June 6, 1944 Normandy, France

June 6, 1944 Normandy, France.

June 6, 1944 Normandy, France.

June 6, 1944 Normandy, France.

June 9, 1944 Normandy, France

LIFE. The War After D-Day: Deeper Into Hell

The Normandy invasion of June 6, 1944, was so vast in scope — and so punishingly effective in establishing an Allied beachhead on European soil — that people sometimes forget just how long the war lasted, and how brutal it remained, in both Europe and the Pacific after D-Day. The successes at Omaha, Utah, Juno, Gold and Sword beaches remain, rightly, among the most celebrated military operations in history — but for more than a year following those landings, the fighting went on, and on, and on in some of the war’s most appalling battles and campaigns.

Hundreds of thousands of Allied and Axis troops and untold thousands more civilian men, women and children died before Japan surrendered in September 1945, finally ending the war that for six years had reshaped the globe. This gallery features photographs — some of them iconic, many of them little-known — from Saipan, Bastogne, Iwo Jima, Berlin, Nagasaki: places where the war did not stop when Operation Overlord ended.

Rescue workers help pull victims from ruins of a building hit by a German V-1 "flying bomb" rocket, July 1944.(Mansell The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images)

A grizzled, battle-weary Marine peers over his shoulder during the final days of fighting on Saipan, July 1944.(W. Eugene Smith The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images)

American Marines in action during the fight for control of Saipan, summer 1944. (W. Eugene Smith The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images)

Photographer W. Eugene Smith's picture of a Marine drinking from his canteen during 1944's Battle of Saipan is as iconic a war picture as any ever made. (W. Eugene Smith Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)

A crew maneuvers an enormous piece of artillery during the Battle of Saipan, 1944. In the waning days of the struggle for the island, thousands of Japanese civilians and troops committed suicide, rather than surrender to American troops. Many leapt to their death from the top of sheer cliffs that fall 200 feet to rocks and surf below. (Peter Stackpole Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)

Long journey: U.S. soldiers drive the wounded from the front lines during the fight to take Saipan, Northern Marianas Islands, June 1944. In the first jeep, one soldier drives while a second holds up IV bags attached to two injured men strapped to the vehicle's hood. W. (Eugene SmithTime & Life Pictures/Getty Images)

While under fire, U.S. Marines advance on occupying Japanese forces in Tanapag, Saipan in June 1944. (Eugene SmithTime & Life Pictures/Getty Images)

Marines tend to wounded comrades during the battle to take Saipan from the Japanese, 1944. (W. Eugene Smith The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images)

Saipan, Marianas Islands July 1944. American GI watching starved, wounded man clean a small child after they emerged from caves to surrender to American troops after the defeat of the Japanese in the battle for control of Saipan. (W. Eugene Smith The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images)

Saipan, Marianas Islands July 1944. Hand of an American Marine lifting tiny infant's barely living body from hole where native islanders had been hiding to escape the battle between American and Japanese forces for control of Saipan. (W. Eugene Smith The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images)

In a photo that somehow comprises both tenderness and horror, an American Marine cradles a near-dead infant pulled from under a rock while troops cleared Japanese fighters and civilians from caves on Saipan in the summer of 1944. The child was the only person found alive among hundreds of corpses in one cave. (W. Eugene Smith Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)

July – August 1944. In a photograph taken in a separate battle against Japanese troops in Guam, Smith captures the moment a wounded American Marine is loaded onto an 'alligator' tracked amphibious vehicle for evacuation. (Eugene SmithTime & Life Pictures/Getty Images)

A Marine, pictured in July 1944, looks at the bodies of Japanese soldiers killed during the battle for control of Saipan. Nearly 30,000 Japanese troops died. (Eugene SmithTime & Life Pictures/Getty Images)

St. Lo, France, summer 1944. (Joe Scherschel The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images)

St. Lo, France, summer 1944. (Joe Scherschel The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images)

Ruins of a town in northwestern France, summer 1944. (Frank Scherschel The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images)

