Pushing the Axis Back

Striking Back at The Third Reich After the first large Allied invasion of the war in North Africa were very successful, Roosevelt decided- At the , Roosevelt and Churchhill agreed to step up the bombing of Germany. The goal of this bombing was to . Churchill called Italy the “soft underbelly” of Europe and was

Strategic Bombing The allies had been bombing Germany for three years by this point in the war dropping 2,300 tons of explosives every- This bombing was minor compared to the new campaign. Between January 1943 and May 1945, the Royal Air Force and the United States dropped approximately 53,000 tons of explosives on Germany every month. It did not destroy the economy or the peoples morale, but it did

Striking at the Soft Underbelly As the bombing campaign increased against Germany, the invasion of Sicily moved ahead as well. was placed in overall command of the invasion. General and General of England controlled the troops on the ground. In July of 1943, despite bad weather the Allied troops made it ashore with few causalties. A new vehicle -proved to very effective at bringing in supplies and artillery to troops on beaches

Striking at the Soft Underbelly Eight days later Patton’s troops smashed through enemy lines and Soon the Italian government collapsed-Mussolini was arrested-in September the Italian government announced their surrender However Hitler was The allies would have to take this territory back. Allied troops landed behind enemy lines in Anzio. The German troops were not surprised and surrounded the allies. It took -Fighting would continue until May of 1945. This campaign was-

Roosevelt Meets Stalin at Tehran Roosevelt met with Stalin before the invasion of France. In late 1943- They agreed to several things-Soviets would attack German’s after invasion of France;

Landing in France Churchill and Roosevelt met in Egypt to plan the invasion-the first decision was to chose the leader of the campaign. Most expected -Dwight D. Eisenhower was chosen to lead the greatest military invasion in history. This invasion would be named-

Planning Operation Overlord The Germans realized that eventually the Allies would invade-they heavily fortified the coast of France However the allies advantage was surprise-the Germans did not know ----to convince the Germans they were right the allies placed inflated tanks, tents and landing craft along the coast of Calais-to German spy planes the decoys looked real-the Germans were-

Planning Operation Overlord By the spring of 1944 everything was ready-over--- The only thing left was to pick the date and give the command to go. The invasion would begin at night and arrive at low tide so that beach obstacles could be seen. The low tide had to ----A date would have to be chosen when all of the conditions could be met. Bad weather would be disastrous to the mission.

Planning Operation Overlord Given all of these conditions there were only a few days each month that the mission could be launched. The first opportunity was between June 5-7, 1944. Eisenhower’s staff referred to any day that a mission began by the letter D. The ----Eisenhower had to make a difficult decision and finally decided to move forward with the invasion.

The Longest Day Nearly 7,000 ships carried more than 100,000 troops towards the beaches, while------ The landing went well at Utah with only 200 troops being lost-within three hours the beach had been taken-however at -----Amazingly the tide slowly turned and when reinforcements arrived the German defenses broke and the beach was taken. By the end of the-----------------

. . . these men came here - British and our allies, and Americans - to storm these beaches for one purpose only, not to gain anything for ourselves, not to fulfill any ambitions that America had for conquest, but just to preserve freedom. . . . Many thousands of men have died for such ideals as these. . . but these young boys. . . were cut off in their prime. . . I devoutly hope that we will never again have to see such scenes as these. I think and hope, and pray, that humanity will have learned. . . we must find some way . . . to gain an eternal peace for this world. Eisenhowersenhower: A Soldier's Life