One of history’s greatest wartime feats of engineering As armies are vast consumers of fuel, there was a long recognised need for a guaranteed supply of fuel after a possible invasion of Allied troops in Europe. The transport of fuel through oil tankers proved to be risky because of possible attacks and unpredictable weather. Already in 1942 plans and preparations were made to lay pipelines beneath the ocean between Southern England and France. After secret and successful trial operations in Medway and Scotland, two pipelines were laid in the summer of 1944, from Shanklin on the Isle of Wight to Port-en-Bessin and from Dungeness to Ambleteuse. In Dungeness, short pipelines that arrived via the railway were connected and wound around huge ‘conundrums’, towed across the Channel by tugs and laid in the ocean. Pumping stations were disguised as ordinary buildings to reduce the threat of enemy attack.&nbsp;Some of these buildings – ice cream parlours, garages and bungalows - still remain today, such as Pluto House in Dungeness. After initial teething problems, around 4 million litres of fuel was being delivered per day and by the end of the war nearly 700 million litres had been delivered across to France - a feat of engineering deemed key to the successful invasion of Europe after D-Day.

United Kingdom

Operation Pluto

Hunger, Fighting and Surrender

In May 1940 the German Army crossed the border into the Netherlands. The Dutch Army had to surrender after five days of fighting. The German occupation of the Netherlands had begun. It would take five years before the country would be freed by Allied forces.
The liberation of the Netherlands was remarkable in the sense that most of the Southern part of the country was liberated in September 1944 during Operation Market Garden and the Battle of the Scheldt while the Northern part remained in German hands until the spring of 1945.
After the failure of Operation Market Garden the Allied forces decided to give the highest priority to a thrust eastwards towards the Rhine and the German heartland. The Northern part of the Netherlands would be liberated later on. This resulted in the strange situation that the final Allied drive to clear the Netherlands from German forces was launched from Germany. The fighting at this point of the war was sporadic and depended largely on the willingness of individual German commanders to continue offering resistance.
Meanwhile a food and fuel shortage, in combination with one of the harshest winters of the war years, led to the death of some 20.000 civilians in the Western part of the Netherlands. This winter would come to be known as the ‘Hunger Winter’.
In the first week of May 1945 the Germans were finally prepared to cooperate in Allied food transports but they were not yet willing to surrender. But when the news of Adolf Hitler’s suicide came out, the end of the war was near.

The Netherlands

Towards the German capitulation in the Netherlands

One of the War’s greatest deception operations Operation Fortitude sought to mislead the German army and conceal the real location of the foreseen Allied invasion of Normandy (June 1944). Operation Fortitude North was designed to give the impression of an impending Allied invasion of Norway, while Operation Fortitude South was to develop a mock invasion at Pas-de-Calais, all working to divert German troops away from Normandy. For the Germans, Pas-de-Calais looked to be the obvious place for an Allied invasion into Europe, offering the shortest route across the Channel. A fictitious 1st U.S. Army Group (FUSAG) was placed in Kent, supported by the construction of roads, bridges, buildings, airfields and embarkation points where dummy airplanes and landing crafts were stationed. Even false radio transmissions were made. A decrypted transmission from the Japanese Ambassador to his government, recounting a conversation with Hitler, revealed that the Germans indeed expected an Allied invasion via the Straits of Dover. On 5 June 1944, a mock invasion was launched from Dover, while the real invasion on 6 June, Operation Overlord, successfully delivered 185.000 troops across to Normandy. Even long after the Normandy landings, Adolf Hitler retained his best troops in Pas-de-Calais, expecting an even larger invasion at a later date.

Operation Fortitude South

Veritable to Varsity

To put an end to the war, Field Marshal Montgomery planned the Rhineland Offensive, a huge operation that was meant to conquer the area west of the Rhine and subsequently to cross the river itself. The offensive was preceded by one of the largest build-ups of Allied forces during the Second World War. In the beginning of February 1945, 500.000 Allied soldiers were assembled in the area around Groesbeek and Nijmegen in the Netherlands, together with 1.000 canon and 34.000 vehicles. It was the largest offensive ever initiated from Dutch soil and the largest operation in the Northwestern part of Europe.
The Allies greatly outnumbered the German forces, but the German military had the advantage of unpredictable terrain and bad weather conditions. In the evening of 23 March Operation Plunder was set in motion: the crossing of the Rhine with amphibious armoured vehicles and improvised floating tanks of the Allied forces. At 07:00 the next morning Operation Varsity, the last major airborne offensive of the war began.
Two divisions of paratroopers were dropped behind German lines, east of the Rhine near Wesel in support of the crossing. After crossing the Rhine, Allied tank divisions reigned supreme on the wide open plains of Northern Germany. The German army had lost its ability to wage an effective defence.

