MILITARY: Normandy to VE-Day

In early March 1945 Eisenhower’s soldiers crossed the Rhine River.  As they and their Soviet comrades-in-arms advanced deeper into Germany, the extent of the Holocaust was revealed with the liberation of the concentration camps.  Industrial areas used to produce war material were captured or destroyed.  With his “Third Reich” in shambles and his forces crumbling under Allied pressure, Hitler killed himself in his Berlin Bunker on April 30.  The Nazis surrendered on May 7.  The war in Europe was over.  Eisenhower had completed his “Great Crusade.”