History WorldWarII / WarInEuropeAndAfrica

With more and more French airfields becoming available and fewer and fewer ''Luftwaffe'' interceptors around to stop them, it is not long before the burgeoning British and American Air Forces reduce every major industrial town and transport hub in Hitler's Reich to ruins. Even their vaunted new jets prove ineffective as the bomber's Mustang escorts outnumber them 60 to one with ace pilots in them like the Tuskegee Airmen able to shoot those jets down more often than the Germans had feared. Furthermore, the capture of French airfields starts to bring their own airfields within range of Allied tactical airpower and increasingly under the near-constant cover of the dreaded Thunderbolt and Typhoon fighter-bombers that are devastating ''Wehrmacht'' formations in France. With the ''Luftwaffe''[='=]s own bombing campaign rendered more and more ineffective as they lose serviceable airfields, Hitler turns to using the newly-developed ''Vergeltungswaffen'' ("retaliation weapons"), the V-1 "Buzz Bomb" and later the V-2 short-range ballistic missile to try and exact some vengeance upon the British—who, after the devastation of years past, by and large consider this a nuisance [[StiffUpperLip not worth getting worked up about]]. That attitude was aided with the facts that the former threat can be intercepted and the latter's impact was lessened by British intelligence's Doublecross system fooling the Germans into "correcting" the missile trajectories to avoid the cities.\\\

* By late June the Soviets' Summer Offensive Operation has bogged down trying to attack Army Group South. On 28 June 1942, Germany's Army Group South executes '''Case Blue''' to take east Ukraine and the oilfields of the Caucasus, quickly encircling and capturing the Red Army Summer Offensive forces and leaving the whole Ukrainian front critically weakened, Stalin moving his reserves to prevent them from driving on Moscow. Army Group South is split into Army Groups A and B and set to take The Caucasus and defend their flank near Stalingrad respectively—but at the last minute Hitler takes forces from the former so the latter can ''capture'' Stalingrad, causing both forces to fail. On 19 November the Soviets deploy half of the massive reserves they've been hiding in the south in Operations '''Uranus''' and '''Saturn'''—trapping 100,000-200,000 Italian and Romanian and a similar number of German troops in a "pocket" around Stalingrad, then pushing the Germans out of the Caucasus entirely. The Soviets have kept the other half of their reserves in plain sight for use in Operation '''Mars''' (25 November 1941) to break the back of Army Group Center—but they fail with heavy losses because the Germans were expecting it and had deployed their own reserves there to counter them. When the last starving survivors of the Stalingrad pocket surrender at gunpoint in February 1943, only 91,000 German troops are left. The offensive against Army Group North to break the Siege of Leningrad is unsuccessful, and on 19 February-15 March the Red Army's pursuit of the reconstituted Army Group South is crushed by a counteroffensive led by ''Panzer'' forces redeployed from Army Group Center and Army Group A (formerly deployed in the Caucasus) in the '''Donets''' counteroffensive. German irrecoverable c.300k, Hungarian+Romanian+Italian c.400k, Soviet c.3 million

Contrary to the usual stereotypes of invasions of Russia being doomed to failure, Russia actually suffered a major German invasion in UsefulNotes/WorldWarOne and ''disintegrated into a [[{{UsefulNotes/RedOctober}} Civil War]], one faction of which surrendered''. The [[UsefulNotes/ImperialRussia Imperial]] government was dissolved by a coup thanks to a food shortage, general political bumbling and the loss of the monarchy's remaining political capital thanks to poor handling of the war effort. The Provisional Government which succeeded it was brought down by massive popular discontent stirred up by the continued food-crisis and eventually [[UsefulNotes/RedOctober another coup launched by the Russian Communist Party]]. And The Russian Communist Party surrendered to Germany because [[WhatAnIdiot they disbanded the army and discovered, to their shock, that their volunteer citizen-militias weren't good enough (unlike the Imperial Army had been) to defend them from the Germans]]. In short, people regarded the Soviet Union as a deranged cousin of the BananaRepublic—an anarchic, barbarous, chaotic society with a government that had gone from incompetent bumbling to inefficient malice. Part of this was the stubborn refusal of most to even ''call the USSR by its official name'', [[InsistentTerminology insisting instead upon calling it "Russia"]]—a trend that would continue into the Cold War. Despite being even bigger than the French Army, the Red Army [[PaperTiger was also associated with total incompetence]] thanks to [[{{UsefulNotes/PolishSovietWar}} a decidedly mixed performance against the Poles during the Russian Civil War]] and a ''horrendously'' poor showing in The Winter War against Finland.\\\

[[YouShouldKnowThisAlready Every year northern Europe experiences a period of cold, typically sub-zero temperatures which are known in English as "winter".]] [[RunningGag Advancing and keeping forces supplied through this period was traditionally considered impossible, or at the very least bloody difficult.]] In the area of Smolensk–Moscow, winter usually arrives by late October, but in 1941 it arrived in early December and by its absence allowed the advances made in the second phase of Unternehmen '''Taifun'''. Contrary to later German accounts, the temperatures encountered were average for the region and were in fact well-known to German forces, which had experienced them in the Smolensk–Moscow area firsthand during the Great War. Despite this there had been a hitherto-ignored emphasis on maximum throughput of supply [[WhatAnIdiot at the expense of maintaining the supply services actually needed to ensure said maximum throughput]]. Moreover, throughout the entire '''Barbarossa''' and '''Taifun''' campaigns, lubricant and spare parts—needed for the routine maintenance of weapons and vehicles—had been totally neglected even for the combat services, resulting in guns and vehicles that were otherwise perfectly serviceable having to be abandoned. But most egregiously of all, long after the army had procured sufficient winter uniforms [[note]] The initial number in storage on 22/6/1941, intended for the occupation force remaining behind in the European USSR, had been just 200k [[/note]] and antifreeze for its weapons and vehicles, all those winter supplies were left in depots in Poland. As casualties from frostbite and hypothermia mounted, fuel lines froze solid in German trucks and tanks, the hydraulic shock-absorbers in German artillery pieces froze and broke the guns, moving parts jammed in German small-arms, and the water pipes in the trains' steam engines froze and burst (rendering them inoperable) they finally realized they had to do ''something''… but it was already too late. On 6 December 1941, the Soviet Winter Counteroffensive began.\\\

The Winter War worked out badly in that was a costly failure which diplomatically isolated the Soviet Union, but it worked to their advantage given that it ''utterly'' discredited figures like Kliment Voroshilov who had been denying (in his case quite possibly ''[[HanlonsRazor sincerely]]'') that the Red Army's effectiveness [[WhatAnIdiot had been degraded by the fatal combination of purges and rapid two-fold expansion]]. It put the faults with the post-purge Red Army on display for all the world to see and forced Stalin to recognise that the Red Army had to be reformed, with figures such as GRU (military intelligence directorate) chief Colonel Ivan Proskurov metaphorically tearing Stalin a new one in secret military councils called to determine just what the hell went so very bloody wrong. The Red Army's abysmal performance had wider implications because it was pretty much the only case study that the ''Fremde Heeres Ost'' (Foreign Armies Ost) department of the German Army's General Staff had to go on when making assessments of the Red Army's effectiveness. To the Germany Army's detriment, in late 1940 the FHO would conclude that the entire Red Army would be every bit as incompetent in mid-1941 as it had proven in the winter of 1939-40—so incompetent, in short, that it would be totally incapable of defending the USSR from a German invasion.\\\

