(explosions) (narrator) May 1944.

It's been four long and harrowing years since the retreat of British forces from Dunkirk in France.

World War II extends across the globe.

(dramatic music) Allied forces slowly advance north through Italy and the Soviet Red Army storms west, pushing German forces back towards their borders.

Allied leaders are in the final stages of planning the long-awaited opening of the second front: D-Day.

♪ (man) You have some one million American soldiers and another one million British and Canadian soldiers gathering on the southern coast of England readying to make the 100-mile voyage to the Normandy beaches.

(man) Prior to D-Day, Nazi propaganda had told the German people and the military that this is going to be the decisive battle of the war.

(narrator) And it was.

The 100 days surrounding the invasion on the beaches of Normandy would mark the beginning of the end of the German occupation of Western Europe.

♪ (shouting) (Martin Luther King, Jr.) No man is free... (Winston Churchill) We shall fight on the beaches.

...if he fears death.

(narrator) A hundred days can change everything from major military upsets... (George H. W. Bush) Iraq's army is defeated.

(narrator) ...and global crisis... (Winston Churchill) We shall never surrender!

(narrator) ...to moments of hope.

(Ronald Reagan) Tear down this wall!

(narrator) These 100 days provide a window into the events that defined modern history.

(tense music) May 23rd, 1944.

The Second World War is at a crossroads.

In the Pacific, the Allies are seeing success in the campaign against the might of Japan.

(man) In the Southwest Pacific, forces led by General Douglas MacArthur were mopping up resistance by the Japanese on the northern coast of New Guinea, and then Douglas MacArthur planned to retake the Philippines later on in the fall of 1944.

(narrator) Meanwhile, the bulk of the German Army is locked in combat against Soviet forces on the Eastern Front.

A struggle that Soviet leader Joseph Stalin has long campaigned the Western Allies to offer more direct assistance with.

(man) And it was imperative from the Allied perspective to keep the Soviet Union in the war.

They couldn't afford to let the Soviet Union collapse.

There could be no guarantees that Hitler's forces wouldn't prevail in the Soviet Union.

(narrator) To aid their Soviet partners, British and American forces have been focusing their efforts in the Mediterranean theater before attempting any assault against the German occupied areas of Northwest Europe.

(Ian) The British view was that if you landed on mainland Italy, this would seriously weaken the Germans.

It would drain German strength away from Western Europe, which was a prerequisite for the eventual cross-channel invasion.

(narrator) Following on from successful operations in North Africa and Sicily in 1943, the momentum against the Axis has slowed.

(soft music) On the Italian front, the Battle of Anzio has been at a standstill for more than two months.

(clock ticking) The static lines disrupted only by brief clashes, sporadic artillery fire, and nighttime raids.

♪ At 5:45 A.M., a barrage of Allied fire launches Operation Buffalo, and the breakout from the Anzio beachhead.

The U.S. 1st Armored Division ends the stalemate, driving toward the city of Cisterna.

♪ The city is captured within two days.

♪ Against the orders of his superiors, U.S.

Lieutenant General Clark then abandons the pursuit of the German 10th Army in the north.

♪ He could have driven directly across the boot of Italy to the Adriatic Sea and cut off all the German forces.

Hundreds of thousands of German soldiers retreating northward.

(somber music) ♪ Instead, he was ambitious, he loved publicity.

Instead, he sent his soldiers west towards Rome, because he wanted to liberate Rome as an American officer.

(narrator) But thoughts of liberating Rome will soon be overshadowed by a much greater offensive: Operation Overlord.

(man) Operation Overlord is the plan for the invasion of Europe.

The initial parts of this go all the way back to Dunkirk.

Once the British are defeated, they go across the English Channel.

There's a guy named Winston Churchill, and he almost immediately starts thinking about the plan for the reinvasion of Europe.

(narrator) The success of Operation Overlord is imperative to weakening Nazi Germany's grip on Northwest Europe and will deny them the resources and manpower of those occupied territories.

(tense music) ♪ May 24th, 1944.

♪ The preliminary operations for an Allied invasion are well underway.

Operation Bodyguard involves numerous strategies designed to trick the German high command on the timing and location of the invasion.

The multilayered Deception Program came in several forms.

The first of these was the double-cross system in which German spies in Britain were rounded up by British security service MI5 and were either executed or were turned to work against Germany.

