Battle of the Bulge and the D-day attacks !

U.S. and other allies strike the German Nazi army!

By 1944, the Soviet Union ‘red army’ had drove Hitler’s German Nazi army out of their country!

The allies had also fought hard to drive Italy and Mussolini out of

Africa!

Things were looking better but Hitler’s Nazi Germany STILL controlled France and

Poland and other small countries in Western Europe!

U.S. head general Dwight Eisenhower knew Germany had to be driven out of France and he knew the United States

army would have to help do it!

They chose a spot on the tip of France called NORMANDY to launch their invasion!

General Dwight Eisenhower speaks to the troops before sending them to attack on D-day! He knew many U.S. soldiers would die in the coming attack

on Hitler’s Nazi army!

The United States knew France must be taken from Hitler’s Nazi army. 175,000 soldiers attacked on June 6, 1944!

Here they are coming toward the beach at France where machine guns wait on them!!

WOULD YOU BE SCARED?

As the first Allied soldiers (mostly U.S., Canadian and British) landed on the beach, the Germans

were waiting on them with machine guns!

They fired at the soldiers in the water as they got off the ‘duck’

boats.

Both sides fought fiercely!

Many U.S. soldiers were killed by the gunfire.

But, the invasion was a success as thousands of Allied troops pushed miles into France! The Allied forces drove the German

Nazis back and slowly began to capture France again for the people of that country!

One young U.S. soldier wrote in a letter home after D-day that:

“Events taking place today will be read about by kids in the future at school!”

Guess he was right huh?

• Let’s watch a short movie about the D-day attack…Let’s see what it was really like that horrible day in 1944 when U.S. soldiers invaded that beach in France while the German Nazis waited on them.

The U.S. soon dropped even more soldiers by parachute behind German lines and guns

into France and attacked again!

They chased the German Nazi army out of every town they came to!

In the COLD December of 1944, the Germans made one final attempt to keep control of

France.• This battle called ‘The Battle of the Bulge’

would be the biggest battle EVER fought by the United States army. My husband’s daddy fought in it!

U.S. soldiers fought to stay warm as they fought back the Germans at the Battle of the Bulge in France!

Hitler threw all his weapons at the U.S. army. He bombed constantly!

U.S. soldiers march down a muddy road in France between fighting at the Battle of the

Bulge.

U.S. soldiers fire large guns at the Battle of the Bulge in France

A battle weary U.S. soldier at the Battle of the Bulge

U.S. soldiers warmed themselves anyway possible in the French and Belgium towns they took from

the Nazi troops.

A U.S. army tank moves in the Battle of the Bulge

U.S. soldiers fight German troops in the snow at the Battle of the Bulge

Sometimes, all it took was just one bullet in the wrong place. This man and his helmet survived D-day but fell at the Battle of the Bulge a few months

later.

Nazi soldiers gunned down U.S. prisoners of war that were captured

at the Battle of the Bulge

A U.S. soldier fires a snow-covered machine gun at the Battle of the

Bulge.

Both sides had so, so many dead at the end of each day of fighting.

Each side had thousands injured as well.

Brave medic teams risked their lives daily to get the injured off the

battle field to safety.

This cemetery in France is where thousands of U.S. soldiers were buried that fought at the Battle of the Bulge.

77,000 Allied soldiers died at the Battle of the Bulge.

Fortunately, my husband’s daddy wasn’t one of these men.

The new World War II memorial in Washington D.C. remembers the men who fought in Europe

against the Germans and those who fought in the Pacific Ocean against Japan.

The memorial is beautiful and haunting at night.

This is a short video clip of the real fighting at the ‘Battle of the Bulge’. • http://www.thehistorychannel.co.uk/site/tv_

guide/full_details/Conflict/programme_3363.php

The Normandy ‘D-day’ beach as it looks today.