On April 25, 1945, Soviet and American troops famously link up at a German village called Torgau on the river Elbe. The job of taking Berlin is left to the Soviets, who are far closer and have claimed the city as part of their sphere anyway. Indeed, Stalin is eager for the Red Army to have the honor of taking the very heart of Nazi Germany, which Hitler has refused to leave. Germany drives the pensioners, the ''Volkssturm'', and the boys of the Hitler Youth to defend her from "the Depredations of the Jewish Communist Hordes", mustering a force of 800,000 "men" and a thousand armored vehicles in the city's defense.[[labelnote:*]]And by "men" they essentially mean any human being who can still hold a weapon; there are infamous stories from the Battle of Berlin where German Panzers are combat-ineffective, not because of any battle damage or malfunction, but because their crews are '''children''' who are literally '''''too small to reach the controls.'''''[[/labelnote]] For their part the Soviets bring 2.5 million of their best veterans—supported by tens of thousands of tanks, airplanes and artillery pieces—to take it from them. After some of the most brutal and bloody urban combat in history, the Red Flag waves above the ''Reichstag'' on May Day, 1945. Hitler attempts to spur the last defenders on, but after several officers refuse his orders to mount a (incredibly futile) counterattack, he unleashes a vicious tirade against his surviving subordinates and, finally admitting that the war is lost, [[BetterToDieThanBeKilled kills himself]] in his bunker alongside his newly-married wife Eva Braun and his dog Blondie[[labelnote:*]]In the aftermath, Hitler's surviving subordinates knew that Soviet soldiers would waste no time desecrating and parading Hitler's and Eva Braun's corpses through the streets as the Italians had done with Mussolini. As a result, they attempted to make sure that the Soviets [[NeverFoundTheBody wouldn't find the bodies]] by wrapping both bodies, along with the corpses of their pet dogs, in a rug and setting it alight. It worked to questionable success; the bodies were not completely incinerated due to the fire being open and therefore unable to reach a very high temperature, but it was enough to render them unrecognizable, enough that Stalin was not completely able to confirm their identities until a month later. Even after identifying them, however, the bodies were kept in SMERSH custody, who first buried them in a forest in Brandenburg, then had them relocated to unmarked graves in Eastern Germany in 1946. Finally, in 1970, to prevent Neo-Nazi elements from finding and/or enshrining the bodies, they were exhumed again, thoroughly crushed and burned, and the ashes scattered in the Biederitz River[[/labelnote]].\\\

On 8 May (9 May in Moscow), 1945, Hitler's successor—''Großadmiral'' Dönitz—approves the unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany. The war in Europe is over, and Allied attention now turns to ending the [[WorldWarII/WarInAsiaAndThePacific war in the Pacific]]. As Japan is even more dead-set on fighting to the last than Germany was, many predict an incredibly costly battle with casualties into the ''millions,'' but the United States have a, ah, [[UsefulNotes/AtomicBombingsOfHiroshimaAndNagasaki different plan,]] to say the least.

On April 25, 1945, Soviet and American troops famously link up at a German village called Torgau on the river Elbe. The job of taking Berlin is left to the Soviets, who are far closer and have claimed the city as part of their sphere anyway. Indeed, Stalin is eager for the Red Army to have the honor of taking the very heart of Nazi Germany, which Hitler has refused to leave. Germany drives the pensioners, the ''Volkssturm'', and the boys of the Hitler Youth to defend her from "the Depredations of the Jewish Communist Hordes", mustering a force of 800,000 "men" and a thousand armored vehicles in the city's defense.[[labelnote:*]]And by "men" they essentially mean any human being who can still hold a weapon; there are infamous stories from the Battle of Berlin where German Panzers are combat-ineffective, not because of any battle damage or malfunction, but because their crews are '''children''' who are literally '''''too small to reach the controls.'''''[[/labelnote]] For their part the Soviets bring 2.5 million of their best veterans—supported by tens of thousands of tanks, airplanes and artillery pieces—to take it from them. After some of the most brutal and bloody urban combat in history, the Red Flag waves above the ''Reichstag'' on May Day, 1945. Hitler attempts to spur the last defenders on, but after several officers refuse his orders to mount a (incredibly futile) counterattack, he unleashes a vicious tirade against his surviving subordinates and, finally admitting that the war is lost, [[BetterToDieThanBeKilled kills himself]] in his bunker alongside his newly-married wife Eva Braun and his dog Blondie.[[labelnote:*]]In the aftermath, Hitler's surviving subordinates knew that Soviet soldiers would waste no time desecrating and parading Hitler's and Eva Braun's corpses through the streets as the Italians had done with Mussolini. As a result, they attempted to make sure that the Soviets [[NeverFoundTheBody wouldn't find the bodies]] by wrapping both bodies, along with the corpses of their pet dogs, in a rug and setting it alight. It worked to questionable success; the bodies were not completely incinerated due to the fire being open and therefore unable to reach a very high temperature, but it was enough to render them unrecognizable, enough that Stalin was not completely able to confirm their identities until a month later. Even after identifying them, however, the bodies were kept in SMERSH custody, who first buried them in a forest in Brandenburg, then had them relocated to unmarked graves in Eastern Germany in 1946. Finally, in 1970, to prevent Neo-Nazi elements from finding and/or enshrining the bodies, they were exhumed again, thoroughly crushed and burned, and the ashes scattered in the Biederitz River[[/labelnote]]\\\

On April 25, 1945, Soviet and American troops famously link up at a German village called Torgau on the river Elbe. The job of taking Berlin is left to the Soviets, who are far closer and have claimed the city as part of their sphere anyway. Indeed, Stalin is eager for the Red Army to have the honor of taking the very heart of Nazi Germany, which Hitler has refused to leave. Germany drives the pensioners, the ''Volkssturm'', and the boys of the Hitler Youth to defend her from "the Depredations of the Jewish Communist Hordes", mustering a force of 800,000 "men" and a thousand armored vehicles in the city's defense.[[labelnote:*]]And by "men" they essentially mean any human being who can still hold a weapon; there are infamous stories from the Battle of Berlin where German Panzers are combat-ineffective, not because of any battle damage or malfunction, but because their crews are '''children''' who are literally '''''too small to reach the controls.'''''[[/labelnote]] For their part the Soviets bring 2.5 million of their best veterans—supported by tens of thousands of tanks, airplanes and artillery pieces—to take it from them. After some of the most brutal and bloody urban combat in history, the Red Flag waves above the ''Reichstag'' on May Day, 1945. Hitler attempts to spur the last defenders on, but after several officers refuse his orders to mount a (incredibly futile) counterattack, he unleashes a vicious tirade against his surviving subordinates and, finally admitting that the war is lost, [[BetterToDieThanBeKilled kills himself]] in his bunker alongside his newly-married wife Eva Braun and his dog Blondie.[[labelnote:*]]In the aftermath, Hitler's surviving subordinates knew that Soviet soldiers would waste no time desecrating and parading Hitler's and Eva Braun's corpses through the streets as the Italians had done with Mussolini. As a result, they attempted to make sure that the Soviets [[NeverFoundTheBody wouldn't find the bodies]] by wrapping both bodies, along with the corpses of their pet dogs, in a rug and setting it alight. It worked to questionable success; the bodies were not completely incinerated due to the fire being open and therefore unable to reach a very high temperature, but it was enough to render them unrecognizable, enough that Stalin was not completely able to confirm their identities until a month later. Even after identifying them, however, the bodies were kept in SMERSH custody, who first buried them in a forest in Brandenburg, then had them relocated to unmarked graves in Eastern Germany in 1946. Finally, in 1970, to prevent Neo-Nazi elements from finding and/or enshrining the bodies, they were exhumed again, thoroughly crushed and burned, and the ashes scattered in the Biederitz River[[/labelnote]]

