"In which modern day country did the Axis forces construct the defensive ""Gustav Line"" in the second world war?"
"World War II in Yugoslavia Military operations in World War II in Yugoslavia began on 6 April 1941, when the Kingdom of Yugoslavia was swiftly conquered by Axis forces and partitioned between Germany, Italy, Hungary, Bulgaria and client regimes. Subsequently, a guerrilla liberation war was fought against the Axis occupying forces and their locally established puppet regimes, including the Independent State of Croatia and the Serbian Government of National Salvation, by the Communist-led republican Yugoslav Partisans. Simultaneously, a multi-side civil war was waged between the Yugoslav communist Partisans, the Serbian royalist Chetniks, Croatian fascist Ustashe and Home Guard, as well"
"build partisans, forcing Germany to garrison Belgrade and Athens to prevent BRP loss. Partisans may also be built in the USSR or France. A common house rule was to allow partisans in Poland to represent the Warsaw Uprising. In 1939 Germany sets up last of the major powers, and has a free offensive against Poland. The Soviets may then seize ""Eastern Europe"" (Eastern Poland, Bessarabia and the Baltic States), which prevents Germany moving in on the Baltic States which would put her forces dangerously close to Leningrad. The Axis player has a free choice as to when Italy enters the"
"Winter Line The Winter Line was a series of German and Italian military fortifications in Italy, constructed during World War II by Organisation Todt and commanded by Albert Kesselring. The series of 3 lines was designed to defend a western section of Italy, focused around the town of Monte Cassino, through which ran the important Highway 6 which led uninterrupted to Rome. The primary Gustav Line ran across Italy from just north of where the Garigliano River flows into the Tyrrhenian Sea in the west, through the Apennine Mountains to the mouth of the Sangro River on the Adriatic coast"
"not denounced, Hitler decided to attack Yugoslavia as well as Greece. The fortification of the area informally known as the Metaxas Line was conceived as a defensive measure against Bulgaria. Bulgaria had refused to sign the Balkan Pact signed by Greece, Yugoslavia, Turkey and Romania in 1934 which aimed at maintaining the geopolitical status quo in the region following World War I. The Metaxas Line was a series of independent forts along the Greek-Bulgarian border, built on possible routes of invasion. Each fort's garrisons belonged to the division or brigade which controlled the respective border sector. The fortifications were built"
"GHQ Line The GHQ Line (General Headquarters Line) was a defence line built in the United Kingdom during World War II to contain an expected German invasion. The British Army had abandoned most of its equipment in France after the Dunkirk evacuation. It was therefore decided to build a static system of defensive lines around Britain, designed to compartmentalise the country and delay the Germans long enough for more mobile forces to counter-attack. Over 50 defensive lines were constructed across the country. After the coastal defences, the GHQ Line was the longest and most important, designed to protect London and"
"centre. This Defence Line of Amsterdam (""Stelling van Amsterdam""), constructed in the years 1880-1914, was the most modern and largest-area circular fortification system in Europe in its day. The line stretched 135 kilometres and included 42 forts as well as four artillery batteries. The line was never tested, but did have a deterrent effect. In 1914, at the outbreak of World War I, the Defence Line, as well as the Dutch Water Line, were a factor in the German decision not to invade the Netherlands. The Defence Line has survived largely intact and was named a World Heritage Site in"
"disrepair. Neither was thus of much use in stopping the onslaught, though parts of the Stalin Line were manned in time and contributed to the defense of the USSR. Following World War II, the line was not maintained, in part due to its wide dispersal across the USSR. Unlike Western Europe, where similar fortifications were demolished for development and safety reasons, much of the line survived beyond the breakup of the USSR in 1991 due to being ignored. Today, the remains of the Stalin Line fortifications are located in Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine (plus possibly the eastern parts of Moldova)."