Germany

The Rhineland Offensive

In 1939 the Second World War started in Europe with the German invasion of Poland. Hostilities soon spread to western and northern Europe. The German invasion of the Soviet Union and the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in late 1941 transformed it into a global conflict, leading Great Britain, the USA and the Soviet Union to enter into a war-time alliance. France achieved the status of the fourth Allied power in the beginning of 1945. With Germany's unconditional surrender on 8 May 1945 in Berlin's Karlhorst district, the Allies had achieved one of their central war aims. By way of the Berlin Declaration of 5 June 1945 the four-power military authorities assumed supreme authority in Germany and Berlin. Henceforth the decisions of the victorious powers, individually in their respective zones and jointly in the Allied Control Council for Germany as a whole, became the law of the land. The capital of the vanquished German Reich, Berlin, was occupied by all four powers. At the final Allied conference of the Second World War, the Potsdam Conference, the Allies agreed on occupation policies concerning demilitarisation, denazification, democratisation, decentralisation and reparation. However, mounting tension between the Western powers and the Soviet Union created a situation in which essential decisions were no longer taken jointly but separately by the military governments in their respective zones and sectors of occupation.

Victorious powers in Berlin

The end of the war and the annihilation of Jews

The concentration camp of Stutthof is quite unknown, compared to camps like Auschwitz, Dachau or Buchenwald. Right after the outbreak of the war Nazi leaders from Pomerania imprisoned and killed many male Polish citizens in Stutthof, all according to plans devised years before the war. The Nazi’s regarded Poles as “subhumans”, to be exterminated in order to germanise the region.
During the war, the role of Stutthof changed. It became an important place within the system of concentration camps established all over Europe. Thousands of Jews (mostly women) from Auschwitz and many more from ghettos and camps in the Baltic states were brought here. They were imprisoned in the so called “Jewish camp” where they were decimated by hunger, disease and the stress of forced labour. In addition, thousands of other women were killed in the gas chambers.
Because of its location near East Prussia, already at the beginning of 1945 Stutthof was within reach of the advancing Red Army. The prisoners who had managed to survive till then, were forced to take part in an extremely brutal evacuation. Already in bad condition, in the middle of a severe winter and half-starved, they were forced to march to the West. Those unable to walk were killed by German guards.

Poland

Liberation of Stutthof

Quickly following the United States’ entrance into the Second World War in December 1941, hundreds of thousands of American troops crossed the Atlantic to the UK to assist with the war effort in Europe. They remained in large numbers throughout the rest of the war from 1942 to 1945. This event became known as the ‘Friendly Invasion’.The hundreds of thousands of American servicemen stationed in various villages and cities throughout the UK had a profound impact on British culture. They introduced to Great Britain popular American music and dances such as the jitterbug. In addition, iconic American food appeared in Britain for the first time such as peanut butter, chewing gum, doughnuts, and Coca Cola. British families often opened their homes to the American servicemen for tea and meals. The Americans brought gifts such as chocolate, candy, cigarettes, and nylon stockings - items in short supply due to rations.Many American camps held dances open to the public with many British girls as special guests. American servicemen would often spend their free time in many of the cinemas, cafes, restaurants, and pubs, cultivating friendly relationships that often blossomed into romantic ones. This resulted in a great number of wartime marriages, with British girlfriends emigrating to the US at the end of the war – becoming known as G.I. brides.The Americans also brought with them their oppressive system of racial segregation. White and black American servicemen served in separate units, who also spent their free time apart. Certain British towns were designated by the U.S. military as only for black or white servicemen, while others alternated certain days for each race. Many interracial relationships between black American servicemen and their white British girlfriends ended sadly as families were often separated because interracial marriage remained illegal in many American states in the years following the war.By the end of the war, the American - British special relationship was strengthened culturally thanks in large part to the ‘friendly invasion’. The images below capture the friendship that grew between the American servicemen and average British citizens during these three years.

