Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
During World War II, a total of about 13.6 million volunteers and conscripts served in the German Army. Only 17 months after Adolf Hitler announced the German rearmament programme in 1935, the army reached its projected goal of 36 divisions. During the autumn of 1937, two more corps were formed.
German-occupied Europe (or Nazi-occupied Europe) refers to the sovereign countries of Europe which were wholly or partly militarily occupied and civil-occupied, including puppet governments, by the military forces and the government of Nazi Germany at various times between 1939 and 1945, during World War II, administered by the Nazi regime under the dictatorship of Adolf Hitler.
The Wehrmacht directed combat operations during World War II (from 1 September 1939 – 8 May 1945) as the German Reich's armed forces umbrella command-organization. After 1941 the OKH became the de facto Eastern Theatre higher-echelon command-organization for the Wehrmacht , excluding Waffen-SS except for operational and tactical combat purposes.
The designation "Light" (leichte in German) had various meanings in the German Army of World War II. There were a series of 5 Light divisions; the first four were pre-war mechanized formations organized for use as mechanized cavalry, and the fifth was an ad hoc collection of mechanized elements rushed to Africa to help the Italians and ...
Panzer Battles: A Study of the Employment of Armor in the Second World War (1st Ballantine Books ed.). New York: Ballantine Books. ISBN 0-345-24440-0. Mitcham, Samuel (2001). The Panzer Legions: A Guide to the German Army Tank Divisions of World War II and Their Commanders. Westport: Greenwood Press. ISBN 978-0-313-31640-1. Parada, George (2004).
For instance, "Army Group South" of the Invasion of Poland became "Army Group A" of the Western Campaign, which became "Army Group Center" during Operation Barbarossa. "Army Group North" during the Invasion of Poland became "Army Group B" in the west and then "Army Group South" in the east. "Army Group C" during the Polish and French campaigns ...
Eastern Front; Part of the European theatre of World War II: Clockwise from top left: Soviet T-34 tanks storming Poznań, 1945; German Tiger I tanks during the Battle of Kursk, 1943; German Stuka dive bombers on the Eastern Front, 1943; German Einsatzgruppen death squad murdering Jews in Ukraine, 1942; Wilhelm Keitel signing the German Instrument of Surrender, 1945; Soviet troops at the Battle ...
A study by German historian Rüdiger Overmans puts the number of German military dead and missing at 5.3 million, including 900,000 men conscripted from outside of Germany's 1937 borders. [153] Richard Overy estimated in 2014 that about 353,000 civilians were killed in Allied air raids. [ 154 ]