Johannes Erwin Eugen Rommel was a German Generalfeldmarschall during World War II. Popularly known as the Desert Fox, he served in the Wehrmacht of Nazi Germany, as well as in the Reichswehr of the Weimar Republic, and the army of Imperial Germany. Rommel was injured multiple times in both world wars.
The Battle of Monte Cassino, also known as the Battle for Rome, was a series of four military assaults by the Allies against German forces in Italy during the Italian Campaign of World War II. The objective was to break through the Winter Line and facilitate an advance towards Rome.
The Winter Line was a series of German and Italian military fortifications in Italy, constructed during World War II by Organisation Todt and commanded by Albert Kesselring. The series of three lines was designed to defend a western section of Italy, focused around the town of Monte Cassino, through which ran the important Highway 6 which led uninterrupted to Rome. The primary Gustav Line ran across Italy from just north of where the Garigliano River flows into the Tyrrhenian Sea in the west, through the Apennine Mountains to the mouth of the Sangro River on the Adriatic coast in the east. The two subsidiary lines, the Bernhardt Line and the Hitler Line, ran much shorter distances from the Tyrrehnian Sea to just northeast of Cassino where they would merge into the Gustav Line. Relative to the Gustav Line, the Hitler Line stood to the northwest and the Bernhardt Line to the southeast of the primary defenses.
Albert Kesselring was a German military officer and convicted war criminal who served in the Luftwaffe during World War II. In a career which spanned both world wars, Kesselring reached the rank of the Generalfeldmarschall and became one of Nazi Germany's most highly decorated commanders.
Edward Richard Holmes, CBE, TD, VR, JP, known as Richard Holmes, was a British military historian. He was co-director of Cranfield University's Security and Resilience Group from 1989 to 2009 and became Professor of Military and Security Studies at Cranfield in 1995.
The 2nd New Zealand Division, initially the New Zealand Division, was an infantry division of the New Zealand Military Forces during the Second World War. The division was commanded for most of its existence by Lieutenant-General Bernard C. Freyberg. It fought in Greece, Crete, the Western Desert and Italy. In the Western Desert Campaign, the division played a prominent role in the defeat of German and Italian forces in the Second Battle of El Alamein and the British Eighth Army's advance to Tunisia.
Major-General Sir Percy Cleghorn Stanley Hobart,, also known as "Hobo", was a British military engineer noted for his command of the 79th Armoured Division during the Second World War. He was responsible for many of the specialised armoured vehicles that took part in the invasion of Normandy and later actions.
BBC History of World War II (1989–2005) is a 30-hour, 12-disc collection of 10 BBC television films about World War II. The films include documentaries, docudramas, and "dramatized documentaries".
Wojtek was a Syrian brown bear bought, as a young cub, in the mountains of Iran, by Polish II Corps soldiers who had been evacuated from the Soviet Union. In order to provide for his rations and transportation, he was eventually enlisted officially as a soldier with the rank of private, and was subsequently promoted to corporal.
Leo Dietrich Franz Reichsfreiherr Geyr von Schweppenburg was a German general in the Wehrmacht during World War II, noted for his pioneering stance and expertise in the field of armoured warfare. He commanded the 5th Panzer Army during the Invasion of Normandy, and later served as Inspector General of Armoured Troops. After the war he was involved in the development of the newly built German Army (Bundeswehr).
The Battle of San Pietro Infine was a major engagement from 8–17 December 1943, in the Italian Campaign of World War II involving Allied forces attacking from the south against heavily fortified positions of the German "Winter Line" in and around the town of San Pietro Infine, just south of Monte Cassino about halfway between Naples and Rome.
The French Expeditionary Corps, also known as the French Expeditionary Corps in Italy, was an expeditionary force of the French Liberation Army. Created in 1943, the corps fought in the Italian Campaign of World War II, under the command of General Alphonse Juin. Consisting of 112,000 men divided into four divisions, all but one of the divisions were colonial units, mostly Moroccans and Algerians drawn from the Army of Africa and led by French officers. Overall the Expeditionary Corps was composed of approximately 60 % of colonial troops.
The German Army was the land forces component of the Wehrmacht, the regular armed forces of Nazi Germany, from 1935 until it effectively ceased to exist in 1945 and then was formally dissolved in August 1946. During World War II, a total of about 13.6 million soldiers served in the German Army. Army personnel were made up of volunteers and conscripts.
Sir Basil Henry Liddell Hart, commonly known throughout most of his career as Captain B. H. Liddell Hart, was a British soldier, military historian, and military theorist. He wrote a series of military histories that proved influential among strategists. Arguing that frontal assault was bound to fail at great cost in lives, as proven in World War I, he recommended the "indirect approach" and reliance on fast-moving armoured formations.
The Rommel myth, or the Rommel legend, is a phrase used by a number of historians for the common depictions of German Generalfeldmarschall Erwin Rommel as an apolitical, brilliant commander and a victim of Nazi Germany due to his presumed participation in the 20 July plot against Adolf Hitler, which led to Rommel's forced suicide in 1944. According to these historians, who take a critical view of Rommel, such depictions are not accurate.
Rommel: The Desert Fox is a 1950 biography of German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel by Desmond Young. The book was the first biography of Rommel and enjoyed immense popularity, especially in Britain. The book led the Western Allies, particularly the British, to depict Rommel as the "good German" and "our friend Rommel", contributing to the formation of the Rommel myth.
Benjamin Abbott Dickson (1897–1976), better known as Monk Dickson, was a United States Army colonel who served in World War II as an intelligence officer. He is best known for predicting the Battle of the Bulge in 1944.
Colonel Nicolas John Lipscombe is a British historian, author, tour guide, lecturer and university tutor.
The Overlord planners for the invasion of Europe in 1944 specified suitable weather for the assault landing; with only a few days in each month suitable. In May and June 1944 frequent pre-assault meetings were held at Southwick House in Hampshire near Portsmouth by Eisenhower with Group Captain James Stagg of the RAF, the Chief Meteorological Officer, SHAEF, his deputy Colonel Donald Yates of the USAAF, and his three two-man teams of meteorologists. Stagg was a "dour but canny Scot.. " He had been given the rank of group captain in the RAF "to lend him the necessary authority in a military milieu unused to outsiders". The senior commanders were General Bernard Montgomery, Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay and Air Marshal Sir Trafford Leigh-Mallory, plus Eisenhower's deputy, Air Marshall Arthur Tedder, his chief of staff Walter Bedell Smith and his deputy chief of Staff Major General Harold R. Bull.
This is a Bibliography of World War II battles and campaigns in Europe, North Africa and the Middle East. It aims to include the major theaters, campaigns and battles of the European theater of World War II. It is part of Wikipedia's larger effort to document the Bibliography of World War II. Its counterpart for the Asia-Pacific theater is the Bibliography of World War II battles and campaigns in East Asia, South East Asia and the Pacific.
