The Military History of Germany

Germany as one state is young. For most of its history the German lands were divided among dozens, then hundreds, of principalities, church lands and free cities inside the Holy Roman Empire, and their armies often fought each other or served foreign kings. The first German nation-state was proclaimed only in 1871. This page follows the story era by era, names the state that fought in each period, links the battles we cover and gives defeats and crimes the same plain treatment as victories. The best known include the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest (AD 9), the Battle of Leipzig (1813), Verdun (1916) and Stalingrad (1942 to 1943).²

What counts as Germany in military history

Britannica dates Germany as a political entity to the division of the Carolingian empire in the 9th century, when the eastern part, the land east of the Rhine, went to Louis the German. From the 10th century its kings also wore the imperial crown of the Holy Roman Empire, a realm that included parts of today's Italy, the Netherlands and the Czech Republic as well as the German lands. The Holy Roman Empire was never a German nation-state, and this site does not count it as one: battles fought by the emperor's own armies belong to the empire's history, while those of German princes such as the electors of Saxony, Bavaria and Brandenburg are counted here.³

The Peace of Westphalia of 1648 left the empire split into hundreds of autonomous territories, most of them small, and the empire itself ended in 1806. Prussia then led the unification of the German states, and the German Empire proclaimed in January 1871 was the first German nation-state. After defeat in 1918 it became a republic; from 1933 it was a Nazi dictatorship; after 1945 it was occupied, divided into two states in 1949 and reunited on 3 October 1990.⁴

Germanic tribes and Rome

The peoples Rome called Germani were separate tribes, not a nation, and the Romans never conquered the lands beyond the Rhine. In the autumn of AD 9 the governor Publius Quinctilius Varus led the XVII, XVIII and XIX legions through the Teutoburg Forest, where warriors under Arminius, a chieftain of the Cherusci who had trained in the Roman army, ambushed the column over several days. The legions were destroyed and Varus and many of his officers took their own lives.⁵

The defeat marked the beginning of the end of Roman expansion in Germania; from then on Roman policy beyond the Rhine was to divide, not conquer. The exact site is still debated, though finds at Kalkriese near Osnabrück point there. Much later, the German national movement of the 19th century turned Arminius, renamed Hermann, into a national hero and the battle into a founding myth, and the Hermann Monument rose in the Teutoburg Forest in 1875.⁶

The medieval empire

East Francia was a loose realm in which the kings depended on the consent of powerful tribal dukes. Repeated raids by Hungarian horsemen helped Otto I of the Saxon dynasty unite them, and in August 955 his army defeated the Hungarians at the Lechfeld near Augsburg; they never invaded again. The pope crowned Otto emperor in 962, the moment usually taken as the start of the Holy Roman Empire.⁷

The Thirty Years' War, 1618 to 1648

The Thirty Years' War began as a revolt of the Protestant estates of Bohemia and spread into a European war fought mainly on German soil. Catholic armies of the emperor and the Catholic League routed Frederick V of the Palatinate, the king the Bohemians had chosen, at the White Mountain in November 1620. Denmark intervened and was beaten, and in 1630 Sweden entered the war, subsidized by France and the Dutch and allied with Saxony.⁸

Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden defeated Tilly at Breitenfeld in 1631 and won again at Lützen in November 1632, where he himself was killed. A Swedish defeat at Nördlingen in 1634 followed, then a Swedish victory at Wittstock in 1636. The war was marked by unprecedented brutality: when the Catholic army stormed Magdeburg in 1631, about two-thirds of the inhabitants were killed.⁹

How many people died is disputed. Britannica gives an overall fall in population of 15 to 20 percent, from about 20 million to 16 or 17 million, while an economic history paper notes that the most conservative estimate is 20 percent and most estimates run from 30 to 40 percent. In the worst-hit territories, such as Württemberg, more than half the people died or disappeared. The Peace of Westphalia of 1648 then sealed the fragmentation of the empire.¹⁰

How Prussia became a great power: Frederick II

The 18th century saw the rise of Prussia, ruled by the Hohenzollern electors of Brandenburg, as a great power. In December 1740 Frederick II invaded the wealthy Habsburg province of Silesia, starting the War of the Austrian Succession. His army beat the Austrians at Mollwitz in April 1741, and in December 1745 the Prussians won again at Kesselsdorf, after which Austria made peace at Dresden.¹¹

The Seven Years' War, from 1756 to 1763, was in Europe a continuation of the struggle for Silesia, with Austria, France and Russia against Prussia. Frederick won a costly victory at Prague in May 1757 but was checked at Kolín in June; he then beat a French-led army almost twice his size at Rossbach and the Austrians at Leuthen. Defeats followed at Hochkirch in 1758 and Kunersdorf in 1759, where an Austro-Russian army destroyed nearly half his force. The Treaty of Hubertusburg in 1763 restored the prewar status, and Prussia kept Silesia.¹²

Napoleon and the wars of 1806 to 1815

In July 1806 sixteen German states left the empire to form the Confederation of the Rhine under Napoleon's protection, bound to supply troops to France, and on 6 August 1806 Francis II laid down the imperial crown, ending the Holy Roman Empire. Prussia went to war that autumn, and on 14 October 1806 its armies were routed in the twin battles of Jena and Auerstedt, which knocked Prussia out of the war.¹³

Defeat drove reform. Civil servants such as Stein and Hardenberg and the soldiers Gerhard von Scharnhorst and August von Gneisenau rebuilt the Prussian state and army, and French domination helped give birth to German nationalism. In 1813 Prussia joined Russia against Napoleon in what Germans call the Wars of Liberation. The decisive battle at Leipzig in October 1813 was a coalition victory of Austrian, Prussian, Russian and Swedish armies, and German soldiers fought on both sides, since Saxony and other Confederation states were still with France.¹⁴

