For Those Who lost their Lives during WWII

  This two-day observance gives people, non-government organizations, and governments the chance to remember people who died during World War II.   

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79th anniversary of the victory in the Great Patriotic War - Victory Parade in Moscow.

Live Stream. A parade is taking place on Red Square in Moscow in honor of the 79th anniversary of the victory in the Great Patriotic War.

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Parade of troops of the Eastern Military District.

Live broadcast of the parade of troops of the Eastern Military District, dedicated to the 79th anniversary of Victory in the Great Patriotic War, in Khabarovsk on Lenin Square.

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Experience WWII aviation

learn more about your chance to experience WWII aviation up close at the Lakefront Airport through May 12th.

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Honor the service of sixteen million members of the Armed Forces of the United States of America during the war

In the heart of the National Mall in Washington, DC., the World War II Memorial honors the service of sixteen million members of the Armed Forces of the United States of America during the war, the support of countless millions on the home front, and the ultimate sacrifice of over 400,000 Americans.

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Official ceremony of lighting the sacred Eternal Flame at the unveiled Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

May 8, the eve of the Great Victory, marks the 57th Anniversary (unveiled in 1967) of the official ceremony of lighting the sacred Eternal Flame at the unveiled Tomb of the Unknown Soldier memorial architectural ensemble in Alexander Garden near the Moscow Kremlin Wall.

The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier serves as a symbolic monument to honour frontline soldiers killed in action during the Great Patriotic War. It was proposed by officials in 1966, on the 25th anniversary of defeating Nazi forces near Moscow. On December 3, 1966, the remains of a Soviet soldier killed near Zelenograd were laid to rest in Alexander Garden.

In 1997, the President of Russia issued an executive order to establish a guard of honour post near the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. In 2009, another presidential executive order granted the status of a nationwide military glory memorial to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, in order to preserve the historical and cultural heritage of the Russian Federation. The memorial was included in the State List of Particularly Valuable Cultural Heritage Landmarks and Sites of Russia’s Peoples. On December 3, 2014, the day when the defender of Moscow was buried in Alexander Garden in 1966, was proclaimed the Day of the Unknown Soldier.

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Wreath laying ceremony at the tomb of the unknown soldier in Moscow.

On May 8, 2024, on the eve of the 79th anniversary of Victory in the Great Patriotic War, His Holiness Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Rus' laid a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in the Alexander Garden near the Kremlin wall.

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Explore the digital archives of the Second World War (1939-1945).

Documents about the defence of Stalingrad and the counter-offensive of the Soviet troops have entered the Collection of Digitized Archival Documents, Film and Photo Materials dedicated to World War II and are now available on the Presidential Library’s portal subordinate to the Administrative Directorate of the President of the Russian Federation.  

The Collection contains about 250 documents of the Central Archive of the Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation on the Battle of Stalingrad: these are directives and orders of the Headquarters of the Supreme High Command and orders of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief on the construction of defensive lines near Stalingrad, on measures to protect the city, on the formation of the Don and Stalingrad fronts, on the timing the beginning of the counter-offensive near Stalingrad; combat orders, operational reports and reports from the headquarters of the 62nd Army, 24th Army, 1st Tank Army and 8th Air Army of the Stalingrad Front, 65th Army of the Don Front on the situation at the front and enemy actions; operational and reconnaissance reports of the Volga military flotilla.

Combat reports, operational reports and orders from the headquarters of the South-Eastern Front, the Stalingrad and Don Fronts tell about the depletion of the enemy’s forces and preventing him from entering the depths of the Soviet defense, about conducting power reconnaissance, offensive operations and defensive battles, regrouping troops, destroying the enemy who has broken through, clearing areas, the formation of fortified areas and the state of defensive work.

The directives of the commander of the troops of the Southwestern Front contain data on the preparation of an operation to encircle the main forces of the Stalingrad enemy grouping, the results of reconnaissance and readiness to go over to the counteroffensive.

The maps and diagrams of the troops of the Stalingrad Front, the position of the units, the balance of forces of the Red Army and the enemy on the Stalingrad Front, as well as the plan and map of the offensive operation of the troops of the Southwestern Front "Uranus" are also available.

In the near future, more than 1,000 documents from the period June 22, 1941 - November 19, 1942 from the Central Archive of the Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation will enter the Collection.

