Unit 7 Notes 3:

End of War European Theater

Allied Powers Are Formed
With the US joining the War after
the Pearl Harbor attack, the major
Allied Powers were created
This included the US led by
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Great Britain led by Winston
Churchill
Soviet Union led by Joseph Stalin
Plan of Attack
Stalin urged that the US and Britain open up a
second front against Germany in order to divide
their troops and ease the current attack on the
Soviet Union
While they initially agreed, the US and Great
Britain decided to first launch an offensive in
North Africa and Italy

Operation Torch
The first plan of attack for the
Allies was capturing North
Africa
Operation Torch, 1942, led by
General Dwight D. Eisenhower,
opened a second front on
Germanys Desert Army
Caught between the US to the
west and British to the east, the
Desert army was finally defeated
General Dwight D. Eisenhower
US General
Leader of Operation
Torch
Leader of the D-Day
invasion (Operation
Overlord)
Commander of the
Allied forces in
Europe
Battle of Stalingrad
After struggling through the Soviet winter,
Hitlers army was ready to attack again the
following summer
The target was Stalingrad
For months, Germany used the Luftwaffe to
bomb the city on a nightly basis
By November, the city was reduced to a
burning heap of rubble, but Stalin had told his
commanders to defend this city at all costs
Battle of Stalingrad
Although the city was 99% lost, the Soviets had the
weather on their side again
Soviet soldiers from outside the city launched a
counter attack trapping all of the German soldiers
inside the city and cutting them off from supplies
By February, 220,000 German soldiers had died
and the remaining 90,000 surrendered
This battle cost the Soviet Union 1 MILLION
soldiers, but they won the battle
Invasion of Italy
In July of 1943, US and British soldiers invaded
the Italian island of Sicily
After the Allied capture of this island in August,
Mussolini was fired as dictator and arrested
On September 3
rd
, 1943 Italy surrendered
Death of Mussolini
Mussolini was captured trying
to escape Italy in the back of a
German truck
The next day he was shot, had
his body dragged and beaten
through the town square in
Milan and his body hanged
upside down from a light post
D-Day
June 6, 1944 the Allies launched
the largest land and sea invasion in
history.
This was known as Operation
Overlord, or D-Day
The attack was led by General
Eisenhower and happened in
Normandy, France
Within a month, 1 million Allied
soldiers came through France
By September France, Belgium,
Luxembourg, and most of the
Netherlands were liberated

Battle of the Bulge
Forced with an ever-closing two-front war,
Hitler launched a massive counter attack into
the west
The great push into the Allies line gave the
battle its name
Although initially sent back, the Allies would
eventually defeat the German army as Hitler
could no longer replace the men he had lost
Germany Surrenders
With 9 million Allied soldiers
surrounding and bombing the German
capital of Berlin, Hitler prepared for
defeat
In his final address to his people Hitler
blamed the Jews for starting the war and
his generals for losing it
On May 1
st
, Hitler committed suicide by
taking poison and shooting himself. His
guards then set his corpse on fire
May 7
th
, 1945 Germany surrendered
This is known as V-E Day
President Roosevelt did not live long
enough to see this however, he died
suddenly a month before