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World War II

|theBattle of Britain |Operation Barbarossa |

|After France was defeated, Hitler planned a sea-invasion of Britain |Hitler always regarded Communist Russia as his greatest enemy and wanted |

|(Operation Sea-Lion). |to destroy it. |

|He knew that he had to gain control of the skies over the English Channel |He also wanted Lebensraum (living space) in the east and access to oil |

|first. This led to the Battle of Britain between the British Royal Air |fields of the Caucuses. |

|Force (RAF) and the German Luftwaffe. |The invasion was code-named Operation Barbarossa. It was carried in June |

|German Messerschmitts and Stuka bombers took off from airfields in France, |1941 by a huge army of 3m soliders, 10,000 tanks and 5,000 planes. |

|Belgium, Norway. Their plan was to attack airfields and radar stations in |Hitler again used blitzkrieg tactics in a three pronged attack, directed |

|Britain. |towards the cities of Leningrad (North), Moscow (centre) and Kiev and |

|On the first day (Eagle Day) almost 1,500 planes attacked Britain. |Stalingrad in the South. |

|The Spitfires and the Hurricanes of the RAF matched the German planes. |The Luftwaffe took control of the air and German tanks and infantry moved|

|These planes were lighter and faster than the German planes as they were |quickly as the Russian Army retreated. As they retreated the Russians |

|not carrying bombs. |carried out a scorched earth policy. They destroyed crops, railway lines |

|The British also had the advantage of Radar, which allowed the British to |and anything that might be useful to the enemy. |

|predict the arrival of British attack. |Stalin rallied his people and called on everyone to fight the Great |

|After a month the RAF were close to defeat but the Luftwaffe had suffered |Patriotic War against Germany. |

|such heavy losses that Hitler changed his tactics. He told the German air |Then Hitler’s progress was halted by the Russian winter. Petrol froze in |

|force to start bombing British cities instead – the Blitz. |the engines of lorries, tanks and aeroplanes and soldiers froze to death |

|Hitler called off the invasion of Britain. This was Hitler’s first defeat. |on duty. Temperatures dropped to -40 C. |

| |In December the soviets launched a counter attack forcing the Germans to |

| |retreat. |

|Battle of Stalingrad |Deliverance Day (D-Day) |

|in the summer of 1942 the Germans advanced towards the oilfields in the |Stalin had long demanded that the Allies open up a second front in the |

|south of the USSR. They key town in this area was Stalingrad. Hitler was |West to take the pressure off the Red Army in the East. |

|determined to capture the city that bore the name of his enemy. |In 1944 a huge army of American, British and Canadian troops gathered in |

|The German 6th Army led by General Von Paulus attacked the city. The |Southern England. They were there to invade France and free it from Nazi |

|Luftwaffe bombed the city to a pulp. Yet when the Germans entered the city,|occupation. |

|the Red Army emerged from the ruins forcing the Germans to fight street by |The invasion was called Operation Overlord and it would be under the |

|street and building by building. Russian reinforcements were brought in |command of General Eisenhower. |

|each night to hold the city. |A deception operation was planned to convince the Germans that the attack|

|German tanks found It difficult to manoeuvre in the narrow rubble filled |would happen near Calais. |

|streets, making them vulnerable to attack from Molotov cocktails (petrol |The operation began on 6th June 1944. Thousands of German planes bombed |

|bombs). |the German defences – while paratroopers were dropped behind enemy lines.|

|In Nov 1942, Marshall Zhukov surrounded the Germans with a Red Army of 1m |Allied troops set up artificial harbours (mulberry piers) to bring in |

|soldiers. Hitler continued to supply the army by airdrops but they suffered|tanks and trucks and they built a pipeline under the ocean (Pluto) to |

|terribly over the harsh winter and eventually surrendered in Jan 1943. |supply oil. |

|Von Paulus had ignored Hitler’s orders to fight to the last bullet. |156,000 soldiers were landed on the beaches of Northern France on the |

|The Germans had lost an army of 300,000 men. |first day. |

|The German defeat at Stalingrad was a major turning point in the war. It |The Germans put up strong resistance. However the invasion was a success |

|was a massive confidence boost for the Russians. |and a million soldiers landed in France by the end of June. |

| |The liberation of Western Europe had begun. |

| |In August 1944, Allied troops liberated Paris. |

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