world war ii: in europe - u.s. history
TRANSCRIPT
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)