Page 4 - Cause & Effect: World War II

CHAPTER FOUR

How Did the Normandy

Invasion Lead to Germany’s

Surrender?

Focus Questions

1. Why do you think the Germans failed to predict the conse-
quences of a two-front war?
2. Why do you think Adolf Hitler ignored his generals’ pleas to
seek a peace treaty with the Allies?
3. What factors were most important to the success of the
Normandy invasion and why?

he war in Europe had been raging for more than four years when
Tthe leaders of the three major Allied powers—US president
Franklin D. Roosevelt, British prime minister Winston Churchill, and
Soviet leader Joseph Stalin—attended a summit to decide the future
course of the confl ict. By now the German army was well entrenched
across the European continent. Although Allied troops had landed
on the Italian mainland in September 1943 when they entered the
southern coastal province of Salerno, their progress north through the
Italian peninsula was slow. In fact, by November 1943 the Allied ad-
vance had essentially stalled at the Mignano Gap, a narrow mountain
pass some 100 miles (161 km) southwest of Rome.
On the eastern front, the Nazi drive into the Soviet Union stalled
due to the cold Russian winters as well as dogged Soviet troops. Nev-
ertheless, by the summer of 1943 some 4 million German troops were
still deployed in the Soviet Union. Indeed, Stalin’s troops were suff ering
tremendous casualties while the Germans continued their occupation of
great swaths of the Soviet Union. To turn the tide against the Germans,

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