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D-Day: Invasion of Normandy
Army troops on board a LCT, ready to ride across the English Channel to France. By the end of the day 155,000 Allied troops were on French soil; the liberation of Western Europe had begun. -
Liberation of Paris
The breakout of Allied forces from Normandy, combined with further landings in southern France (Operation Dragoon) in mid-August, made the German position in France impossible to maintain. After more than four years of German occupation, France was free again. -
Allied Offensive in the Saar Valley
While Allied troops in the north concentrated on clearing the Germans from the Low Countries, the U.S. Third Army under General Patton was charged with assaulting the West Wall, a line of defenses along the border between France and Germany. the defenses were pierced at several points, and bridgeheads established across the Saar River. For the first time, Allied troops were on German soil. -
The Batttle of The Bulge
October Hitler decided to launch an offensive through the Ardennes, a hilly forest region in southern Belgium. The Germans launched the Ardennes offensive in mid-December, and in a matter of days they managed to penetrate deep into Allied territory, creating a massive bulge in center of the American lines. Meanwhile a sizeable U.S. force remained cut off and surrounded in the town of Bastogne. By the end of January the Americans had retaken all the territory they had lost, and the drive toward -
Closing of the Ruhr Pocket
In March 1945, as Allied forces swarmed across the Rhine at Remagen in the south and Wesel in the north, most of the German forces in the region fell back upon the Ruhr Valley. Rather than attempt an immediate head-on assault, the U.S. Ninth and First Armies moved around behind the enemy, so that by 1 April an entire army group was encircled. While the Allies would continue to encounter pockets of resistance in their conquest of western Germany, the closing of the Ruhr Pocket effectively destr -
The Battle of Berlin
In mid-April the Soviets, under the command of Marshal Georgi Zhukov, began their final drive against the German capital, and by the 21st Russian tanks penetrated the city limits. There followed nearly two weeks of intensive street fighting, as the Germans doggedly held on to every building and city block. Five days after the fall of Berlin the German government surrendered unconditionally to the Allies. The war in Europe was finally over.