In June 1815 Napoleon beat the Prussian army under Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher at Ligny, but two days later the arrival of several Prussian corps helped Wellington's Anglo-allied army win at Waterloo, where some 45,000 Prussians took part.¹⁵

How Germany was unified, 1864 to 1871

King William I appointed Otto von Bismarck minister-president of Prussia in 1862, and Bismarck led Prussia through three short wars that united the German states under Prussian leadership. The first, against Denmark in 1864 over Schleswig and Holstein, included the naval action off Jasmund. In 1866 Prussia fought Austria, and at Königgrätz on 3 July the chief of the general staff, Helmuth von Moltke, brought three armies together by railroad and won the decisive battle. Prussia now dominated the German states.¹⁶

In the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 to 1871 the German armies forced a French surrender at Sedan, shut a French army inside Metz until it surrendered on 27 October 1870 and laid siege to Paris. On 18 January 1871 William I was proclaimed German Emperor in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles, and the Treaty of Frankfurt of 10 May 1871 took Alsace and part of Lorraine from France.¹⁷

How Germany fought World War I

In 1914 the German Empire fought beside Austria-Hungary against France, Russia and Britain. The Schlieffen Plan sent the main German armies through neutral Luxembourg and Belgium to defeat France quickly, but in September 1914 the French and British stopped them at the Marne and they fell back to the Aisne, which condemned Germany to a war on two fronts. In the east, the Eighth Army under Paul von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff encircled much of the Russian Second Army at Tannenberg in August 1914 and inflicted a catastrophic defeat on it.¹⁸

In 1916 Erich von Falkenhayn attacked Verdun to break the French army. He failed: the Imperial War Museums count 377,000 French and 330,000 German losses, Britannica about 400,000 and 350,000, and the Germans suffered even more on the Somme the same year.¹⁹

The German Spring Offensive of 1918 won ground, but the Allied Hundred Days Offensive pushed the German army back and wore it down. By 29 September Ludendorff had decided that Germany must seek an end to the fighting; the navy mutinied at Kiel on 28 October, Kaiser William II abdicated on 9 November, and on 11 November 1918 Germany signed the armistice.²⁰

The Weimar Republic

The republic proclaimed in November 1918, the first parliamentary democracy in Germany, signed the Treaty of Versailles on 28 June 1919. Germany lost Alsace-Lorraine to France and Poznań, West Prussia and Upper Silesia to Poland; sources measure the loss differently, from about 10 percent of territory and population (Britannica) to 13 percent of territory (the US Holocaust Memorial Museum). Article 231 made Germany accept responsibility for the war, and its army was limited to 100,000 men without conscription.²¹

Many Germans refused to accept that their army had lost. Right-wing groups claimed that the government had stabbed an undefeated army in the back, a belief historians call entirely inaccurate, and promises to rearm, reclaim territory and remilitarize the Rhineland helped the Nazi Party win mainstream voters.²²

Nazi Germany and World War II

In 1933 the Nazi Party under Adolf Hitler set up a dictatorship with a racist ideology. In 1935 Hitler announced a rearmament program that broke the Versailles terms, in March 1936 he sent troops into the Rhineland, and in 1938 and 1939 Germany took over Austria and the Czech lands without war. A non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union in August 1939 secretly provided for the division of Poland.²³

The war was begun on a lie. On 31 August 1939 SS men dressed as Poles staged an attack on the German radio station at Gleiwitz, and Nazi propaganda falsely claimed that Poland was persecuting ethnic Germans (the Gleiwitz incident). Germany invaded Poland on 1 September, starting World War II in Europe, and struck at the Polish post of Westerplatte; on 29 September divided Poland with the Soviet Union, annexing the west and ruling the rest as the General Government under Hans Frank.²⁴

In 1940 Germany conquered Denmark and Norway, the Low Countries and France, but lost the air war in the Battle of Britain, fought from July to October, and gave up its plan to invade. On 22 June 1941 it invaded the Soviet Union in breach of the pact. A Soviet counteroffensive from 6 December drove the Germans from Moscow; at Stalingrad the encircled Sixth Army surrendered in early 1943, and the last great German offensive in the east failed at Kursk in July 1943. In North Africa, Erwin Rommel was defeated at El Alamein in late 1942.²⁵

The war in the east was also a war of annihilation. Nazi Germany and its allies and collaborators murdered six million Jews in the Holocaust. The Einsatzgruppen killing units, about 3,000 men, shot Jews and others in the occupied Soviet Union, aided by the Wehrmacht, the Order Police and local collaborators, and at least 1.5 million Holocaust victims died in mass shootings or gas vans there. About 3.3 million Soviet prisoners of war, some 57 percent of those captured, were dead by the end of the war. The claim of a "clean Wehrmacht" that took no part in these crimes is a postwar myth; the German military was complicit in the Holocaust and in the murder of civilians and prisoners.²⁶

After the landings in Normandy on 6 June 1944 and the failure of the last German offensive in the west, the Battle of the Bulge in December, Allied armies entered Germany from both sides. Soviet troops encircled Berlin, Hitler killed himself on 30 April 1945, and the German armed forces surrendered unconditionally at Reims on 7 May, with the surrender taking effect in the east on 9 May.²⁷

Division, two armies and reunification

The victors divided Germany into four zones of occupation, and twelve million Germans were expelled from the lost eastern territories. The Allied Control Council formally abolished Prussia on 25 February 1947. The Federal Republic was founded from the three western zones in 1949 and the German Democratic Republic from the Soviet zone on 7 October 1949.²⁸