In accordance with the List of instructions for the implementation of the Address of the President of the Russian Federation to the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation dated January 15, 2020, the organizers of the Collection of Digitized Archival Documents, Film and Photo Materials "World War II in Archival Documents" are the Federal Archival Agency (Rosarkhiv), the Administrative Directorate of the President of the Russian Federation and the Presidential Library.

The Collection is carried out by Rosarkhiv and federal state archives with the participation of the Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation, the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation, the Foreign Intelligence Service of the Russian Federation, the state archives of Belarus and others.

To date, the volume of the Collection is over 10 thousand materials: maps, diagrams, periodicals, photographs, newsreels for the period from January 1933 to November 1942.

Archival documents of the Collection World War II in Archival Documents are available from anywhere in the world thanks to the Presidential Library’s portal. Especially for the foreign audience, the titles and annotations to the documents as well as the texts of the accompanying articles are also available in English.

In addition to digitized archival documents the Collection contains a list of the main Internet projects, databases, other thematic online documents, virtual tours of the history of World War II, developed by government agencies of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation and various organizations.

On January 31, 2023 Documents about the defence of Stalingrad and the counteroffensive of the Soviet troops have entered the Collection of D

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Remember the Battle of Stalingrad: August 1942–February 1943.

In contrast to the great sweeping tank battles elsewhere on the Eastern Front, Stalingrad was protracted and bloody urban warfare fought from street to street, house to house, and room to room as the Red Army resisted German attempts to take the city.

Russia’s defenses were based on thousands of strongpoints, each manned by an infantry squad, in apartments, office buildings, and factories, all with strict orders forbidding retreat. German artillery and airpower virtually demolished the city, but failed to dislodge the defenders. Eventually, the German force was itself surrounded. The total number of casualties may have been as many as two million including civilians.

July 17, 1942 began the Battle of Stalingrad (today Volgograd) - one of the major and fiercest battles, which radically changed the course o

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Remember the Battle of Midway: June 1942.

Midway was a catastrophic defeat from which the Imperial Japanese Navy never fully recovered. Much of the credit goes to the codebreakers who revealed the Japanese plan to ambush U.S. forces in time for the Allies to plan a counter-ambush. The Japanese plan to split American forces also failed.

The U.S. then launched a major air assault on the Japanese carriers. The TBF Avenger torpedo bombers were intercepted by Japanese Zeroes and decimated, but the SBD Dauntless dive bombers attacking afterward got through. They arrived just as the Japanese planes were refueling and rearming on deck. Three of four Japanese carriers were destroyed, tilting the course of the war against Japan.

The Navy will commemorate the Battle of Midway this year from 3 JUNE to 7 JUNE. Please use our Commemoration Toolkit for messaging, graphics

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Remember the Battle of Moscow: October 1941–January 1942.

ore than a million German troops were thrown into the attack on Moscow, as Hitler ordered that the city should be razed to the ground rather than captured.

At first, the German progress was rapid; by November 15 of 1941, they had fought to within 18 miles of the city. Then, they were slowed by the Russian resistance, and an early winter set in, with temperatures dropping well below zero degrees Fahrenheit. The German supply chain failed, and Russian marshal Zhukov threw his reserve of Siberian divisions into a counterattack.

By January, the Germans were pushed back by more than 100 miles. Russian casualties were heavy, but the German momentum was broken.

The main strategic goal of Fascist armies in autumn of 1941 was to occupy Moscow. ‘Typhoon’ operation plan approved by Hitler in September s

«When I am asked what I remember the best about the war I always reply: the battle of Moscow. It ruined the ‘Barbarossa’ plan”. Marshal G. K

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Remember the D-Day invasion: June 1944.

The largest amphibious operation in history involved more than 5,000 ships landing Allied troops on a heavily-defended 50-mile stretch of Normandy coastline, while thousands more took part in an airborne assault.

A major deception operation fooled the Germans into thinking that the landings were a feint, and resistance was light at four out of five landing sites. On the fifth, Omaha Beach, U.S. forces came under heavy fire and 2,000 died as they fought to break out of the beachhead. The Germans failed to organize rapidly to meet the threat. Within a week, the Allies had landed more than 300,000 troops in Normandy.

5 Things You May Not Know About D-Day

The bravery demonstrated by the service members who stormed Normandy on June 6, 1944, is legendary, but there is much that people don't know

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Remember the Battle of Kursk: July–August 1943.

