GeneralsOfWWII @GeneralsofWWII

American B-26 bombers strike German fortifications along the French coast in advance of the Allied invasion of Normandy. June, 1944.

Coming soon........D-Day!!! #ww2 #wwiihistory #DDay #Eisenhower #france #invasion

#DidYouKnow about the phantom army used by the Allies to deceive the Germans before D-Day? #GhostArmy

This day in 1941, the German parachutists and glider-borne troops who led the invasion managed to secure the island of Crete, Greece. The battle ended with the evacuation to Egypt of the bulk of the Allied force. The remaining 5,000 defenders surrendered. #WW2

On this day in 1940, the commander of the British Expeditionary Force was told to abandon his army. His name was John Vereker, 6th Viscount Gort. He held the Victoria Cross from the First World War, where in 1918 he had personally led a battalion across a canal under machine gun fire with a shattered arm. He was 53 years old. He had spent the last three weeks watching his army die on the road to Dunkirk. Churchill's order was direct. Lord Gort was to leave Dunkirk that night by fast motor launch. The British government could not afford to let the Germans capture the commander of the British Army as a propaganda prize. Gort tried to refuse. He was told it was not a suggestion. He left in the dark from the East Mole on the evening of May 31, in a small naval vessel, having handed command of the rear party to Major General Harold Alexander. Witnesses on the boat said Gort was close to tears the entire way back to England. That same 24 hours was the largest single-day evacuation in British military history. 68,014 men came off the beaches and the mole. Royal Navy destroyers ran shuttle runs across the Channel, each one loading 1,000 soldiers in twenty minutes and racing back through Stuka attacks and floating mines. The little ships of England ferried thousands more from the open sand out to the deeper water. By dawn on June 1, more than 250,000 British soldiers were home. But Dunkirk did not save itself. Eighty miles south, in a town called Lille, 35,000 French soldiers had been holding out for four days, completely surrounded by seven German divisions. They were the rearguard of the French 1st Army. Their commander, General Jean-Baptiste Molinié, had been ordered to die in place to keep the road to Dunkirk open. He had done exactly that. By May 31 they had no artillery shells, almost no rifle ammunition, no food. They had eaten their cavalry horses on the 29th. When Molinié finally laid down his arms, the German corps commander, General Kurt Waeger, was so stunned by what they had done with nothing that he refused to take their swords. He ordered his own men to present arms as the French marched out into captivity. He saluted Molinié in person on the road outside Lille. It was the only time in 1940 that a defeated French army was granted the honors of war. Most of the British soldiers who got home that night never knew the price.

Bad weather, limited technology, and conflicting reports complicated General Eisenhower's decision about when to launch the D-Day invasion. Ahead of the new film 'Pressure,' learn more about the weather forecasting that would shape the course of the war. nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/p…

On this day in 1943, a thousand starving Japanese soldiers ran screaming out of the fog on a frozen Alaskan island, bayonets lashed to broken sticks, to die. The island was Attu, the westernmost tip of the Aleutian chain. It was the only piece of North American soil the Japanese had captured in the entire war. The Americans had been trying to take it back for nineteen days in the worst conditions either side had ever fought in: freezing rain, knee-deep mud, fog so thick a man could not see his own rifle, and tundra that swallowed boots and never gave them back. The Japanese garrison was down to 800 men. They had no food left. No medicine. No way off the island. They had been told no rescue was coming. Their commander was Colonel Yasuyo Yamasaki, a 51 year old career officer who had been on Attu for less than three weeks. On the night of May 28, he gathered every man who could still hold a weapon. This included his wounded. Those who could not walk were shot or given grenades. Those who could limp were given anything that could stab. Some had bayonets. Some had bayonets lashed to ski poles. Some had bayonets lashed to tent stakes. Then he led them straight at the American line in the dark. It was the largest banzai charge of the Pacific war up to that point. They came through a gap in the fog at 3:30 AM, completely silent until they were inside the American positions. Then they screamed. They overran the front line in minutes. They overran the artillery batteries behind it. They reached the field hospital and butchered the wounded in their cots. They got within a hundred yards of the American command post before they were finally stopped by a scratch force of engineers, cooks, military police and walking wounded who fired at point blank range until their rifles were too hot to hold. When the sun came up, the snow on the slope was carpeted with bodies. The Americans counted 500 dead Japanese on the ground in front of them. Then they began finding the rest. Almost all of the remaining defenders had killed themselves with grenades held against their chests. American soldiers walking the field afterward described finding small groups of three or four men curled in a circle, their bodies folded around the same grenade. Out of a Japanese garrison of nearly 2,900, the Americans took 28 prisoners. It was the second highest American casualty rate of any battle in the Pacific war, after Iwo Jima. Almost no one in the United States has heard of it.

A friendly reminder to help your favorite podcasts out there (not just ours). ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ #LikeFollowShare #comment #save #podcast #podcasting

This looks really interesting, @GeneralsofWWII! The book exams 54 German & 140 Soviet commanders in total.