Unable to supply both of his top generals, British Field Marshal UsefulNotes/BernardLawMontgomery in the south and American General UsefulNotes/GeorgeSPatton in the north, UsefulNotes/DwightEisenhower is forced to choose which one to give priority of supplies. Patton's plan is simply to break through the German lines directly east of Berlin, and then push through to the German capitol city to seize it before the Soviets do. But this means smashing through the heavily fortified Siegfried Line, and then across both Western ''and'' Central Germany, in a massive battle of attrition which, while more likely to work due to sheer numbers, would prove costly in both time and men, which Eisenhower was not sure he could afford, what with the war already having been going on for 5 years already. Judging by the actions in France during '''Overlord''' and '''Dragoon''', such attrition would mean committing to the World War I-style mobile defensives, only this time Germany would be on their home turf and by all accounts they intended to make the Allies fight tooth and nail for every inch--as one can imagine, this was not a very enticing concept for someone who wanted to end the war as quickly and bloodlessly as possible.

Unable to supply both of his top generals, British Field Marshal UsefulNotes/BernardLawMontgomery in the south and American General UsefulNotes/GeorgeSPatton in the north, UsefulNotes/DwightEisenhower is forced to choose which one to give priority of supplies. Patton's plan is simply to break through the German lines directly east of Berlin, and then push through to the German capitol city to seize it before the Soviets do. But this means smashing through the heavily fortified Siegfried Line, and then across both Western ''and'' Central Germany, in a massive battle of attrition which, while more likely to work due to sheer numbers, would prove costly in both time and men, which Eisenhower was not sure he could afford, what with the war already having been going on for 5 years already. Alternatively, Montgomery proposes a daring two-part plan called Operation '''Market Garden''', which envisions a massive paratrooper deployment (consisting of the American 101st and 82nd Airborne Divisions and the British 1st Airborne) in Holland to seize nine vital bridges ("'''Market'''"), creating a secured corridor by which the British XXX Corps, an armoured formation, would ride straight across the Rhine and punch into Germany too swiftly for the Germans to counter ("'''Garden'''"). If it succeeds, they will be able to seize the Ruhr Valley, the industrial heart of Germany, and deal a fatal blow to the Reich's military might in one fell swoop. He claims that this will [[HomeByChristmas end the fighting by Christmas]] (which, [[UsefulNotes/WorldWarI based on history]], he ''really'' [[WhatCouldPossiblyGoWrong should've known not to say]], especially after the Germans said similar to ''the same thing'' about their Eastern Front campaign, just before Stalingrad came along). Pressured by civilian leaders to bring a quick end to the war, Eisenhower is forced to agree. Meanwhile, the Germans suspect that an Allied thrust through Holland is imminent and quickly work to replenish their divisions, many of which are at token strength.\\\

Come June 6, 1944: '''Operation Overlord''' commences. Over northern France, in the wee hours of morning before sunrise, an aerial fleet of 1,200 cargo planes carry out a massive aerial invasion, dropping American and British paratroopers by parachute and glider to secure strategic points and undermine German defenses. As the sun starts to rise, the Germans are greeted to the sight of more than '''5,000''' vessels across the horizon, who proceed to begin ferrying hundreds of thousands of Allied troops ashore. The landing operation is divided among 5 codenamed beaches: The [[UsefulNotes/YanksWithTanks Americans]] land upon "Utah" and "Omaha", the [[UsefulNotes/BritsWithBattleships British]] attack "Sword" and "Gold", and finally the [[UsefulNotes/CanucksWithChinooks Canadians]] get "Juno" beach. To say the Germans are caught flat-footed is a massive understatement; an Allied deception campaign made German Command think that they were not going to land anywhere ''near'' Normandy and the fact that the dreary weather had whipped the Channel up to the point that conducting an invasion in the middle of that mess was just downright ''insane,'' yet here the Allies were. To make things even worse, UsefulNotes/ErwinRommel, the general in charge of the Western Front defenses, was away at home celebrating his wife's birthday, and a breakdown in communications made him ''vastly'' underestimate the size of the Allied invasion fleet, to the point that he was convinced that it was simply a diversionary attack before the main invasion would commence elsewhere. By the time he realized it was not an a diversion, it was too late as the defensive forces were in disarray as the Allies continued to pour ashore. Despite their surprise, however, the Germans fought doggedly, and the day quickly turned bloody for both sides. By the end of it, though, the Allies had gained a tenuous toehold, and over the next few days, the hold strengthened until it became a solid foothold. After four years, Fortress Europe's walls in the west are finally toppled. But the fight was far from over, as Allies and Axis began a deadly reenactment of the Great War in the northern French countryside.\\\

The Allied invasion goes well and by August, Paris is liberated by French and American forces. Soon after, American and French forces land in southern France in an amphibious landing known as Operation '''Dragoon'''. After some minor fighting, over 140,000 German soldiers are outmaneuvered and surrender. However, the invasion goes a little ''too'' well. By the beginning of September, the Allies find themselves advancing on towns they had not expected to reach until the following ''spring''. Allied forces race forward to confront the rapidly retreating Germans, well ahead of their supply lines (which become dangerously long due to a lack of deep water ports and have to be driven all the way from Normandy). The Germans use this to pull back a sizable amount of their forces. Despite the vast withdrawal, the Allied High Command believes that the ''Wehrmacht'' is a spent force which poses little threat. The advance soon grinds to a halt as the Allies must literally wait for their supplies to catch up to them.\\\

Unfortunately, a combination of bad weather, inaccurate intelligence, insuperable logistics and equipment failure causes the operation to fail despite the best efforts of the troops, particularly those working in intelligence. Cells of the [[LaResistance Dutch Resistance]] managed to pass on reports that two SS Panzer Divisions were being held in reserve near Arnhem (the main target city, without which the operation was useless), [[IgnoredExpert but the Allied High Command distrusted them]]. The Americans are able to take their targets without too much of a problem, except for Nijmegen (which involves a dangerous river crossing), but the advance of XXX Corps slows considerably the further north they drive up the A50 motorway, by which the entire operation hinged upon to deliver the Allies into Germany. Unfortunately, the narrow, deep cutting corridor becomes the perfect environment for German artillery to rain upon the XXX Corps from both sides as they struggle to make headway, leading to the motorway quickly earning the name "[[IDontLikeTheSoundOfThatPlace Hell's Highway]]" from those unfortunate enough to travel it. Further complicating matters are that the British are dropped nearly ten miles away from their target area, due to heavy flak defenses in Arnhem, and the Germans overrun their resupply zones and isolate them. To make matters worse, on the evening of September 19th, Germany launches a massive night raid targeting the Netherlands city of Eindhoven, where the American 101st Airborne and portions of XXX Corps have garrisoned. With no anti-aircraft guns defending the city, the Allies could only watch in horror as the German bombers dropped parachute flares, and then hundreds of bombs, pulverizing the city from above and gutting buildings and structures had stood for more than one hundred years. Countless civilians are killed, who only in the days before had been celebrating with their liberators, only to be grimly reminded that their former occupiers yet existed with a vengeance. Along with the lives lost, the Allied supply line is crippled as well, further delaying XXX Corps as they struggle to reach their objective before the Allied-held bridges are overrun. In Arnhem, the British 1st Airborne, despite being critically low on supplies and heavily battered by German forces, manage to organize and take the northern bridgehead, but are forced into brutal house-to-house fighting with elite German forces, their only hope being that the XXX can reach them before they are overrun. Unfortunately, XXX Corps' momentum runs out in the city of Nijmegen--they manage to cross the bridge with the help of the 82nd Airborne, but on the far side they are met with stiff resistance from German tanks and anti-tank guns. After taking severe losses, and with their logistics already stretched to the breaking point up Hell's Highway, the Allies fall back and redraw their battle lines in Nijmegen. The 1st Airborne's relief would not be arriving. '''Operation Market Garden''' ends in failure.\\\