A Free French soldier dashes to aid a French resistance fighter taking aim at a German sniper following the liberation of Paris, August 1944. (Ralph Morse The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images)

Sniper attack, Paris, August 1944. (Ralph Morse The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images)

American Army trucks (note cyclist hitching a ride) parade down the Champs-Elysées the day after the liberation of Paris by French and Allied troops, August 1944. (Frank Scherschel The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images)

A crowd of jubilant French civilians and Allied troops celebrate the end of the war in Europe, Paris, May 8, 1945. (Ralph Morse The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images)

September 1944.Stolberg, Germany. Young German prisoner of war being searched by American soldier after he was captured during the fight for the Stolberg area. (John Florea The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images)

September 1944, Stolberg, Germany. American soldier slogging through deep mud carrying ammuntion to a waiting Sherman tank of 3rd Armored Div, aka Spearhead, during the battle for control of the Stolberg area. (John Florea The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images)

November 1944. Germany. American 240mm howitzer under camouflage netting in the rear with "dragon's teeth" of the Siegfried Line in the foreground. (John Florea The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images)

Cathedral turned into a makeshift hospital during the Allied campaign to retake the Philippines, Dec. 1944.(W. Eugene Smith The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images)

A nurse tends to wounded soldiers in a makeshift hospital located in a cathedral during the campaign to retake the Philippines, Dec. 1944. (W. Eugene Smith The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images)

A tired American soldier just back from the front lines during the Battle of the Bulge, December 1944. (George Silk The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images)

American General Anthony McAuliffe, commander of the 101st Airborne during the Battle of the Bulge. When the Germans demanded the surrender of American troops who were outnumbered and surrounded in the town of Bastogne, McAuliffe replied to the ultimatum with a now-legendary one-word response: "Nuts!” -- which a milder way of… (U.S. Army)

German POWs carry the body of an American soldier killed in the Battle of Bulge, January 1945. (George Silk The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images)

An American tank moves past another gun carriage which slid off an icy road in the Ardennes Forest during the Battle of the Bulge, Dec. 20, 1944. (John FloreaTime & Life Pictures/Getty Images)

Scene during the Battle of the Bulge, December 1944 –January 1945 . (John Florea Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)

Lace curtain shrouds body of an American soldier awaiting burial in Bastogne cemetery, January 1945. (Russ Engel—US Army)

United States Marines (foreground) blow up a cave connected to a Japanese blockhouse on Iwo Jima, March 1945. (W. Eugene Smith The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images)

U. S. Coast Guardsmen assist a wounded Marine returning from the fight on Iwo Jima, 1945. (US Coast Guard)

Crewmen fight fires on the deck of the USS Saratoga, which was badly damaged and set ablaze after being hit several times by Japanese bomber planes and kamikaze attacks off of Iwo Jima, 1945. (US Navy)

American troops chat near a dead Japanese soldier on Iwo Jima. The degree to which the Japanese were willing to fight to the death, rather than surrender, is summed up in one remarkable statistic: Close to 20,000 Japanese soldiers were killed during the battle; only around 200 were captured. (W. Eugene Smith Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)

American aircraft in flight during battle against Japanese for Iwo Jima. W. (Eugene SmithTime & Life Pictures/Getty Images)

U.S. Marines of the 28th Regiment, 5th Division, raise the American flag atop Mt. Suribachi, Iwo Jima, on Feb. 23, 1945. (Joe Rosenthal AP Photo)

An exemplar of a bitter, grueling land battle, Iwo Jima also saw prodigious air and sea power brought to bear as American and Japanese troops clashed over control of the tiny Pacific island. American forces finally captured Iwo Jima — and its two strategic airfields — in late March, 1945. (W. Eugene Smith—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)

Grim-faced American soldiers fighting on Okinawa listen to a radio broadcast of the surrender of Germany and the end of WWII in Europe, May 1945. (U.S. Army)

American infantryman Terry Moore takes cover as incoming Japanese artillery fire explodes nearby during the fight to take Okinawa, May 1945. (W. Eugene Smith The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images)

