WWII's+European+Theater+2nd+Period

=WWII's European Theater= During WW2, in Europe there were alot of extremely important battles, generals, and new tatics. A few of the main battles include D day, and the Battle of the Buldge. D day was and is the biggest invasion that has ever taken place in the history of the world. The Battle of the Buldge was Germans last attempt to push the Allies back, it did not work out. The Allies had very powerful and succesful Generals. They were Eisenhower, Patton, and Montgomery, and unfortunately they did not get along very well. Along with this huge war came new ideas of how to fight, such as the strategic bombing of Germany. The Allies started bombing the cities, which caused many civilian deaths. America first got involved in this war in North Africa, and they worked they way up to Italy and continued north from there.

Generals Eisenhower, Patton and Motgomery-
General Eisenhower and General Patton got along better than each of them did with General Montgomery. Eisenhower and Patton were the American generals, so they had very different approaches to how the war should be fought. The Americans accused Montgomery of being too laid back with his tactics. General Patton wanted to take on the Germans, where Montgomery wanted to take the time to plan it all out. The American generals were more about getting things done as fast as possible, where Montgomery wanted to make sure it was done as well as possible. All in all these generals did not get along very well. They constantly fought for the spotlight; they wanted the glory to be under their name. They all had a lot of experience going in, along with very nice reputations. This made them, in a way, full of themselves. Neither one wanted to be outdone by the other, and this caused problems. [|Source] General Eisenhower was an American 5 star general.

North Africa, Sicily, and Italy
At first, Americans thought it would be a good idea to attack mainland Europe, but the British thought it would be a good idea to attack North Africa. Doing this would be a way to relieve the Soviets. When they captured North Africa, a few months later, Americans decided that invading France across the channel would not be the best way in to Europe. They decided to start with the island of Sicily with hopes of destroying the Axis base and helping with the downfall of the Mussolini.While Capturing Sicily, due to the lack of communication in their advances, Americans felt that the British were stealing the show. General Paton, against orders, pushed in to Palermo and Messina. This attack worked exactly like they wanted it too, it helped with Mussolini’s downfall. The Allies then turned to Italy, and when they landed, the Italian government surrendered. However, the Germans in Italy were not so willing to give up the land. They fought fiercely and tried to prevent the landing force from meeting up with the Eighth Army. The advance by the allies was slow because of the terrain and Germany was determined to fight for every single foot of Italy. [|Source]

Strategic Bombing on Germany
The bombing of Germany was a very controversial deal. Britain had a sense of pride because they did not bomb cities, where the civilians were. Britain’s were tired of the Germans bombing their cities when they decided it was time for the German’s to, “reap the whirlwind” they had started, basically it was their turn to take a hit. On August 24, 1940 the German air force, against orders, bombed London. This angered the British prime minister and he called for a raid on Berlin. Hitler then started the Blitz, which led to back and forth bombing between both countries. The British realized they had a problem with the accuracy of their bombings, that being they had a hard time hitting within five miles of their target. This made big targets, like cities even more appealing. Both sides then declared that people living in industrial towns were helping with the war and because of that they were okay to bomb. The campaign ended after the bombing of Dresden. The main issue people had with this was that there were a lot of refugees fleeing the Russian front in the town when it was bombed. After this bombing, Churchill tried to deny his involvement with it. The Prime Minister of Britain said, “It was Churchill who was ultimately responsible for the raid on Dresden.” [|Source]

**OPERATION OVERLORD[[image:http://retiredfireman.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/d-day-beach.jpg?w=432&h=329 align="right"]]**
Operation Overlord also known as “The Battle of Normandy” or “D-day” occurred on June 6th 1944, and was the largest and is still the largest invasion to ever occur. The people responsible for the planning were General Eisenhower who was the overall commander for “overlord” other commanders were Air Marshalls Leigh-Mallory, and Tedder, Field Marshall Montgomery and Admiral Ramsey. The Planning of “Overlord” was a whole new type of logistical issues that no army has had to ever deal with. Some of these issues were how to get the 160,000 Soldiers, the 13,000 vehicles, the 6,000 boats, the 5000 fighter planes and 1,200,000 tons of supplies needed to support the troops into position for the attack without the German spies or the people quiet about it. Another issue they came across was how to get the Germans to believe that the were going to land at Pays de Calais which was a better option to land at then landing in Normandy how they did this is they sent one battalion of soldiers to that beach (about 1,000 soldiers) to fool the Germans. “The Landing” was on five beaches each beach had nearly 50,000 soldiers and 2500 vehicles landing in a matter of twenty-four hours on each beach. Within 30 days of D-day the Allied forces landing they had pushed through 40 miles of France and had landed over 1,000,000 soldiers and nearly 600,000 tons of supplies. [|Source]

Battle of the Bulge
This battle was the last offensive attack by Nazi Germany, and was by far the bloodiest of all the battles. Hitler’s plan was to push through the Allies line with a massive armored tank and attack and split the front in two and hopefully cut off supply lines. This strategy worked for the most part but only because it caught American soldiers off guard. Due to weather an airstrike could never be called. This was saw as an opportunity so German soldiers disguised themselves as American solders spreading false information around camps. Lack of money to purchase fuel doomed Germany. To keep the attacks up fuel was needed which they didn't have. Germans ended up retreating on foot due to lack of fuel and ammo.[| Source] -American Casualties 89,500 - British Casualties 1,408



Conclusion
The Allies were not as effective as they could have been at defeating Germany. They did succeed in the end, which is great, but there were small problems along the way. If the generals had gotten along better they may have been able to coordinate better and have less casualties because of this. They also may have been able to achieve the victory much faster if they had worked together. It is a good thing they were all such great generals, otherwise Hitler may have been able to win the war, or at least drag it out much longer than it went.