By the end of January, the Germans have been pushed back to where they started, with much of their valuable armor either destroyed or left behind with empty fuel tanks. This defeat essentially breaks the back of Germany's power to resist in the West. With the last reserves of their professional army now depleted, every loss of man and machine from this point forward is literally irreplaceable. Casualties from the battle are high, with nearly 100,000 American and British men killed, wounded or captured. German losses are about even. But, like the battles on the Eastern Front, as great as the Allied losses are, they are ''survivable''. With Allied industry safely beyond the reach of the Germans, and their own industrial centers under constant air bombardment, and their main concerns being squabbling amongst the commanders (not helped by Montgomery's ill-advised comments after the Battle of the Bulge) and what was going to happen after the war. It's now only a question of how long before Germany will be forced to surrender for lack of ammunition and fuel, if nothing else.\\\

By early 1945, the war in Europe has entered its endgame and the Third Reich takes its last, shuddering gasp. In March, the Americans, to their ''own'' surprise, manage to capture the intact Ludendorff Bridge in the German city of Remagen,[[labelnote:*]]The bridge collapsed due to battle damage ten days later. By that time, Allied engineers had managed to set up a more stable pontoon bridge, but it was the original crossing at Remagen which allowed for the pontoon bridge to be set up in the first place[[/labelnote]] allowing for the Allies to cross the Rhine, the last line of defense in the West for Germany. In April, the last major German army on the Western Front has surrendered to the Americans and British after being outmaneuvered, and the Ruhr—the primary steelmaking and manufacturing center of the country—is captured. '''317,000''' German troops are captured, along with 24 seasoned generals, leading to a complete collapse of defenses on the Western front and reducing resistance to isolated pockets which are either dead-set on holding out to the last, or simply waiting for someone to surrender to. Meanwhile the Soviets have finished securing their flanks in Prussia and Silesia, with Koniev's forces being ''extremely'' careful to minimize damage to the German industries which have been moved there from the Ruhr to protect them from Air Attack. Many of these industrial enterprises are dismantled wholesale and reassembled in Ukraine, where they only partially replace the industries destroyed by Erich von Manstein in the long German retreat (of 1943-4) from the region.\\\

In April 25, 1945, Soviet and American troops famously link up at a German village called Torgau on the river Elbe. The job of taking Berlin is left to the Soviets, who are far closer and have claimed the city as part of their sphere anyway. Indeed, Stalin is eager for the Red Army to have the honor of taking the very heart of Nazi Germany, which Hitler has refused to leave. Germany drives the pensioners, the ''Volkssturm'', and the boys of the Hitler Youth to defend her from "the Depredations of the Jewish Communist Hordes", mustering a force of 800,000 "men" and a thousand armored vehicles in the city's defense.[[labelnote:*]]And by "men" they essentially mean any human being who can still hold a weapon; there are infamous stories from the Battle of Berlin where German Panzers are combat-ineffective, not because of any battle damage or malfunction, but because their crews are '''children''' who are literally '''''too small to reach the controls.'''''[[/labelnote]] For their part the Soviets bring 2.5 million of their best veterans—supported by tens of thousands of tanks, airplanes and artillery pieces—to take it from them. After some of the most brutal and bloody urban combat in history, the Red Flag waves above the ''Reichstag'' on May Day, 1945. Hitler attempts to spur the last defenders on, but after several officers refuse his orders to mount a (incredibly futile) counterattack, he unleashes a vicious tirade against his surviving subordinates and, finally admitting that the war is lost, [[BetterToDieThanBeKilled kills himself]] in his bunker alongside his newly-married wife Eva Braun and his dog Blondie.[[labelnote:*]]In the aftermath, Hitler's surviving subordinates knew that Soviet soldiers would waste no time desecrating and parading Hitler's and Eva Braun's corpses through the streets as the Italians had done with Mussolini. As a result, they attempted to make sure that the Soviets [[NeverFoundTheBody wouldn't find the bodies]] by wrapping both bodies, along with the corpses of their pet dogs, in a rug and setting it alight. It worked to questionable success; the bodies were not completely incinerated due to the fire being open and therefore unable to reach a very high temperature, but it was enough to render them unrecognizable, enough that Stalin was not completely able to confirm their identities until a month later. Even after identifying them, however, the bodies were kept in SMERSH custody, who first buried them in a forest in Brandenburg, then had them relocated to unmarked graves in Eastern Germany in 1946. Finally, in 1970, to prevent Neo-Nazi elements from finding and/or enshrining the bodies, they were exhumed again, thoroughly crushed and burned, and the ashes scattered in the Biederitz River[[/labelnote]] On 8 May (9 May in Moscow), 1945, his successor—''Großadmiral'' Dönitz—approves the unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany. The war in Europe is over, and Allied attention now turns to ending the [[WorldWarII/WarInAsiaAndThePacific war in the Pacific]]. As Japan is even more dead-set on fighting to the last than Germany was, many predict an incredibly costly battle with casualties into the ''millions,'' but the United States have a, ah, [[UsefulNotes/AtomicBombingsOfHiroshimaAndNagasaki different plan,]] to say the least.

Unfortunately, a combination of bad weather, inaccurate intelligence, insuperable logistics and poor equipment causes the operation to fail despite the best efforts of the troops, particularly those working in intelligence. Cells of the [[LaResistance Dutch Resistance]] managed to pass on reports that two SS Panzer Divisions were being held in reserve near Arnhem (the main target city, without which the operation was useless), [[IgnoredExpert but the Allied High Command distrusted them.]] The Americans are able to take their targets without too much of a problem, except for Nijmegen (which involves a dangerous river crossing), but the advance of XXX Corps slows considerably the further north they drive up the A50 motorway, by which the entire operation hinged upon to deliver the Allies into Germany. Unfortunately, the narrow, deep cutting corridor becomes the perfect environment for German artillery to rain upon the XXX Corps from both sides as they struggle to make headway, leading to the motorway quickly earning the name "[[IDontLikeTheSoundOfThatPlace Hell's Highway]]" from those unfortunate enough to travel it. Further complicating matters are that the British are dropped nearly ten miles away from their target area, due to heavy flak defenses in Arnhem, and the Germans overrun their resupply zones and isolate them. To make matters worse, on the evening of September 19th, Germany launches a massive night raid targeting the Netherlands city of Eindhoven, where the American 101st Airborne and portions of XXX Corps have garrisoned. With no anti-aircraft guns defending the city, the Allies could only watch in horror as the German bombers dropped parachute flares, and then hundreds of bombs, pulverizing the city from above and gutting buildings and structures had stood for more than one hundred years. Countless civilians are killed, who only in the days before had been celebrating with their liberators, only to be grimly reminded that their former occupiers yet existed with a vengeance. Along with the lives lost, the Allied supply line is crippled as well, further delaying the XXX as they struggle to reach their objective before the Allied-held bridges are overrun. In Arnhem, the British 1st Airborne, despite being critically low on supplies and heavily battered by German forces, manage to organize and take the northern bridgehead, but are forced into brutal house-to-house fighting with elite German forces, their only hope being that the XXX can reach them before they are overrun. Unfortunately, the XXX's momentum runs out in the city of Nijmegen--they manage to cross the bridge with the help of the 82nd Airborne, but on the far side they are met with stiff resistance from German tanks and anti-tank guns. After taking severe losses, and with their logistics already stretched to the breaking point up Hell's Highway, the Allies fall back and redraw their battle lines in Nijmegen. The 1st Airborne's relief would not be arriving. '''Operation Market Garden''' ends in failure.\\\