Okinawa, Ryukyu Islands April 1945. American Marines advance towards smoke in the distance which marks the front lines of combat between US and Japanese forces. (J. R. Eyerman The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images)

Julich, Germany February 1945. Two US Ninth Army infantrymen under intense machine gun & mortar fire, running across pontoon footbridge spanning the Roer River as body of American soldier lies sprawled before them during WWII. (George Silk The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images)

Allies Drive For The Rhine. February 1945. US 9th Infantry soldiers running for cover past the body of an American GI killed in the fierce fighting to take the towns along the Roer river during the Allied drive into Germany.(George Silk The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images)

Allies Drive For The Rhine. February 1945. American soldier escorting a group of German prisoners somewhere along the banks of the Roer river during the Allied drive into Germany.(George Silk The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images)

Germany 1945. American soldiers of 75th Div. marching up the road after crossing the Rhine River on a pontoon bridge during the Allied drive towards Berlin. (William Vandivert The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images)

Oberwallstrasse, in central Berlin, saw some of the most vicious fighting between German and Soviet troops in the spring of 1945. (William Vandivert The LIFE Picture Collecton/Getty Images)

LIFE correspondent Percy Knauth, left, sifts through debris in the shallow trench in the garden of the Reich Chancellery where, Knauth was told, the bodies of Hitler and Eva Braun were burned after their suicides. (William Vandivert Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)

At the Reichstag, evidence of a practice common throughout the centuries: soldiers scrawling graffiti to honor fallen comrades, insult the vanquished or simply announce, I was here. I survived. Berlin, 1945. .(William Vandivert Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)

An image almost too perfectly symbolic of Berlin in 1945: A crushed globe and a bust of Hitler amid rubble outside the ruined Reich Chancellery. .(William Vandivert Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)

Russian soldiers and a civilian struggle to move a large bronze Nazi Party eagle that once loomed over a doorway of the Reich Chancellery, Berlin, 1945. (William Vandivert The LIFE Picture Collecton/Getty Images)

Berlin 1945, July 1945. Ruins of the Reichstag building showing destruction from Allied bombing and artillery. Note abandoned 88mm anti-aircraft gun in foreground. (William Vandivert The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images)

A gutted trolley car amid Hiroshima ruins, months after America's August 1945 atomic bomb attack on the city. (Bernard Hoffman The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images)

Nagasaki, Sept. 1945. (Bernard Hoffman The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images)

Mother and child in Hiroshima, Japan, December 1945. (Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images)

A photo album, pieces of pottery, a pair of scissors — shards of life strewn on the ground in Nagasaki, 1945.(Bernard Hoffman The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images)

American officers (including neck-craning skeptic William "Bull" Halsey, third fr. left) line deck of battleship USS Missouri (BB-63) while Japanese delegation signs official surrender document, Sept. 2, 1945. (Carl Mydans The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images)

September 2, 1945. Japanese Surrender-Missouri. Gen. Douglas MacArthur signing official surrender of Japan, as Gen. Jonathan Wainwright & British Gen. Arthur E. Percival look on aboard the US battleship USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay. (J. R. Eyerman The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images)

September 2, 1945. Japanese Surrender-Missouri. Japanese delegation, includ. Mamoru Shigemitsu (top hat, cane) & Gen. Yoshijiro Umezu (immediately L of Shigemitsu), face Gen. Douglas MacArthur (at mic) & Allied officers during the official, unconditional surrender of Japan, held aboard the US battleship USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay. (J. R. Eyerman The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images)

Times Square, August 14, 1945 V-J Day. (Alfred Eisenstaedt Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)

Celebrations in Chicago, August 14, 1945 V-J Day (Gordon Coster Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)

Peace at last: V-J Day, Times Square, August 14, 1945. (Alfred Eisenstaedt Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images )

V-J Day, Aug. 14, 1945. Caption from the Aug. 27, 1945, issue of LIFE magazine: "In the middle of New York's Times Square a white-clad girl clutches her purse and skirt as an uninhibited sailor plants his lips squarely on hers." (Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images)

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cast LIFE. The War After D-Day: Deeper Into Hell

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