Osprey Publishing @OspreyBooks

a week ago

In July we're delighted to publish 'Generalship on the Eastern Front, 1941–45: A Study in Command' by Robert Forczyk. Who were the generals who led these campaigns on the Eastern Front? UK: 16th July 2026 US: 14th July 2026 You can find out more here: bit.ly/3Q17Ts2

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This day in 1940, Operation Dynamo, the evacuation of Dunkirk, began. Over the next 9 days, more than 338,000 British, French, and other Allied troops were rescued from the beaches of Dunkirk. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of French soldiers fought desperate delaying actions against advancing German divisions to hold the perimeter. #WW2

Coming soon.......Mussolini. #italy #italia #Dictator #Mussolini #BlackShirt #ww2history

Northern France, May 1940. The silence is interrupted as an MG34 suddenly opens up across the fields, its rapid bursts of fire echoing through the French countryside. Moments later, batteries of 10.5cm leFH 18 artillery unleash a devastating barrage on French positions, the earth erupting beneath waves of smoke, mud and steel.

I have immense respect for the Guardians of our fallen heroes that stand guard at Arlington Cemetery! May our heroes rest in eternal peace! 🫡🕊️🇺🇸 God bless! 🙏

On May 22, 1940, the German army was winning the war so fast it scared Hitler. Heinz Guderian's panzers had broken out of the Ardennes ten days earlier, crossed the Meuse at Sedan against textbook military doctrine, and were now tearing across northern France toward the Channel coast at a speed that no army in history had ever sustained. On the morning of the 22nd, his XIX Panzerkorps struck north from Abbeville. Within forty eight hours his lead units would be looking at the sea. The strategic picture was almost too good to believe. The British Expeditionary Force, the best of the French army, and the entire Belgian army were being pressed against the coast from the south by Guderian and from the east by Bock's Army Group B. Nearly a million Allied soldiers were inside a shrinking pocket. If the Germans closed it, the war in the west was over. Guderian wanted to close it. So did his immediate superior, Ewald von Kleist. So did the chief of the army general staff, Franz Halder. They all understood that the panzers were one good day's drive from Dunkirk, the last functioning port the Allies had left, and that taking Dunkirk would mean capturing or killing the entire British army on the continent. Then, on May 24, the order came down from Hitler personally. Halt. The reasons for the halt order have been argued about for eighty five years. The traditional explanation is that Hermann Göring, jealous that the army was getting all the glory, told Hitler the Luftwaffe could finish off the pocket from the air. There is some truth to this. Göring did say that. Hitler did believe him. But there were other reasons too. The panzer divisions had been driving for two weeks without major maintenance. Their tank strength was down to roughly fifty percent. The ground around Dunkirk was marshy, cut by canals, terrible for armor. And Hitler, who had served as an infantryman in Flanders in the last war, knew exactly how that terrain swallowed mechanized forces. There was also a deeper anxiety. The campaign was going so well, so much faster than anyone in Berlin had projected, that Hitler did not trust it. He kept expecting a great French counterattack, a hammer blow into the long exposed flank of the panzer corridor. He wanted to consolidate. He wanted his army group commanders to slow down, regroup, and prepare for the second phase of the campaign against the rest of France. The halt lasted three days. By the time it was lifted, the British had organized a defensive perimeter around Dunkirk, the Royal Navy had begun assembling every vessel that could cross the Channel, and Operation Dynamo was underway. Between May 26 and June 4, 1940, 338,226 Allied soldiers were evacuated from the beaches and harbor of Dunkirk. The Germans captured 40,000 French troops who covered the rear. They did not capture the British army. If you want to identify the single decision that lost Germany the war, you can make a good case for the halt order. Without the BEF, Britain almost certainly cannot fight on into 1941. Without Britain fighting on, there is no Battle of Britain, no American supply route to Europe, no D-Day. The war either ends in 1940 with a negotiated peace, or it becomes a German-Soviet war fought entirely in the east. Guderian wrote in his memoirs that he received the halt order with "speechless amazement." He had Dunkirk in his sights. He could see it through binoculars. And he was being told to wait. The single most consequential traffic jam in military history started on May 22, 1940, when the panzers turned north. It ended when Hitler blinked.

Un acorazado USS Missouri, de la clase Iowa, hace uso de sus armas principales durante entrenamientos de tiro.

Gotta love ❤️ all of this WW2 content coming out of Hollywood lately. 👏

Roadside Attractions @roadsidetweets

2 weeks ago

Inspired by true events, #LuckyStrike starring Scott Eastwood is in theaters June 26.

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Scott Eastwood, Colin Hanks, and Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor star in #LuckyStrike. Only in theaters June 26. Watch the official trailer now.

@AndNapoleon @cafs29711 @Napoleonic_Imp 👍👍👍👍

🚨New episode🚨- Naval tactics of the Napoleonic Era! Wars. In this episode, special guest and author Joshua Meeks will break down the key tactics, strategies, and innovations used by legendary commanders like Admiral Nelson. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/epi… #navaltactics #napoleonic

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