Campaign

In late 1953, the seventh year of France's war against the Viet Minh insurgency in its colony of Vietnam, the C-in-C, General Navarre, was encouraged to plant an 'air-ground base' in the Thai Highlands at Dien Bien Phu, to distract General Giap's Vietnamese People's Army from both Annam and the French northern heartland in the Red River Delta, and to protect the Laotian border. Elite French paratroopers captured Dien Bien Phu, which was reinforced between December 1953 and February 1954 with infantry and artillery, a squadron of tanks and one of fighter-bombers, to a strength of 10,000 men.

As the final month of fighting in Europe in 1945 dawned the Allies embarked upon a series of mopping up operations, destroying the last centres of German resistance as the essentially defeated Wehrmacht fought on in increasingly desperate conditions, driven on by the explicit no surrender order issued by Hitler. Yet at the same time, the Allied alliance was already on shaky ground, as German resistance was crushed the Allies began to eye each other nervously across a battle-torn Europe, with the politically driven military decisions to have a huge impact on the future of the continent.

Against the wishes of Hitler, German forces under Erich von Manstein were forced to retreat following the failure of the Kursk offensive of July 1943. The race to the natural defensive line was on, with the Soviets launching one of their largest offensives of the war – with over 2 million men on the move. Robert Forczyk describes the dramatic four-month campaign that saw the Red Army not only succeed in crossing the Dnepr at multiple points, but also liberate Kiev, capital of the Ukraine.