Unfortunately, a combination of bad weather, inaccurate intelligence, insuperable logistics and poor equipment causes the operation to fail despite the best efforts of the troops, particularly those working in intelligence. Cells of the [[LaResistance Dutch Resistance]] managed to pass on reports that two SS Panzer Divisions were being held in reserve near Arnhem (the main target city, without which the operation was useless), [[IgnoredExpert but the Allied High Command distrusted them.]] The Americans are able to take their targets without too much of a problem, except for Nijmegen (which involves a dangerous river crossing), but the advance of XXX Corps slows considerably the further north they drive up the A50 motorway, by which the entire operation hinged upon to deliver the Allies into Germany. Unfortunately, the narrow, deep cutting corridor becomes the perfect environment for German artillery to rain upon the XXX Corps from both sides as they struggle to make headway, leading to the motorway quickly earning the name "[[IDontLikeTheSoundOfThatPlace Hell's Highway]]" from those unfortunate enough to travel it. Further complicating matters are that the British are dropped nearly ten miles away from their target area, due to heavy flak defenses in Arnhem, and the Germans overrun their resupply zones and isolate them. To make matters worse, on the evening of September 19th, Germany launches a massive night raid targeting the Netherlands city of Eindhoven, where the American 101st Airborne and portions of XXX Corps have garrisoned. With no anti-aircraft guns defending the city, the Allies could only watch in horror as the German bombers dropped parachute flares, and then hundreds of bombs, pulverizing the city from above and gutting parts of the city that had stood for more than one hundred years. Countless civilians are killed, who only in the days before had been celebrating with their liberators, only to be grimly reminded that their former occupiers yet existed with a vengeance. Along with the lives lost, the Allied supply line is crippled as well, further delaying the XXX as they struggle to reach their objective before the Allied-held bridges are overrun. In Arnhem, the British 1st Airborne, despite being critically low on supplies and heavily battered by German forces, manage to organize and take the northern bridgehead, but are forced into brutal house-to-house fighting with elite German forces, their only hope being that the XXX can reach them before they are overrun. Unfortunately, the XXX's momentum runs out in the city of Nijmegen--they manage to cross the bridge with the help of the 82nd Airborne, but on the far side they are met with stiff resistance from German tanks and anti-tank guns. After taking severe losses, and with their logistics already stretched to the breaking point up Hell's Highway, the Allies fall back and redraw their battle lines in Nijmegen. The 1st Airborne's relief would not be arriving. '''Operation Market Garden''' ends in failure.\\\

* Although UsefulNotes/ErwinRommel's German Expeditionary Force (of just one division!) in North Africa was originally just meant to prop the Italians up and avoid making them look bad, North Africa has effectively turned into a "fifth front" for Germany, with Rommel commanding half as many troops as Army Group B. Given that North Africa has zero strategic importance, deploying troops (let alone combat!) here is not something that Germany can actually afford [[note]] Rommel hasn't been given the troops or vehicles to take the Suez Canal or the oilfields of the Near/Middle East. That task would in Rommel's reckoning require four mobile divisions of more than 60,000 troops, including 8000 'organic' (in-division) trucks, with a fleet of what the OKH (Oberkommando Des Heeres, High Command of the Army) reckons would have to be at least 8000 dedicated supply trucks (not attached to the divisions, but dedicated to the task of supplying them). This is against 3000 actual supply trucks in North Africa and Army Groups North, Center, South, A, and B (all in the Eastern Theatre) having just 14,000 dedicated supply trucks between them [[/note]]. Although the Italians manage to transport more-than-sufficient supplies to their depot in Benghazi in the face of harassment from British Malta, the road-supply chain from there to Cyrenaica and Egypt is a thousand kilometers long[[note]] And once the Allies build up sufficient air-cover incessant air-attacks devastate the truck fleet before the Germans switch to travelling only by night, halving the tonnage delivered overnight [[/note]] and Rommel's troops starve as their food rots in the docks at Benghazi [[note]] Tobruk could theoretically have delivered up to 600 tons of supplies per-month up to just 100km behind Rommel's 30,000 troops. Given that their requirements were about 60,000 tons monthly, even if Tobruk and Cyrenaica hadn't been under constant Allied air-attack this wouldn't have helped at all. For their part the Italian Navy refuses to ship supplies to those ports, where their ships are sitting ducks for Allied air-raids. [[/note]]. After some back-and-forth action the Western Allies eventually push him back into Tunisia, with U.S. troops occupying French North Africa and pushing eastward. Although the Allies, and the completely inexperienced Americans in particular, make some serious blunders this only persuades Hitler to send ''even more'' men to the North African Front so he can avoid admitting that they shouldn't be there in the first place… all 100k of whom surrender[[note]] including as many as 200,000 Italians (about half of all these being bona-fide combat-troops!) [[/note]] when the Allies finally break through and encircle them. Noting the importance of [[SpotOfTea tea]] in the African theater as a way to make the awful water taste better, the British government buys ''the entire world crop'' in 1942. German irrecoverable c.100k (majority captured), Italian c.400k (majority captured), Western Allies c.20k

The decisive Second Battle of El Alamein in October of 1942 sees the British turn Rommel back from the Suez and the Middle East oilfields for good and force the Axis to retreat westward towards Tunisia. Here, they are trapped against additional Allied forces that have executed Operation '''Torch''' and landed on the coasts of French Morocco and Algeria. Caught in the pincer, the Germans have nowhere to go. By May 1943, the 100k German troops and 100k Italians not evacuated to Europe are prisoners of war and the fight for the continent is over. The campaign is a colossal morale boost for the Western Allies, who see their first sustained offensive successes against German forces as well as the combat debut of US troops sourced from the USA (as opposed to the on-loan Guomindang Chinese troops serving with the US Army in Burma).\\\