West Germany joined NATO on 6 May 1955 and regained its sovereignty within the alliance, and the Bundeswehr was founded when its first 101 volunteers were appointed on 12 November 1955, the 200th birthday of the Prussian reformer Scharnhorst. East Germany joined the Warsaw Pact and founded its National People's Army in 1956. Reunification on 3 October 1990 disbanded that army; some of its soldiers were taken into the Bundeswehr, the first 250 recruits swearing its oath on 19 October 1990. Full sovereignty came only with the Two Plus Four Agreement.²⁹

German commanders

Arminius, the Cherusci leader at the Teutoburg Forest, became a 19th-century national hero. Frederick II of Prussia won Silesia and kept it through the Seven Years' War, at the price of heavy defeats as well as victories. Scharnhorst and Gneisenau rebuilt the Prussian army after 1806, and Blücher led it at Leipzig, Ligny and Waterloo. Helmuth von Moltke the Elder commanded the Prussian armies at Königgrätz and was a principal commander of the wars of unification; Hindenburg and Ludendorff won at Tannenberg, and in September 1918 Ludendorff concluded that Germany had to seek an end to the fighting. In World War II Friedrich Paulus surrendered at Stalingrad, and Erwin Rommel, the commander in North Africa, was forced to take poison in October 1944 when suspected of involvement in the plot to kill Hitler.³⁰

Germany's battles, era by era: all 120

Every battle we have written up in which the German states, Prussia, the German Empire, Nazi Germany or the Germanic tribes before them took part, grouped by era and in date order:

Antiquity to AD 476 · 1

1. 9
   Battle of the Teutoburg Forest, AD 9Germanic tribes vs Roman Empire

   How Arminius lured three Roman legions into the German forests and destroyed them, halting Rome at the Rhine for good.

   

The early modern era 1492 to 1789 · 32

1. 1620
   Battle of White Mountain, 1620Holy Roman Emperor and the Catholic League vs Bohemian estates

   On 8 November 1620 the Emperor's and the Catholic League's armies broke the Bohemian estates outside Prague in two hours, ending the revolt that began the Thirty Years' War.

   
2. 1622
   Battle of Wimpfen, 1622Catholic League and Spain vs Baden-Durlach (Protestant side)

   On 6 May 1622 Tilly and Córdoba beat the margrave of Baden-Durlach near Wimpfen on the Neckar after a lucky shot blew up the Protestant powder wagons.

   
3. 1626
   Battle of Lutter, 1626Catholic League (with imperial reinforcements) vs Denmark-Norway and the Lower Saxon Circle

   On 27 August 1626 Tilly's Catholic League army routed Christian IV of Denmark at Lutter am Barenberge, ending the king's hopes in northern Germany.

   
4. 1631
   Battle of Breitenfeld, 1631Sweden and Electoral Saxony vs Holy Roman Emperor and Catholic League

   On 17 September 1631 Gustavus Adolphus and the Saxons met Tilly north of Leipzig; the Saxons fled, but the Swedish brigades turned and destroyed the imperial army.

   
5. 1632
   Battle of Lützen, 1632Sweden and its Protestant German allies vs Holy Roman Empire (Imperial army)

   On 16 November 1632 Gustavus Adolphus attacked Wallenstein in the fog at Lützen. His army won the field; the king died in a cavalry melee.

   
6. 1636
   Battle of Wittstock, 1636Sweden and its allies vs Holy Roman Emperor and Saxony

   On 4 October 1636 Banér's Swedes and Leslie's Scots and Germans beat the larger Imperial and Saxon army at Wittstock, sending their cavalry round through swamp and forest into its rear.

   
7. 1638
   Battle of Rheinfelden, 1638Army of Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar (in French service) vs Holy Roman Empire and Bavaria

   On 28 February 1638 Werth and Savelli drove Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar from the siege of Rheinfelden. They celebrated; three days later he came back, routed their army and took both of them prisoner.

   
8. 1644
   Battle of Freiburg, 1644Kingdom of France vs Electorate of Bavaria and the Empire

   In August 1644 Enghien and Turenne stormed Mercy's Bavarian lines in the hills above Freiburg; they took the first line and broke against the second.

   
9. 1656
   Battle of Filipów, 1656Grand Duchy of Lithuania vs Sweden and Brandenburg

   On 22 October 1656 a Swedish and Brandenburg army caught Hetman Gosiewski's Lithuanian division at Filipów, two weeks after his victory at Prostki.

   
10. 1664
    Battle of Saint Gotthard, 1664Habsburg Monarchy, Imperial Army of the Reich, League of the Rhine and France vs Ottoman Empire

    On 1 August 1664 Montecuccoli's Imperial, German and French troops rallied from a rout and drove an Ottoman bridgehead back into the flooded Rába.

    
11. 1683
    The Siege of Vienna, 1683Poland, Holy Roman Empire and German states vs Ottoman Empire

    A starving city, then the winged hussars came down the mountain. The day the Ottoman advance into Europe turned.

    
12. 1704
    Battle of the Schellenberg, 1704Grand Alliance (England, the Dutch Republic, the Empire) vs France and the Electorate of Bavaria

    On 2 July 1704 Marlborough and Louis of Baden stormed the Schellenberg above Donauwörth; an evening breakthrough near the town gave them the Danube crossing.

    
13. 1704
    Battle of Blenheim, 1704Grand Alliance: England, the Dutch Republic, the Holy Roman Empire and German states vs France and the Electorate of Bavaria

    On 13 August 1704 Marlborough and Prince Eugene destroyed a Franco-Bavarian army on the Danube, captured Marshal Tallard and saved Vienna.

