Propagandists Victorious: 1944–45

Abstract

In 1944 allied armies advanced slowly but steadily towards final victory in Europe. Anglo-American and other allied forces drove the Germans out of Italy, and after the Normandy landing on 6 June forced them into retreat everywhere. Meanwhile the Russians were expelling Axis forces from Soviet territories. On 20 July dissident Wehrmacht officers and a handful of anti-Nazi civilians tried to assassinate Hitler and take over the government, hoping to end the war and gain an advantageous peace. They failed disastrously and the war raged on. By autumn Rumania had surrendered, Paris was liberated, Finland accepted armistice, Brussels was freed, and German forces fell back in Holland, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Greece, Yugoslavia and Bulgaria. On 30 November Canadian units ‘broke into’ Germany proper, the first allied troops to enter the Nazi bastion. A German counterattack in mid-December failed utterly. This ‘Battle of the Bulge’ was the deaththroe of a fatally wounded animal, and from that moment the allied advance became a headlong rush.