Theater (warfare) in the context of "Eastern Front (World War II)"

Strategic bombing is a systematically organized and executed military attack from the air which can utilize strategic bombers, long- or medium-range missiles, or nuclear-armed fighter-bomber aircraft to attack targets deemed vital to the enemy's war-making capability. It is a military strategy used in total war with the goal of defeating the enemy by destroying its morale, its economic ability to produce and transport materiel to the theatres of military operations, or both. The term terror bombing is used to describe the strategic bombing of civilian targets without military value, in the hope of damaging an enemy's morale.

One of the strategies of war is to demoralize the enemy so that peace or surrender becomes preferable to continuing the conflict. Strategic bombing has been used to this end. The phrase "terror bombing" entered the English lexicon towards the end of World War II and many strategic bombing campaigns and individual raids have been described as terror bombing by commentators and historians. Because the term has pejorative connotations, some, including the Allies of World War II, have preferred to use euphemisms such as "morale bombings".

The Mediterranean and Middle East theatre, also known as the Mediterranean Theater of War, was a major theatre of operations during the Second World War. The vast size of the theatre saw interconnected land, naval, and air campaigns fought for control of the Mediterranean Sea, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, the Middle East and Southern Europe. Despite their disparate geographic locations and objectives, these operations were not seen as neatly separated from each other, but part of an extensive, contiguous theatre of war.

The Mediterranean theater had the longest duration of the Second World War. Combat started on 10 June 1940 with Italy's declaration of war against the United Kingdom and France and ended on 2 May 1945 when all Axis forces in Italy surrendered. In Germany military history, the scope of the theatre is described as Mediterranean, South-East Europe, and North Africa 1939–1941. Additionally, various post-war conflicts, such as the Greek Civil War and the first phase of the Palestine War, were rooted in events during the Mediterranean theater.

The supreme commander-in-chief (supreme commander) is the title of a person holding supreme commanding authority over the armed forces of a state (or coalition of states), usually in wartime and sometimes in peacetime.

The supreme commander-in-chief is also vested with extraordinary power in relation to all civilian institutions and persons on the territory of a given state and the theater of military operations (theater of war). As a rule, the head of state is the supreme commander-in-chief. For the first time, the corresponding English term was used by the king of England, Scotland and Ireland, Charles I (1625–1649). In some states of the British Commonwealth, this position is replaced by the governor-general.

The European theatre of World War II was one of the two main theatres of combat during World War II, taking place from September 1939 to May 1945. The Allied powers (including the United Kingdom, the United States, the Soviet Union and France) fought the Axis powers (including Nazi Germany and the Kingdom of Italy) on both sides of the continent in the Western and Eastern fronts. There was also conflict in the Scandinavian, Mediterranean and Balkan regions. It was an intense conflict that led to at least 39 million deaths and a dramatic change in the balance of power in the continent.

During the 1930s, Adolf Hitler, the leader of Nazi Germany, expanded German territory by annexing all of Austria and the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia in 1938. This was motivated in part by Germany's racial policy that believed the country needed to expand for the pseudoscientific "Aryan race" to survive. They were aided by Italy, another fascist state which was led by Benito Mussolini. World War II started with Germany's invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939, and the Soviet Union, led by Joseph Stalin, joined the invasion later that month. The two nations then partitioned Poland between them.

The Mexican Dirty War (Spanish: Guerra sucia) was the Mexican theater of the Cold War, an internal conflict from the 1960s to the 1980s between the Mexican Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI)-ruled government under the presidencies of Gustavo Díaz Ordaz, Luis Echeverría, and José López Portillo, which were backed by the U.S. government, and left-wing student and guerrilla groups. During the war, government forces carried out disappearances (estimated at 1,200), systematic torture, and "probable extrajudicial executions".

In the 1960s and 1970s, Mexico was persuaded to be part of both Operation Intercept and Operation Condor, developed between 1975 and 1978, with the pretext to fight against the cultivation of opium and marijuana in the "Golden Triangle", particularly in Sinaloa. The operation, commanded by General José Hernández Toledo, was a flop with no major drug-lord captures, but many abuses and acts of repression were committed.

Military aviation is the design, development and use of military aircraft and other flying machines for the purposes of conducting or enabling aerial warfare, including national airlift (air cargo) capacity to provide logistical supply to forces stationed in a war theater or along a front. Airpower includes the national means of conducting such warfare, including the intersection of transport and warcraft. Military aircraft include bombers, fighters, transports, trainer aircraft, and reconnaissance aircraft.