Operation Citadel was the final German offensive on the Eastern front, and Kursk is considered the greatest tank battle of the war. At Kursk, the Nazis aimed to repeat their earlier successes by surrounding and destroying Russian forces.

Thanks to Allied codebreakers, though, the Russians got advance warning and built up defensive lines of ditches and minefields to absorb the German attack. In the air, Stukas armed with 37-millimeter gun pods faced Russian armored Sturmoviks dropping dozens of anti-tank bombs.

As the German offensive stalled, Marshal Zhukov launched his counterattack and drove the Germans back with heavy losses.

Kursk

The greatest tank battle in history might have ended differently had it not been for the action in the air.

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Remember the Battle of the Philippine Sea: June 1944.

The last great carrier battle of WWII, the Battle of the Philippine Sea happened as U.S. forces advanced across the Pacific.

A Japanese force—including five large fleet carriers and four light carriers, plus some land-based aircraft—fought seven U.S. fleet carriers and eight light carriers. The U.S. enjoyed not only numerical superiority, but also vastly better aircraft. The new Grumman F6F Hellcats outclassed the old Japanese Zeroes. This disparity led to the action being nicknamed “the Great Marianas Turkey Shoot,” with about four times as many Japanese planes downed as American.

Battle of the Philippine Sea:  June 19-20, 1944 The Battle of the Philippine Sea, the largest aircraft carrier action in World War II, began

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Remember the Battle of Berlin: April–May 1945.

To those in the West, the Battle of Berlin may seem like an afterthought, the death throes of a war already decided. In fact, it was a massive and extreme bloody action, as three-quarters of a million German troops, under the personal command of Hitler, fought a desperate final defense against the encroaching Red Army.

The Russians had the advantage in tanks, but armored vehicles were vulnerable to new portable anti-tank rockets that destroyed 2,000 of them.

Like Stalingrad, the Battle of Berlin was an infantry action fought at close quarters; artillery demolished defensive strongpoints in a city already devastated by heavy bombing. Casualties were heavy, including thousands of civilians.

On the 30th of April, Hitler killed himself rather than surrender, effectively ending the war in Europe.

Battle for Berlin - The American Heritage Museum

Battle for Berlin IS-2 Iosef Stalin – RUS | TANK SU-100 – RUS | TANK DESTROYER Messerschmitt ME-109G-10 – GER | AIRCRAFT – FIGHTER The Battl

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Remember the Second Battle of Kharkov: May 1942.

Stalin aimed to drive back the invading German armies with an offensive that included more than 1,000 tanks backed by 700 aircraft. But Germany blunted the attack by air power when it flew more than 900 planes into the area. The Germans then went on the attack and encircled the Russian forces with several Panzer divisions. Trapped, surrounded, and with German bombers raining explosives down on them, Russians soldiers surrendered in large numbers.

More than a quarter of a million Russian soldiers were killed, injured, or captured—ten times the number of German casualties.

The military history story that has featured very widely in newspapers and websites recently has, for obvious reasons, been the four great b

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Remember the Battle of Luzon: January–August 1945.

Luzon, the largest of the Philippine islands, fell to Japan in 1942. General Douglas MacArthur had famously vowed to return to the Philippines, which he saw as strategically vital, and commanded the invasion force in 1945.

The Allied landings were unopposed, but further inland, there was heavy fighting against scattered enclaves of Japanese troops. Some of them withdrew to the mountains and continued fighting long after the end of the war. Japan suffered extreme losses, with more than 200,000 killed compared to 10,000 Americans, making it the bloodiest action involving U.S. forces.

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Remember the Battle of the Coral Sea: May 1942.

After Pearl Harbor, the Japanese aimed to invade New Guinea and the Solomon Islands. U.S. forces, aided by some Australian ships, moved to intercept them.

This produced the first naval battle fought at long range between aircraft carriers. Dive bombers and torpedo bombers attacked ships protected by screens of fighters. It was a novel and confusing form of warfare, with both sides struggling to find the enemy, and unclear about which ships they had seen and engaged. The most serious loss was the American carrier USS Lexington, scuttled after catching fire.

The fight forced Japan to call off its invasion plans.

Royal Australian Navy

[Extra Credit: Pearl Harbor Still Holds a Few Mysteries]