Baltic
Scandinavian Prelude 3 September 1939 to 8 April 1940 Part II
âŹ ïž Scandinavian Prelude September 1939 to 8 April 1940 Part I Scandinavian Prelude 3 September 1939 to 8 April 1940 Part III âĄïž In October, 1939, the German Naval War Staff instructed Grossadmiral Raeder to place before Hitler a strongly-worded recommendation that (with the Russians) Germany should put pressure on Norway in order to obtain bases for âa fundamental improvement…
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Karl XII â The Baltic and Saxon Campaigns I
Karl XII spent much of September 1700 at his headquarters in Sweden conferring with his advisers and the high command about how to best deal with Augustus. Since the armistice between Russia and Turkey was now known, the tsarâs intentions were not certain. Peter had actually issued a declaration of…
Karl XII â The Baltic and Saxon Campaigns II
The planned pursuit of Peter the Great was contingent upon first having knocked Augustus out of the war, and the failure to do so upset the plans. There was no way the Swedes could move against the Russians with a full-strength Polish-Saxon army in their rear or flank. The Swedes…
Siege of Memel (October 1944)Â I
The city known today as Klaipeda is on the Baltic coast of Lithuania. In 1944, it was the East Prussian city of Memel, at the northern extremity of East Prussian territory. At the end of the Great War, 80 per cent of the cityâs population was German, but most of…
Siege of Memel (October 1944)Â II
7th Panzer Division in Kurland, 1944 Cloudy conditions prevailed on 7 October, with light rain, but the weather wasnât bad enough to ground the Soviet aircraft, which continued to attack every road movement they detected. Grossdeutschland and 7th Panzer Division, together with whatever remained of 551st Volksgrenadier Division, tried to…
Tobruk Besieged: 4 May 1941 â 25 October 1941 Part II
An aspect of the struggle between the Tobruk garrison and the Luftwaffe that has gone virtually unremarked is the role played by camouflage and deception. The man behind it was Captain Peter Proud RE, who arrived at Tobruk after an eventful journey from Cyrenaica during the Benghazi-Tobruk Handicap. He was…
The Baltic littoral â A Nordic Pact?
The end of the war had found the Soviet Union in possession of much of the Baltic littoral, including Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia and East Prussia, and in occupation of Poland and the eastern zone of Germany. The USSR had also occupied Finnmark, the northernmost Norwegian province, and the Danish-owned Baltic…