World Wars: World War II

1. World Wars: World War II Assault on Europe

2. Operation Overlord • Late 1943—U.S. and Great Britain start preparing for the invasion of Europe. The invasion is to take place in Normandy.

3. Operation Overlord • Codename—Operation Overlord—Allied invasion of northern France. • Lead commander—U.S. 4 star General Dwight D. Eisenhower. • Headed SHAEF—Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force.

4. Operation Overlord • Operation is scheduled to take place in the spring of 1944. • Early June along the beaches of Normandy. • Would completely surprise Germans—expected the attack to come at Pas-de-Calais.

5. Operation Overlord • Germans believed that Patton would lead the invasion. • Operation Fortitude—diversion from the real attack. • Germans heavily reinforced the area of Pas-de-Calais

6. Operation Overlord • Training—very intense and extremely detailed. • 175,000 men, 1,000 transport planes, 5,000 ships, and 6,000 fighters and bombers.

7. Operation Overlord • German defensive positions well scouted—Allies knew almost every gun position along the Normandy coastline.

8. Operation Overlord • Created a huge deception (Operation Fortitude) that the invasion would take place at Pas-de-Calais. • Inflatable tanks, cardboard airplanes, etc.—used to deceive the Germans and worked. • Germans kept a vast majority of their force at Calais to repel the invasion.

9. Operation Overlord • Task for the Allies was daunting—huge undertaking—but the Allies were completely successful in seizing the element of surprise.

10. Operation Overlord • German occupied Northern coast of France. • The “Atlantic Wall”—lined with giant pillboxes and concrete bunkers. • All kinds of murderous hazards as well along the coastline

11. Operation Overlord • In command at Normandy for the Germans is Erwin Rommel—believed invasion would be won or lost on the beaches.

12. Operation Overlord • June 5, 1944—General Eisenhower gives the go ahead for the invasion. • That evening U.S. and British paratroopers dropped behind the German lines (Band of |Brothers) 101stAirborne.

13. Operation Overlord • By daylight June 6, 1945…despite confusion, the Allies secured beach-heads. • The Allied Invasion of France—The Great Crusade

14. Operation Overlord • June 6, 1945—5:30 a.m. landing craft begin their runs into the beaches. • U.S.—Utah and Omaha • British—Sword and Gold • Canadians—Juno

15. Operation Overlord • At 6:30 a.m. the first assault wave of troops hit the beaches. • It was a murderous affairs as all plans went wrong. • Men drowned, rough surf swamped landing craft, and the German fire was withering.

16. Operation Overlord • Gunfire was far worse than anything they could have imagined. • Within minutes of landing casualties in leading platoons was 90% • Blood literally turned the shoreline tidewater red—horrible carnage.

17. Operation Overlord • By midday Allied naval gunfire had many German guns out of action. • By Afternoon the beaches were swarming with tanks, men, and supply carriers.

18. Operation Overlord • The invasion had been a complete surprise for the Germans—they never saw it coming. • Within days it was clear the Allies were in France to stay

19. Operation Overlord • The Germans would halt the advance for over a month in the hedgerow country. • French farm fields bordered with 8 foot high earthen walls.

20. Operation Overlord • The Hedgerows created a great defensive position for the Germans—difficult for men and tanks to penetrate • German retaliation—Hitler begins launching V-1 and V-2 rockets against London

21. The Plot to Kill Hitler-Valkyrie • On July 20, 1944 a bomb exploded at Hitler's daily briefing.  It was the last in a series of assassination attempts against Hitler carried out by a group of military conspirators.

22. The Plot to Kill Hitler-Valkyrie • Shortly afterwards, using a legitimate military plan codenamed "Valkyrie," senior officers of the German Home Army tried to seize power in an attempt to free Germany from the criminal Nazi regime.

23. The Plot to Kill Hitler-Valkyrie • But this assassination attempt, like all those before it, had failed. • In consequence, within hours orders were soon issued from Hitler's headquarters countermanding "Valkyrie." 

24. The Plot to Kill Hitler-Valkyrie • In some military districts, such as France, the subordinate commanders were anti-Nazi and they followed the "Valkyrie" orders without hesitation. • The local Gestapo and SS were rounded up and detained.

25. The Plot to Kill Hitler-Valkyrie • But in other military districts, the news that Hitler had survived the assassination attempt was sufficient grounds for disregarding "Valkyrie" and following the orders from Hitler's headquarters instead. • So the only uprising by Germans against the Nazi regime collapsed.

26. The Plot to Kill Hitler-Valkyrie • In the night of July 20, 1944, the first men associated with this German revolt against Hitler's dictatorship were executed without trial. • The first man to fall to the vicious Nazi retribution was the man who had from early 1942 onwards developed and nurtured the coup d'etat plans, Plan "Valkyrie":  General Friedrich Olbricht.

