The first major Nazi concentration camp, located near Munich. Operating from 1933 to 1945, the site served as an early model for future camps. Initially established for the incarceration of political prisoners, Dachau expanded into a large system of subcamps holding tens of thousands of prisoners and forced laborers, many of them Jews. When American forces liberated Dachau on April 26, 1945, there were 67,655 registered prisoners in the Dachau complex.
A concentration camp established near the city of Weimar in east-central Germany in 1937. The camp initially held primarily political prisoners. After Kristallnacht, some 10,000 Jews were detained here, and other groups were interned at Buchenwald throughout the war. The Buchenwald camp system eventually comprised over 80 subcamps, some of which were operated by private industry with prisoners deployed as forced laborers. By February 1945, the prisoner population grew to around 112,000 as prisoners from camps in the east were evacuated before the advancing Soviet offensive. Buchenwald was liberated by U.S. forces on April 11, 1945. [...]
A concentration camp in northwest Germany, Bergen-Belsen was named for its location near two villages. […]
A military offensive launched by Hitler in December of 1944, now named after the 70-miles wide and 50-miles deep “bulge” in the battle lines of the Allies across Luxembourg and into the Ardennes region of Belgium. The German offensive split American and British forces, temporarily halting the Allied advance. After four weeks of fighting, the Allies had pushed the Germans back into Germany.
A battle between the Soviet Red Army and Nazi Germany for the industrial city of Stalingrad [today Volgograd] on the Volga River in Russia. The siege lasted for 199 days between September 1942 and February 1943, with fierce combat and heavy losses on both sides. German troops were eventually surrounded and trapped by the Soviets, leading to the surrender of over 90,000 German soldiers. The German defeat at Stalingrad was a turning point in the war.