List of military engagements of World War II

This is a list of military engagements of World War II encompassing land, naval, and air engagements as well as campaigns, operations, defensive lines and sieges. Campaigns generally refer to broader strategic operations conducted over a large bit of territory and over a long period of time. Battles generally refer to short periods of intense combat localised to a specific area and over a specific period of time. However, use of the terms in naming such events is not consistent. For example, the Battle of the Atlantic was more or less an entire theatre of war, and the so-called battle lasted for the duration of the entire war. Another misnomer is the Battle of Britain, which by all rights should be considered a campaign, not a mere battle.

Sieges

 * Siege of Warsaw
 * Siege of Leningrad
 * Siege of Lwów
 * Siege of Modlin
 * Siege of Novorossiysk
 * Siege of Odessa
 * Siege of Sevastopol
 * Siege of Tobruk
 * Siege of Budapest
 * Siege of Breslau
 * Siege of Bastogne
 * Siege of Budapest (1945)

Naval engagements
General
 * Arctic Convoys
 * Battle of the Atlantic - the name given to the conflict in the Atlantic Ocean between 1939 and 1945.
 * see also Timeline of the Battle of the Atlantic (1939-1945)
 * Battle of the Mediterranean
 * Battle of the Indian Ocean

Specific 1939 1940 1941 1942 1943 1944 1945
 * The Battle of the River Plate
 * First Battle of Narvik
 * Second Battle of Narvik
 * Battle of Cape Matapan
 * Battle of Pearl Harbor
 * Battle of the Coral Sea
 * Battle of Midway
 * Battle of Guadalcanal
 * Battle of the Komandorski Islands
 * Battle of Leyte Gulf
 * Operation Ten-Go

Major bombing campaigns
General
 * Strategic bombing during World War II
 * Strategic bombing survey for the overall impact of the bombing.

Specific
 * Baedeker raids
 * Chungking
 * Coventry
 * Broome - Japanese raid on the town of Broome, targeting the airfield.
 * Dresden
 * Darwin - Japanese target the harbour.
 * Hamburg
 * Helsinki - February 1944, was mostly ineffective due to air defence and deception.
 * Hiroshima - One nuclear weapon, Little Boy dropped from a B-29, devastating a city.
 * Kassel
 * London - "The Blitz" and the V-1 and V-2 campaigns
 * Lübeck
 * Nagasaki - One nuclear weapon, Fat Man dropped from a B-29, devastating a city.
 * Narva - March 1944. Evacuated town was destroyed by Soviet ADD.
 * Pearl Harbor
 * Rostock - Heinkel Airplane Construction Plant, Seaport, and City
 * Rotterdam
 * Stalingrad - 23 August 1942
 * Tallinn - February - March 1944. Bombed by Soviet ADD. Large-scale damage.
 * Tokyo - Several devastating raids.
 * Warsaw

Raids
Small to medium-sized raiding operations were carried out by both Allied and Axis armies during World War II. The modus operandi used included guerrilla attacks by partisans in occupied territory and/or combined operations involving the landing and removal of specialised light infantry, such as commandos, by means of small boats.
 * Allied
 * Operation Colossus
 * 10 February 1941
 * Experimental raid by 38 British Commandos on a fresh water aqueduct near Calitri in southern Italy.
 * Operation Claymore
 * 4 March 1941
 * 1000 Men from the British Commandos and belonging to the Norwegian Independent Company 1 destroy fish oil factories on the remote islands off the coast of Norway.
 * Operation Archery
 * 27 December 1941
 * 570 men from the British Commandos and belonging to the Norwegian Independent Company 1 raid and attack German positions on Vågsøy Island in Norway.
 * Battle of Timor
 * 19 February 1942 – 10 February 1943
 * Continuous raids from Australian commandos against the occupying Japanese.
 * Operation Chariot
 * 28 March 1942
 * 196 Royal Navy and Army Commando units raid and destroy the heavily defended docks of St. Nazaire in occupied France.
 * Dieppe Raid
 * 19 August 1942
 * Over 6,000 infantrymen, mostly Canadian attempted to seize and hold the port of Dieppe.
 * Makin Island raid, 17–18 August 1942
 * Operation Jaywick, September 1943
 * Operation Jedburgh, 1944
 * Operation Roast, April 1945
 * Axis
 * Operation Greif, December 1944

Raiding units
 * Allied
 * Multinational
 * Chindits
 * Devil's Brigade
 * Z Special Unit
 * Popski's Private Army
 * Gideon Force
 * Australia
 * Australian Army Independent Companies
 * France
 * Far East French Expeditionary Forces
 * Intervention Light Corps
 * Greece
 * Sacred Band
 * United Kingdom
 * Long Range Desert Group
 * Special Air Service
 * Royal Marines
 * Special Operations Executive
 * British Army Commandos
 * Layforce
 * British Paratroopers
 * United States
 * Marine Raiders
 * US Army Rangers
 * Alamo Scouts
 * Merrill's Marauders
 * Axis
 * Nazi Germany
 * Brandenburger Regiment
 * Waffen-SS (commando force led by Otto Skorzeny).
 * Fascist Italy
 * Decima Flottiglia MAS
 * Empire of Japan
 * Special Naval Landing Forces

Defensive lines

 * Atlantic Wall
 * Caesar Line
 * GHQ Line
 * Gothic Line
 * Gustav Line
 * Maginot Line
 * Mannerheim Line
 * Metaxas Line
 * Siegfried Line
 * Taunton Stop Line

Contemporaneous wars

 * Anglo-Iraqi War
 * Chinese Civil War
 * Greek Civil War
 * Second Italo-Abyssinian War
 * Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945)
 * Soviet-Japanese Border War (1939)
 * Spanish Civil War
 * Winter War (Russo-Finnish War), Continuation War, Lapland War