    
14. 1741
    Battle of Mollwitz, 1741Kingdom of Prussia vs Habsburg Monarchy

    On 10 April 1741 the Austrian cavalry routed the Prussian right at Mollwitz and Frederick II rode away. His infantry stayed, held and won him his first battle.

    
15. 1743
    Battle of Dettingen, 1743Pragmatic Army (Britain, Hanover, Austria) vs Kingdom of France

    On 27 June 1743 George II's Pragmatic Army, cut off on the river Main, beat off the French at Dettingen: the last battle led by a reigning British king.

    
16. 1745
    Battle of Kesselsdorf, 1745Kingdom of Prussia vs Electorate of Saxony and Austria

    On 15 December 1745 the 69-year-old Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Dessau stormed the Saxon guns at Kesselsdorf near Dresden and ended the Second Silesian War.

    
17. 1746
    Battle of Rocoux, 1746France vs Pragmatic Army (Austria, Dutch Republic, Britain, Hanover, Hesse)

    On 11 October 1746 Marshal Saxe stormed the villages outside Liège held by the Pragmatic Army; British dragoons covered the retreat as the allies crossed the Meuse at night.

    
18. 1756
    Battle of Lobositz, 1756Kingdom of Prussia vs Habsburg Monarchy

    On 1 October 1756 Frederick the Great attacked Browne's Austrians at Lobositz in fog; his cavalry was wrecked, his infantry took the burning town, and Browne withdrew intact.

    
19. 1757
    Battle of Prague, 1757Kingdom of Prussia vs Habsburg Monarchy

    On 6 May 1757 Frederick the Great stormed the Austrian lines east of Prague. Schwerin fell with the colors in his hands, and 27,000 men were lost in a single day.

    
20. 1757
    Battle of Kolín, 1757Habsburg Monarchy (Austria) and Saxon cavalry vs Kingdom of Prussia

    On 18 June 1757 Daun's Austrians beat Frederick the Great at Kolín in Bohemia, ending his siege of Prague and his run of victories.

    
21. 1757
    Battle of Gross-Jägersdorf, 1757Russian Empire vs Kingdom of Prussia

    On 30 August 1757 Apraksin's Russians beat Lehwaldt's Prussians at Gross-Jägersdorf in East Prussia, then marched away without using their victory.

    
22. 1757
    Battle of Rossbach, 1757Kingdom of Prussia vs France and the Holy Roman Empire

    On 5 November 1757 Frederick the Great's 22,000 Prussians caught a French and Imperial army twice their size on the march and routed it in about an hour and a half.

    
23. 1757
    Battle of Leuthen, 1757Kingdom of Prussia vs Habsburg Monarchy

    On 5 December 1757 Frederick the Great feinted, marched hidden behind low hills and broke an Austrian army twice his size near Leuthen in Silesia.

    
24. 1758
    Battle of Domstadtl, 1758Habsburg Monarchy (Austria) vs Kingdom of Prussia

    On 30 June 1758 Loudon's Austrians ambushed Frederick the Great's 4,000-wagon supply convoy at Domstadtl and forced him to lift the siege of Olomouc.

    
25. 1758
    Battle of Hochkirch, 1758Habsburg Monarchy vs Kingdom of Prussia

    On 14 October 1758 Daun's Austrians crept up on Frederick the Great's camp at Hochkirch in the dark and struck at 5 a.m. The night march, the churchyard fight, Keith's death and the numbers.

    
26. 1759
    Battle of Maxen, 1759Habsburg Monarchy and the Reichsarmee vs Kingdom of Prussia

    In November 1759 Frederick the Great sent General Finck's corps behind the Austrian army. At Maxen Daun surrounded it, and on 21 November the whole corps surrendered.

    
27. 1760
    Battle of Landeshut, 1760Habsburg Monarchy (Austria) vs Kingdom of Prussia

    On 23 June 1760 Loudon's Austrians stormed the Prussian hill forts at Landeshut, today Kamienna Góra, and captured General Fouqué with most of his corps.

    
28. 1760
    Battle of Warburg, 1760Allied army: Hanover, Hesse-Kassel, Brunswick and Britain vs Kingdom of France

    On 31 July 1760 a flank march in the fog and Lord Granby's British cavalry drove the Chevalier de Muy's French corps from Warburg over the Diemel.

    
29. 1762
    Battle of Freiberg, 1762Kingdom of Prussia vs Holy Roman Empire and Austria

    On 29 October 1762 Prince Henry of Prussia beat the Austro-Imperial army near Freiberg in Saxony, in what is called the last battle of the Seven Years' War.

    
30. 1776
    Battle of Pell's Point, 1776Continental Army vs Britain and Hesse

    On 18 October 1776 John Glover's 750 Massachusetts men fought a British and Hessian landing from wall to wall at Pell's Point and bought Washington a day to escape Manhattan.

    
31. 1776
    Battle of Trenton, 1776United States (Continental Army) vs Great Britain (Hessian garrison)

    Washington's Christmas-night crossing of the Delaware and the surprise that revived the Revolution.

    
32. 1777
    Battle of Bound Brook, 1777Great Britain (British and Hessian troops) vs United States (Continental Army and militia)

    On 13 April 1777 Cornwallis's three columns surprised Benjamin Lincoln's outpost at Bound Brook; most of the garrison escaped to the hills, but the guns were lost.

    

The Napoleonic era 1789 to 1815 · 8

1. 1792
   Battle of Valmy, 1792France vs Prussia (First Coalition)

   On 20 September 1792 the French held the hills around Valmy under a Prussian cannonade; Brunswick turned back, and the French Republic was proclaimed the next day.