The Friendly Invasion

During World War Two, The Hague was generally spared from major attacks causing widespread devastation. That is until the Allied air raid of 3 March 1945. In an attempt to destroy the V-2 launching pads that the occupying German forces had erected in Haagse Bos, the RAF Second Tactical Air Force deployed 56 bombers, Mitchells and Bostons, to launch an air raid from Belgium and northern France. It went very wrong. The bombs were dropped in several rounds, mostly above the Bezuidenhout district, and the Korte Voorhout was also hit. A strong north wind 'blew' the bombs to the wrong places and a navigation error involving the use of incorrect co-ordinates meant that they landed on Louise de Colignyplein, right in the middle of the residential Bezuidenhout area. Due to low-hanging fog, the pilots were unable to see where they were and 67,000 kilos of anti-personnel bombs were dropped on the neighbourhood. More than 520 people were killed and over 250 ended up seriously injured. Thousands were made homeless, with lots of houses, shops, businesses, schools and churches left in ruins. Many people died in the intense fires. While emergency services arrived quickly, several factors, including a lack of firefighters and equipment as well as burst water pipes, meant that the fire brigade was unable to cope with the 'inferno', as some later described it. Those who had managed to survive the bombs and flames fled en masse to Voorburg and Binckhorst. The Atlantic Wall in Haagse Bos meant that the road to Benoordenhout was closed. Panicking, people grabbed whatever they could lay their hands on, in particular the precious Swedish bread that had been distributed the day before. The desperate refugees were taken in by local residents. Although many now only had the clothes they stood up in and anything else they had managed to grab, the people were grateful to have survived at all.

Bombing of the Bezuidenhout: 3 March 1945

In the early morning of 10 May 1940, Germany invaded the Netherlands. The purpose of the 'Battle for The Hague' was to conquer the airports and the city and to capture both the Queen and the Cabinet. Thanks to fierce resistance, with George Maduro and others fighting against the invaders, the German attack failed. But euphoria over the victory was short lived as the Netherlands was eventually nonetheless occupied. Queen Wilhelmina, her family and the government fled to England. The Hague, with the Binnenhof and Plein, became the centre of German rule in the Netherlands. The German Reichskommissar, Dr Arthur Seyss-Inquart, moved into the Logement van Rotterdam at Plein 4. In 1943, construction of German coastal defences commenced with the Atlantic Wall. This anti-tank trench, running through large parts of The Hague and Scheveningen, left a trail of destruction in its wake. Nor was The Hague spared the horrors of the war. Its Jewish community, the second-largest in the Netherlands, was almost completely exterminated; Sinti and Roma residents were also deported to Auschwitz and almost none of them returned. From The Hague, Engelandvaarders braved the crossing to England. One of the best known was 'Soldier of Orange' Erik Hazelhoff Roelzema. But for those arrested in the resistance, the Oranjehotel was the place where the Germans passed judgement. Prisoners who were sentenced to death were executed on the Waalsdorpervlakte. In autumn 1944, there was famine in The Hague. Around 2,100 people died of hunger in 1945 alone. In 1944, the Germans also launched a new weapon: the V-2, the first unmanned guided ballistic missile. An Allied attempt to destroy these V-2 rockets went disastrously wrong, leading to wide-scale bombing of the residential neighbourhood of Bezuidenhout on 3 March 1945. On Saturday, 5 May 1945, the Germans capitulated, but the Allies' official entry into the Hague did not take place until 8 May. The procession was led by units from the Princess Irene Brigade, a Dutch army unit that formed part of the First Canadian Corps and fought alongside the Allies. Queen Wilhelmina returned to The Hague on 6 July 1945.

The Hague in World War Two

An estimated 1,800 Dutch citizens attempted to escape to England during World War Two. The majority chose to travel via neighbouring countries, while a minority went straight across the North Sea. Many different vessels were used and at least 204 people made the crossing successfully. Most of the attempts were made in 1941, when the Dutch coast was still somewhat accessible. One crossing from Scheveningen was undertaken on 16 March 1941: seven young fishermen from Scheveningen journeyed to England on the shrimp barge Anna KW 96. All of them subsequently enlisted in the Royal Netherlands Navy and survived the war. Four Engelandvaarders (Erik Hazelhoff Roelfzema, Chris Krediet, Peter Tazalaar and Bob van der Stok) started Contact Holland as a way of improving contact between London and the Dutch resistance. Reliable radio communications were crucial. Dutchmen who had previously ventured across the North Sea as Engelandvaarders were trained as secret agents, ready to return to the Netherlands armed with instructions and Morse code equipment. These secret agents then had to be dropped off on the coast of Scheveningen along with radio gear. Hazelhoff Roelfzema, Krediet and Tazelaar carried out two landings off the coast of Scheveningen during the winter of 1941-42. A number of agents were arrested in spring 1942; Anton van der Waals, the most significant Dutch traitor in World War Two, played an important role in this. The Allied secret agents were captured and forced to continue to communicate with England but through messages written by the Germans. This was the start of the Englandspiel. Not realising that the agents were sending their messages while in the enemy’s clutches, the British continued sending secret agents to the continent. Upon arrival in the Netherlands, they were immediately captured by the Germans. At the end of the war, most of the secret agents were deported from the Netherlands; 54 did not survive the Englandspiel. The Hague has two memorial plaques dedicated to the Englandspiel. One of these is at the Binnenhof, the other is on the edge of Scheveningse Bosjes

