Warsaw, Occupied Poland • July 29, 1944 By July 1944 Poland had been occupied by the armed forces of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany for close to 5 years and by those of Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union for considerably less. (For nearly 2 years, from September 1939 to June 1941 when the German Wehrmacht invaded the Soviet Union…
Paris, Occupied France • August 10, 1944 On August 1, 1944, almost two months after the initial D-Day landings in Normandy, France, more than 14,000 personnel and equipment from 41-year-old Gen. Philippe Leclerc’s Free French 2nd Armored Division began landing on Utah Beach. Leclerc (1902–1947) juggled three roles: He was a subordinate divisional commander in an…
Paris, Occupied France · August 10, 1944 On August 1, 1944, almost two months after the initial D-Day landings in Normandy, France, more than 14,000 personnel and equipment from Gen. Philippe Leclerc’s Free French 2nd Armored Division began landing on Utah Beach. Leclerc (1902–1947) juggled three roles: He was a subordinate divisional commander in an American…
Warsaw, Occupied Poland · August 1, 1944 After landing on Normandy’s Gold, Juno, and Sword beaches on D‑Day, June 6, 1944, British soldiers came upon Germany’s Leichter Ladungstraeger (light charge carrier) named “Goliath,” a tank-tread robot demolition mine approximately 4 feet long, 2 feet wide, and 1 foot tall/1.3 m long, 0.6 m wide, and 0.3 m tall that carried 170–220 lb/77–100 kg of…
Warsaw, Occupied Poland · July 29, 1944 By July 1944 Poland had been occupied by the forces of Nazi Germany for close to five years and by those of the Soviet Union for considerably less. The Polish resistance Home Army (Armia Krajowa), which was loyal to the London-based Polish government-in-exile, had long planned some form…
Paris, Occupied France · August 10, 1944 Beginning on August 2, 1944, almost two months after the initial D-Day landings in Normandy, France, more than 14,000 personnel and equipment from Gen. Philippe Leclerc’s Free French 2nd Armored Division landed on Utah Beach. Leclerc juggled three roles: He was a subordinate divisional commander in an American army, he…
Warsaw, Occupied Poland · August 1, 1944 When British soldiers landed on Normandy’s Gold, Juno, and Sword beaches on June 6, 1944, they came upon Germany’s Leichter Ladungstraeger (“light charge carrier”) named Goliath, a tank-tread robot approximately 4 feet long, 2 feet wide, and 1 foot tall that carried 170–220 lb of high explosives. Known as the beetle tank to…
Warsaw, Occupied Poland · July 29, 1944 By July 1944 Poland had been occupied by the forces of Nazi Germany for close to five years and by those of the Soviet Union for considerably less. The Polish resistance Home Army (Armia Krajowa), which was loyal to the London-based Polish government-in-exile, had long planned some form…
When August 1 to October 2, 1944 Where Warsaw, capital of German-occupied Poland Who More than 40,000 Polish irregulars in the pro-Western Polish Home Army (Armia Krajowa) under Gen. Antoni Chrusciel (1895–1960) versus (initially) 11,000 German troops under the overall command of Lt. Gen. Reiner Stahel (1892–1955). Also, more than 5,000 SS personnel, including Waffen-SS,…