   
2. 1806
   Jena-Auerstedt, 1806French Empire vs Kingdom of Prussia

   Napoleon destroys the Prussian army in twin battles in a day.

   
3. 1813
   The Battle of Leipzig, 1813Coalition (Russia, Prussia, Austria, Sweden) vs French Empire

   Six hundred thousand men and the largest battle in Europe before 1914.

   
4. 1813
   Battle of Hanau, 1813French Empire vs Austria and Bavaria

   On 30 and 31 October 1813, retreating from Leipzig, Napoleon found Wrede's Austro-Bavarian army across his road at Hanau and blasted it aside with fifty guns.

   
5. 1814
   Battle of Montmirail, 1814French Empire vs Russia and Prussia (Army of Silesia)

   On 11 February 1814 Napoleon beat Sacken's Russians around Marchais and threw back Yorck's Prussians. The Allies escaped across the Marne because the bridge at Château-Thierry was never taken.

   
6. 1815
   Battle of Ligny, 1815French Empire vs Prussia

   On 16 June 1815, two days before Waterloo, Napoleon beat Blücher's Prussians at Ligny, but their army escaped north to fight again.

   
7. 1815
   Battle of Quatre Bras, 1815French Empire vs Britain, Netherlands, Brunswick, Nassau and Hanover

   On 16 June 1815 Marshal Ney attacked Wellington's army at the crossroads of Quatre Bras. The Allies held, and the fight kept a French corps away from Ligny.

   
8. 1815
   The Battle of Waterloo, 1815Coalition (Britain, Prussia) vs French Empire

   Napoleon's last gamble, undone by a defiant ridge, unbroken infantry squares, and the Prussians arriving out of the woods just in time.

   

The industrial age 1815 to 1914 · 5

1. 1864
   Battle of Jasmund, 1864Denmark vs Prussia

   On 17 March 1864 Prussian corvettes sailed out of Swinemünde to test the Danish blockade. Off Rügen they traded broadsides with the frigate Sjælland and fled. It was the Prussian Navy's first battle.

   
2. 1870
   Siege of Paris, 1870-1871France (Government of National Defense) vs Prussia and the German states

   From September 1870 to January 1871 German armies besieged Paris; the city sent its letters out by balloon, ate its zoo animals and finally capitulated on 28 January.

   
3. 1870
   Battle of Spicheren, 1870Kingdom of Prussia and North German Confederation vs French Empire

   On 6 August 1870 Prussian divisions marching to the sound of the guns stormed the Spicheren heights above Saarbrücken and drove Frossard's corps back towards Metz.

   
4. 1870
   Battle of Coulmiers, 1870French Republic vs Bavaria and Prussia

   On 9 November 1870 France's newly raised Army of the Loire beat the Bavarians at Coulmiers and won back Orléans, one of the few French victories of the war.

   
5. 1870
   Battle of Beaune-la-Rolande, 1870Kingdom of Prussia and allies (Second Army) vs French Republic (Army of the Loire)

   On 28 November 1870 two French corps marching to relieve Paris struck the Prussian X Corps at Beaune-la-Rolande. Outnumbered, it held on until help came at dusk.

   

World War I 1914 to 1919 · 25

1. 1914
   First Battle of Champagne, 1914 to 1915France vs German Empire

   On 20 December 1914 Joffre's Fourth Army attacked the German trenches in Champagne. Three months and tens of thousands of casualties later, it had gained three kilometers.

   
2. 1914
   Battle of Lorraine, 1914French Republic vs German Empire

   On 14 August 1914 two French armies invaded German Lorraine under Plan XVII; within a week they were thrown back at Sarrebourg and Morhange.

   
3. 1914
   Battle of Tannenberg, 1914German Empire vs Russian Empire

   How Germany encircled and destroyed a whole Russian army at Tannenberg in 1914, taking some 90,000 prisoners.

   
4. 1914
   The First Marne, 1914France and Britain vs German Empire

   The counterattack that saved Paris and turned the war into trenches.

   
5. 1914
   Siege of Antwerp, 1914Belgium and Britain vs Germany

   In autumn 1914 German siege guns smashed the forts of Antwerp; the city burned and surrendered on 10 October, but King Albert's army escaped to fight on at the Yser.

   
6. 1914
   First Ypres, 1914Entente vs German Empire

   The battle that froze the Western Front to the sea.

   
7. 1914
   Battle of Penang, 1914German Empire vs Russian Empire and France

   At dawn on 28 October 1914 the German cruiser Emden, disguised with a false funnel, sank the Russian cruiser Zhemchug and the French destroyer Mousquet at Penang.

   
8. 1914
   Battle of Coronel, 1914German Empire vs British Empire

   On 1 November 1914 von Spee's cruisers caught Cradock's squadron off Chile at sunset and sank the Good Hope and the Monmouth with every man aboard.

   
9. 1914
   Battle of Łódź, 1914German Empire and Austria-Hungary vs Russian Empire

   From 11 November to 6 December 1914 German and Russian armies fought a vast battle of maneuver around Łódź that cost some 200,000 lives and was then almost forgotten.

   
10. 1914
    Battle of the Falkland Islands, 1914United Kingdom (Royal Navy) vs German Empire (East Asia Squadron)

    On 8 December 1914 von Spee's squadron came to raid Port Stanley and found two British battlecruisers in harbor. By nightfall four of his five cruisers were sunk.

    
11. 1915
    Battle of Dogger Bank, 1915United Kingdom vs German Empire

    On 24 January 1915 codebreakers sent Beatty's battlecruisers after Hipper near the Dogger Bank. Blücher was sunk, but a crippled flagship and a misread signal let the rest escape.

