The Grebbe Line (Dutch: Grebbelinie) was a forward defence line of the Dutch Water Line, based on inundation. "Grebbelinie" (military defensive line) in the Netherlands "Peel-Raamstelling" (military defensive line) in the Netherlands Northwestern France - 10-16 May 1940 The defensive structures around the village are part of a 630km defensive line full of pillboxes, tank traps and other stuff. It formed Field Marshal Albert Kesselring's last major line of defence along the summits of the northern part of the Apennine Mountains during the fighting retreat of the German forces in Italy against the Allied Armies in Italy, commanded by General Sir Harold Alexander. Until 1935, the German Frontier saw the acquisition of increasingly more defensive positions, artillery nests, bunkers, and tank traps. The main goal of the Maginot Line was to inflict major casualties and to experience as few casualties as possible. Even worse, they didn’t expect Germany to pierce the front in the Ardennes range and its deep forest. The Maginot line was named after Andre Maginot (1877-1932), a politician who served in World War I until wounded in November 1914. The Siegfried Line near Wallendorf is probably the best spot to dive into the Battle of the Bulge in Luxembourg. No. The Battle of Okinawa (April 1, 1945-June 22, 1945) was the last major battle of World War II, and one of the bloodiest. Besides some artillery shots, nothing. The Elastic Defense’s basic principles consist of minimizing casualties to one’s own side while maximizing casualties to the other side’s troops. Germany Ww2. André Maginot, Minister of War in 1929, pushed hard for this law, and thus gave his name to what would later become the Maginot Line. Intervals were filled with machine-guns, rifle entrenchments and separate fire positions. This position contained individual strongpoints arranged in depth and interconnected to form an uninterrupted defensive belt while artillery guns occupied positions behind it. On the night of 19-20 April the Axis positions were hit by a heavy air and artillery bombardment, followed by a ground attack. The mythical "Brisbane Line" became a public issue when Eddie Ward, the member for East Sydney, accused the previous Menzies government of having a plan to abandon northern Australia to the Japanese should they invade from the north without firing a shot. The Allies entered in Belgium with the desire to counter-attack the Germans. Last year, the 1991 Eagles were named as the best defense in the past 30 years by Football Outsiders . The Tunisian campaign (also known as the Battle of Tunisia) was a series of battles that took place in Tunisia during the North African campaign of the Second World War, between Axis and Allied forces. The Allies consisted of British Imperial Forces, including a Greek contingent, with American and French corps.The battle opened with initial success by the German and Italian … They gave up just over 70 yards rushing per game, forcing eight […] Defensive preparations included the construction of a series of holding lines to slow down the invader. This line crossed the narrowest sector of the Italian peninsula roughly between Gaeta and Ortona. A defender can thus yield lightly defended territory in an effort to stress an attacker's logistics or spread out a numerically superior attacking force. Photos of locations showing english and british pill boxes, pillbox, bunkers and anti-tank defences built to resist a German invasion of England in World War 2. Total mobilization would start on the 2nd of September, and war between Germany and France would start the 3rd after France declared war. War changed during peace time, and the French stayed with the World War 1 strategies, which proved to be a total disaster. World War II (WWII) was a long and bloody war that lasted about six years. World War I has just ended. There are no casualties, and the soldiers are waiting. Did the French High Command ever expect what would follow? But the French Government was then sure that Germany would never dare touch Belgium again. But the biggest flaw was that the line was incomplete because of diplomacy. The Wehrmacht then attacked and pushed to the Channel and encircled most of the Allied armies in Belgium. The artillery bombardment forced the Italian defenders to abandon part of their main defensive line, and Enfidaville fell, but only after heaving fighting. As the Occupation of the Rhineland was coming to an end in 1930, the French government decided to take the initiative by starting to build the defensive line at the German frontier in 1929. This was plenty for the machine guns from the second line to shoot down anything that could move in this zone as the French machine guns could shoot up to 1,200 meters. Chronological Outline of the Course of Events in the battle for Berlin . All structured data from the file and property namespaces is available under the. Always wanting to learn more, he now looks to spread his knowledge in history. Poland had just rejected Germany’s demand about the Danzig corridor. Rather than defeating an attacker