June 6, 1944, the biggest seaborne invasion in history. Allied soldiers from Britain, the US and Canada land on five Normandy beaches – Gold, Sword, Utah, Omaha and Juno. Encountering mines, machine gun fire, artillery and bunkers, Episode 1 tells the heroic story of the soldiers who led the assault from the shoreline to the bluffs.
Allied soldiers push on to take their first objective, the city of Caen. They're met by formidable Panzer forces determined to push the Allies back into the sea. For the next two months, a bloody battle of attrition is wage in the fields and villages of Normandy.
Hitler orders a massive counter-attack in an attempt to cut the Allies in two. But British and Canadian forces press in on German forces from the North while American troops close in from the South - creating what is known as the Falaise Pocket. The German army attempts to flee from a gap in the pocket, but they are bombed by Typhoons and finally routed from Normandy.
Seizing the Scheldt Estuary fell to the Canadians who fought a bloody but victorious battle through mud, minefields and canals to secure the critical shipping supply rout to the Allied troops waiting in Antwerp. In contrast, the British attempt to break through the Rhine and Arnhem is a tragic failure and becomes known as "the bridge too far".
In the dead of one of the coldest winters on record, under-armed and under-prepared U. S. infantry divisions find themselves fighting off the best of the German army in the inaccessible hill and forest country of the Ardennes.
With only the Rhine River between the Allies and Hitler, each of the Allied Armies undertake to cross the river in its own way. Soldiers tell the amazing story of capturing the Ludendorff Bridge in the town of Remagen. Once across the Rhine, the Allies meet the Russian troops at Elbe and the war reaches its endgame with the Russian siege of Berlin.