(narrator) Part of Operation Bodyguard is Operation Fortitude, a phantom army deployed to convince the Germans the attack will occur at Pas-de-Calais.

(David) Operation Fortitude created a fanciful, a fake, a decoy army that was stationed near the White Cliffs of Dover in England and in Kent.

They used inflatable tanks, inflatable aircraft, inflatable amphibious assault craft, and set up tents all over that area of England.

(narrator) Allied leaders know from previous experience, that choosing the right location for the invasion and avoiding early detection will be key to the success of Operation Overlord.

(atmospheric music) August 1942.

In the early hours of August 19th, an assault force of primarily Canadian troops approach the port of Dieppe on the French Coast.

♪ (Adrian R. Lewis) The Dieppe amphibious raid conducted by the British and Canadians, and the British view is considered sort of a dress rehearsal for the Normandy invasion.

In terms of refining their doctrine, in terms of thinking how we need to do this.

(narrator) These efforts proved fatal.

(dramatic music) Allied ships encountered a small German convoy on approach, removing the element of surprise.

After landing on the beaches, the troops faced nine hours of intense fighting before they were forced to withdraw.

Some 6,100 infantry landed that day alongside air and sea support.

Most never returned to the battlefield, wounded or taken prisoner.

More than 1,000 Allied lives were lost.

The raid on Dieppe was a devastating lesson for Allied commanders, and the main takeaway was that nothing mattered more than choosing the right landing ground.

(man) So there was this effort over several years starting full time in 1942, but based on intelligence that had been gathered in the years and months beforehand to determine where the landings could take place, what the best strategic location for them was, but also what the best practical location.

(tense music) ♪ (narrator) May 1944.

Four possible landing sites are proposed.

Brittany, the Cotentin Peninsula, Pas-de-Calais, and the beaches of Normandy.

Brittany and the Cotentin Peninsula would expose the Allies to swift German counter-attack.

The shortest distance across the Channel to England, the port city of Calais, is seen as the ideal target.

But it is also the most heavily fortified location.

(man) The Pas-de-Calais, i.e.

the area closest to Britain or Normandy was the majority of the German generals, particularly Rommel, believed that the Allies would attack at the Pas-de-Calais.

Hitler himself always said, "We must also have a look at Normandy where there is also an opportunity, the Allies would land there."

(narrator) Normandy was chosen for its weaker defenses and long stretches of beaches.

But it was essential that the decision be kept secret.

(soft music) (James) Planning had to be done in great secrecy so that the Germans never knew where the Allies were going to come ashore until they actually did.

(tense music) ♪ (narrator) May 31st.

♪ The first troops prepare to board ships bound for Normandy.

Allied troops from more than 12 countries are deployed to camps along the south coast of England.

♪ They are briefed on their duties for D-Day, but few know the details of where the landings will take place.

The Supreme Allied Commander in Northwest Europe, U.S. General Dwight Eisenhower, oversees planning of the operation.

Appointed by President Roosevelt, Eisenhower had led the Allies to victory in the 1942 invasion of French North Africa, and later in the invasion of Sicily.

But Overlord is unlike any previous military assault.

Below Eisenhower, Allied ground forces are under the control of British Commander-in-Chief Montgomery.

Montgomery had seen successes in North Africa and Italy.

♪ Eisenhower and Montgomery lay the final plans at Southwick House alongside other commanders, Air Chief Marshal Tedder and Admiral Ramsay.

Ramsay heads Operation Neptune, the naval component of the invasion.

(James) Ramsay had made his name supervising in the evacuation from Dunkirk, but then he'd gone on to be the planner and really the leader of a number of very successful amphibious operations in the Mediterranean.

He was also very good at working with the army.

He understood that the army had to decide what it needed to do on land before the navy could decide how it could best get the army onto the land and support it there.

♪ There were many challenges about getting sufficient troops ashore, across beaches in a very difficult environment in sufficient numbers with sufficient armed strength to protect against a German counter-offensive.

(narrator) By 1944, Germany's military strength has been weakened by constant battle.

(ominous music) (Peter) In summer 1944, Germany had fought almost five years in the war.

This meant the Germans had to suffer a lot of casualties, particularly in the war against the Soviet Union.

The Germans lost between 1941 and '44 about 2,000 men per day permanently.

♪ (man) By May 1944, Germans were in deep, deep military trouble.

