Victory In Europe! And…Victory (eventually) in Asia!

Dead soldiers lie in the snow after the Battle of the Bulge. Both sides lost many but the

Allies won and marched into Germany!

Crowds of people in each French city meet Allied soldiers and hug and cheer them as they free their towns from Hitler’s control.

After the Allies (Americans and British) won at the horrid ‘Battle of the Bulge’, German soldiers ran

out of France and back into Germany!

Soviet Union troops attack Germany’s capital city of Berlin and

raise their flag to show victory!

With the U.S. and Britain moving into Germany from the west and the Soviet ‘red’ army moving in from the east,

Hitler is said to have killed himself. The Soviets took these photos but the body was never viewed by the U.S.

On May 8, 1845, Germany unconditionally surrendered to the Allied side and the War in

Europe was over!

Newspapers proclaimed the victory in Europe from New York to London to Paris!

This British newspaper tells citizens to REJOICE!

And they do! The V-E celebration was a HUGE party in Europe!

But for the United States, they had yet one more country to do battle

with…

Raising the U.S. flag on the Island of Iwo Jima

In spring of 1945, American navy and marines attacked the Japanese islands of Iwo Jima and Okinawa in the Pacific

Ocean. We were closer to Japan but wow- 50,000 American men were killed in the fighting!

Do we continue on to Japan and lose another million men? Or do we unleash the biggest weapon yet on an unsuspecting Japanese army?

What did we do? President Harry Truman who took over when

Roosevelt died-had to help make this hard, horrible decision. Them or us?

What would you do?

The world’s 1st atomic bomb was dropped by the U.S. on Hiroshima,

Japan in 1945.

The plane that dropped the Atomic Bomb

A brother and sister seek comfort in Nagasaki

Hiroshima today at the Peace Garden