Downfall of the Thousand-Year Reich

1. The End of the Axis Alliance - - Hungary and Romania Jump Ship 2. D-Day: The Allied Invasion of Europe (June 6, 1944) - - Operation Overlord and the Beeches of Normandy - - Allied Successes and Losses 3. Resistance to Hitler as Defeat Approaches - - Operation Valkyrie (July 20, 1944) 4. Pushing Toward Germany - - Market Garden and the Battle of the Bulge - - Red Army Atrocities and the Capture of Berlin 5. VE Day: The End of the War in Europe (May 7, 1945) - - The Fate of Hitler and Mussolini

The German Retreat

Mussolini Rescued by the Nazis, September 1943

Admiral Horthy of Hungary attempted to escape his alliance with Hitler as the war effort turned against the Axis

In September 1944, King Michael (L) broke the Romanian alliance with Germany and had Iron Guard leader Ion Antonescu (R) arrested

Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill at Tehran (Iran), November 1943

Operation Overlord would require an assault from the English channel to the beaches of Normandy - - and against the Atlantic Wall

Operation Overlord would require the largest amphibious landing in history, on five major beeches

Supreme Allied Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower made sure Operation Overlord was planned meticulously

While troops landed on the beaches, planes would drop parachutists behind enemy lines and destroy transportation and communication infrastructure.

American troops land at Omaha beach, June 6, 1944

Amassing troops and supplies following the D-Day landing

French fisherman survey the dead on Omaha Beach at Normandy, June 1944

American soldiers examine a German tank and its dead crewman following the German counter-attack, August 1944

Operation Valkyrie: Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg, conspirator of the July 20, 1944 bomb plot to kill Hitler (and below with Hitler)

Henning von Tresckow

Hitler shows Mussolini the bomb damage

Here Died For Germany: Berlin memorial at the sight at which the July 20th conspirators were executed

Competing visions of victory: Generals Montgomery, Patton and Bradley

Plan for Operation Market Garden, designed to get the Allies across the Rhine river from the Netherlands into Germany

Captured British POWs following the failure of Market Garden

Hitlers last gasp: The Battle of the Bulge in the Ardennes region of Belgium

American and German soldiers at the Battle of the Bulge

Pontoon Bridge Over the Rhine, 1945

Destroyed Trains and Lines During WWII

Western Allies Greet the Soviets at the Elbe River, April 25, 1945

German women bore the brunt of the wrath of the Red Army in 1945

Members of the Volkssturm Peoples Militia

Red Army soldiers on the Roof of the Reichstag, Berlin, May 1945

The last photo of Hitler, inspecting his destroyed offices; Hitlers successor Karl Doenitz, who officially surrendered Germany to the Allies, May 7, 1945

Following Hitlers suicide on April 30, 1945

The bodies of Mussolini and his mistress, hung by partisans, April 28, 1945