    
12. 1915
    Second Battle of Artois, 1915France (Tenth Army), with the British First Army vs German Empire (Sixth Army)

    On 9 May 1915 Pétain's corps and the Moroccan Division broke through north of Arras and reached the crest of Vimy Ridge within hours. By nightfall they had lost it.

    
13. 1916
    The Battle of Verdun, 1916France vs German Empire

    Ten months of grinding slaughter around a French fortress, the longest battle of World War I.

    
14. 1916
    The Brusilov Offensive, 1916Russian Empire vs Austria-Hungary and Germany

    From 4 June 1916 General Brusilov's armies broke the Austro-Hungarian front in Volhynia and Galicia. It was Russia's greatest success of the war, and one of its costliest.

    
15. 1916
    The Somme, 1916Britain and France vs German Empire

    A million casualties and the symbol of industrial war.

    
16. 1917
    Battle of Arras, 1917British Empire vs German Empire

    On Easter Monday 1917 British and Empire troops came out of the tunnels under Arras and broke the German line. Then Monchy-le-Preux and Bullecourt turned the offensive into a costly stalemate.

    
17. 1917
    Battle of Vimy Ridge, 1917Canada (British Empire) vs German Empire (Sixth Army, Group Vimy)
18. 1917
    The Battle of Passchendaele, 1917British Empire and allies vs German Empire

    Flanders, 1917. A bold plan to break out toward the Belgian coast collapsed into mud, drowning, and attrition. This is the Third Battle of Ypres, remembered as Passchendaele.

    
19. 1917
    Battle of Caporetto, 1917Austria-Hungary and Germany vs Kingdom of Italy

    On 24 October 1917 German and Austro-Hungarian troops broke the Italian front at Caporetto and drove Italy's army back to the Piave. What happened and what it cost.

    
20. 1917
    Second Battle of Heligoland Bight, 1917United Kingdom (Grand Fleet) vs German Empire (High Seas Fleet)

    On 17 November 1917 British cruisers raced into the Heligoland Bight after German minesweepers, lost them in smoke and minefields, and met German battleships.

    
21. 1918
    The Zeebrugge Raid, 1918United Kingdom (Royal Navy, Royal Marines) vs German Empire (Imperial German Navy)

    On St George's Day 1918 the Royal Navy stormed the Zeebrugge Mole and sank concrete-filled cruisers in the Bruges canal to shut in the U-boats. Within days they were out again.

    
22. 1918
    Battle of Belleau Wood, 1918United States (with French support) vs German Empire

    The US Marines' brutal three-week fight that helped stop the German drive on Paris.

    
23. 1918
    The Hundred Days Offensive, 1918Allied Powers (Britain and the Empire, France, United States, Belgium) vs German Empire

    From Amiens on 8 August to the armistice of 11 November 1918, British Empire, French, American and Belgian armies broke the German army in the west.

    
24. 1918
    The Meuse-Argonne Offensive, 1918United States (with France) vs German Empire

    More than a million Americans, 47 days, and the end of the war.

    
25. 1919
    Scuttling at Scapa Flow, 1919German interned fleet vs Royal Navy at Scapa Flow

    On 21 June 1919 the interned German High Seas Fleet sank itself at Scapa Flow in Orkney on Admiral von Reuter's signal, rather than be handed to the Allies.

    

World War II 1939 to 1945 · 47

1. 1939
   Battle of Wizna, 1939Poland vs Nazi Germany

   How a few hundred Poles held Wizna for three days against a German corps in 1939, the Polish Thermopylae.

   
2. 1939
   The Gleiwitz incident, 1939Nazi Germany (SD and Gestapo) vs Victim

   On 31 August 1939 SS men posing as Polish insurgents raided the Gleiwitz radio station and murdered Franz Honiok, staging a pretext for the invasion of Poland.

   
3. 1939
   The Defence of Hel, 1939Poland vs Germany

   Cut off on a Baltic sandbar, the garrison held for 32 days.

   
4. 1939
   The Battle of Mokra, 1939Poland vs Germany

   On the first day of the war, a cavalry brigade held off a panzer division.

   
5. 1939
   The Battle of Mława, 1939Poland vs Germany

   Polish bunkers stopped the German 3rd Army at the border.

   
6. 1939
   The Battle of Westerplatte, 1939Poland vs Nazi Germany

   Told to hold for twelve hours, Westerplatte held for seven days.

   
7. 1939
   Battle of Kałuszyn, 1939Poland vs Nazi Germany

   How the Iron Division retook Kałuszyn east of Warsaw in a night attack, and the famous, contested uhlan charge of 1939.

   
8. 1939
   The Battle of the Bzura, 1939Poland vs Nazi Germany

   The largest battle of September 1939, and Poland's great counterstroke.

   
9. 1939
   The Battle of Kock, 1939Poland vs Germany

   Undefeated in the field, General Kleeberg ran out of ammunition.

   
10. 1940
    The Battle of Narvik, 1940Norway, Britain, France and Poland vs Germany

    Polish mountain troops among the fjords of northern Norway.

    
11. 1940
    The Battle of Britain, 1940Britain (RAF) vs Germany (Luftwaffe)

    The RAF holds the sky over England and stops a German invasion.

    
12. 1941
    The Siege of Leningrad, 1941 to 1944Soviet Union vs Germany and Finland

    872 days, the 125-gram ration, the Road of Life and Tanya Savicheva's diary.

    
13. 1941
    The Battle of Moscow, 1941USSR vs Nazi Germany

    The first great defeat of the Wehrmacht, in the snow.

    
14. 1941
    Bombing of Belgrade, 1941Germany vs Kingdom of Yugoslavia

    On Palm Sunday, 6 April 1941, German bombers struck Belgrade without a declaration of war. The city center burned with the National Library, and the death toll is disputed to this day.

