Halted at the gates of Moscow and Leningrad in 1941, the Germans renewed their offensive against the Soviet Union in 1942 and attacked Stalingrad in July. The Soviet armies counterattacked, quickly surrounding the entire German Sixth Army of 300,000 men. By late January 1943 only 123,000 soldiers were left to surrender. Hitler, who had refused to allow a retreat, suffered a catastrophic defeat. In summer 1943 the larger, better-equipped Soviet armies took the offensive and began to push the Germans back (see Map 30.2).

To match the Allied war effort, Germany had applied itself to total war in 1942 and had enlisted millions of German women and millions of prisoners of war and slave laborers to work in the war industry. Between early 1942 and July 1944 German war production tripled in spite of heavy Anglo-American bombing. Terrorized at home and frightened by the prospect of unconditional surrender, the Germans fought on with suicidal stoicism.

Not yet prepared to attack Germany directly through France, the Western Allies engaged in heavy fighting in North Africa (see Map 30.2). The French Vichy government allowed Germany to transport war materials and aircraft through Syria to Iraq to use against the British. In June–July 1941 the British invaded Syria and Lebanon. In autumn 1942 British forces defeated German and Italian armies at the Battle of El Alamein (el a-luh-MAYN) in Egypt. Shortly thereafter an Anglo-American force took control of the Vichy French colonies of Morocco and Algeria.

Having driven the Axis powers from North Africa by spring 1943, Allied forces invaded Italy. War-weary Italians deposed Mussolini, and the new Italian government accepted unconditional surrender in September 1943. Italy, it seemed, was liberated. But German commandos rescued Mussolini in a daring raid and made him head of a puppet government. German armies seized Rome and all of northern Italy. The Allies’ Italian campaign against German forces lasted another two years and involved, in terms of infantry dead and wounded, the most costly battles of the war in western Europe. The German armies in Italy finally surrendered on April 29, 1945. Two days earlier Mussolini — dressed in a German military uniform and trying to escape with the retreating German forces — had been captured by partisan forces, and he was executed the next day.

On June 6, 1944, American and British forces under General Dwight Eisenhower landed on the beaches of Normandy, France, in history’s greatest naval invasion. More than 2 million men and almost 0.5 million vehicles pushed inland and broke through the German lines. In March 1945 American troops crossed the Rhine and entered Germany.

The Soviets, who had been advancing steadily since July 1943, reached the outskirts of Warsaw by August 1944. On April 26, 1945, the Red Army met American forces on the Elbe River in Germany. The Allies had closed their vise on Nazi Germany and overrun Europe. As Soviet forces fought their way into Berlin, spawning unimaginable scenes of carnage, destruction, and brutality, Hitler committed suicide in his bunker on April 30. On May 7 the remaining German commanders capitulated.