with a single, strong defensive line, defence in depth relies on the tendency of an attack to lose momentum over a period of time or as it covers a larger area. What the Germans did was pretty simple. But the operation failed, and the enemy was able to strengthen his defensive line from Holland to Switzerland. This would have required U.S 5th Army under Lieutenant General Mark Clark to commit most of his Anzio fo… I travelled to Wallendorf to see some of these defenses. The last major line of defense in the final stages of World War II, along the Apennines formed by Field Marshal Albert Kesselring, was named “Gothic Line" (Gotenstellung). Germany Ww2. From 1936 to 1939, the line was fully occupied for different reasons and different lengths: the Rhineland re-militarization in ’36, the Anschluss, and the Sudeten crisis in ’38. Their success was great but only because the French strategy was simply not possible during World War 2. Category page. World War II defensive lines, World War II sites of Nazi Germany, Fortifications in Germany. On April 1, 1945—Easter Sunday—the The Gothic Line was a German defensive line of the Italian Campaign of World War II. Soon the phony war started. Military Diorama. ... World War Ii. East met West on the River Elbe on April 25, 1945, ... Germany in June of 1945, after the end of World War II. 1 Early history and first decommissioning 2 World War II 3 Pantherstellung 4 See also 5 References The Grebbe Line was first established in 1745 as a line of defense to protect the … In September 1944, American troops broke through Germany’s toughest defensive line. In April, Allied forces pushed through the German defensive line in Italy. The French High Command didn’t really expect that. The Blitzkrieg and the encirclement maneuvers of the Germans were very simple, and, in the end, not that well thought out. Their cities were devastated by fleets of bombers, their armies were encircled and then annihilated, and their merchant and … World War II Day by Day: April 1945. The Maginot Line: The History of the Fortifications that Failed to Protect France, Maginot Line Gun Turrets: And French Gun Turret Development 1880–1940, Fortress France: The Maginot Line and French Defenses in World War II, Military Medals from the Battle of Britain, Top 10 Flying Aces of the United Kingdom RAF during World War II, Tarawa: The Toughest Fortified Position Marines Faced in World War II. The third line was designed to provide cover to the fighting troops in the field. This category has the following 40 subcategories, out of 40 total. This list may not reflect recent changes (). Wikimedia Commons has media related to World War II defensive lines. Berlin is alerted. Kesselring's written and oral directives and orders indicated that the Bernhard Line was but one of a series of defensive lines to be occupied by Tenth Army in the retrograde movement toward Rome. The enemy was not supposed to reach it and never really did. Officially beginning on September 1, 1939, when Germany invaded Poland, World War II lasted until both the Germans and the Japanese had surrendered to the Allies in 1945. 3 Jan 1942: US-Filipino troops fell back to Guagua-Porac defensive line in Philippines. One of them is that, as you will see later on, there was no escape for some bunkers. It stretched more than 630 km; from Kleve on the border with the Netherlands, along the western border of the old German Empire, to the town of Weil am Rhein on the border to Switzerland – and featured more than 18,000 bunkers, tunnels … The Maginot Line was weaker there, but the Mountains were a fantastic defensive position for the French as the Germans or Italians would never break through. Here is a timeline of major events during the war. It was sometimes known as the Albert Line. The South Lancashires held the far left of the British line, west of Nieuport, the Loyals occupied the fortified town of Bergues on the right, while the East Lancashires plugged a gap in the centre of the line … The Grebbe Line ran from the Grebbeberg in Rhenen northwards until the IJsselmeer. It was designed in a way that the sentries could quickly alert the second line that danger was coming. Subcategories. The Sarre offensive would do nothing as well. The Trasimene Line was a German defensive line during the Italian Campaign of World War II. No more than being a different crisis until the breakout of the war. The Germans were attacking deeper and deeper behind the Allies, and they were now flanking them. When Germany annexed the Sudetenland, the Czech fortifications were thus captured and, as they were built with the help of French engineers, the Wehrmacht tested the fortifications and figured out how to break them. One of the best defensive lines ever kept the team's postseason hopes alive. Eight days later they would find out how wrong their assumptions had been. This category has the following 8 subcategories, out of 8 total. Media in category "World War II defensive lines" The following 9 files are in this category, out of 9 total. The enormous undertaking seemed a waste to some people but