resistance. The defence of Crete evolved into a costly naval engagement; by the end of the campaign the Royal Navy's eastern Mediterranean strength had been reduced to only two battleships and three cruisers.
The Balkans campaign of World War II began with the Italian invasion of Greece on 28 October 1940. In the early months of 1941, Italy's offensive had stalled and a Greek counter-offensive pushed into Albania. Germany sought to aid Italy by deploying troops to Romania and Bulgaria and attacking Greece from the east. Meanwhile, the British landed troops and aircraft to shore up Greek defences. A coup d'état in Yugoslavia on 27 March caused Adolf Hitler to order the conquest of that country.
The 2nd Army was a field army of the German Army during World War II.
The Brandenburgers were members of Nazi Germany's Wehrmacht special forces unit during World War II.
The military history of Greece during World War II began on 28 October 1940, when the Italian Army invaded Greece from Albania, beginning the Greco-Italian War. The Greek Army temporarily halted the invasion and pushed the Italians back into Albania. The Greek successes forced Nazi Germany to intervene. The Germans invaded Greece and Yugoslavia on 6 April 1941, and overran both countries within a month, despite British aid to Greece in the form of an expeditionary corps. The conquest of Greece was completed in May with the capture of Crete from the air, although the Fallschirmjäger suffered such extensive casualties in this operation that the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht abandoned large-scale airborne operations for the remainder of the war. The German diversion of resources in the Balkans is also considered by some historians to have delayed the launch of the invasion of the Soviet Union by a critical month, which proved disastrous when the German Army failed to take Moscow.
The Allies, formally referred to as the United Nations from 1942, were an international military coalition formed during the World War II (1939–1945) to oppose the Axis powers, led by Nazi Germany, the Empire of Japan, and the Kingdom of Italy. Its principal members by the end of 1941 were the "Big Four" - United Kingdom, United States, Soviet Union, and China.
Operation Harpoon may refer to:
The invasion of Yugoslavia, also known as the April War or Operation 25, was a German-led attack on the Kingdom of Yugoslavia by the Axis powers which began on 6 April 1941 during World War II. The order for the invasion was put forward in "Führer Directive No. 25", which Adolf Hitler issued on 27 March 1941, following a Yugoslav coup d'état that overthrew the pro-Axis government.
The Dodecanese campaign of World War II was an attempt by Allied forces to capture the Italian Dodecanese islands in the Aegean Sea following the Armistice with Italy in September 1943, and use them as bases against the German-controlled Balkans. Operating without air cover, the Allied effort was a costly failure, the whole of the Dodecanese falling to the Germans within two months. The Dodecanese campaign, lasting from 8 September to 22 November 1943, resulted in one of the last major German victories in the war.
821 Naval Air Squadron was a Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm carrier based squadron formed on 3 April 1933 with the transferral and amalgamation of the Fairey III aircraft from 446 and half of 455 Flight Flights Royal Air Force to the newly formed Fleet Air Arm of the Royal Air Force. The squadron operated during the Second World War.
Prior to World War II, the Indian Ocean was an important maritime trade route between European nations and their colonial territories in East Africa, the Arabian Peninsula, British India, Indochina, the East Indies (Indonesia), and Australia for a long time. Naval presence was dominated by the Royal Navy Eastern Fleet and the Royal Australian Navy as World War II began, with a major portion of the Royal Netherlands Navy operating in the Dutch East Indies and the Red Sea Flotilla of the Italian Regia Marina operating from Massawa.
The 2nd Mechanised Corps was a formation in the Soviet Red Army during the Second World War.
881 Naval Air Squadron was a squadron of the British Royal Navy's Fleet Air Arm formed in June 1941. It served as a fighter squadron in the Second World War, taking part in the British invasion of Madagascar in 1942, in the Allied invasions of Northern France and Southern France in 1944, also taking part in operations in the Aegean Sea and off Norway before disbanding in October 1945.
References
- ↑ Wilt, Alan F. (1974). ""Shark" and 'Harpoon": German Cover Operations Against Great Britain in 1941". Military Affairs. 38 (1): 1–4. doi:10.2307/1987322. ISSN 0026-3931. JSTOR 1987322.
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