Afrika Korps

In 1941, Northern Africa was held by Field Marshal Erwin Rommel (1891-1944), known as the “Desert Fox,” whose Afrika Korps was seemingly invincible. The British and Americans agreed to conduct a North African campaign, defeat the Germans there, and then attack what Britain’s great wartime prime minister Winston Churchill called the “soft underbelly of Europe.” Forces under British Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery and American generals Dwight D. Eisenhower and George S. Patton decisively defeated the Germans and Italians in North Africa by May 1943, and an Italian invasion was launched.

Coral Sea and Midway

While the Germans began to lose to their grip on Africa, U.S. forces also started to turn the tide in the Pacific. During May 3-9, 1942, the navy sunk or disabled more than 25 Japanese ships, blocking Japan’s extension to the south and preventing the Japanese from severing supply lines to Australia. However, the Japanese soon returned to the offensive by attacking the island of Midway, some 1,100 miles northwest of Hawaii. Marshalling a task force of 200 ships and 600 planes, the Japanese counted on the element of surprise to achieve a rapid victory. But, unknown to them, American intelligence officers had broken Japanese codes, and the navy had advance warning of the task force.

The battle commenced on June 3, 1942, and U.S. aircraft, launched from the Hornet, Yorktown, and Enterprise, sank four Japanese carriers. Reeling from this blow, the Imperial Navy withdrew their fleet, but the Americans gave chase, sinking or disabling two heavy cruisers and three destroyers, as well as destroying 322 planes. Although the U.S. Navy took heavy losses—the carrier Yorktown, a destroyer, and 147 aircraft—Midway Island remained in American hands, and the Japanese were never able to resume the offensive in the Pacific.

Island Hopping

After suffering defeat at Midway, the Japanese turned their attention to mounting a fullscale assault on Australia. They began by constructing an airstrip on Guadalcanal in the southern Solomon Islands. In response, on August 7, 1942, a U.S. task force landed Marines at Guadalcanal, where the Japanese resisted for six months. Guadalcanal was the beginning of a U.S. strategy of “island hopping”: a plan to take or retake all Japanese-held islands, thereby gradually closing in on the Japanese mainland itself. The campaign promised to be a very long haul. Guadalcanal, having taken six hellish months to conquer, was fully 3,000 miles from Tokyo.

The next step was to neutralize the major Japanese air and naval base at Rabaul, on the eastern tip of New Britain Island, just east of New Guinea. Under General MacArthur, U.S. and Australian troops attacked through the Solomons and New Guinea. When the Japanese rushed to reinforce their position on the islands of Lae and Salamaua, on March 3-4, 1943, U.S. B-24 Liberators and B-17 Flying Fortresses attacked troop transports and their naval escorts with devastating results. The Battle of the Bismarck Sea cost the Japanese 3,500 men; the Allies lost only five planes. The defeat was a severe blow to the Japanese presence in the southwest Pacific. By the end of 1943, Rabaul had been neutralized, severing some 100,000 Japanese from any hope of supply, support, or reinforcement.

In the central Pacific, U.S. forces moved against Tarawa and Makin islands. Makin quickly fell, but Tarawa was defended by veteran Japanese jungle fighters, and the battle, begun on November 20, 1943, was extraordinarily costly to both sides.

Mediterranean Shores

By mid-May 1943, Roosevelt and Churchill agreed to postpone crossing the English Channel to invade France until the “soft underbelly” of Europe had been penetrated via an invasion of Sicily from North Africa. On July 9-10, 1943, British and American forces landed in Sicily, and the Italian army crumbled before them. German resistance was a different matter, however, and costly fighting ensued. The invasion of Sicily culminated in the fall of Messina to the Allies on August 17, 1943.

By this time, Benito Mussolini had been overthrown (July 25, 1943) and was saved from arrest only by a German rescue mission. The Italian government, now under Marshal Pietro Badoglio (1871-1956), made secret peace overtures to the Allies while the Germans dug in on the Italian peninsula and awaited an invasion.

On September 3, 1943, British and U.S. forces left Messina and landed on the toe of the Italian boot. The Fifth U.S. Army, under General Mark W. Clark (1896-1984), landed at Salerno, and within a month southern Italy fell to the Allies. The Germans evacuated the key city of Naples on October I but then greatly stiffened their resistance, struggling to hold After Badoglio’s government signed an armistice with the Allies and, on October 13, declared war on Germany, Hitler installed Mussolini as head of a puppet regime in northern Italy.

For the balance of 1943, the Allied armies in Italy were stalemated. On January 22, 1944, 50,000 U.S. troops landed at Anzio, just 33 miles south of Rome, but were pinned down by German forces. Not until June 4, 1944, did Rome fall to the Allies. From this point on, the Germans steadily retreated northward. On April 28, 1945, Mussolini and his mistress, Claretta Petacci, were captured by Italian anti-Fascists, then shot and hung by the heels in a Milanese public square.

The Beaches of France

Although U.S. forces entered Europe through Italy, fighting on the continent was more widespread. The Soviets, who suffered the heaviest casualties of the war and who had been devastated by a surprise German invasion begun on June 22, 1941, were fighting back with a vengeance. The Battle of Stalingrad (present-day Volgograd), fought from July 17 to November 18, 1942, resulted in the loss of 750,000 Soviet troops, but also 850,000 Nazis. This battle turned the grim tide of warfare on the Eastern Front. In the meantime, British Royal Air Force (RAF) bombers and U.S. Army Air Corps bombers pummeled industrial targets throughout Germany. At sea, the Battle of the Atlantic had raged since early 1942. From January to June, German U-boats sunk three million tons of U.S. shipping. However, the development of longer-range aircraft and more advanced radar systems led to effective defenses against U-boats, and by the spring of 1943, the U-boat threat had been greatly reduced.

With pressure applied from the south, from the east, from the air, and at sea, the time was at last right for a major Allied thrust from the west: a full-scale assault on what Hitler liked to call “Fortress Europe.” For this offensive, the Allies mounted in Britain the largest and most powerful invasion force in history. Officially christened Operation Overlord, the invasion of Normandy became popularly known by the military designation of the day of its commencement: D-Day, June 6, 1944.

U.S. General Dwight David Eisenhower was in command of the high—stakes operation, which—astoundingly-caught the Germans off guard. True, the Germans expected an invasion—but not at Normandy. Through an elaborate program of deception and disinformation, the Allies had led the Germans to believe that the invasion would come at Calais. Nevertheless, German resistance was stiff, but the Allies prevailed and on August 15, 1944, launched a second invasion of France, this time in the South between Toulon and Cannes. The objective was to trap German forces within the laws of a giant pincers. On August 25, Paris—beloved capital of France, in German hands since 1940—fell to the Allies.