The Battle of Stalingrad in the beginning of 1943 was a major turning point.

The whole army, the 6th Army, was basically annihilated, and the Germans then began a retreat that continued in Eastern Europe all the way until the end of the war.

(Adrian Gilbert) The state of the German Army in the west during the spring of 1944 could be called mixed at best.

The front line troops were very poor quality.

(narrator) Despite these weaknesses, the Allies will need to launch a swift and decisive invasion to gain a foothold in mainland Europe.

♪ (soft music) June 1st.

In the evening, the first lines of a poem by Paul Verlaine are broadcast from the BBC in London to Nazi occupied France.

♪ (speaking in French) "A sighing begins in the violins of the autumn song."

A coded message, it alerted the Resistance that the invasion would start within two weeks.

♪ On the 5th, the next three lines were broadcast, meaning that the invasion would occur within 48 hours.

♪ The Germans heard and understood the messages.

They had been described by a Resistance member under torture.

But the Germans did not react decisively.

♪ Alongside intelligence messages, the speeches of General de Gaulle are transmitted over the BBC, seeking to rally French support to the Allies.

But de Gaulle's connection to the French people is fractured by difficult life in German occupied France.

(man) He has very little knowledge of how he's going to be greeted by the French when he gets back there, and he has this very one-way relationship with the French, because he's broadcasted them over the BBC.

(solemn music) (narrator) Although the Allies have learned from earlier failures, the seaborne D-Day landings will be a massive feat.

They will first face resistance from the German Navy.

(James) The Germans did have a destroyer force based on the French Coast, and what was more critical and subject of much more retention from the Allies for the purposes of the threat were the E-boat, their motor torpedo boat forces that were distributed around the coast, and of course, the very powerful U-boat submarine force, which again was very largely French based and therefore in a good position to interfere with the operation.

(narrator) The Navy is not the only defense Germany has been readying for a potential Allied invasion.

(dramatic music) March 23rd, 1942.

Two years earlier, Hitler issued Führer Directive #40 ordering the construction of the Atlantic Wall, a continuous, impregnable fortification from Norway to Spain.

♪ Built mainly by prisoners of war, the wall was an amalgam of defenses stretching over 5,000 kilometers.

(David) There would be giant fortifications, gun emplacements, casemates, barbed wire, mines, all sorts of fortifications.

The problem was that the Germans did not know when and where precisely the Allied invasion would come, therefore they spread themselves very, very thin.

♪ (narrator) When Field Marshal Rommel inspected the Atlantic Wall in late 1943, he was unimpressed.

To prevent the Allies from establishing a foothold at Normandy, Rommel believed their forces must be destroyed in the sea and on the beaches.

But his ordered improvements made little difference.

(Peter) The Atlantic Wall, in many ways, was much more a propaganda tool than an efficient and fully constructed line of fortification.

When the Allied landed in summer 1944, only parts of the Atlantic Wall were complete.

(narrator) Despite having outflanked France's Maginot Line, a similar wall of fixed fortifications along the French-German border just four years ago, Hitler believes this will be enough to hold back any Allied invasion along the Atlantic Coast.

(solemn music) June 1944.

Five German infantry divisions, including one veteran formation, the 352nd Infantry Division, recently arrived near Omaha Beach are stationed at or near the Normandy landing zone.

Prior to D-Day, Nazi propaganda had told the German people and the military that this is going to be the decisive battle of the war.

(explosions) ♪ Germany had suffered a lot of defeats on the Eastern Front, but they still hoped, if they ward off an Allied invasion in Western Europe, they could redeploy their forces and then turn it against the Soviet Union again.

(narrator) Allied success will require large numbers of troops to be deployed at great speed on the beaches of Normandy.

(James) The invasion of Normandy meant that five divisions, which were upwards of 18,000 to 20,000 men in each division, had to be put ashore on one day.

In addition, there were two airborne divisions, which were somewhat smaller in numbers.

Still at least 10,000 men in each had to be dropped by parachute onto the Normandy Coast.

That meant that there are nearly 160,000 people had to be got ashore within about a 24-hour period.

♪ (tense music) (narrator) June 3rd.

North along the French Coast, Pas-de-Calais is battered by more than 5,000 tons of ammunition over just 36 hours.

♪ The bombings will mislead German command into believing this will be the site of the invasion.