"A number of the positions have become museums and may be toured. Border Line (Switzerland) The Border Line defenses of Switzerland were constructed in the late 1930s in response to increasing tensions between Switzerland and its neighbours, chiefly the Axis powers of Germany and Italy. The Border Line was planned to slow or hold an invading force at the border. It consisted of a series of bunkers spaced at short intervals along the French, German and Austrian borders. The bunkers were reinforced by larger multi-blockhouse forts at key points. Most of the positions were within two or three kilometers of"
"Wehrmacht for a few days. (The Brest Fortress resisted much longer, but it was an older fortification technically not part of the Molotov line). The ruins of these fortifications, many of them well preserved, can be found today in Lithuania, Poland, Belarus and Ukraine. The modern borders are somewhat different from the borders in 1941, and hence some sections of the line do not lie in border zones and are easily accessible. On the other hand, other sections do lie right along the modern Polish-Ukrainian, Polish-Belarusian and Lithuanian-Russian borders, so access to them may still be restricted for reasons of"
"ever-shrinking occupied territory. Pushing the enemy out of the Soviet territory in June 1944 by conducting the large-scale Operation Bagration, the Soviet Army proceeded to dismantle the Eastern Axis powers — Romania, Bulgaria, and Hungary — to liberate other neighboring countries from the German Army, and to impose Communist-led governments on the ""liberated"" nations. Some of these nations joined the Allies and provided troops to fight Nazi Germany, which was effectively the only remaining Axis power in Europe by the end of 1944. Finland retained its independence the second time, but broke with the Axis, at the cost of having"
"Axis, and Luxembourg was effectively annexed by Germany. Luxembourg remained under German control until liberated by the Allies at the end of 1944. Macedonia was part of Yugoslavia during World War II. So see this article's section on Yugoslavia. See Madagascar in World War II. Malaya was under British rule before the war began. It was occupied by Japan in 1942 through 1945. The Malayan Communist Party became the backbone of the Malayan Peoples' Anti-Japanese Army. See British Borneo and Malaya, which merged after the war to form Malaysia. See French West Africa in World War II. Malta was a"
"Gothic Line The Gothic Line (; ) was a German defensive line of the Italian Campaign of World War II. It formed Field Marshal Albert Kesselring's last major line of defence along the summits of the northern part of the Apennine Mountains during the fighting retreat of the German forces in Italy against the Allied Armies in Italy, commanded by General Sir Harold Alexander. Adolf Hitler had concerns about the state of preparation of the Gothic Line: he feared the Allies would use amphibious landings to outflank its defences. To downgrade its importance in the eyes of both friend and"
"Axis casualties. The Gustav Line stretched across the Italian peninsula and barred the way to Rome for the two Allied armies in Italy: the U.S. 5th Army in the west and the British 8th Army in the east. The Allies' grand strategy in the autumn of 1943 was for the 8th Army to advance through the Sangro River defences, then hook south at Arezzano and enter Rome from the rear while the 5th Army approached from the south. The center of the Gustav line crossed the main route north to Rome at strategically crucial Highway 6. It followed the Liri"
"in spite of Yugoslav attempts to remain neutral in the war, the Axis powers invaded Yugoslavia. The territory of modern Serbia was divided between Hungary, Bulgaria, the Independent State of Croatia (NDH) and Italy (greater Albania and Montenegro), while the remaining part of Serbia was placed under German Military administration, with Serbian puppet governments led by Milan Aćimović and Milan Nedić. During this period, hundreds of thousands of ethnic Serbs fled the Axis puppet state known as the Independent State of Croatia and sought refuge in German-occupied Serbia, seeking to escape the large-scale persecution and genocide of Serbs, Jews, and"
"Axis powers The Axis powers (; ; ""Sūjikukoku""), also known as ""Rome–Berlin–Tokyo Axis"" (also nicknamed with the Italian name ""Roberto"", from the initials of ""ROma"", ""BERlin"" and ""TOkyo""), were the nations that fought in World War II against the Allies. The Axis powers agreed on their opposition to the Allies, but did not completely coordinate their activity. The Axis grew out of the diplomatic efforts of Germany, Italy, and Japan to secure their own specific expansionist interests in the mid-1930s. The first step was the treaty signed by Germany and Italy in October 1936. Benito Mussolini declared on 1 November"
"1940 into Poland, the Baltic, and Bessarabia, the decision was made to abandon the line in favour of constructing the Molotov Line further west, along the new border of the USSR. A number of Soviet generals felt that it would be better to keep both lines and to have a defence in depth, but this conflicted with the pre-World War II Soviet military doctrine. Thus, the guns were removed, but were mostly in storage as the new line began construction. The 1941 Axis invasion caught the Soviets with the new line unfinished and the Stalin Line largely abandoned and in"
