World War Two: European Theater Quiz

Answer: Italy

The battle plan, codenamed Operation Husky, was to take most of Sicily and capture Axis-held airfields and ports, thereby opening the Mediterranean Sea to Allied shipping to supply an invasion of the mainland. It began on July 9, 1943 and lasted for six weeks. Once the invasion started the Germans were forced to redeploy a fifth of their army from the Eastern Front to Italy; that percentage remained until almost the end of the war.

Answer: Stalingrad

The Axis powers wanted to occupy Stalingrad (now Volgograd) so they could control water traffic on the Volga River and have access to the southeast European oil fields. The Germans had tried to take Moscow in 1941. Though unsuccessful they captured much of the territory on Russia's western side. On August 23, 1942 they began an attack on Stalingrad in southern Russia.

The siege lasted over five months, involved intense fighting and resulted in around two million total casualties. Ultimately, and with the help of the harsh Russian winter, the Soviets were victorious.

It marked a turning point in the war on the Eastern Front and the war itself.

Answer: May, 1940

On Sept. 3, 1939, France declared war on Germany following the German invasion of Poland. They shortly began an offensive against the Germans in the Saar but withdrew by mid-October. In May, 1940, after much planning, Germany invaded France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg using tactics of overwhelming force against an unprepared enemy.

The term "blitzkrieg" (meaning lightning war) was used to describe the invasion and also the previous invasion of Poland in 1939, but that was a term used mostly by journalists; the German military occasionally used it for propaganda purposes, not to describe their operations.

Answer: Overlord

The invasion of northern mainland Europe was a huge undertaking, as it would have to be to overcome a well-defended coast. The initial Allied effort involved 1,200 aircraft and 5,000 ships. Specialized equipment and tactics were developed in anticipation of the type of terrain the invaders would encounter.

There were few harbors to land troops and equipment so artificial harbors, called Mulberrys, were developed. 160,000 Allied troops landed in Normandy on June 6, 1944. The Axis troops gave little ground but the continued deployment of Allied forces pushed them back.

By the time the operation was concluded on August 30 the Allies had put ashore an army of two million troops.

Answer: Hiwis

Hiwi was the German abbreviation of the word Hilfswilliger, meaning auxiliary volunteer. Besides POWs they were people recruited from occupied nations. In some cases they represented 25% to 50% of fighting men in German infantry units.

Answer: Monte Cassino

As the Allies drove north to Rome they had to pass Monte Cassino Monastery, a sixth-century building that overlooked the Liri and Rapido valleys. The Allies believed the Germans were using the abbey as an observation post so, even though it was in a protected historic zone, they dropped 1,400 tons of bombs on it on February 15, 1944.

The Germans then set up observation sites in the rubble. After four main assaults, including having to scale almost vertical mountain sides, the Allies finally captured it on May 18th.

Answer: Kursk

Kursk is the administrative center of the Kursk Oblast, near the Ukraine border. German and Soviet forces fought there over a huge area: 15,000+ sq. mi. (38,850+ sq. km.) from July 5 to August 23, 1943. Estimates of how many tanks each side used vary widely, but there may have been as many as 2,700 German tanks and 3,600 Soviet armored vehicles.

As luck would have it, Russian defense was ferocious, and on July 10, Allied forces began the invasion of Italy. Hitler had to deploy some of the Eastern Front troops and tanks southward. The tank battle was inconclusive, as the Soviet Army held their ground, but at a high cost. The German retreat gave the Soviets the symbolic victory and signaled the loss of German momentum on the Eastern Front, from which they never recovered.

Answer: Dunkirk

After the German invasion of Poland the United Kingdom sent the British Expeditionary Force to aid in the defense of France. But the Allied forces were overwhelmed and a rescue by sea was the only real alternative to being captured. Starting on May 26, 1940 and continuing for nine days all manner of sea craft, from warships to fishing boats to pleasure craft ferried soldiers across the English Channel. Over 338,200 troops were rescued.

Answer: Estonia

The battle of Narva was one of a series of interconnected battles. The Soviets wanted to take the Narva Isthmus to prepare to invade Finland and East Prussia. The whole campaign lasted from February to August, 1944. The Axis forces had a defensive victory and set back Soviet plans in the Baltic region by over six months.

Answer: Operation Bagration

The operation began two weeks after the Allied landing in Normandy and caused the Axis forces to have to fight on two major fronts. It was a large operation in what was then Soviet Byelorussia (current day Belarus, Ukraine, the Baltic states and eastern Poland). Lasting from mid-June to mid-August, 1944, the Soviets destroyed 28 of 34 divisions in the German 'Army Group Center'.

The Germans suffered over 450,000 casualties, the biggest defeat in German military history.