Engelandvaarders and Das Englandspiel

The success of the Allies in the liberation of Western Europe was made possible by the men who helped bring supplies to the front line, such as the personnel of the Red Ball Express.&nbsp;The Red Ball Express was a truck convoy which supplied US forces between August 25th and November 16th 1944, and which contributed enormously to the success of the armies. The convoy was staffed largely by African-American soldiers, who worked tirelessly to supply the front line.Following the Normandy landings in July 1944, the Allied forces quickly advanced into France, but their progress depended heavily on access to supplies. The French railway system had been severely damaged during the conflict and the Allies had not yet gained access to crucial ports in France and Belgium. The Red Ball Express was conceived as a temporary solution to the supply dilemma. The convoy name was derived from a rail term meaning to prioritise. The route was intended as a one-way express loop highway, and the supply trucks were meant to have exclusive use of the route. It was signposted with red balls and warning signs for other vehicles to stay off the highway, although other military and civilian vehicles often disregarded this, causing disruptions and delays.The original routes ran from Cherbourg to Chartres, bringing supplies to General George S. Patton’s Third Army and the US First Army. The routes were later extended as far as Sommesous and Soissons. Within days of being operational the convoy reached its peak in terms of supply, delivering over 12,000 tons of supplies and using close to 6,000 trucks. The urgency of supplying the front line meant that the convoys ran twenty-four hours a day. Driving at night proved difficult, as the truck headlights needed to be masked with ‘cat-eye’ covers to prevent the convoys from being detected and attacked by German planes. Truck drivers also had to contend with landmines and snipers, as well as shrapnel and barbed wire, which shredded tires. Simple fatigue was also an issue for the drivers who often worked more than twenty-four hours at a time.The Red Ball Express was discontinued in mid November when more efficient means of transporting supplies became possible. In expressing his gratitude to the supply convoys in October 1944, Supreme Commander General Dwight Eisenhower described the Red Ball Express route as “the lifeline between combat and supply [...] without which the armies might fail.” During the brief 83-day lifespan of the Red Ball Express, the convoy had transported more than 400,000 tons of supplies to the front line using around six thousand trucks. Around 23,000 men had worked on the route, 75% of whom were African-American. Racial policy in the US dictated the number of African-American recruits in the armed forces, and they accounted for a mere 8% of US troops stationed in Europe throughout the war. While a proportion of these troops took up combat roles, the majority of African American soldiers were assigned to service roles such as the Red Ball Express. Sources:Bykofsky, Joseph and Harold Larson. The Transportation Corps: Overseas Operations. Washington D.C. Office of the Chief of Military History, 1957.Lee, Ulysses. The Employment of Negro Troops: The United States Army in WWII. Washington D.C. Office of the Chief of Military History, 1966.Makamson, Collin. “Keep em Rolling.” 2012. The National WWII Museum New Orleans. Accessed March 19, 2019. http://www.nww2m.com/2012/02/keep-em-rolling/.Medford, Edna Green and Michael Frazier. 1993. "Keep 'em Rolling”: African American Participation in the Red Ball Express.” Negro History Bulletin 51 (1): 57-61.Olmsted, Daniel. “From the Pony Express to the Red Ball Express.” 2018. The National World War II Museum New Orleans. Accessed March 19, 2019. https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/pony-express-red-ball-express.Ruppenthal, Roland G. Logistical Support of the Armies: The European Theatre of Operations. 2 Vols. Washington D.C. Office of the Chief of Military History, 1953. US Army Transportation Museum. “The Red Ball Express, 1944.” Accessed March 19, 2019. https://web.archive.org/web/20180126045735/http://www.transchool.lee.army.mil:80/museum/transportation%20museum/redballintro.htm.Wynn, Neil A. The African-American Experience during World War II. Plymouth: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2010.