"available. The terms of the capitulation were extremely severe, as the Axis proceeded to dismember Yugoslavia. Germany occupied northern Slovenia, while retaining direct occupation over a rump Serbian state and considerable influence over its newly created puppet state, the Independent State of Croatia (NDH), which extended over much of today's Croatia and contained all of modern Bosnia and Herzegovina and Syrmia region of modern-day Serbia. Mussolini's Italy occupied the remainder of Slovenia (annexed and renamed as the Province of Lubiana), Kosovo, and large chunks of the coastal Dalmatia region (along with nearly all its Adriatic islands). It also gained control"
"a small, élite force capable of fighting behind enemy lines in winter conditions. This was to have been a commando unit that could be landed, by sea or air, into occupied Norway, Romania and/or the Italian Alps on sabotage missions against hydroelectric plants and oil fields. In Norway, the chief industrial threat was the creation of the heavy water used in the German atomic weapon research at Rjukan. Furthermore, attacks on Norwegian power stations, which supplied the country with 49% of its power, might drive the Axis powers out of the country and give the Allies a direct link to"
"at 28 March 1938. During the occupation of the Netherlands, the Germans made fortifications to prohibit the Allies to liberate the Netherlands and to protect their V2 rocket platforms in the Netherlands. The Germans built new defence lines like the Atlantic Wall but also reused the Dutch defence line like the Grebbe line. During the cold war a defence line was created to slow down the Russian attack on the Netherlands. Defence lines of the Netherlands The Vestingwet (eng: ""Fortification Law"") or Wet tot regeling en voltooiing van het vestingstelsel (eng: ""Law to regulate and complete the fortification"") was signed"
"armies was stopped in front of this fort. On the eve of World War II, Fort Roupel was incorporated into the Metaxas Line, a new line of defence that was built to repel an invasion into Greece from Bulgaria. For three days the fort held out against German attack and was only abandoned by its men after the surrender of the Greek army in Thessaloniki. Today one of the fortification's galleries is open to visitors, as is a small museum and the pavilion the visitors, the observatory and memorial of fallen soldiers. In the gallery, the visitor has the opportunity"
"Mareth Line The Mareth Line was a system of fortifications built by France in southern Tunisia, prior to World War II. It was to defend Tunisia against attacks from Libya, then a colony of Fascist Italy. Tunisia was occupied by Axis forces after Operation Torch in 1942 and the line was used by the Axis to defend against the British 8th Army, which had re-occupied Libya during 1943. French plans for defence of Tunisia assumed that Italy would launch an overwhelming assault that France could not easily oppose. Italy was expected to launch attacks on Egypt and Tunisia as soon"
"as the Gustav Line, a series of formidable defences the Germans had created). The Eighth Army, operating on the Adriatic coast, had already pierced the Gustav Line at its eastern end. However, the appalling weather conditions forbade further progress and so operations there were closed down. As a result, the relatively intact 5th Division was available elsewhere. Therefore, in early January 1944 the division was transferred from the Eighth Army, now under Lieutenant-General Sir Oliver Leese, to the western end of Italy to join Lieutenant-General Richard McCreery's British X Corps. X Corps, stationed along the Garigliano river, was part of"
"five-to-eight kilometre variations, as the eastern border between Poland and the Soviet Union. When Churchill proposed to add parts of East Galicia, including the city of Lviv, to Poland's territory (following Line B), Stalin argued that the Soviet Union could not demand less territory for itself than the British Government had reconfirmed previously several times. The Allied arrangement involved compensation for this loss via the incorporation of formerly German-held areas (the Recovered Territories) into Poland. As a result, the current border between the countries of Belarus, Ukraine and Poland is an approximation of the Curzon Line. At the end of"
"of Axis defenses in the area. Eventually the partisans managed to obtain weapons and explosives after convincing Slovak guards of the storage facilities to help the resistance, as many of the guards had been patients of Nina'a father. As a doctor Ivan Sosnin forged health certificates to exempt several resistance members from forced labour. Not long after using the explosives they gathered to destroy a German locomotive, Taraskin was executed by the Germans on 22 January 1943. After Taraskin's death it was decided that Sosnina would be the new partisan leader, and the units continued their usual leaflet-spreading, re-supply, sabotage,"