(rapid gunfire) (James) The Allied decoy effort in relation to the Pas-de-Calais was very sophisticated, very successful.

They did not actually stage a landing in the Pas-de-Calais, but they did deploy a decoy force C to simulate an invasion force.

General Patton was placed in command of this dummy army with the idea that his name was already so well-known, the Germans would immediately associate it with the key offensive effort.

(narrator) On the same day, across Europe, U.S. troops reached the outskirts of the Eternal City, Rome.

They have faced strong German resistance and difficult terrain.

But by June 3rd, German troops have retreated to the Gothic Line, the last major line of defense along the summits of the Northern Apennine Mountains.

♪ (soft music) (waves crashing) ♪ June 4th.

Just one day before the planned landings, Royal Air Force Meteorologist Group Captain Stagg and his team forecast poor visibility and strong winds.

The invasion will require very precise conditions to guarantee success: a full moon, little cloud, and a low tide to expose the hidden shoreline defenses.

♪ Stagg recommends that D-Day be delayed until June 6th when there will be a brief window of improved conditions.

In a story that will go down as the most important weather report in history, Eisenhower agrees to the delay.

Allied deceptive strategies are proving effective.

Rommel has returned to Germany to celebrate his wife's birthday.

His gift, a pair of Parisian shoes.

Assuming the invaders will launch at high tide, when the distance across the beach will be shortest, Rommel believes the assault will not take place until mid-June.

(dramatic music) ♪ June 5th.

Rome is officially in Allied hands.

U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt addresses the American people over radio in a fireside chat.

(Franklin D. Roosevelt) The first of the Axis capitals is now in our hands.

One up and two to go.

And now it'll be a source of deep satisfaction.

(Ian) Rome was relinquished, but the Germans were able to fall back on more defensive lines further north in Italy.

There would be still more hard fighting to come as the Allies continued their advance northwards.

(narrator) In England, junior officers opened their sealed orders that reveal the long-held secret location of the landing.

Thousands of ships cross the Channel in Operation Neptune, the naval phase of the landings.

(James) The invasion fleet on D-Day consisted of about 2,700 vessels, which did not include the nearly 1,900 small landing craft, which could be deployed from many of the larger vessels.

(narrator) The Normandy assault will hit five beaches.

U.S. troops will land at the western beaches, Utah and Omaha, British forces at the center beachhead, Gold, and the easternmost, Sword.

The Canadians will land on Juno.

♪ (suspenseful music) ♪ June 6th, 1944, D-Day.

Under the cover of nightfall, more than 18,000 American and British paratroopers are dropped behind enemy lines.

(engines whirring) As the sun rises, Allied ships positioned along the coast begin shelling German defenses.

♪ Just 40 minutes later, the first assault waves approach the American landing sites Omaha and Utah Beach.

♪ (David) At Utah Beach, which is the farthest west among the five beaches, the currents of the English Channel drove the landing craft hundreds of yards off course.

They landed hundreds of yards from where they were supposed to land.

♪ (narrator) Twenty-one thousand infantrymen eventually land on Utah with only 200 casualties.

They advance six kilometers on the first day.

(Adrian Gilbert) The only real problems experienced by the Allies was on Omaha Beach, which is one of the objectives of the U.S. Army.

There were various problems in getting the men out of their amphibious craft onto the beaches themselves.

(David) There are instances of some of the first landing craft in the first wave that suffered 90 to 95% casualties, so each one of those landing craft could carry about 30 men, so you figure they drop the ramp, the men run onto the beach, and 27 or 28 of them are immediately killed or wounded.

(James) From the perspective of a soldier going ashore at one of the beaches, the view was different from beach to beach, but all of them had to consider the fact of the German booby traps and obstructions.

(narrator) Facing little German resistance, 20,000 British troops launch on the center site, Gold Beach.

♪ Another 29,000 land on Sword Beach.

♪ Twenty-one thousand Canadian troops capture Juno and progress inland.

♪ (David) Over on the British and Canadian Beaches, Sword, Gold, and Juno, the British did not have as many problems as the Americans did.

They suffered not thousands of casualties, but just a few hundred casualties.

(narrator) Landing at the easternmost beach of Sword, the British 3rd Division's key objective for D-Day is the capture of Caen.

But it will be many weeks before the city is in Allied hands.

To support a seaborne invasion of this scale, the Allies had to overcome a logistical challenge of unprecedented magnitude.

