Victory in Europe
By the end of June 1944, one million Allied troops had crossed the Normandy beaches onto French soil. After weeks of hard fighting, the port of Cherbourg was taken, followed by a massive air and land assault centered on the town of St. Lo, enabling the first decisive Allied breakout from the beachhead in late July. Progress eastward was rapid from this point, as other American and French units landed on the Mediterranean coast and began advancing from the south. By early September Paris was liberated, and a continuous Allied line was soon established from the Swiss border to the English Channel.
With Soviet armies closing from the east and almost continuous bombing of industrial sites from the air, the Nazi high command concluded that the defense of France was futile. German forces were pulled back and consolidated behind the natural barrier of the Rhine River network. Although the first German city, Aachen, was captured in October, the Allied advance slowed almost to a standstill due to bad weather and mounting supply problems.
As freezing temperatures and cloudy weather started to settle over central Europe in late 1944, Hitler conceived a bold offensive campaign to relieve the pressure on his reeling army. On December 16 his generals launched an eleven-division assault through the Ardennes Forest aimed at Brussels and Antwerp. In a stroke, Hitler sought to split the Allied armies and to deny the Allies the vital port facilities at Antwerp. This desperate move had little chance of ultimate success, but still caught the Allies by surprise and seriously disrupted their planned offensive operations. The ensuing Battle of the Bulge was fought bitterly over a two-week period. The focal point was at Bastogne, where the 101st Airborne Division held out even though cut off and surrounded. When the weather cleared just before Christmas Day and Patton’s 3rd Army advance units arrived, the issue was decided. By early January all German forces were eliminated from the “bulge,” with the loss of two panzer armies and eight hundred tanks. There would be no further offensive efforts by the German army.
After the Battle of the Bulge it was only a matter of weeks before the Allied armies continued to push to the east. In March 1945 the Rhine River barrier was forced at several points, as the German defenses began to collapse all along the front. The British and Canadian armies on the left flank raced for the German North Sea ports. The American 1st and 9th armies advanced on the Ruhr Valley, cutting off Germany’s main industrial region from the rest of the country. Patton’s Third Army, meanwhile, attacked east along the Danube toward Czechoslovakia.
As the war was nearing an end, General Eisenhower made a controversial strategic decision with long-range consequences for the postwar era. He did not attempt to capture Berlin. Stopping short and directing his forces southward at other objectives, he allowed the Soviets uncontested control of the German capital. As Red Army forces encircled Berlin, Hitler finally committed suicide on April 29. By strange coincidence, Franklin Roosevelt and Benito Mussolini also died within days of the German leader’s death. Shortly thereafter, a German provisional government accepted surrender terms and a cease-fire. At Eisenhower’s headquarters, Marshal Alfred Yodl signed the formal document:
We, the undersigned… hereby surrender unconditionally to the Supreme Commander, Allied Expeditionary Force, and simultaneously to the Supreme High Command of the Red Army, all forces on land, sea, and in the air who are at this date under German control.457
At 11:01 p.m. on May 8, 1945, World War II in Europe came to an end.