DK - World War II Map by Map

GERMAN DEFIANCE 159

◁ Ruins of Warsaw

After suppressing an uprising by Polish

resistance fighters in the summer of 1944,

German troops systematically destroyed

Warsaw, leaving four-fifths of the city in ruins.

JAN 1944 MAY SEP JAN 1945

Nov 28, 1943

Churchill, Roosevelt, and

Stalin meet in Tehran

Jan 27, 1944 Soviet

troops break through to

Leningrad, ending siege

Jun 5, 1944

Allied forces

enter Rome

Jul 20, 1944

Attempted

assassination

of Hitler fails

Aug 25, 1944

Paris liberated by

Free French and

Allied troops

Sep 17–26, 1944

Operation Market

Garden fails to secure

Rhine crossing at Arnhem

Jan 22, 1944

Allied landings

at Anzio, Italy

Feb 20–25, 1944

“Big Week”: intensive

Allied bombing raids

on Germany

Jun 6, 1944

D-Day landings

in Normandy

Jun 23, 1944 Soviet

offensive in Belorussia

launched, driving

forward into Poland

and Baltic states in July

Jun 13, 1944

First V-1

flying bombs

strike Britain

Aug 1, 1944

Warsaw Uprising

begins

Sep 8, 1944 First

V-2 rockets launched

against Britain

transform the war. But although the Germans introduced

flying bombs, rockets, and jet aircraft, the weapons were

too little, too late to have any decisive impact.

The final stages

By summer 1944, the Soviets were advancing toward

Germany from the east, while the Western Allies had invaded

Normandy. However, the euphoria of liberation as Allied

forces raced across France and Belgium that August was

followed by frustration when they ground to a halt in the fall.

The failure of a coup against Hitler left him securely in control

and determined to fight to the end. Political conflicts came to

the fore, with Communist-led partisan movements clashing

with Nationalists and Fascists in Yugoslavia, Greece, and Italy.

The suffering across Europe in the latter stages of the war

was tremendous. The extermination of Jews continued, and

the Allied aerial bombing campaign took a heavy toll on

civilians in German cities and elsewhere. Liberation from

Nazi rule brought joy to many, but death or humiliation to

those judged as traitors—from collaborators in France to

Crimean Tatars subject to mass deportation in the USSR.

Millions of ethnic German civilians from the Baltic and

central Europe fled west in the face of the advancing Soviet

armies. A post-war Europe scarred by ideological division,

ruins, and refugees was already taking shape while the

fighting approached its climax.

▽ Liberation of Paris

US soldiers and Parisian women

celebrate in front of the Eiffel Tower

after the liberation of Paris in August

1944. The city had been under
      German occupation for four years.

“The free men of the world are marching together to Victory!”

GENERAL DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER, “ORDER OF THE DAY” STATEMENT, JUNE 5, 1944

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