United States

The Red Ball Express

Described a little too emphatically as "petit Stalingrad", these rather disjointed battles, which took place between 2 and 6 September, should have been called "battle of the Borinage" insofar as they did not concern the capital of Hainaut, but rather the surrounding industrial region, as far as the forest of Mormal. As a result of the of the 19th and 5th U.S. Corps’ (Hodges’ First Army) advance, a huge pocket trapping some 70,000 men of retreating and jumbled German units from two armies and 18 different divisions was formed at the very beginning of September'44. Despite their detestable strategic situation and the absolute air supremacy of the Allies, at least half of the Nazi elements present in the so-called "pocket" would manage to escape to the east, which remained incompletely closed due to the weakness of the Mons’ “bottleneck”. Nevertheless, the increasingly obvious disorganisation of the Wehrmacht and the effective intervention of the U.S. Air Force on 3 September at Goegnies-Chaussée made it possible to destroy long columns of German vehicles at the cost of minimal losses... among the Americans. From the Landsers perspective, the result of the confrontation that lasted 4 to 5 days had more tragic consequences. More than 25,000 of them, including 4 generals, were taken prisoner and their dead numbered approximately 3,500 men. U.S. losses were infinitely lighter, given the absence of the Luftwaffe and the chaotic nature of the Nazi retreat. The losses of the 3rd U.S. Armoured Division amounted to... 57 men while their comrades of the 1st Infantry Division recorded "only" 32 killed. In fact, it was the American Air Force and its P47 "Thunderbolt" that did most of the work, with ground troops mopping up the remnants thanks to their “Sherman” tanks and assistance from local resistance forces. With the help of Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles and in partnership with CEGE-SOMA. <iframe class="ql-video" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="true" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/nar2Q05OiVs?showinfo=0"></iframe>

Belgium

The Mons Pocket, or the "petit Stalingrad" of the Borinage

German conquest of most of continental Europe was accompanied with ruthless application of air power as a means of terrorizing the attacked nations into submission. Wieluń, Frampol, and Warsaw in Poland, Rotterdam in the Netherlands, London and Coventry in Britain, Beograd in Yugoslavia, or Leningrad and Stalingrad in the Soviet Union were among numerous cities and towns attacked by the dreaded Luftwaffe without distinguishing between civilian and military targets. British Bomber Command responded in kind, steadily increasing the number of bombers taking off each night to strike at German cities. 1942 the American 8th Air Force joined in, attacking at daytime. Apart from destroying German munitions factories, railroad connections, and key military installations, the aim was to disrupt the production by forcing the workers to hide in air raid shelters, destroy their homes, and this way to break their spirit. Although the air campaign did not manage to paralyze German war production or to break the morale of the people, it put an enormous strain on German war machine. At a huge cost in manpower and resources, massive air raid shelters and anti-aircraft emplacements were erected across Germany. Many factories were evacuated to facilities burrowed underground, mostly by prisoners of concentration camps. The Germans, unable to conduct a similar campaign due to Allied supremacy in the air, developed new so-called Vergeltungswaffen (revenge weapons) – V-1 cruise missiles and V-2 ballistic rockets, to indiscriminately attack cities in Britain and, later on, liberated cities on the Continent.

Bombardment of Cities

On April 11 at 4:30 PM, the first buffalo went into the IJssel, Operation Cannonshot had started. The crossing lasted 7 minutes without receiving enemy fire. After the battalions were transferred, pontoon bridges were started to build. At the same time, a ferry brought the first medium-duty Sherman tanks from the 1st Hussars to support the infantrymen. The infantrymen had already reached their first goal, “De Kribbe” and “De Weerd” farm. At this stage the enemy easily withdrew. The situation changed at the villages of Klarenbeek and Voorst. The bridgehead in making came under heavy German artillery and mortar fire. Which, according to the Canadian reports, resulted in in 17 casualties among the engineers. It did not take long to build the bridge. At 02:00 on April 12, the bridge and two pontoons were ready. This allowed brigades 1 and 3 and the heavy vehicles to cross the IJssel. The entire 1st Canadian Infantry Division entering the Wilpse banks was the sign that the liberation of The pontoon bridge between Gorssel and Wilp was a so-called “Class 9” bridge. This was named “Can of Worms Bridge” as it was reminiscent of a jar with wriggling piers. Later one of the officers arrived with a sign with the text “Poco-Poco Bridge” or well the “Ietsie Pietsie” bridge. The builders could harly appreciate all of this and a riot arose. This riot went so high that the order from above came that both signs could remain. The first name was still removed on 13 April 1945. Therefore, the bridge that led to the liberation of the West Netherlands entered history as the “Poco-Poco” bridge