(James) There were no ports of any size in the immediate landing area, but more to the point, the Germans were well aware of the importance of having ports available to any Allied invasion, so they had fortified every port on the French Coast as much as they could.

(soft music) (narrator) On D-Day, enormous concrete and steel harbors are transported across the Channel in pieces.

The Mulberry harbors were the unofficial harbors constructed to achieve a sufficient supply rate.

(Adrian R. Lewis) You need logistics, supplies, tons of it to feed a division, particularly a division that's in combat.

Beans, bullets, ammunition, all the things that a division will go through and the fuel for these tanks.

(narrator) An ingenious feat of British engineering, the Mulberry harbors allow thousands of vehicles and millions of men to come ashore in the weeks ahead.

(dramatic music) ♪ Hitler is sleeping when his generals arrive at his Alpine residence, Berghof, to report the attack.

(Adrian Gilbert) So it was only later in the day that Hitler was aware that the invasion had actually taken place.

And even still, Hitler was unsure that the attack on Normandy was, indeed, the main invasion.

(narrator) Upon learning of the invasion, Rommel quickly returns from Germany to France.

(David) The tactical commander was Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, and he was not able to move forces around either the way he wanted because of lack of communications.

(Adrian R. Lewis) The Germans had a panzer reserve that they could have started moving immediately, but that didn't happen.

Some of the failures on the German part helped the British and the Americans out significantly during the early days of the Normandy invasion.

(narrator) The largest seaborne invasion in history and a feat performed after years of planning and preparation, the Normandy landings mark the beginning of a long fight to end the occupation of France and overturn German power in Western Europe.

♪ (Adrian Gilbert) Although the Allies scored an extraordinary victory in the first day of the D-Day landings, they found the subsequent fighting much harder.

The Germans were better prepared, they had recovered from the shock and surprise of the first landings, and they mounted a spirited defense of the whole Normandy region.

(ominous music) ♪ (narrator) The British Army launched Operation Perch to encircle Caen.

Positioned at an important junction of roads and railways, the city's capture will aid in supply transport and communication across the region.

But delays at the beaches allow the Germans to build up reinforcements.

♪ (David) Operation Perch can be considered, on one level, an Allied failure.

If you look more at the strategic level, this Operation Perch was actually something of a victory, something of a success.

Field Marshal Erwin Rommel needed to commit many of his tank units to defend Caen, which means he wasn't able to use them elsewhere in the theater of operations.

♪ (narrator) June 12th.

(gunshots) U.S. forces find early success to the west of Caen in Carentan, a vital link between the U.S. beachheads.

♪ By end of day, Carentan is in Allied hands.

The victory joins the five Allied beachheads and establishes a continuous front.

♪ (tense music) June 17th.

Hitler summons Field Marshal Rommel and his superior, Commander-in-Chief in the west, Rundstedt, to a secret meeting.

♪ After costly fighting in the days following the landings, Hitler has finally agreed to activating further panzer reserves.

Rundstedt and Rommel advise the Führer that the Allies cannot be turned back.

They see no choice but for the German troops to retreat.

But Hitler refuses.

♪ (Richard Evans) The differences of opinion in the German leadership were essentially between Hitler, who said, "No retreat, keep fighting every inch of the ground.

Don't give way," and the generals who, on the basis of-- like they'd been trained to do, according to the military doctrine, kept on saying, "Look, you've got to withdraw to more defensible positions," and were just accused by Hitler of cowardice.

(dramatic music) ♪ (waves crashing) (narrator) June 19th.

A violent storm hits the Normandy Coast, the worst in 40 years.

The American harbor at Omaha Beach is destroyed and the British harbor is badly damaged.

This causes critical delays in the movement of troops and equipment.

(soft music) ♪ (James) So the effort on the beaches had to continue well into September, until sufficient ports had not only been captured, but had been cleared of booby traps and the demolitions had been undone so that merchant ships could get alongside piers and unload quickly.

(dramatic music) (explosions) (gunshots) (narrator) June 22nd, on the Eastern Front, the Red Army launches its major offensive, Operation Bagration.

♪ (Peter) In summer 1944, the Germans suffer three major defeats.

First, in Normandy, against the Allies.

Second, in Italy, also against the Allies.

And finally, on the Eastern Front on the 22nd of June.

(David) The Soviet Army hit the Germans with 2.5 million soldiers along a 1,000-mile front.