"the Second World War a number of Guards troops were stationed in Eastern Europe, for example, in the Group of Soviet Forces in Germany. Since the break-up of the Soviet Union, Guards designations for military units have been retained by Belarus, Russia and Kazakhstan. Ukraine retained the Guards designations until 2016. A number of former Soviet republics have national guard branches of their armed forces, including Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan (2,500 Republican Guards in 1994), Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine and Uzbekistan. Guards unit Guards units (, , ) are elite units and formations in the armed forces of the former Soviet"
"northern France. During World War II, in which combat was relatively fluid, the term ""main line of resistance"" was used less often, and the positions the term described were usually less deep and complex than in World War I. However, there were exceptions, including the French Maginot Line, the German Atlantic Wall and Westwall (Siegfried Line to the Allies), as well as the Soviet defenses at the Battle of Kursk. After the Korean War became static in 1951, MLR described the defensive positions of the U.N. Eighth Army, a series of trenches and bunkers extending east to west across the"
"by Germany to protect Germany from a British-French offensive against the Ruhr, irrespective of their claims to neutrality. In April 1941, shortly after Germany and Yugoslavia completed negotiations for Yugoslavia to join the Axis, a coup d'état occurred in Yugoslavia that led to the Axis invasion of Yugoslavia. Germany needed access to the territory held by Yugoslavia to allow German forces to have a direct route to travel through, to reach and rescue Italian military forces that were faltering in their campaign in Greece. There was substantial animosity towards the alliance amongst Serbs, Yugoslavia's largest ethnic group, who had fought"
"of occupation from Nazi Germany. Still today, the locals remember these events and they remain immensely grateful to the US Army. Important remembrance sites The Liberation Route Europe in Italy will connect important remembrance sites connected to the landing in Sicily, the Gustav Line defense, the Battle of Montecassino, the landing in Anzio, the Gothic Line defense. The Liberation Route Europe is developed and managed by the Liberation Route Europe Foundation. Its purpose is also to bring together all of the institutions related to World War II remembrance (museums, universities, regional and national governments, tourism authorities, veterans associations, war graves"
"4m), shelter for a gun or mortar (7x4m), HQ bunker (6 x 4m), medical bunker (7 x 4m), observation post (1.2 x 1.2m), dragon's teeth, After the Battle of Kursk, only the Árpád Line was able to detain the Russian army for more than 3 weeks. With regard to effectiveness per cost rate, it was the most potent fortification system during World War 2. The construction of Árpád Line was 5-10 times cheaper per kilometer than the German and French counterexamples, and it was able to hold off the enemy for an incomparably longer period. The losses were extremely low,"
"Yugoslav and are now on Slovenian territory. The 1947 Paris Peace Treaty forbade the construction or expansion of fortifications within twenty kilometers of the border. However, with Italy's membership in NATO, construction began on a new defensive line from Austria to the Adriatic along the Yugoslavian border along the Natisone and Tagliamento rivers. The new line used tank turrets in a manner similar to German defences during the previous conflict, allowing 360 degree traverse and a high rate of fire. By 1976 this system was still considered useful in any conflict short of nuclear war. The end of the Cold"
"Árpád Line The Árpád Line was a line of fortifications built in 1941-44 in the north-eastern and eastern Carpathian Mountains along the border of Kingdom of Hungary. It was named after Árpád, the head of the Hungarian tribes. The main function of the Line was to protect Transylvania, Székely Land and Kárpátalja from the east. The line was the main line of defence, the Hunyad and Prinz Eugene lines lay in front of it. General Teofil Hárosy (pioneer) developed the theory of flexible defense in 1939-1940. The ""flexible"" defense-lines (Mannerheim-line, Árpád Line, Bar Lev-Line) are not based on dense lines"
"was held by the coastal town of Ortona, captured by Canadian forces in the fierce Battle of Ortona in December 1943 which became known as ""the little Stalingrad."" Failure by the 8th Army to capture Orsogna however put an end to the Allied plans of a strong drive up the eastern coast. Rain, flooded rivers, and high casualties, as well as the departure of General Montgomery, all put a halt to Allied plans until the spring of 1944. The Gustav Line thus fulfilled the wishes of Field Marshal Kesselring of keeping the Allies south of the so-called Winter Line. On"
"them to withdraw to the so-called ""Morgan Line"". The Free Territory of Trieste was established, and separated into Zone A and Zone B, administered by the western Allies and Yugoslavia respectively. Initially, Yugoslavia was backed by Stalin, but by 1947 the latter had begun to cool towards the new state's ambitions. The crisis eventually dissolved as the Tito–Stalin split started, with Zone A being granted to Italy, and Zone B to Yugoslavia. Meanwhile, civil war raged in Greece – Yugoslavia's southern neighbor – and the Yugoslav government was determined to bring about a communist victory. Yugoslavia dispatched significant assistance, in"