Battles won by allies Crossword

One of the most audacious operations in the German conquest of Europe was the air assault on the Greek island.
The Battle of Iwo Jima is an iconic event, thanks largely due to Joe Rosenthal's photograph of the American flag being raised. But military analysts still argue whether the island's limited strategic value justified the costly action.
The Allies invaded Italy in 1943 but by 1944 had progressed only as far as the Gustav Line south of Rome. So the Allies staged a massive amphibious operation to force the defenders to split their forces or be surrounded, but quick success depended on a rapid break-out from the beachhead.
After Anzio, the Germans occupied defensive positions known as the Winter Line, consisting of bunkers, barbed wire, minefields and ditches.The fight resembled a WW1 battle, with artillery bombardments preceding bloody infantry assaults on fixed positions. Success was bought at the cost of more than 50,000 casualties on the Allied side.
Following the D-Day invasion of June 1944, the Allies broke out of Normandy and advanced rapidly across France and Belgium. Hitler aimed to halt them by a surprise Blitzkrieg. Several armored divisions massed in the Ardennes with the goal of breaking through Allied lines.
When Britain and France declared war on Germany following the Nazi invasion of Poland, many expected that war to be a retread of the infantry tactics actions of WWI. That line of thinking clearly led to the French strategy of constructing the heavy concrete fortifications of the Maginot Line.
By late 1940 Britain faced the threat of a German invasion, but the incursion would succeed only with air superiority. What followed was the first major campaign fought by opposing air forces.
Hitler's plan to attack Soviet Russia was called Operation Barbarossa, and it sure looked insane on paper given the Russian numerical superiority and the ignominious history of enemy forces invading Russia.
All available Japanese forces were thrown into the area but the separate units failed to unite, resulting in several actions scattered over a wide area. All four Japanese light carriers were sunk, as were three battleships.
Submarine warfare had some impact in the First World War but became vastly more significant in WWII as the German U-boat packs aimed to blockade Europe. Merchant ships took to sailing in large convoys, protected by screens of destroyers and corvettes armed with depth charges and sonar.