(explosions) ♪ And over that two-month period, the Soviets inflicted some 500,000 casualties on the Germans and essentially broke the German Resistance.

♪ (narrator) The aim is to destroy German Army Group Center in Byelorussia, recapture Soviet territory, and assert political power in the region.

Within one week, the German front lines are in tatters.

♪ (Richard Evans) Huge numbers of well-equipped Soviet forces were pushing relentlessly across Eastern Europe and getting close to the borders of Germany itself.

Germany was now, from the summer of 1944, fighting on two fronts.

(narrator) The Germans have underestimated the Soviet strength, which will result in huge manpower and material losses they will never recover from.

♪ June 26th.

Meanwhile, the British and American-led operations are making steady if somewhat less decisive progress.

After the delay caused by storms, a large scale offensive to capture Caen, Operation Epsom, is launched.

The four-day offensive is costly on both sides and results in a stalemate.

(ominous music) July 2nd.

The gradual Allied advance escalates frictions amongst Nazi command.

Field Marshal Rundstedt struggles to convince Hitler of the harsh reality.

The Führer refuses to consider a retreat and Rundstedt is forced to retire.

General von Kluge replaces him as Commander-in-Chief of the west.

Soon, Kluge will also encourage Hitler to retreat.

(soft music) ♪ July 17th.

Rommel and his officers are returning to La Roche-Guyon after inspecting forces on the front lines.

Their car is attacked by enemy fire, hitting a tree.

Rommel is thrown from the vehicle, suffering serious head injuries and is knocked unconscious.

♪ (suspenseful music) July 20th.

Within Germany, there is a growing fear that defeat at the hands of the Allies is inevitable.

A group of military and civilian conspirators decide to take extreme measures in an attempt to bring about a quick end to the war.

An army officer named Stauffenberg and members of the general staff conduct Operation Valkyrie at the Wolfsschanze in East Prussia, a plot to assassinate Hitler.

(Richard Evans) Colonel von Stauffenberg is a war hero and had fought brilliantly for the Nazis and courageously planted a bomb in Hitler's eastern headquarters.

♪ And it went off, but unfortunately, Hitler was protected by a heavy wooden table.

(narrator) Stauffenberg and others are executed the following day in an impromptu court-martial.

Thousands are arrested by the Gestapo.

The still injured Rommel is implicated in the plot.

(shouting in German) (David) Field Marshal Erwin Rommel was among the senior officers caught in this dragnet.

He was not directly involved in the assassination plot, but he did know about it.

Adolf Hitler gave him the option of either standing a public trial or committing suicide, and Erwin Rommel chose to commit suicide.

(tense music) (Richard Evans) What effect did this have on the German people?

On the whole, faith in Hitler was still undimmed, so there was a sense of relief amongst the German people that the plot had been foiled and that they could carry on.

(solemn music) (narrator) July 25th.

More than a million Allied troops occupy a narrow bridge head.

A British attack on the southern part of Caen puts immense pressure on German forces and draws attention from the western flank of the Normandy beachhead where the first U.S. Army opened a major offensive, Operation Cobra.

♪ (David) And the spearhead of Operation Cobra is General George S. Patton.

He's been moved from being the commander of that fictitious army in England to France where he takes over a full United States Army with several divisions.

(Adrian Gilbert) The Americans broke out to the beachhead around Saint-Lô and began a rapid advance into Central France.

Although the Germans continued fighting on in a spirited fashion, they were simply overwhelmed by superior Allied might.

(narrator) After capturing much of Caen, British and Canadian forces advance towards Falaise.

Under Patton, the newly recommissioned 3rd Army swings around north to link up with the British, aiming to encircle some 100,000 Germans.

(David) Thirty-five thousand Germans escape, but then more than 50,000 Germans were either killed or captured, and that pocket of resistance is known as the Falaise pocket.

(narrator) The remnants of the German 7th Army and 5th Panzer Army retreat to the Seine River.

(pensive music) ♪ August 15th.

The Allies aim to increase the pressure.

Another amphibious landing, Operation Dragoon, is launched in Southern France.

(David) As the Allies were racing towards Paris combined American and French forces landed on the French Coast in the Mediterranean and began to drive northward.

♪ (narrator) Alongside Overlord, Operation Dragoon creates a pincer move, clamping down on the Germans in France.