Of course, for those that fought in it, the '''Battle of the Bulge''' was still ''notoriously'' brutal for both sides--the winter of 1944 in Europe brought with it record-breaking cold temperatures, and is still known as one of the coldest winters in Belgium's recent history. The Allied forces were caught completely unprepared, and compounding the situation was that most of the soldiers manning the frontlines were paratroopers, whose use in battle was intended more towards [[GlassCannon swift attacks and harassing forces behind their own lines]] rather than battles of attrition, but quickly found themselves performing the latter in the face of the sudden and unexpected advance for the (seemingly) well-equipped German forces. Making matters worse was that their reinforcements and resupply were delayed by the weather and already-present logistics problems (much of which was left over from the abortive Operation Market Garden), leaving them with what little they carried with them at the time. For the Axis, while they did not have to worry so much about unsuitable combat strategies, they ''did'' have just as many supply problems ''if not moreso'' due to the desperate war effort which spurred the offensive in the first place--It was not uncommon for entire German platoons to surrender to Allied forces, if only to get aid for their wounded...only to discover the Americans they surrendered to did not even have the supplies or manpower to look after their ''own.'' Such situations were rare, but there are stories of Allied soldiers leaving the surrendered German platoons [[LeaveBehindAPistol a single pistol loaded with ample ammunition]] as a merciful courtesy for what must be done.\\\

[[folder:Götterdämmerung]]

The absolute capper to Germany's shitty summer is Finland's unilateral signing of a peace treaty with the Soviet Union on the 19th of September. It had been a long time coming. The day after the German Sixth Army surrendered (for the first time, of three) at Stalingrad on the 2nd of March 1943, Field Marshal Mannerheim met with the Finnish Cabinet. They unanimously agreed that Germany was screwed and they had to find a way to avoid being dragged down with them. In 1943 the PM promised Hitler that he would never break solidarity with Germany and sign a separate peace, while Finland bade its time and quietly sent out peace feelers. After the destruction of Army Groups Center (June), North Ukraine (July), North and South (August), the Finnish PM resigned in favor of Mannerheim, who began formal peace negotiations shortly thereafter. The resulting treaty was actually quite reasonable all-round, conceding Finnish independence in return for assurances of her utter neutrality. The move was a huge blow to German prestige, as it left Germany without a single voluntary ally bar Japan.\\\

[[OverlyNarrowSuperlative Apart from India, Canada, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, and a couple dozen other protectorates and colonies Britain stands alone]] against the relative might of [[ThoseWackyNazis Hitler's Third Reich]], [[AndZoidberg and Mussolini's Fascist Italy]]. Their army is shattered and in no condition to resist an invasion, but they still have the Royal Navy, the Royal Air Force and the English Channel to protect them. The Germans, however, don't have specialized landing forces or amphibious landing gear and their navy is ''tiny''; even more after their significant losses invading Norway, and their failure to seize the French fleet means it will be a long time before the ''Kriegsmarine'' can be reinforced.[[note]]And, as it turns out, it never will be reinforced, other wartime needs (such as tank and U-boat production) taking priority[[/note]]. Aerial superiority, therefore, is essential to shepherd an invasion force across the Channel and protect their supply convoys afterwards. Fortunately for the British, the Luftwaffe is exhausted by the high-tempo close air support operations which ''Bewegungskrieg'' operations require, so the Germans must pause for several weeks to rest and reequip their air forces before a full-scale assault can begin.\\\

German embassies in Norway were well aware of the invasion plans, and used a lot of propaganda to keep Norwegian public and officials from acting rashly. Thus, a movie made from the bombing of Warsaw was shown at the very beginning of April, to underline the point of what the ''Wehrmacht'' actually could manage. Meanwhile, a Norwegian journalist in Lübeck telegraphed home on an alarming mass of ships scheduled for the North Sea. The telegram was received, but the headlines never got printed. The military leadership, and even the government, was alerted about this, [[TheMole but forces inside the Joint Chiefs of Staff]] advised caution. The invasion began on the morning of April 9. Denmark was attacked through Jutland. While some Danish units near the border offered some scattered resistance, the Danish government, under Prime Minister Thorvald Stauning and King Christian X convened at a crisis meeting in the early morning hours. Remembering the terror bombing Warszawa had been subjected to the year before, the Danish leaders feared that something similar could happen to Copenhagen, and as such came to the conclusion that offering any kind of serious resistance to the Germans was an untenable situation that would only lead to the needless loss of Danish lives. A general order of surrender was quickly handed down to the Danish armed forces, though some active fighting would still go on for a couple of hours, as the German attack had disrupted the lines of communication. All in all the German invasion of Denmark lasted about six hours. In a show of goodwill for the swift surrender, the Nazi government allowed the Danish state to keep their King and elected civil government and some modicum of autonomy, but only on the pain of the Danish government's continued and full collaboration with any German orders. In Norway, however, things would take a quite different course...\\\

German embassies in Norway were well aware of the invasion plans, and used a lot of propaganda to keep Norwegian public and officials from acting rashly. Thus, a movie made from the bombing of Warsaw was shown at the very beginning of April, to underline the point of what the ''Wehrmacht'' actually could manage. Meanwhile, a Norwegian journalist in Lübeck telegraphed home on an alarming mass of ships scheduled for the North Sea. The telegram was received, but the headlines never got printed. The military leadership, and even the government, was alerted about this, [[TheMole but forces inside the Joint Chiefs of Staff]] advised caution. Th invasion began on the morning of April 9. Denmark was attacked through Jutland. While some Danish units near the border offered some scattered resistance, the Danish government, under Prime Minister Thorvald Stauning and King Christian X convened at a crisis meeting in the early morning hours. Remembering the terror bombing Warszawa had been subjected to the year before, the Danish leaders feared that something simliar could happen to Copenhagen, and as such came to the conclusion that offering any kind of serious resistance to the Germans was an untenable situation that would only lead to the needless loss of Danish lives. A general order of surrender was quickly handed down to the Danish armed forces, though some active fighting would still go on for a couple of hours, as the German attack had disrupted the lines of communication. All in all the German invasion of Denmark lasted about six hours. In a show of goodwill for the swift surrender, the Nazi government allowed the Danish state to keep their King and elected civil government and some modicum of autonomy, but only on the pain of the Danish government's continued and full collaboration with any German orders. In Norway, however, things would take a quite different course...\\\

German embassies in Norway were well aware of the invasion plans, and used a lot of propaganda to keep Norwegian public and officials from acting rashly. Thus, a movie made from the bombing of Warsaw was shown at the very beginning of April, to underline the point of what the ''Wehrmacht'' actually could manage. Meanwhile, a Norwegian journalist in Lübeck telegraphed home on an alarming mass of ships scheduled for the North Sea. The telegram was received, but the headlines never got printed. The military leadership, and even the government, was alerted about this, [[TheMole but forces inside the Joint Chiefs of Staff]] advised caution. Invasion began on the morning of April 9. Denmark was attacked through Jutland, and surrendered rather quickly. Norway on the other hand…\\\

…was attacked at several ports at once. Many coastal forts responded with what they had, and some cities, like Kristiansand, Stavanger and Bergen suffered heavy bombardment. Kristiansand probably had the worst of it. In the Oslo fjord, the German attack fleet suffered equally heavy losses, with the heavy cruiser ''Blücher'' going down with all hands.\\\

