Victory and Tragedy in Europe
Turning the Tide in Europe
• Operation Torch – Nov. 8, 1942: British &
American forces under command of Gen. Dwight
D. Eisenhower attack German forces in North
Africa
• Battle of the Kasserine Pass – German counter
offensive
• Axis forces surrendered North Africa in May of
1943
• July – August 1943: British and American armies
attacked Sicily, Italy
Turning the Tide in Europe
• Italian King & army forced Mussolini from
power & negotiated peace with allies
• Germany occupied most of Italy while allied
forces landed in Southern Italy
• Bitter fighting lasted until the surrender of
Germany in 1945.
• Eastern Front: German offensive stopped at
the Battle of Kursk in the Soviet Union
Operation Overload
• D-Day: June 6, 1944 – major amphibious
invasion at Normandy, France
• Allied forces landed 500,000 men and 100,000
vehicles within 2 weeks
• Break-through of the German line at St. Lo
• This led to the encirclement of German army
at Falaise
Operation Overload
• Germans lost 250,000 men
• Allies liberated Paris on August 25th
• Eastern Front: by end of 1944 – Red Army
entered the Balkans & reached central
Poland
Operation Overload
• Russians suffered over 20 million casualties
(6000 Vista Murrietas, 195 Murrietas)
• Equivalent to the deaths of everyone in
Nevada, New Mexico, West Virginia,
Nebraska, Idaho, Hawaii, Maine, New
Hampshire, Rhode Island, Montana,
Delaware, South Dakota, Alaska, North
Dakota, Vermont and Wyoming
Victory & Tragedy in Europe
• Allied air strikes – by end of 1944, bombing
raids crippled German war production,
transportation, and its economy
• Dresden – allied air raid using fire bombs
destroyed the undefended city killing over
50,000 civilians
• Battle of the Bulge: Dec. 16, 1944 – Hitler
attempted to break British and American lines
by capturing the port city of Antwerp
A pile of bodies awaits cremation after the firebombing of
Dresden, February 1945
City of Dresden, Germany, after an Allied bombing, February 1945
Victory & Tragedy in Europe
• German offensive ran out of gas before it
could reach the allied fuel supplies
• Collapse of German forces – allied armies
crossed the Rhine River in March capturing
the industrial center of Germany
• On April 25, 1945 – American and Soviet
troops met at the Elba River
• On April 30 – Hitler committed suicide (Yay!
Though 20 years too late.)
Victory & Tragedy in Europe
• Berlin surrendered to the Soviets on May 2
• VE Day (Victory in Europe Day) – May 8th:
Nazi state formally capitulated (unconditional
surrender = no “stab in the back” myth)
Holocaust
• “Final solution” to what Hitler saw as “the
Jewish problem” – starting in 1942, Hitler’s SS
began a campaign of genocide which focused
on the elimination of the Jewish population
in Europe.
• Death camps such as Auschwitz and Treblinka
were used to murder over 6 million Jews and
1 million Poles, Gypsies, and others deemed
inferior by the Nazis
Berga Concentration Camp Survivors, 1945
A pile of human remains at the site of Nazi concentration camp
Majdanek, 1944, Lublin
Corpses at Buchenwald, April 1945
Corpses at Buchenwald, April 1945
Einsatzgruppe A members shoot Jews on the outskirts of Kovno,
1941-1942
Executions of Kiev Jews by German army mobile killing units, 1942
Eyeglasses from Auschwitz prisoners, 1945
German SS guards executed after the liberation of Dachau by
Allied forces, 1945
German woman forced to see death camps, 1945
Mass Grave Bergen Belsen, May 1945
Members of the Sonderkommando burning corpses on fires in pits
at Auschwitz II-Birkenau, 1944
Rows of bodies of dead inmates fill the yard of Lager Nordhausen,
a Gestapo concentration camp, 1945
Senator Alben W. Barkley views the evidence at first hand at
Buchenwald concentration camp, April 1945
The last Jew in Vinnitsa, 1941
Three emaciated survivors liberated from Buchenwald, April 1945
Ustaše militia execute prisoners at Jasenovac concentration camp
Young German boy walks beside corpses of hundreds of prisoners
from Bergen Belsen, April 20 1945
Wedding Rings stolen From Buchenwald Inmates, May 5, 1945