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Wars & Battles — Practice Questions flashcards

6 of 60 questions free to study here · 22 topics · the whole deck is built into Willys

Multiple-choice practice questions, one best answer each, on famous wars and battles from ancient Greece to Waterloo, the American Revolution and Civil War, and both World Wars.

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Practice deck · part of Wars and famous battles · written against: Conventional dates and outcomes from ancient Greece to 1945; contested figures given as ranges or left out. Updated 2026-10-10.

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6 questions from the deck as they are. Flip, rate yourself, filter by topic; your progress stays in this browser.

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  1. In 480 BCE the Athenian leader Themistocles lured a larger Persian fleet into narrow waters where its numbers became a handicap and Greek triremes could ram at close quarters. Which battle was this?

    A) The Battle of Salamis
    B) The Battle of Plataea
    C) The Battle of Mycale
    D) The Battle of Aegospotami
    A) The Battle of Salamis

    Themistocles fought in the straits between Salamis and the Attic mainland, wrecking Persian command of the sea. Aegospotami (405 BCE) was a Spartan victory over Athens, and Plataea (479 BCE) was the decisive land battle.
    Greece & Persia
  2. How did Napoleon win the Battle of Austerlitz in December 1805?

    A) He held a ridge until his allies struck the enemy's flank
    B) He let the enemy take a burned city, then cut its supply lines
    C) He landed troops behind the enemy from the Danube
    D) He lured the allies off the Pratzen Heights, then took them
    D) He lured the allies off the Pratzen Heights, then took them

    He made his right wing look weak to tempt the Russians and Austrians down from the Pratzen Heights, then seized the heights and split their army. Holding a ridge until allies arrived describes Wellington at Waterloo.
    Napoleonic Wars
  3. What was Germany's Schlieffen Plan designed to achieve?

    A) A war of attrition designed to bleed France white at Verdun
    B) A quick win over Russia while holding the French border
    C) A naval blockade to starve Britain out of the war
    D) A quick win over France, then a turn east against Russia
    D) A quick win over France, then a turn east against Russia

    The plan meant to avoid a long two-front war by defeating France quickly with a sweep through Belgium, before slow-mobilizing Russia was ready. "Bleed France white" was Falkenhayn's later description of his aim at Verdun in 1916.
    Western Front
  4. How did the German army get around France's Maginot Line in May 1940?

    A) Troops landed by sea on the coast near Dunkirk
    B) Paratroops seized the forts of the line from behind
    C) Tanks drove around the line's southern end in Switzerland
    D) Tanks pushed through the Ardennes and crossed at Sedan
    D) Tanks pushed through the Ardennes and crossed at Sedan

    The main armored thrust came through the Ardennes, which the French thought unsuitable for tanks, crossed the Meuse at Sedan and drove to the Channel, cutting off the Allied armies in Belgium.
    Blitzkrieg & the Battle of Britain
  5. Japan occupied southern French Indochina in July 1941. How did the United States respond?

    A) It recognized Manchukuo in return for a pullback
    B) It ended its supply of aid to Nationalist China
    C) It froze Japanese assets and cut off oil exports
    D) It declared war on Japan within the week
    C) It froze Japanese assets and cut off oil exports

    The oil embargo, joined by Britain and the Dutch East Indies, left Japan, which imported most of its oil, choosing between backing down and seizing oil fields by force.
    Japan's Expansion & Pearl Harbor
  6. On the atomic mission of August 9, 1945, why was Nagasaki bombed instead of the primary target?

    A) Clouds and smoke hid the primary target, Kokura
    B) Kokura had already been destroyed by firebombing
    C) Kokura had just been declared an open city
    D) Soviet troops had already entered Kokura that day
    A) Clouds and smoke hid the primary target, Kokura

    The B-29 Bockscar found Kokura obscured and turned to its secondary target, Nagasaki. The Soviet Union had declared war on Japan the day before, invading Manchuria, not Japan itself.
    The Atomic Bombs & Surrender

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About these cards

Review status: Second-reader reviewed, with corrections applied.

Checked against:

  • Checked against the references used by the Wars & Battles study decks: Encyclopaedia Britannica entries; edited reference works (the Oxford Companions to British History, to American Military History and to United States History, the Dictionary of American History, Gale's Encyclopedia of Modern Europe, Encyclopedia of the Early Modern World, Encyclopedia of World Biography, World War II Reference Library and American Home Front in World War II, and World Encyclopedia) and scholarly books (among them Heinrichs, Threshold of War; Carlson, Joe Rochefort's War; Holmes, Double-Edged Secrets; Falkenhayn's memoir, General Headquarters 1914-1916); American Battlefield Trust battle summaries (battlefields.org); the National Archives, Library of Congress and National Park Service (US government works); Imperial War Museums, the U.S. Office of the Historian, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Holocaust Encyclopedia, Naval History and Heritage Command pages and the National WWII Museum. Disputed dates and figures are left out. Reference only; no text copied.
  • Also checked against Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon and Polybius in public-domain English translations; treaty and surrender texts in the Yale Law School Avalon Project; the National Diet Library's text of the Potsdam Declaration; Hansard (api.parliament.uk); the World War I Document Archive (Brigham Young University); Ulysses S. Grant's Personal Memoirs (public domain); the American Presidency Project (UC Santa Barbara); the National Army Museum, Royal Museums Greenwich, RAF Museum, English Heritage and the National WWI Museum and Memorial; the Eisenhower Presidential Library; the CDC; and the U.S. Department of Energy's Manhattan Project history (osti.gov). Reference only; no text copied.
  • World History Encyclopedia (worldhistory.org), consulted, not copied.
  • Australian War Memorial (awm.gov.au), consulted, not copied.
  • Deutsches Historisches Museum, LeMO (dhm.de/lemo), consulted, not copied.
  • Original questions written for this deck; no official, textbook or question-bank items were copied.

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