    
15. 1941
    The Siege of Tobruk, 1941Allies (Australia, Britain, Poland, Czechoslovakia and others) vs Germany and Italy

    The Carpathian Brigade holds the hardest sectors of the desert fortress.

    
16. 1941
    Siege of Odessa, 1941Romania (4th Army), with German support vs Soviet Union (Coastal Army, Black Sea Fleet)

    From August to October 1941 Soviet troops held Odessa, cut off by land and supplied by sea, against Romania's 4th Army, then slipped away by ship.

    
17. 1941
    HMAS Sydney and the Kormoran, 1941Australia (Royal Australian Navy) vs Germany (Kriegsmarine)

    On 19 November 1941 the cruiser HMAS Sydney closed on a Dutch freighter off Western Australia. It was the raider Kormoran. Both sank; all 645 Australians died.

    
18. 1942
    Barvenkovo-Lozovaya offensive, 1942Soviet Union vs Germany

    In January 1942 the Red Army broke through on the Donets near Izyum and drove toward the Dnieper, but the Germans held the shoulders and the gain became the Izyum bulge.

    
19. 1942
    The Battle of Stalingrad, 1942-1943USSR vs Germany and allies

    Five months of street fighting on the Volga, a surprise encirclement, and the surrender that turned the whole war in the East.

    
20. 1942
    The Channel Dash, 1942Germany vs United Kingdom

    On 12 February 1942 Scharnhorst, Gneisenau and Prinz Eugen ran up the English Channel in daylight. Six Swordfish attacked and none came back; only mines touched the German ships.

    
21. 1942
    Battle of Mersa Matruh, 1942Axis (German and Italian forces) vs British Commonwealth (Eighth Army)

    In late June 1942 Rommel's spent army outflanked the British at Mersa Matruh; X Corps was cut off and broke out at night, and the Eighth Army fell back to El Alamein.

    
22. 1942
    El Alamein, 1942British Empire and Commonwealth vs Germany and Italy (Panzerarmee Afrika)

    Montgomery breaks Rommel and turns the tide in North Africa.

    
23. 1942
    Operation Uranus, 1942Soviet Union vs Germany and Romania

    On 19 November 1942 the Red Army struck the Romanian armies on both flanks of Stalingrad. Four days later the German Sixth Army was encircled.

    
24. 1942
    Battle of the Barents Sea, 1942United Kingdom vs Germany

    On 31 December 1942 four British destroyers bluffed a heavy cruiser and a pocket battleship away from an Arctic convoy. Not one merchant ship was lost, and Hitler turned on his navy.

    
25. 1943
    Operation Ochsenkopf, 1943Germany and Italy (5th Panzer Army) vs United Kingdom and France (British First Army)

    On 26 February 1943 von Arnim threw Tiger tanks at the British front in northern Tunisia. A battalion and a battery at Sidi Nsir held them for a day, and at Hunt's Gap the panzers were shot to pieces.

    
26. 1943
    Battle of the Sutjeska, 1943Yugoslav Partisans (NOVJ Main Operational Group) vs Germany, Italy, Croatia (NDH) and Bulgaria

    From 15 May 1943 over 100,000 Axis troops closed on Tito's partisans in the Bosnian mountains. A third of them died, but the breakout at the Sutjeska saved the movement.

    
27. 1943
    The Battle of Kursk, 1943USSR vs Germany (Operation Citadel)

    Hitler's doomed 1943 gamble and the greatest tank battle of the war, told scene by scene.

    
28. 1943
    Battle of Prokhorovka, 1943Soviet Union vs Germany

    On 12 July 1943 the Soviet 5th Guards Tank Army attacked the II SS Panzer Corps at Prokhorovka. What really happened and why the legend grew.

    
29. 1943
    Operation Kutuzov, 1943Soviet Union vs Germany

    On 12 July 1943, at the height of Kursk, the Red Army attacked the German bulge around Orel. Five weeks later it had taken Orel and pushed the Germans back.

    
30. 1943
    Donbas offensive, July 1943Soviet Union vs Germany

    In July 1943 the Red Army attacked on the Mius and at Izyum. It gained little and was thrown back, but the attack pulled German panzers south from Kursk.

    
31. 1943
    Smolensk operation, 1943Soviet Union vs Germany

    From August to October 1943 two Soviet fronts ground through the forest defenses of Army Group Center and retook Smolensk on 25 September.

    
32. 1944
    Leningrad-Novgorod offensive, 1944Soviet Union vs Germany

    On 14 January 1944 two Soviet fronts struck from Oranienbaum, Leningrad and Novgorod. Within two weeks the German ring was broken and the 872-day siege was over.

    
33. 1944
    Battle of Monte Cassino, 1944Allies (incl. Polish II Corps) vs Nazi Germany

    How four battles, the last won by the Polish II Corps, took Monte Cassino in 1944 and opened the road to Rome.

    
34. 1944
    Battle of Anzio, 1944Allies (United States, Britain) vs Germany

    On 22 January 1944 the Allies landed at Anzio behind the Gustav Line and caught the Germans by surprise. A week of caution let Kesselring seal the beachhead, and the siege lasted four months.

    
35. 1944
    The Battle of the BulgeUnited States and allies vs Germany

    December 1944: fog, snow and a desperate German gamble in the Ardennes forest. The siege of Bastogne, McAuliffe's Nuts, and Patton's race north.

    
36. 1944
    Crimean offensive, 1944Soviet Union vs Germany and Romania

    In April and May 1944 the Red Army broke into the Crimea, drove the German 17th Army into Sevastopol and took the city in three days of assault.