Operation Cannonshot

Allied victory in Normandy and the success of Operation Dragoon sent German armies in headlong retreat. The rapid pursuit, however, consumed an inordinate amount of petrol and other supplies, which all had to be transported from the beaches of Normandy or from ports in Provence. In early September logistical difficulties forced general Eisenhower to prioritise, and he chose to target the Ruhr industrial area.Meanwhile, American and French forces met determined German resistance around Metz and in the Belfort Gap; the Allies were stopped short of their objectives in the Alsace. Only in mid-November 1944 did the Allies manage to break through the enemy lines. In the South the French liberated Belfort and reached the Rhine; in the North, the 7th U.S. Army penetrated German defences in the Vosges; the 2nd French Armoured Division exploited this success, liberating Strasbourg on 23rd November.Despite this success, general Eisenhower forbade general Patch’s 7th Army to cross the Rhine and attempt to outflank German West Wall defences. To the south of Strasbourg, around Colmar, the Germans managed to hold on to a large pocket on the western bank of the Rhine. Again, a stalemate ensued.On New Year’s Eve, 1944, German units began Operation Nordwind, the final German attempt to turn the tide in the West. After three weeks of bloody fighting, the German forces were stopped. From 20th January to 9th February the French 1st Army, reinforced by U.S. troops, cleared the Colmar Pocket, thus liberating the last large section of French land still under German occupation.

France

Liberation of Alsace

Having broken German resistance in the Vosges and the Belfort Gap, the Allies reached the Rhine at Strasbourg and near Mulhouse. Between these points German forces managed to hold onto a 65-kilometre stretch of the western bank of the Rhine, centred around the city of Colmar. Early attempts at reducing this pocket failed due to logistical problems; the inexperience of the rapidly expanding of the French army, and personal factors also contributed to the situation as general Leclerc initially refused to serve under general de Lattre due to his past service for the Vichy regime.Therefore the attempt at reducing the pocket in late December failed. Adolf Hitler, claiming Alsace to be a part of the Greater German Reich, stressed the necessity of holding on to the pocket as a springboard for an offensive to retake the region. In order to ensure that, he entrusted the command in the area to the notorious Heinrich Himmler, the Reichsführer of the SS.On 8th January 1945 the southern element of Operation Nordwind began. German units attacked from the pocket, aiming to retake Strasbourg. French 2nd Corps managed to top them after a few days of heavy fighting. On 20th January in heavy snowfall, the French 1st Army, reinforced with U.S. units and now Leclerc’s 2nd Armoured Division, began the assault on the pocket. Despite the surprise, the Germans put up determined resistance. Only on 2nd February French troops entered Colmar, clearing the remnants of German defenders by the next day. The last vestiges of German resistance in the Pocket were broken by 9th February.

Colmar Pocket

The question of the chronology of the liberation is important. To be the first liberated Belgian city would increase history related tourism. Between the two cities of Hainaut - Mons and Tournai - it’s a question of hours, perhaps minutes. For the allies, the timeline is equally important because of the rivalry between the two liberating armies. Originally, in Eisenhower's plans, the liberation of Tournai was assigned to the XXXth British Corps. However, faced with dwindling German resistance, American General Omar Bradley could not resist the temptation to assault the flagging enemy forces with "his" 2nd Armoured Division, thereby pulling the rug out from under the British. A Task Force made up units of the 30th Infantry Division entered the area at around 19:45 on 2 September (the British, rather frustrated, only appeared on the 3rd, around 9:30-10:00). So, was Tournai the first Belgian city to be liberated? No. For, on that very same day – 2 September – at around 18:25, tanks of the 83rd Armoured Reconnaissance Battalion of the 3rd Armoured Division had already managed to reach the outskirts of Mons, the capital of Hainaut, at the crossroads of the Chaussée Brunehaut, breaking through increasingly feeble German defensive lines. But it wasn’t until the next day, 3 September, that the city center was liberated with the assistance of the Belgian resistance. With the help of Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles and in partnership with CEGE-SOMA.

