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After the successful Allied invasions of western France, Germany gathered reserve forces and launched a massive counter-offensive in the Ardennes, which collapsed by January. At the same time, Soviet forces were closing in from the east, invading Poland and East Prussia. By March, Western Allied forces were crossing the Rhine River, capturing hundreds of thousands of troops from Germany's Army Group B, and the Red Army had entered Austria, both fronts quickly approaching Berlin. Strategic bombing campaigns by Allied aircraft were pounding German territory, sometimes destroying entire cities in a night. In the first several months of 1945, Germany put up a fierce defense, but was rapidly losing territory, running out of supplies, and running low on options. In April, Allied forces pushed through the German defensive line in Italy, and East met West on the River Elbe on April 25, 1945, when Soviet and American troops met near Torgau, Germany. Then came the end of the Third Reich, as the Soviets took Berlin, Adolf Hitler committed suicide on April 30, and Germany surrendered unconditionally on all fronts by May 8 (May 7 on the Western Front). Hitler's planned "Thousand Year Reich" lasted only 12 incredibly destructive years. (This entry is Part 17 of a weekly 20-part retrospective of World War II)

Beginning in June of 1940, the North African Campaign took place over the course of three years, as Axis and Allied forces pushed each other back and forth across the desert in a series of attacks and counterattacks. Libya had been an Italian colony for several decades and British forces had been in neighboring Egypt since 1882. When Italy declared war on the Allied Nations in 1940, the two armies began skirmishing almost immediately. An Italian invasion of Egypt in September of 1940 was followed by a December counterattack where British and Indian forces captured some 130,000 Italians. Hitler's response to this loss was to send in the newly formed "Afrika Korps" led by General Erwin Rommel. Several long, brutal pushes back and forth across Libya and Egypt reached a turning point in the Second Battle of El Alamein in late 1942, when Lieutenant-General Bernard Montgomery's British Eighth Army broke out and drove Axis forces all the way from Egypt to Tunisia. In November, British and American forces landed thousands of troops across western North Africa in Operation Torch, which joined the attack, eventually helping force the surrender of all remaining Axis troops in Tunisia in May of 1943, ending the Campaign for North Africa. (This entry is Part 12 of a weekly 20-part retrospective of World War II)

"Starting with the Invasion of Sicily in July of 1943, and culminating in the June 6, 1944 D-Day Invasion of Normandy, Allied forces took the fight to the Axis powers in many locations across Western Europe. The push into Italy began in Sicily, but soon made it to the Italian mainland, with landings in the south. The Italian government (having recently ousted Prime Minister Benito Mussolini) quickly signed an armistice with the Allies -- but German forces dug in and set up massive defensive lines across Italy, prepared to halt any armed push to the north. After several major offensives, the Allies broke through and captured Rome on June 4, 1944. Two days later, the largest amphibious invasion in history took place, with nearly 200,000 Allied troops taking 7,000 ships and more than 3,000 aircraft toward the coast of Normandy, France on D-Day, June 6, 1944. Some 156,000 troops landed, 24,000 by air and the rest by sea, meeting stiff resistance from well-defended German positions across 50 miles of French coastline. After several days of intense warfare, Allied troops gained tenuous holds on several beaches, which they were able to grow with reinforcement and bombardment. By the end of June, Allies were in firm control of Normandy, and by August 25, Paris was liberated by the French Resistance, with help from the French Forces of the Interior and the U.S. 4th Infantry Division. In September, the Allies launched another major invasion, Operation Market Garden, the largest airborne operation of its time, where tens of thousands of troops descended on the Netherlands by parachute and glider. Though the landings were successful, troops on the ground were unable to take and hold their targets, including bridges across the Rhine River. Despite that setback, by late 1944, the Allies had successfully established a Western Front, and were preparing to advance on Germany. (This entry is Part 16 of a weekly 20-part retrospective of World War II)"