♪ Some within the Allied command believe Dragoon to be a mistake that will pull vital resources away from the Italian front and Overlord.

It is later blamed for a loss of momentum, which allows Stalin to strengthen the Soviet grip on Eastern Europe and the Balkans, which has repercussions long after the war has ended.

(James) Churchill himself had tried to intervene to stop Dragoon and use what resources were available in the north to conduct further landings in Northern France, but he was overruled.

♪ (soft music) ♪ (narrator) August 19th.

As the Allies close in on Paris, French resistance intensifies in a bid to end German occupation of the city.

♪ The French forces of the interior stage an uprising against the German garrison.

Posters are plastered through the streets calling on citizens to mobilize.

Urban guerilla fighters dart across the deserted Paris streets searching for the enemy.

(Adrian Gilbert) The French Resistance comprised many conflicting groups, but they banded together to try and take control of the city before the Allies arrived at the end of August.

♪ (Richard Vinen) Eisenhower, I think, has a famous phrase that the French Resistance amounted to the equivalent of 15 divisions.

Now, I think that's Eisenhower being nice.

A lot of what the French forces do in the summer of 1944 is symbolic.

(narrator) On the Eastern Front, the Red Army summer offensive ends on August 19th.

It has dealt a devastating blow to Nazi Germany.

Soviet forces are on the banks of the Vistula with Berlin almost in reach.

(dramatic music) August 25th.

Hitler sends orders to General Choltitz, Commander of the German garrison in Paris, demanding the immediate destruction of the city.

(Adrian Gilbert) But fortunately, he disobeyed the order and ordered his troops out of the city as quickly as possible.

As a result, the city was essentially left unguarded, and this allowed the Allies to arrive without incurring any casualties or damage.

(narrator) Under General Eisenhower's direction, the French 2nd Armored Division entered the city on the night of August 24th.

The following morning, Choltitz surrenders to Allied troops.

(Richard Vinen) It's very sort of psychologically important that Paris should be liberated by French forces.

Now, in some senses, that's true in that the forces on the ground and streets of Paris are mainly French.

But clearly what has made the Germans leave Paris is the arriving, particularly, American forces.

(distant cheering) (orchestral music) ♪ (narrator) Parisians are ecstatic and take to the streets en masse.

Although the city did not suffer the destruction inflicted on many other European capitals, Parisians have experienced food shortages, surges in disease, and threats to freedom and life.

♪ August 26th.

After laying a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, de Gaulle takes a triumphant walk down the Champs-Élysées.

The celebration is interrupted by sniper fire.

Civilians quickly disperse, running for cover.

♪ (rapid gunfire) But the French leader continues his journey toward Notre Dame.

♪ August 30th.

Day 100.

Twelve weeks after the landing on the beaches, the Battle of Normandy has been won.

More than 200,000 German troops retreat across the River Seine.

The German withdrawal represents the crumbling state of Hitler's Fortress Europe.

After years of planning, the D-Day landings were a success.

The Allies faced immense challenges, but their strategies and superior equipment made them unstoppable.

(David) The 100 days surrounding the D-Day invasion and the Allied breakout was one beginning of the end for Nazi Germany.

(Adrian R. Lewis) So now you have the Russians coming in on the Eastern Front and then the Americans and the British coming in on the Western Front to complete the destruction of Nazi Germany.

So in terms of significance, it is the most important operation for the British and the Americans in World War II.

♪ (Adrian Gilbert) Not only had the Allies conducted a difficult amphibious operation against major opposition, they had defeated the German Army in the field in the ensuing days.

This was a major triumph.

(Peter) It means that large parts of Europe will not fall into Soviet hands, but that the democratic countries, Britain and the United States, will liberate large parts of Europe.

(distant cheering) (pensive music) ♪ (explosions) ♪ (narrator) These 100 days changed the tide of World War II and marked the beginning of the end for Nazi Germany.

The D-Day landings fulfilled a long-standing promise to return to France's shores following the devastating evacuation from Dunkirk in 1940.

♪ After complex planning and negotiations amongst the Allied commanders, the Germans have been driven from French soil.

♪ In the following weeks, the Führer would grasp for shreds of battle triumph, but Germany's military could not recover after such devastating defeats in the east and west.

♪ Although the global war would continue for another year, Allied victory was now inevitable.

♪ (dramatic music) ♪ (bright music)