27. The Plot to Kill Hitler-Valkyrie • Thousands of other conspirators and their sympathizers followed and were liquidated in a bloody retribution.

28. The Plot to Kill Hitler-Valkyrie • Who were the men behind the conspiracy?  Was it really just a "tiny clique of criminally stupid officers" as Hitler claimed?  And was Claus Graf Stauffenberg– the only person named by Hitler - really the driving force behind it?

29. The Plot to Kill Hitler-Valkyrie • Erwin Rommel was implicated in the plot, and because of his service to Germany was allowed to commit suicide….instead of stand trial.

30. The Plot to Kill Hitler-Valkyrie • Had the plot been successful, and Hitler would have been killed, the war would have been shortened by several months. • A smiling Claus von Stauffenbergwith fellow conspirator Albrecht Mertz von Quirnheim in 1942.

31. July-August 1944 • The Allies Breakout from Northern France • Ike puts Patton back in command of the U.S. 3rd Army tank command in France. • Rolls through German forces moving southwest and eastward toward Germany.

32. July-August 1944 • August 7, 1945—Germans counterattack west of Paris, but are stopped cold. • Destroyed 2 Panzer Divisions and 8 Wehrmacht Divisions • Germans are now in full retreat.

33. July-August 1944 • August 25, 1945—Allies liberated Paris • In early fall however, Allies stalled due to a gasoline shortage. • Germans were now in full retreat across eastern France.

34. July-August 1944 • Germans are beginning to crumble along the Eastern Front as the Soviets continue to advance into Poland.

35. September 1944 • With gasoline in short supply—Monty is given the lion’s share to advance east in September. • Monty’s plan was to move through Holland but suffered severe casualties.

36. October 1944 • U.S. 9th Army captures the German city of Aachen. • November 1944—the U.S. moved into “no-man’s land” called the Hurtgen Forest.

37. November 1944 • Hurtgen Forest was a useless operation—Germans inflicted heavy casualties on the U.S. forces. • The forest is eventually bypassed rather than continue the useless fighting there.

38. November 1944 • South of Hurtgen Forest—Patton’s 3rd Army suffered the same results at Metz. • All this time Hitler—even though his army was retreating—was busy planning a counterattack.

39. November 1944 • Hitler wanted to break the American line in Belgium’s Ardenne Forest • By mid-December Hitler had assembled 24 divisions—mostly Panzer tank divisions….rready to attack 12/17/44

40. The Battle of the Bulge • December 17, 1944-January 31, 1945. • By late 1944, Germany was unmistakably losing the war. The Soviet Red Army was closing in on the Eastern front, while strategic Allied bombing was wreaking havoc on German cities.

41. The Battle of the Bulge • The Italian peninsula had been captured and liberated, and the Allied armies were advancing rapidly through France from west to east. • Therefore, Adolph Hitler knew that the end was near if something could not be done to slow the Allies' advance.

42. The Battle of the Bulge • After the triumphant breach of Normandy in August 1944, the Allies rushed across France with amazing speed. • But before they could cross the Rhine River, they would have to face a last-stand German onslaught.

43. The Battle of the Bulge • The Battle of the Bulge, so named because of the westward bulging shape of the battleground on a map, lasted from mid-December 1944 to the end of January 1945.

44. The Battle of the Bulge • It was the largest land battle of World War II in which the United States directly participated. More than a million men fought in the battle — 600,000 Germans, 500,000 Americans, and 55,000 British.

45. The Battle of the Bulge • The battle was fought on an 80-mile front running from southern Belgium through the Ardennes Forest, and down to Ettelbruck in the middle of Luxembourg.

46. The Battle of the Bulge • Hitler's real target was the British-American alliance, and he saw the battle as a Juggernaut to break apart and defeat the Allied forces. • That "surprise attack" would supposedly divide British and American forces, leaving the way wide open for the Wehrmachtto swing north and seize the port of Antwerp. • Thus they could cut off the main supply base for the Allied armies on the Western Front.

47. The Battle of the Bulge • Hitler believed that he could force the western Allies to negotiate a peace treaty in the Axis' favor. • He also believed that such factors as bad weather, bad terrain, and the Christmas holiday would help him catch the Allies by surprise.

48. The Battle of the Bulge • In other words, he anticipated it to be a decisive battle to win. • After all, the Allies were very much inferior to the Germans as far as their military strength was concerned.

49. The Battle of the Bulge • At the battle's beginning, the U.S. At the battle's beginning, the U.S. Army was equipped with 80,000 men, 400 tanks, and 400 guns, while the Germans had 200,000 men, 600 tanks, and 1,900 guns.

50. The Battle of the Bulge • The night before the battle, Hitler sent in soldiers to infiltrate the front. • Some were dropped by parachute, others came in driving captured American jeeps. • Those German soldiers spoke fluent English and wore U.S. uniforms; therefore they managed to spread confusion by giving false directions, changing road signs, and cutting telephone lines.