This stalled the German invasion of the capital, and enabled the government and King to escape. They travelled through the country for two months, practically with the ''Wehrmacht'' at their heels in hot pursuit. By April 10th, {{the Quisling}} government had taken the helm, and offered King Haakon VII and his government "safe conduct" if they surrendered. [[RoyalsWhoActuallyDoSomething The King]] [[InItsHourOfNeed made a stand,]] and his government likewise, making the Germans fight their way into the country for two months. Local army units took to arms in many places, and made the best of it. The badassery of the local units kept the Germans at bay for weeks, until the ''Luftwaffe'' arrived. Some mountainous areas were so narrow, the Norwegians just fortified the mountainsides, knowing that German vehicles only had one small country road to use. The Germans understood rather quickly that the Norwegians just picked them off one by one. Then again—the ''Luftwaffe'' saved the German advance. Hitler was allegedly furious over the Norwegian lack of cooperation in the matter, and declared war by April 11, seeing to it that Norway became, and remained, a fighting Ally during the remainder of the war, although the Norwegian mainland was occupied.\\\

All the lands north of the Alps-Carpathians-Caucasus Mountains experience two periods of muddy weather which are known in Russian as the ''Rasputitsa'' ('season of mud', 'season of no roads'). One comes about as a result of heavy rains which gradually turn to heavy snowfall as the daytime temperature drops below freezing sometime in September-October, and the other occurs as the snow begins to thaw sometime in February-April. Advancing and keeping forces supplied through this period was traditionally considered impossible, or at the very least bloody difficult. In the area of Smolensk–Moscow the ''Rasputitsa'' usually arrived in mid-late September or early October, but in 1941 it arrived in mid-October and by its absence allowed the initial advances made during ''Unternehmen '''Taifun'''. Contrary to later German accounts this was in no way unexpected or unmanageable—this meteorological phenomenon had been a fact of life in Europe for all of recorded history, and attempting to fight through it (without adequate engineering/logistical preparation) had caused the failure of military operations as recently as [[UsefulNotes/WorldWarOne Passchendaele in 1917]] (an ill-fated British Commonwealth campaign in Belgium). Moreover, German forces had observed the arrival of the ''Rasputitsa'' in the Smolensk–Moscow area firsthand during World War One.\\\

On the naval front, the Battle of the Atlantic begins slowly. The German Navy has learned many lessons from its experience of commerce-raiding in the First World War and the new Commander of U-boats, Admiral Karl Dönitz, has been planning for a new submarine war for nearly twenty years. He and his staff expect the British to quickly adopt the convoy system, which had led to a sharp decline in sinkings by U-boats when the Royal Navy finally conceded it was necessary in mid-1917. In addition, the British have developed sonar (a form of remote-detection device that uses sound-waves) and are confident they can easily locate submerged boats. However, German U-boats will spend most of their non-attack time surfaced for practical reasons (as they have limited range and speed while submerged) and to reduce the effectiveness of sonar. Dönitz has also developed new doctrine to counter convoys: submarines will scout out, converge upon, and follow convoys by day. Then, they will attack under the cover of darkness when the convoy escorts' sight-based anti-submarine weapons will be least effective. Unfortunately, he has less than a fifth of the submarines needed for strategically significant operations, the fleet expansion and rearmament program is nowhere near complete, as Dönitz and surface fleet commander Admiral Erich Raeder were under the impression that war wouldn't start until 1943 at the earliest.[[note]]The ''Kriegsmarine'' anticipated that a war-winning level of operations would require at least 300 operational U-boats with a rotation of 1/3 out raiding, 1/3 in-transit, and 1/3 ashore (for rest&repairs) at any one time[[/note]]. Nevertheless, he sends his "Grey Wolves" into the North Sea to begin sinking ships. One of them, ''U-47'', is sent into Scapa Flow, the main naval base in the British Isles, and sinks the battleship HMS ''Royal Oak'' before escaping unharmed. The British are stunned.\\\

Unable to supply both of his top generals, British Field Marshal UsefulNotes/BernardLawMontgomery in the north and American General UsefulNotes/GeorgeSPatton in the south, UsefulNotes/DwightEisenhower is forced to choose which one to give priority of supplies. Patton's plan is simply to break through the German lines directly east of Berlin, and then push through to the German capitol city to seize it before the Soviets do. But this means smashing through the heavily fortified Siegfried Line, and then across both Western ''and'' Central Germany, in a massive battle of attrition which, while more likely to work due to sheer numbers, would prove costly in both time and men, which Eisenhower was not sure he could afford, what with the war already having been going on for 5 years already. Alternatively, Montgomery proposes a daring two-part plan called Operation '''Market Garden''', which envisions a massive paratrooper deployment (consisting of the American 101st and 82nd Airborne Divisions and the British 1st Airborne) in Holland to seize nine vital bridges ("'''Market'''"), creating a secured corridor by which the British XXX Corps, an armoured formation, would ride straight across the Rhine and punch into Germany too swiftly for the Germans to counter ("'''Garden'''"). If it succeeds, they will be able to seize the Ruhr Valley, the industrial heart of Germany, and deal a fatal blow to the Reich's military might in one fell swoop. He claims that this will [[HomeByChristmas end the fighting by Christmas]] (which, [[UsefulNotes/WorldWarI based on history]], he ''really'' [[WhatCouldPossiblyGoWrong should've known not to say]], especially after the Germans said similar to ''the same thing'' about their Eastern Front campaign, just before Stalingrad came along). Pressured by civilian leaders to bring a quick end to the war, Eisenhower is forced to agree. Meanwhile, the Germans suspect that an Allied thrust through Holland is imminent and quickly work to replenish their divisions, many of which are at token strength.\\\

Germany's [[StrategyVersusTactics Grand Strategic situation]] is tolerable but tenuous. To secure a negotiated peace with The Commonwealth Germany would need to focus on naval production (U-boots, and perhaps ultimately a surface fleet). But to safeguard against the Soviet Union Germany has to focus on Army production. Moreover Germany simply doesn't have the fuel to fight the Soviet Union for more than two months. This is partly down to just how much the Soviets are charging the Germans for fuel, but also because the Soviets are not willing to sell them very much (relative to Germany's requirements for waging war upon them). In the near future Germany will have to choose between 1) defeating Britain in the short-term at the risk of becoming vulnerable to The Asiatic Hordes terrorized into submission and service by the Judeo-Bolshevik Conspiracy in the short-term, or 2) fighting a ForeverWar with Britain or defeating Britain in the long-term while strengthening The Communist Pawns Of The Jewish World Conspiracy by meeting their continued demands for German technical assistance... thereby eventually becoming vulnerable to The Communists in the long-term anyway when they matched Germany's level of technical expertise and married it to their '[[{{Irony}} barbaric and unholy]] [[NotSoDifferent ideological fanaticism]]'. [[ForegoneConclusion Given German hatred for socialism, the choice was obvious.]]\\\

While operations on the North African front involve fewer than 300k combat troops on both sides even at the height of the fighting, as against the more than four million engaged on various Soviet-German fronts such as Leningrad and Rzhev-Vyazma, in English-speaking countries the African front receives far more publicity. Part of this focus is simply the inevitable result of a lack of press contacts within the USSR, which also actively works to censor Red Army defeats (''e.g.'', '''Mars''') and avoids giving too much coverage to operations which are insufficiently successful ('''Gallop''', '''Star'''). But the focus is also deliberate, as the western Allies want to convey the impression that they are valuable allies for the Soviet Union. They do so by comparing a few key tactical engagements (e.g. El Alamein and Stalingrad) and avoiding too much focus on casualties, troop and equipment totals, or the wider course and relative importance of operations. [[NotSoDifferent Soviet media does the opposite in the name of inflaming Soviet public opinion and so promoting heartfelt calls by members of their public for the western Allies to do more to help.]]\\\

