Marked The Last Great German example essay topic

For this assignment I was given the task of researching and giving a short presentation regarding the role of the United States in Europe after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, which took place in December 1941. Upon first pondering the subject to which I was assigned, I could not recall anything off the top of my head regarding this subject, so I immediately turned to my old U.S. History book to refresh my memory. History has never been a desirable course of study for me because I find it to be too complex and rather boring. Yet this assignment gave me a chance to look at a particular piece of history and it allowed me to see how each and every event in history lead to the consecutive event. It also gave me a chance to understand and concentrate on the subject that I was assigned to in a very detailed manner, this of which I probably would not have ever done unless prompted to. Therefore, I found this project to be very enlightening and I feel that I have benefited intellectually from this assignment, which I pretty much dreaded at first.

Shortly after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, Adolf Hitler, ruler of Nazi Germany, declared war against the U.S. This prompted the President of the U.S. at the time, Franklin. D. Roosevelt, to ask Congress for a proclamation of war against Germany as well as Japan. This marked the end of U.S. isolationism. Now the U.S. was officially at war with in both the Pacific and in Europe, which after all was said and done, took the lives of about 407,316 U.S. servicemen and women. On November 8, 1942 U.S. forces under the command of Dwight. D. Eisenhower entered the ground war in Europe with Operation TORCH in North Africa in the cities of Morocco and Algeria. At the time these territories had been left by the Germans under a puppet French government, or a Vichy government, which collaborated with the Nazis. With the TORCH landings, the Vichy officials in Africa immediately switched sides, giving the Allies footholds in N. Africa. U.S. forces then met German opposition at Kas serine Pass in N. Africa in February 1943.

This battle served as a tactical defeat for the U.S. but the Axis powers were unable to back it up and the Allies forced them to surrender in Africa in May. For the next year the Central Mediterranean remained the focus of U.S. and Britain. Britain feared military disaster from a landing in W. Europe and proposed strikes in S. Europe. U.S. Army Chief of Staff, George Marshall, and President Roosevelt agreed to action in North Africa and to invade Italy in 1943. In July and August, Allied forces lead by Montgomery and Patton overran Sicily, causing the Italian king and army to force Mussolini from power and then begin to negotiate peace with Britain and the U.S., but not the Soviet Union. In September, the Allies announced an armistice with Italy and Eisenhower's troops landed south of Naples. All together, the Italian campaign dried up Allied resources.

But despite months of bitter fighting, the Allies controlled 2/3 of Italy when the war eventually ended on May 1, 1945. On the Eastern front, a climactic battle between the Germans and the Soviet Union broke out on July 5, 1943. The Germans sent 3,000 tanks against Kursk Salient, a gigantic wedge that the U.S.S.R. had pushed into their lines. However, the U.S.S.R. prepared a defense in depth with 3,000 tanks of their own to counter the Germans. This marked the last great German offensive until December 1944. The following year on June 6, the western Allies landed on the coast of Normandy in northwestern France.

On this famous D-Day, one British and 2 U.S. airborne divisions dropped behind German positions. During the next few weeks, Operation OVERLORD was enacted, and the Allies managed to break through German lines causing a quarter million German casualties. But the Allies continued their drive towards Germany. In the meantime, by the end of 1944, the U.S.S.R. had reached central Poland, and with the end in sight they had suffered nearly 20 million casualties. In the last months of 1944, massive air strikes finally reduced German war production. Thousand bomber raids on railroads and oil facilities began to cripple the German economy.

In 1945, British and U.S. bombers staged a terror raid on Dresden packed with refugees, killing tens of thousands of civilians. Despite this, Hitler struck a last blow known as the Battle of the Bulge. On December 16, 1944, he launched 25 divisions against thinly held U.S. positions in Belgium. The Americans suffered many casualties but this battle never seriously threatened the outcome of the war. The Nazi empire collapsed in the spring of 1945 when the U.S.S.R. liberated Poland and the western Allies entered Germany, seeing the political and racial horror that Hitler had created.

The U.S. and Britain crossed the Rhine in March and enveloped Germany's industrial core. On April 25, the U.S. and Red Army troops met on Elbe River. Hitler commited suicide in his bunker on April 30 in Berlin, which then surrendered to U.S.S.R. on May 2. The Nazi state was formally capitulated on May 8, 1945, marking the end of the war.