    
37. 1944
    D-Day, 1944Allies (USA, Britain, Canada) vs Nazi Germany

    Five beaches, thousands of ships, and one morning that breached the Atlantic Wall and opened the Western Front.

    
38. 1944
    The Warsaw Uprising, 1944Poland vs Germany

    Warsaw rose against the German occupation and fought alone for 63 days.

    
39. 1944
    The Battle of Falaise, 1944Allies (USA, Britain, Canada, Poland, Free France) vs Germany

    The Polish armored division corked the Falaise Pocket.

    
40. 1944
    Operation Market GardenAllies (Britain, US, Poland) vs Germany

    The Allied airborne gamble of September 1944, a chain of Dutch bridges, and the bridge too far at Arnhem where the plan came apart.

    
41. 1944
    Battle of the Scheldt, 1944Allies (First Canadian Army) vs Germany (Fifteenth Army)

    In October and November 1944 Canadian, British and Polish troops fought across flooded polders and Walcheren island to open the Scheldt and the port of Antwerp.

    
42. 1945
    Operation Konrad III, 1945Germany and Hungary vs Soviet Union

    On 18 January 1945 German panzers struck from Lake Balaton to relieve encircled Budapest. They reached the Danube in 27 hours and retook Székesfehérvár, but stalled about 25 km short of the city.

    
43. 1945
    The Ruhr Pocket, 1945United States (12th Army Group) vs Germany (Army Group B)

    On Easter Sunday 1945 two U.S. armies met at Lippstadt and trapped Model's Army Group B in the Ruhr. Seventeen days later some 317,000 Germans had surrendered.

    
44. 1945
    The Battle of Berlin, 1945USSR vs Nazi Germany

    The ferocious final battle for Hitler's capital in 1945, told scene by scene.

    
45. 1945
    Battle of the Seelow Heights, 1945Soviet Union and Poland vs Germany

    On 16 April 1945 Zhukov's armies attacked the Seelow Heights, the last ridge before Berlin. Searchlights blinded the wrong side, and the breakthrough took four bloody days.

    
46. 1945
    Battle of Halbe, 1945Soviet Union vs Germany

    In late April 1945 the encircled German Ninth Army and thousands of refugees tried to break out through Halbe, south of Berlin. About 40,000 died; 25,000 soldiers reached the Elbe.

    
47. 1945
    The Battle for Castle Itter, 1945U.S. Army, anti-Nazi Wehrmacht soldiers, Austrian resistance and French prisoners vs Waffen-SS

    On 5 May 1945 American tankers, anti-Nazi German soldiers and French VIP prisoners held Schloss Itter in the Tyrol against the Waffen-SS until relief arrived.

    

Other 2

1. 1919
   Battle of Ławica, 1919Greater Poland insurgents vs German Empire

   On 6 January 1919 Greater Poland insurgents cut the power, fired four shells and took the German air station at Poznań in about twenty minutes. The prize was the start of Poland's air force.

   
2. 1938
   The Aragon Offensive, 1938Nationalists, with the Italian CTV and the German Condor Legion vs Spanish Republic (Popular Army)

   On 7 March 1938 Franco's armies struck the exhausted Republican front in Aragon. Six weeks later Navarrese troops waded into the Mediterranean at Vinaròs, and Republican Spain was cut in two.

   

Timeline

1. AD 9
   Arminius destroys three Roman legions under Varus (Teutoburg Forest).³¹
2. 955
   Otto I defeats the Hungarians at the Lechfeld near Augsburg.³²
3. 1620
   Catholic armies rout Frederick V (White Mountain).³³
4. 1631
   Sack of Magdeburg; Gustavus Adolphus wins at Breitenfeld.³⁴
5. 1648
   The Peace of Westphalia ends the Thirty Years' War.³⁵
6. 1757
   Frederick II wins at Rossbach and Leuthen.³⁶
7. 1806
   End of the Holy Roman Empire; Prussia routed at Jena and Auerstedt.³⁷
8. 1813
   Coalition victory over Napoleon at Leipzig.³⁸
9. 1866
   Prussia defeats Austria at Königgrätz.³⁹
10. 1871
    William I proclaimed German Emperor at Versailles, 18 January.⁴⁰
11. 1914
    The German advance is stopped at the Marne.⁴¹
12. 1918
    Kaiser William II abdicates; armistice of 11 November.⁴²
13. 1919
    Treaty of Versailles signed, 28 June.⁴³
14. 1939
    After the staged Gleiwitz incident, Germany invades Poland on 1 September.⁴⁴
15. 1941
    Germany invades the Soviet Union, 22 June.⁴⁵
16. 1943
    The Sixth Army surrenders at Stalingrad.⁴⁶
17. 1945
    Unconditional surrender at Reims, 7 May.⁴⁷
18. 1949
    The Federal Republic and the German Democratic Republic are founded.⁴⁸
19. 1955
    West Germany joins NATO; the Bundeswehr is founded.⁴⁹
20. 1990
    Germany is reunited, 3 October.⁵⁰

Memory and further reading

Germany's wars have been remembered in very different ways. The 19th-century national movement built a myth around the Teutoburg Forest; after 1918 the stab-in-the-back legend poisoned the Weimar Republic; and after 1945 the long reckoning with Nazi crimes included the slow dismantling of the clean Wehrmacht myth, publicly challenged by the exhibition on the crimes of the Wehrmacht that opened in Hamburg in 1995. In December 1970 Chancellor Willy Brandt knelt before the memorial to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, asking forgiveness for the crimes of the Third Reich.⁵¹

For the neighbors' side of many of these wars, see our hubs on Poland, France and Britain, and the rankings of the greatest battles of World War II and of the greatest World War I battles.