Poland: Did you mean...?

Adolf Hitler (1889-1945), the leader of Nazi Germany, was intent on attacking the USSR in the summer of 1941. With Western Europe subdued in 1940, Hitler could finally pursue his dream of territorial expansion in the East, destroy Bolshevism...

The Battle of Smolensk in 1941 ended in victory for Nazi Germany and its Axis allies against the USSR's Red Army during Operation Barbarossa in the Second World War (1939-45). Smolensk on the Dnieper (Dnepr/Dnipro) river was the traditional...

The Battle of Tourcoing (17-18 May 1794) was a major engagement in the War of the First Coalition, the first phase of the French Revolutionary Wars (1792-1802). It saw an army of the French Republic successfully fend off a six-pronged attack...

While the focus has been on Western Europe so far, there has also been a lot going on in Eastern Europe, which we'll be looking at today. The Commonwealth of Poland-Lithuania, The Ottoman Empire, and Russia were all competing at the eastern...

A map illustrating the growing instability in Europe in the lead-up to World War II, capturing the aggressive territorial expansion of Nazi Germany and the failure of appeasement. Between 1935 and 1939, a series of bold geopolitical moves...

This map illustrates the situation in Europe in November 1920 in the aftermath of First World War (1914-18), as the continent was reshaped by the Treaty of Versailles (1919) and the Treaty of Sèvres (1920). The German Empire had collapsed...

A March 1943 photograph of Adolf Hitler (1889-1945), the leader of Nazi Germany, alongside several of his generals as they study maps of the Eastern Front during the German-Soviet War of the Second World War (1939-45). The generals are (L...

A photograph showing the damage to Warsaw following the German invasion of Poland in September 1939. Photograph taken in October. Imperial War Museums

A May 1944 photograph of women prisoners at the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp complex in Poland which was set up by the SS to murder those identified as enemies of Nazi Germany, especially Jewish people.

An aerial view of the Auschwitz I part of the complex of labour and extermination camps in Poland known as Auschwitz. Over one million people died in this complex at the hands of the Nazi SS. Auschwitz was one of the main instruments of the...