Offensive (military) in the context of "Courland Pocket"

National security, or national defence (national defense in American English), is the security and defence of a sovereign state, including its citizens, economy, and institutions, which is regarded as a duty of government. Originally conceived as protection against military attack, national security is widely understood to include also non-military dimensions, such as the security from terrorism, minimization of crime, economic security, energy security, environmental security, food security, and cyber-security. Similarly, national security risks include, in addition to the actions of other states, action by violent non-state actors, by narcotic cartels, organized crime, by multinational corporations, and also the effects of natural disasters.

Governments rely on a range of measures, including political, economic, and military power, as well as diplomacy, to safeguard the security of a state. They may also act to build the conditions of security regionally and internationally by reducing transnational causes of insecurity, such as climate change, economic inequality, political exclusion, and nuclear proliferation.

Annihilation is a military strategy in which an attacking army seeks to entirely destroy the military capacity of the opposing army. This strategy can be executed in a single planned pivotal battle, called a "battle of annihilation". A successful battle of annihilation is accomplished through the use of tactical surprise, application of overwhelming force at a key point, or other tactics performed immediately before or during the battle.

The end goal of a battle of annihilation is to cause the leaders of the opposing army to sue for peace due to the complete annihilation of their army and thus inability to further engage in offensive or defensive military action. It is not necessary to kill or capture all, or even most, of an opposing army's forces to annihilate it in the sense used here. Rather, the destruction of the enemy army as a cohesive military force able to offer further meaningful military offense or defense, even if temporarily, is the objective.

A tank is an armoured fighting vehicle intended as a primary offensive weapon in front-line ground combat. Tank designs are a balance of heavy firepower, strong armour, and battlefield mobility provided by tracks and a powerful engine; their main armament is often mounted within a turret. They are a mainstay of modern 20th and 21st century ground forces and a key part of combined arms combat.

Modern tanks are versatile mobile land weapons platforms whose main armament is a large-calibre tank gun mounted in a rotating gun turret, supplemented by machine guns or other ranged weapons such as anti-tank guided missiles or rocket launchers. They have heavy vehicle armour which provides protection for the crew, the vehicle's munition storage, fuel tank and propulsion systems. The use of tracks rather than wheels provides improved operational mobility which allows the tank to overcome rugged terrain and adverse conditions such as mud and ice/snow better than wheeled vehicles, and thus be more flexibly positioned at advantageous locations on the battlefield. These features enable the tank to perform in a variety of intense combat situations, simultaneously both offensively (with direct fire from their powerful main gun) and defensively (as fire support and defilade for friendly troops due to the near invulnerability to common infantry small arms and good resistance against heavier weapons, although anti-tank weapons used in 2022, some of them man-portable, have demonstrated the ability to destroy older generations of tanks with single shots), all while maintaining the mobility needed to exploit changing tactical situations. Fully integrating tanks into modern military forces spawned a new era of combat called armoured warfare.

A non-aggression pact or neutrality pact is a treaty between two or more states/countries that includes a promise by the signatories not to engage in military action against each other. Such treaties may be described by other names, such as a treaty of friendship or non-belligerency, etc. Leeds, Ritter, Mitchell, & Long (2002) distinguish between a non-aggression pact and a neutrality pact. They posit that a non-aggression pact includes the promise not to attack the other pact signatories, whereas a neutrality pact includes a promise to avoid support of any entity that acts against the interests of any of the pact signatories. The most readily recognized example of the aforementioned entity is another country, nation-state, or sovereign organization that represents a negative consequence towards the advantages held by one or more of the signatory parties.

The Battle of Berlin, designated as the Berlin Strategic Offensive Operation by the Soviet Union, and also known as the Fall of Berlin, was one of the last major offensives of the European theatre of World War II.

