 Operation Overlord was the code name given to the Allied invasion of France  It involved landing 21 American divisions and 26 British, Canadian, and Polish divisions on Normandy  Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno and Sword

 The Allies set up a “fake” army in Dover, 21 miles across the English Channel from Calais, France  This dummy army used cardboard tanks, useless ships, and detectable radio traffic  The deception worked and Hitler ordered his top tank division to Calais

 More than 11,000 planes prepared the beaches  On four of the beaches, the landings were lightly opposed with few casualties  On Omaha beach, the Germans had dug trenches and built heavily artillery nests  Mines were hidden all along the beach

 The American forces there suffered numerous casualties from the gunfire, the mines, the bombs, and drowning  One writer called D-Day “the longest day”  By the end of the day, the Allies gained a toehold in France  Within a month, more than 1 million Allied troops landed at Normandy

 In August of 1944, the Allies had liberated Paris  Hitler ordered the capital destroyed by retreating armies, but the leaders disobeyed and left the “city of lights” as beautiful as they’d found it  On July 20, 1944, a German officer planted a bomb at Hitler headquarters  The explosion killed or wounded 20 people, but Hitler survived  General Rommel (Desert Fox) took poison to escape being put on trial

 In December of 1944, Hitler organized a counterattack in the Ardennes  Hitler’s plan had English-speaking German soldiers disguise themselves and cut phone lines and disrupt communication  The Battle of the Bulge Almost succeeded

 The Germans caught the allies by surprise  The Americans fought the Germans back at Bastogne and held off German forces until the sky was clear enough for air support  The battle was a desperate attempt by Hitler to drive a wedge between American and British forces

 In January, the Soviet Army reached the Oder River outside Berlin  The Allies advanced north through Italy  In April 1945, Mussolini tried to flee to Switzerland, but was captured and hung in Italy at a gas station  Allied forces had crossed the Rhine River into Germany and reached the Elbe River (50 miles from Berlin)

 Hitler had been shaken by tremors, paranoid from drugs, and kept alive by mad dreams of victory  He gave orders nobody followed and planned campaigns nobody would fight  On April 30, 1945, Hitler had committed suicide along with a dozen of his closest friends  On May 7, 1945, Germany surrendered  FDR had died a few weeks earlier, however, and Harry S. Truman was to see the nation through to final victory