By this point, what little of Germany's once-formidable mechanized fighting power that hasn't been recalled to Berlin for a final defense begins to crumble and break down under its own weight, sometimes quite literally--Germany's Tiger and Panther tanks, formerly a nightmarish sight for any Allied tanker, have by this point expended their last spare parts and consumed their last fumes of fuel, and are either destroyed to prevent being made into trophies or simply left to abandon where they sputtered out. The ''Luftwaffe,'' once the pride of the air over Germany, have literally ''run out of airbases'' to land at. Many Allied soldiers will recount the sight of driving along Germany's famous Autobahn, only to see German planes parked neatly along the shoulders where their pilots had either been using the highway as a makeshift airbase, or had simply landed their planes and abandoned them, no longer possessing the resources nor the fighting spirit to send them into the air again. Outside of the major cities, the amount of people willing (or even ''able'') to fight the advancing Allies continues to dwindle out, bit by bit, even as the Nazi commanders begin enacting such programs as ''Volkssturm'', essentially a nationwide militia of whomever and whatever they can scrounge up for defense. In the face of the better-equipped and better-trained Allies, however, the ''Volkssturm'''s actions are delaying, at most, and succeed only in costing more innocent lives in the final months of the war.

In April 25, 1945, Soviet and American troops famously link up at a German village called Torgau on the river Elbe. The job of taking Berlin is left to the Soviets, who are far closer and have claimed the city as part of their sphere anyway. Indeed, Stalin is eager for the Red Army to have the honor of taking the very heart of Nazi Germany, which Hitler has refused to leave. Germany drives the pensioners of the ''Volkssturm'' and the boys of the Hitler Youth to defend her from "the Depredations of the Jewish Communist Hordes", mustering a force of 800,000 "men" and a thousand armored vehicles in the city's defense.[[labelnote:*]]And by "men" they essentially mean any human being who can still hold a weapon; there are infamous stories from the Battle of Berlin where German Panzers are combat-ineffective, not because of any battle damage or malfunction, but because their crews are '''children''' who are literally '''''too small to reach the controls.'''''[[/labelnote]] For their part the Soviets bring 2.5 million of their best veterans—supported by tens of thousands of tanks, airplanes and artillery pieces—to take it from them. After some of the most brutal and bloody urban combat in history, the Red Flag waves above the ''Reichstag'' on May Day, 1945. Hitler attempts to spur the last defenders on, but after several officers refuse his orders to mount a (incredibly futile) counterattack, he unleashes a vicious tirade against his surviving subordinates and, finally admitting that the war is lost, [[BetterToDieThanBeKilled kills himself]] in his bunker alongside his newly-married wife Eva Braun and his dog Blondie.[[labelnote:*]]In the aftermath, Hitler's surviving subordinates knew that Soviet soldiers would waste no time desecrating and parading Hitler's and Eva Braun's corpses through the streets as the Italians had done with Mussolini. As a result, they attempted to make sure that the Soviets [[NeverFoundTheBody wouldn't find the bodies]] by wrapping both bodies, along with the corpses of their pet dogs, in a rug and setting it alight. It worked to questionable success; the bodies were not completely incinerated due to the fire being open and therefore unable to reach a very high temperature, but it was enough to render them unrecognizable, enough that Stalin was not completely able to confirm their identities until a month later. Even after identifying them, however, the bodies were kept in SMERSH custody, who first buried them in a forest in Brandenburg, then had them relocated to unmarked graves in Eastern Germany in 1946. Finally, in 1970, to prevent Neo-Nazi elements from finding and/or enshrining the bodies, they were exhumed again, thoroughly crushed and burned, and the ashes scattered in the Biederitz River[[/labelnote]] On 8 May (9 May in Moscow), 1945, his successor—''Großadmiral'' Dönitz—approves the unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany. The war in Europe is over, and Allied attention now turns to ending the [[WorldWarII/WarInAsiaAndThePacific war in the Pacific]]. As Japan is even more dead-set on fighting to the last than Germany was, many predict an incredibly costly battle with casualties into the ''millions,'' but the United States have a, ah, [[UsefulNotes/AtomicBombingsOfHiroshimaAndNagasaki different plan,]] to say the least.

Unable to supply both of his top generals, British Field Marshal UsefulNotes/BernardLawMontgomery in the north and American General UsefulNotes/GeorgeSPatton in the south, UsefulNotes/DwightEisenhower is forced to choose which one to give priority of supplies. Patton's plan is simply to break through the German lines and get to Berlin before the Soviets. But this means smashing through the heavily fortified Siegfried Line, and then across both Western ''and'' Central Germany, in a massive battle of attrition which, while more likely to work due to sheer numbers, would prove costly in both time and men, especially if the bypassed Ruhr Valley were left intact to continue supplying the Wehrmacht forces. Montgomery proposes a daring two-part plan called Operation '''Market Garden''', which envisions a massive paratrooper deployment (consisting of the American 101st and 82nd Airborne Divisions and the British 1st Airborne) in Holland to seize nine vital bridges ("'''Market'''"), creating a secured corridor by which the British XXX Corps, an armoured formation, would ride straight across the Rhine and punch into Germany too swiftly for the Germans to counter ("'''Garden'''"). If it succeeds, they will be able to seize the Ruhr Valley, the industrial heart of Germany, and deal a fatal blow to the Reich's military might in one fell swoop. He claims that this will [[HomeByChristmas end the fighting by Christmas]] (which, [[UsefulNotes/WorldWarI based on history]], he ''really'' [[WhatCouldPossiblyGoWrong should've known not to say]], especially after the Germans said similar to ''the same thing'' about their Eastern Front campaign, just before Stalingrad came along). Pressured by civilian leaders to bring a quick end to the war, Eisenhower is forced to agree. Meanwhile, the Germans suspect that an Allied thrust through Holland is imminent and quickly work to replenish their divisions, many of which are at token strength.\\\

Unable to supply both of his top generals, British Field Marshal UsefulNotes/BernardLawMontgomery in the north and American General UsefulNotes/GeorgeSPatton in the south, UsefulNotes/DwightEisenhower is forced to choose which one to give priority of supplies. Patton's plan is simply to break through the German lines and get to Berlin before the Soviets. But this means smashing through the heavily fortified Siegfried Line. Montgomery proposes a daring two-part plan called Operation '''Market Garden''', which envisions a massive paratrooper deployment (consisting of the American 101st and 82nd Airborne Divisions and the British 1st Airborne) in Holland to seize nine vital bridges ("'''Market'''"), creating a secured corridor by which the British XXX Corps, an armoured formation, would ride straight across the Rhine and punch into Germany too swiftly for the Germans to counter ("'''Garden'''"). If it succeeds, they will be able to seize the Ruhr Valley, the industrial heart of Germany, and deal a fatal blow to the Reich's military might in one fell swoop. He claims that this will [[HomeByChristmas end the fighting by Christmas]] (which, [[UsefulNotes/WorldWarI based on history]], he ''really'' [[WhatCouldPossiblyGoWrong should've known not to say]], especially after the Germans said similar to ''the same thing'' about their Eastern Front campaign, just before Stalingrad came along). Pressured by civilian leaders to bring a quick end to the war, Eisenhower is forced to agree. Meanwhile, the Germans suspect that an Allied thrust through Holland is imminent and quickly work to replenish their divisions, many of which are at token strength.\\\