After the Vistula–Oder Offensive of January–February 1945, the Red Army had temporarily halted on a line 60 km (37 mi) east of Berlin. On 9 March, Germany established its defence plan for the city with Operation Clausewitz. The first defensive preparations at the outskirts of Berlin were made on 20 March, under the newly appointed commander of Army Group Vistula, General Gotthard Heinrici.

Amphibious warfare is a type of offensive military operation that today uses naval ships to project ground and air power onto a hostile or potentially hostile shore at a designated landing beach. Through history the operations were conducted using ship's boats as the primary method of delivering troops to shore. Since the Gallipoli Campaign, specialised watercraft were increasingly designed for landing troops, material and vehicles, including by landing craft and for insertion of commandos, by fast patrol boats, zodiacs (rigid inflatable boats) and from mini-submersibles. The term amphibious first emerged in the United Kingdom and the United States during the 1930s with introduction of vehicles such as Vickers-Carden-Loyd Light Amphibious Tank or the Landing Vehicle Tracked.

Amphibious warfare includes operations defined by their type, purpose, scale and means of execution. In the British Empire at the time these were called combined operations which were defined as "...operations where naval, military or air forces in any combination are co-operating with each other, working independently under their respective commanders, but with a common strategic object." All armed forces that employ troops with special training and equipment for conducting landings from naval vessels to shore agree to this definition. Since the 20th century, an amphibious landing of troops on a beachhead is acknowledged as the most complex of all military maneuvers. The undertaking requires an intricate coordination of numerous military specialties, including air power, naval gunfire, naval transport, logistical planning, specialized equipment, land warfare, tactics, and extensive training in the nuances of this maneuver for all personnel involved.

The military career of Napoleon spanned over 20 years. He led French armies in the French Revolutionary Wars and later, as emperor, in the Napoleonic Wars. Despite his comprehensive battle-winning record, Napoleon ended his career in defeat. Nevertheless, European history has since regarded Napoleon as a military genius and one of the finest commanders in history. His battles, campaigns and wars have been studied at military schools worldwide. Such campaigns as the Italian campaign of 1796–1797, the Ulm campaign and the Six Days' Campaign demonstrated his strategic and tactical genius. He fought more than 80 battles, losing only ten, mostly towards the end when the French army was not as dominant. As historian Alexander Mikhailovsky-Danilevsky observed, Napoleon was a "despotic sovereign of the battlefield, in whose presence but few generals ventured to maneuver, striving only to ward off his blows." Napoleon never sought refuge behind ridges, redoubts, etc.; he was a proponent of the offensive principle.

The French dominion collapsed rapidly after the invasion of Russia in 1812. Napoleon was defeated in 1814 and exiled to the island of Elba, before returning to France. He was finally defeated in 1815 at Waterloo. He spent his remaining days in British custody on the remote volcanic tropical island of Saint Helena. In his long military career, Bonaparte celebrated 64 victories and suffered 10 defeats; 6 battles ended with an uncertain outcome.

The Meuse–Argonne offensive (also known as the Meuse River–Argonne Forest offensive, the Battles of the Meuse–Argonne, and the Meuse–Argonne campaign) was a major part of the final Allied offensive of World War I that stretched along the entire Western Front. It was fought from September 26, 1918, until the Armistice of November 11, 1918, a total of 47 days. The Meuse–Argonne offensive was the largest in United States military history, involving 1.2 million American soldiers, sailors and marines, along with 800,000 French and 850 Siamese personnel. It is also the deadliest campaign in the history of the United States Army, resulting in over 350,000 casualties, including 28,000 German lives, 26,277 American lives and an unknown number of French lives. American losses were worsened by the inexperience of many of the troops, the tactics used during the early phases of the operation, and the widespread onset of the global influenza outbreak called the "Spanish flu."

The offensive was the principal engagement of the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) in World War I. It was one of a series of Allied attacks, known as the Hundred Days Offensive, which brought the war to an end. It was the largest and bloodiest operation of the entire war for the AEF even though, given the scale of other battles on the Western Front, its size was limited and the operation itself secondary, being far from the main offensive axis.