September '44: The first liberated city in Belgium

Initially the Allies had planned to land in the Provence simultaneously with the landing in Normandy. However, even the massive Allied war machine could not sufficiently support two large-scale amphibious operations in Europe at the same time. Therefore operation Dragoon had been postponed. Longer-than-anticipated fighting in Normandy and the growing realization that ports in Northern France would not suffice for unloading all the necessary supplies led the Allied planners to revive the Provence plan. The troops selected for the operation were the U.S. VI Army Corps and the French ‘Army B’, later the 1st Army, commanded by general Jean de Lattre de Tassigny. They were supported by some airborne units, numerous aircraft and a large naval armada. They were to face the German 19th Army, composed mostly of third-rate units, as most of the crack units had been withdrawn to stem the growing Allied pressure on Normandy front. Also the defences were nowhere near as strong as the Atlantic Wall in Northern France. The Allies landed in the morning of 15th August, and quickly overran German defences, aided by the French Resistance. Still, the Germans forces were able to conduct a fighting retreat in the Rhone valley, delaying the American advance. Meanwhile French units liberated Marseille and Toulon, thus capturing two large harbours, which were to play a significant part in supplying the Western front. In mid-September Allied units advanced from Southern France met with victorious units attacking from Normandy, forming the Western Front. Four weeks of fighting cost the Allies about 25,000 casualties; the German army lost about 150,000 men, mostly prisoners.

Operation Dragoon

The final stage of the Rhineland Offensive was the crossing of the fabled river itself. It was clear to everyone that the Rhine was the last major natural obstacle to the Allied advance into Germany. The crossing of the Rhine between Rees and Wesel (Operation Plunder) was part of several coordinated Rhine crossings. The actions started late on 23 March 1945. It was an operation of large numbers. A million soldiers from three countries participated. The Allies gathered over 4.000 pieces of artillery on the West bank of the river while over 250.000 tons of supplies were amassed near the front. The preparations were obscured from German view by the largest smoke screen ever laid. In support of the Rhine crossing, Operation Varsity, the largest airborne operation performed in a single day, took place. 14.000 paratroopers were dropped east of the Rhine behind enemy lines to deepen the Allied bridgehead and to knock out German artillery targeting the Rhine. Operation Plunder went like clockwork. German resistance was completely broken by the artillery barrage and in the first two hours of the operation the Allies lost only 31 men. Some of the casualties of the Operations Varsity and Plunder are buried at the Reichswald Forest Cemetery. After the establishment of the first bridgeheads it took engineers of the 9th U.S. Army just nine hours to bridge the river. Winston Churchill was present at the headquarters of Field Marshall Montgomery to witness the start of the final stage of the war in Germany. With the Allies crossing the Rhine, the days of the Third Reich were numbered. <iframe class="ql-video" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="true" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/S6AlvQ1HRis?showinfo=0"></iframe>

The crossing of the Rhine: Operation Plunder and Operation Varsity

By the end of 1943, Allied forces had arrived in the Abruzzo region on the Adriatic coast. Here they faced the formidable Gustav Line defences. The Gustav Line was the main Axis line of defence and stretched across the entire width of Italy. In November 1943 British forces managed to cross the Sangro river and penetrate the Gustav Line on the Adriatic coast. This was a major success but soon the Allied forces would face heavy fighting again, this time at the town of Ortona.Ortona is located on a high ridge overlooking the Adriatic sea and the Moro river valley. The town was an important tactical junction and its capture was necessary for the continuation of the Allied advance on the eastern shore of Italy.The job was given to the 1st Canadian Infantry Division supported by tanks from the 1st Canadian Armour Brigade. Taking Ortona proved to be very costlyThe fighting on the approach to the city and then the Battle of Ortona itself between 20 and 28 December caused heavy casualties and led to the destruction of the city. It took bitter house to house fighting to clear the city of German forces. The combined losses of the Allied and German forces and the civilian population are estimated to be between 4,000 and 6,000. The Battle of Ortona was one of the most important and tragic events of the Italian campaign. Churchill himself, in his volumes on the Second World War, pointed out that "It was the first great battle in the streets of an inhabited centre, and we learned a lot from it".

Italy

The Battle of Ortona

On 1 July 1945, Colonel Frank Howley arrived in Berlin with an advanced detachment of the U.S. Army. His mission was to build the American military administration in Berlin. In June 1944, only a few days after the Allied landing in Normandy, Howley had already been assigned to help establish a local government and administration in the French city of Cherbourg. A few weeks later, in August 1944, he had commanded an Anglo-American unit which had moved into occupied Paris along with the first combat troops.
In December 1944, Howley set up his headquarters in Barbizon, south of Paris, in order to prepare for the establishment of the military administration in Berlin. After the Berlin Garrison had surrendered on 2 May 1945, Berlin was completely under Soviet control for two months. The takeover of the West Berlin sectors by the three Western powers was planned for 4 July 1945. Howley commanded an advanced detachment of 500 officers and soldiers, with 120 vehicles. However, the Soviets only permitted 37 officers, 175 enlisted personnel and 50 vehicles to enter the city.
This was a first taste of the numerous disputes in the negotiations with the Soviet military administration which Howley, as director of the U.S. Military Government in Berlin, and, starting in December 1947, as the U.S. city commandant of Berlin, would find himself engaged in.
In March 1949, during the Berlin Airlift, Howley was promoted to brigadier general. After the end of the Berlin blockade, he left the city in the late summer of 1949 and returned to the United States. One year later, he published the memoirs of his time stationed in Berlin, under the title Berlin Command.

