World War II: In Europe

Nazi conquest- September 1942

North Africa• 1940 British and Italian forces

clash. Italians are beaten• Enter Germany and General

Erwin Rommel “Desert Fox”• Rommel pushes British forces

back to Egypt• British troops gets a new

commander General Bernard Montgomery.

• Montgomery rebuilds the British Army and attacks

• Battle of El Alamein Nov. 1942• Montgomery attacks, beats

Rommel

Rommel Montgomery

Operation Torch• American Forces land in French North Africa• American suffer huge defeat at Kasserine Pass• New General- George Patton• Americans from the West and British from the East force Germany out of Africa

British

Americans

Americans

Battle of Stalingrad • The Battle Started in July 1942 and

ended in Jan 1943• The German 6th Army is stopped by

the Russians• This defeat is the turning point on the

Eastern Front.• Considered one to the bloodiest

battles of the war. Germany lost 800,000 killed, missing or wounded

• Of the 91,000 German that surrendered, only 5,000 made it back home.

Invasion of Italy, 1943

• Combined British & American invasion of Italy didn’t go very well, but it stretched the German army very thin

*American and British forces land on the beaches of

Normandy, and gain a foothold in France

D-Day – Operation Overlord

(June 6th, 1944)

*D-Day (June 6, 1944)

Pointe du Hoc

It was a nearly 100-meter-high cliff,

with perpendicular sides jutting out

into the Channel. It looked down on

Utah Beach to the left and Omaha

Beach to the right. There were six

155mm cannon in heavily reinforced

concrete bunkers that were capable

of hitting either beach

*D-Day (June 6, 1944)

Airborne Assault

• The 82nd and 101st

Airborne troops were dropped behind enemy lines to secure important cross roads to prevent the Germans from reinforcing the coast.

• The drop was a disaster, troops were dropped all over northern France

Normandy Landing (June 6, 1944)

Higgins Landing Crafts

German Prisoners

*German counter-attack against American and British forces

* Despite heavy casualties, the allied line holds

* Last serious Nazi threat

Battle of the Bulge – winter 1944

The Battle of the Bulge:Hitler’s Last Offensive

Dec. 16, 1944 to Jan. 28, 1945 Hitler tries one last attack to split

the Allies

Attack fails due to the Americans that hold on to the town of Bastogne

*As Soviet forces

approached Berlin,

Hitler committed

suicide on April 30th,

1945

*Germany

surrendered to the

allies on May 7th,

1945 (V-E Day)

German Defeat

*Hitler Commits Suicide April 30, 1945

The Führer’s Bunker

Cyanide & Pistols

Mr. & Mrs. Hitler

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YS2rQhMWmuo (How did Hitler Die?)

*V(ictory-E(urope) Day (May 8, 1945)