Existing comment:
From Normandy to Berlin:
"Day after day we roll down German roads, going ever deeper into the interior of the country... You get the feeling that the army is an immense flood pouring over the countryside, tipped with violence at the crest and depositing flotsam in the backwaters. You move with the tide, and it carries you along in an almost effortless fashion."
-- Captain Max Lale
After the victory in Normany in August 1944, Allies armies in the east and west began closing in on Nazi Germany like a giant vise. By mid-September, the Soviets were in Poland while, in the west, the Allies neared the German border. Then Hitler made a deseparate gamble. He marshalled his forces for a surprise attack at the center of the Allied lines.
The attack came on December 16 in the Ardennes Forest, a portion of the Allied line held by American forces. Masses of German tanks and troops hits the Americans by surprise, and created a large bulge in the Allied front. The Americans fought back savagely. By early January, they began to push back the attackers. The "Battle of the Bulge" was the last great German offensive of the war.
Now the Allies pressed forward. By March 1945, they had crossed the Rhine River. In the east, a masasive offensive by the Soviets put them at the outskirts of Berlin by mid-April. Soviet and American armies met on April 11 at the Elbe River. On April 30, Hitlet committed suicide. One week later, Germany surrendered. |