Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
The Atlantic Wall (German: Atlantikwall) was an extensive system of coastal defences and fortifications built by Nazi Germany between 1942 and 1944 along the coast of continental Europe and Scandinavia as a defence against an anticipated Allied invasion of Nazi-occupied Europe from the United Kingdom, during World War II.
The outcome of the battle was a strategic victory for the Allies—the German tonnage war failed—but at great cost: 3,500 merchant ships and 175 warships were sunk in the Atlantic for the loss of 783 U-boats and 47 German surface warships, including 4 battleships (Bismarck, Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, and Tirpitz), 9 cruisers, 7 raiders, and 27 ...
Reports vary on the fate of the two tankers that were in the dock; they were either swept away by the wall of water and sunk, [72] or swept to the far end of the dock, but not sunk. [73] A party of 40 senior German officers and civilians who were on a tour of Campbeltown were killed. In total, the explosion killed about 360 men. [74]
Map showing the advance of US Army units into Brittany and the locations of German positions in August 1944. As part of the preparations for Operation Overlord, the Allied invasion of Normandy, Saint-Malo was identified by the Allied planners as one of several minor ports on the French Atlantic coast that could be used to land supplies for the Allied ground forces in France.
Throughout the Phoney War, most of the military clashes, such as the Battle of the Atlantic, occurred at sea. Among the notable incidents were: Among the notable incidents were: On 1 September 1939, the first day of the war, a German submarine sank the ship SS Athenia , killing 117 civilian passengers and crew.
All the operations took place between the Arctic Circle in Norway and the France–Spain border, along what was known as the Atlantic Wall. The raiding forces were mostly provided by the British Commandos, but the two largest raids, Operation Gauntlet and Operation Jubilee, drew heavily on Canadian troops. The size of the raiding force depended ...
With the Luftwaffe unable to defeat the RAF in the Battle of Britain, the invasion of Great Britain could no longer be thought of as an option. While the majority of the German army was mustered for the invasion of the Soviet Union , construction began on the Atlantic Wall – a series of defensive fortifications along the French coast of the ...
In June 1940, Germany's leader Adolf Hitler had triumphed in what he called "the most famous victory in history"—the fall of France. [30] British craft evacuated to England over 338,000 Allied troops trapped along the northern coast of France (including much of the British Expeditionary Force) in the Dunkirk evacuation (27 May to 4 June). [31]