World War II: Places

City in which Anne Frank wrote her diary while hiding from the Nazis		Amsterdam
Final bridge over the Rhine in Operation Market Garden, 1944, which British troops failed to take; 1st Airborne Division destroyed in the ensuing combat; operation described in the book and film A Bridge Too Far		Arnhem
Hitler's last desperate offensive in the Ardennes, 16 Dec 1944 to 6 Jan 1945		Battle of the Bulge
German name for the Polish village of Brzezinka, about two miles from Auschwitz: site of the concentration camp officially known (partly) as Auschwitz II		Birkenau
Mansion near Milton Keynes, Bucks, used as Britain's main code–breaking establishment during WWII – a.k.a. Station X		Bletchley Park
D–Day: the Germans expected the Allied landings to be at		Calais
In 1943, Churchill and Roosevelt met to discuss strategy, in the Anfa Hotel at (African city)		Casablanca
German city, target of the first Thousand Bomber Raid (1942)		Cologne
Invaded by German forces May 1941 – the first successful airborne invasion		Crete
The only major Australian city to be bombed (19 February 1942 – over 200 killed)		Darwin
German–occupied French port, target of a disastrous Allied raid 42 days after Dunkirk – planned by Lord Louis Mountbatten		Dieppe
River on which the Western Allies met with Soviet forces, April 1945		Elbe
Town in Normandy – birthplace of William the Conqueror: gave its name to the decisive engagement of the Battle of Normandy (21 August 1944), which led to the liberation of Paris four days later		Falaise
Island in the Solomon Islands, gave its name to the first major Allied offensive against the Japanese Empire (August 1942 to Feb 1943)		Guadalcanal
Baltic port: became a "Free City" (i.e. not part of either Germany or Poland) under the 1919 Treaty of Versailles; demanded by Hitler in 1939 (along with the so–called Polish Corridor to its west, which was Poland's only route to the sea); denial led to the Nazi invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939; became part of Poland following the Yalta and Potsdam conferences after World War II		Gdansk (Danzig)
Neutral country, occupied by 746 Royal Marines (in response to growing German interest) on 10 May 1940, without a shot being fired, in Operation Fork; defence was transferred to the USA (still neutral at the time) in July 1941		Iceland
Established in August 1944, the Gothic Line was the German forces' last major line of defence during their retreat from (country)		Italy
Japanese island, famous for a battle that took place there in Feb–March 1945, and particularly for an iconic photograph of six US marines hoisting the Stars & Stripes on it, for which photographer Joe Rosenthal won the Pulitzer Prize; subsequently occupied by the USA until 1968		Iwo Jima
2–mile gap in the Atlas Mountains, in Tunisia: scene of the first major engagement between American and German forces in World War II (February 1943)		Kasserine Pass
Russian forest where 4,500 Polish officers, PoWs, were found murdered by the Russians (1940)		Katyn
City on the south–west tip of Honshu island: site of a major arsenal, which was the backup target for the atomic bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima and the primary target for the one that was dropped on Nagasaki		Kokura
Oskar Schindler's enamel and munitions factory was in the Jewish ghetto of		Krakow
Engagement between German and Soviet forces, in July and August 1943: described as the greatest tank battle in history		Kursk
Port on the Bay of Biscay, where Germany established a major submarine (U–boat) base: the last French city to be liberated at the end of the war		La Rochelle
Russian city besieged by German forces for '900 days', Sep 1941–Feb 1944		Leningrad (St. Petersburg)
4–day action off the Philippines in October 1944, in which the US 3rd and 7th fleets destroyed what remained of Japanese naval power: probably the largest naval battle of WWII, possibly the largest ever, and the first in which the Japanese carried out organised kamikaze attacks		Leyte (LAY–tee) Gulf
Czech village destroyed by Nazis in 1942 as retaliation for the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich		Lidice (LI–di–ché)
Baltic port: the first German city to be attacked in substantial numbers by the RAF (March 1942)		Lübeck
Bridge at Remagen, captured by US troops 7 March 1945 – the Allies' first bridgehead across the Rhine (the last one standing at the time)		Ludendorff
Battle that turned the tide of the Pacific war in the Allies' favour (1942)		Midway
Italian monastery on the slopes of Monte Cairo, in the south of the Lazio region, overlooking the town for which it's named; occupied by the Nazis, and destroyed by allied bombing in the course of four battles from January to May 1944, resulting in heavy casualties on both sides and the almost total destruction of the town itself		Monte Cassino
Port in Arctic Norway, scene of one of the first major battles of World War II (April–June 1940)		Narvik
French village where German forces massacred villagers in 1944 as a reprisal		Oradur–sur–Glane
Algerian port where the French fleet was scuttled in 1940		Oran
"A day that will live in infamy": Franklin D. Roosevelt on		Pearl Harbor
Capital of the German state of Brandenburg: venue of the conference of July–August 1945 at which the Allied leaders (Truman, Atlee and Stalin) agreed terms for the reconstruction and military occupation of Germany following World War II; also gave its name to the Allies' declaration of 26 July 1945 calling for the surrender of Japanese forces		Potsdam
French city in which General Eisenhower received the surrender of the Wehrmacht, on behalf of the Allies (7 May 1945)		Reims
Natural harbour in Orkney, used as a major British naval base in World Wars I and II; the German fleet was scuttled there in 1919		Scapa Flow
Surrendered to the Japanese, 15 February 1942, by Commonwealth forces that had retreated there two weeks earlier after the Japanese invaded the Malay peninsula – in what Winston Churchill described as "the worst disaster and largest capitulation in British history"		Singapore
August 1942 to February 1943: German Sixth Army trapped and destroyed in a Soviet counter–offensive following a German siege – the turning point of the European theatre, but the bloodiest battle of the war and one of the deadliest in history, with casualties estimated at between 1.25 and 2.5 million		Stalingrad
Football League club whose ground (the County Ground) was used as a prisoner–of–war camp		Swindon Town
Italian port where 21 "obsolete" Fairey Swordfish biplane torpedo bombers from the aircraft carrier HMS Illustrious devastated the Italian fleet on 11–12 November 1940 – "the first all–aircraft ship–to–ship naval attack in history"		Taranto
Second largest of the Northern Mariana Islands: seized by the Allies in July 1944 and used as a US Air Force base – including the missions that dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki		Tinian
Seat of Marshal Petain's collaborationist government in occupied France, 1940–44		Vichy
English name of Hitler's headquarters on the Eastern Front		Wolf's Lair
Crimean resort where Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin met to plan the future of Europe, February 1945		Yalta

You are here:

World War II: Places