would eventually have a huge impact on the war. Elastic Defense, also known as Defense in Depth was a tactical doctrine that was used in various forms by different nations during World War II, notably GermanyandJapan. Its only problem was that it was 30 years late. Italy's land frontiers were in most places mountainous and easily defended, but in the years leading up to World War II, Italy's relations with its neighbours were uneasy. The Alpine line was similar in concept to other frontier fortifications of the same era, including the Maginot Line of France, the Siegfried Line of Germany, and the National Redoubt of Switzerland. B Border Line fortifications of Switzerland‎ (6 P) British World War II defensive lines‎ (11 P) F Fortified position of Liège‎ (18 P) It was a diplomatic strategy, but it proved to be an enormous mistake. The main advance came on the coast, on the 50th Division front. The fourth and last line was the logistic line: barracks, ammunition, and artillery. While an understanding of the Line's creation is vital to any study of World War I, World War II, and the period in between, this knowledge is also helpful when interpreting a number of modern … Facing the South West Front was a hodgepodge of German units in the process of trying to regain some kind of defensive line and command control. They were trying to establish a defensive line in the thickly wooded countryside ... A German Officer’s World War II Combat Memoir. The Battle of Kursk was the largest tank battle to take place in World War II. Punching hard in the Ardennes and in the direction of Sedan, like in 1870, the French High Command realized a disaster was happening. For all intents and purposes, it was the defensive line that did a large majority of the work for the best defense in the league in 1993. Are they expecting anything? The Maginot Line was not a defensive line just at the German frontier, as the first Bunkers were built in Nice at the Italian Frontier in southeast France. The French government decided to enact a law that would initiate the construction of a defensive line on the frontiers of France, near Switzerland and Belgium. The worse was yet to come as “Plan Dyle” started as a response to the German attack. After the nearly concurrent breakthroughs at Cassino and Anzio in spring 1944, the 11 nations representing the Allies in Italy finally had a chance to trap the Germans in a pincer movement and to realize some of Winston Churchill's strategic goals for the long, costly campaign against the Axis \"underbelly\". The main danger would finally come from the back of the line, as General Heinz Guderian would push his panzers far behind the defensive line and encircle the French, too. The 21st of August 1939, France decided to mobilize and thus garrison the fortifications. The Maginot Line saw little to no action. Soldiers were trapped in shelters, cut from reinforcements and fresh air. Finally, the Polish commander, realizing the hopelessness of the situation, gave the order to his people to surrender. Operation Olive (25 August-October 1944) was the first Allied attack on the German Gothic Line in the northern Apennines. World War II was waged on land, on sea, and in the air over several diverse theaters of operation for approximately six years. Once upon a time I had some track with my childhood Hornby railway kit, but that disappeared in … The French demography was in no match for the German demography, and French blood had to be spared as much as possible. Waiting for what? UK WWII Defence Locations. The French government decided to enact a law that would initiate the construction of a defensive line on the frontiers of France, near Switzerland and Belgium.The former had been neutral since 1815, and the latter was an ally of France. ... and the establishment of a defensive line along the rivers Don and Volga, which would also be held by allies. A “Defense Council” is formed with Marshal Petain, Marshal Joffre, and Marshal Foch, the French Minister of War and the French President in the late 1910’s. The battle of Maciejow is one of many forgotten tank battles on the eastern front. There is also a very “internet famous” battle that happened during this short period. The Oder defenses are built up. Bundesarchive Photos 1933 - 1945..+ all fields of WWII - Page 414. Ww2 Photos. Operation Barbarossa, launched in June 1941, failed to achieve Hitler's objective of decisively defeating the Soviet Union in a single campaign. A passionate of France and modern military history, he has a special interest into the Prussian state, specially since the Sadowa battle against Austria. The Taunton Stop Line was a World War II defensive line in southwest England. THE MAIN LINES OF ATTACK OF THE RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE . All three of the 1st Battalions then took up defensive positions to cover the evacuation of the BEF. A disaster happened during the following days through the application of the plan. Poland Ww2. It proved to be reliable, and it never really fell. 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