Frank Howley

After joining the U.S. Army in May 1942, James Megellas wanted to see combat as quickly as possible. In October 1943, after months of training, he joined the 504 Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 82nd Airborne Division. He first saw action with this unit in Italy where he was in charge of a platoon during battles in the Apennine Mountains and the Anzio bridgehead.
Because of the heavy losses it had suffered in Italy, his regiment stayed in England while the rest of the 82nd Airborne Division jumped into France on the 6th of June 1944 during D-Day (Operation Overlord). In September 1944 Megellas and his unit rejoined the 82nd Division during Operation Market Garden. During this operation, Megellas took part in the daring crossing of the Waal river in Nijmegen. Under murderous enemy fire the paratroopers crossed the Waal river in flimsy canvas boats, suffering heavy casualties. For his actions, Megellas was decorated with the Distinguished Service Cross. After Market Garden Megellas and his unit took part in the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944 and in the invasion of Germany where he witnessed the liberation of the Wöbbelin concentration camp at Ludwigslust.
In January 1946, Megellas led his company down Fifth Avenue in New York in the big Victory Parade. After the war he retired from active army service and was active in politics. He wrote a memoir of his wartime experiences called ‘All the way to Berlin’.

James Megellas

After the capitulation of Belgium on 28 May 1940 the military officer Jean-Baptiste Piron was internated. He escaped and in April 1941 he succeeded in reaching England. There he joined the Belgian army in reconstruction in January 1942. Almost a year later Piron was called to London by the Belgian Prime Minister in exile Hubert Pierlot. In London he wasinformed about the definitive plans for the reorganization of the Belgian Ground Forces. Piron was appointed commander and soon thereafter lieutenant-colonel of the 1st Belgian Infantry Brigade, a new Belgian unit. The unit consisted of 2,500 soldiers and was trained in Wales. This unit, also known as the Piron Brigade (Brigade Piron), was created in January 1943. In spring 1944, 2,200 soldiers of the Piron Brigade were ready for the fight on the continent.
On 8 August 1944 they landed in Arromanches, on the Normandy coast. They actively participated in the Battle of Normandy, for instance in Operation Paddle, that aimed at precipitating the fall of the Germans armies in the direction of the Seine. The Brigade moved further up to the north and on 3 September 1944 Piron and his men crossed the French-Belgian border. Only one day later they liberated Brussels. After that, they participated in the liberation of the Netherlands.
Piron continued his military career as commander of the Belgian occupying army in Germany. In 1947 he was promoted to Lieutenant-General of the Belgian army. He finished his career, from 1951 to 1957, as chief of staff and aide-de-camp to King Baudouin.

Jean-Baptiste Piron

In 1944 the Italian Adriana Vitali lived in Littoria (now Latina). During the Battle of Anzio (22 January - 5 June 1944), Littoria, placed between the Cassino front and the Anzio Beachhead, was bombarded by Allied planes and shelled by American and British ships moored at Anzio and Nettuno. Adriana witnessed the blaring sirens, the destructions caused by the bombardments and the run towards air-raid shelters.
Her father, while looking for food in the countryside, ran into a downed American pilot who was hiding his parachute. The two decided to help each other: Adriana’s father obtained the parachute in exchange for his civilian clothes. He also advised the pilot how to reach the Allied troops.
On 1 April 1944 the Germans ordered the inhabitants of Littoria to leave town immediately. Adriana’s father arranged for a horse-drawn carriage and a young republican Fascist soldier guided the family towards the German defensive zone. There they saw the Allied airplanes destroying Littoria’s houses. The soldier left to go back to town, but only a few moments later they saw the young man blown up by a land mine.
The Vitali family stayed in Norma, about 20 km from Littoria, for six months. Then they went back to Littoria, where they found their house severely damaged. A few months later, on 4 October 1944, Adriana celebrated her First Communion. She still remembers the British soldiers who offered her candies and the beautiful dress she wore that day, made from the silk of the American parachute.

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