THE ALLIED FORCES won a stunning victory in Normandy. While the grinding battles for much of June and July 1944 were more akin to trench warfare than the Blitzkrieg of 1940, the long-sought breakout was finally achieved in August.

By Aug. 21, after 77 days of fighting, two German armies were destroyed and it appeared to many that the war might soon be over. Behind the lines, German cities were being relentlessly bombed day and night, with war factories and facilities being hammered. When the much-reduced flow of weapons and equipment did come out of the factories, the Allied bombers’ devastation of the road and rail networks made it difficult to move the materiel to the combat zone. The front was shrinking. The invasion of Normandy allowed for the liberation of France and beyond, while Operation Dragoon, the Allied invasion of southern France, opened a new front in mid-August. Most importantly, the Soviet Red Army continued to roll forward on the Eastern Front.

The German high command, now only loosely led by the despondent and drug-addled Adolf Hitler, still hoped for a miracle to win the war: the introduction of super weapons, such as new U-boats and jet fighters; or the long-shot hope that terror weapons like the V-1 and V-2 rockets would cause enough despair among the British to splinter the Allied unity. That was unlikely as the British people had long proven that they, as the popular phrase suggested, “could take it.”

By the end of August, with Paris liberated, Germany seemed on the verge of defeat. And yet the Wehrmacht (Germany’s army) had an amazing ability to regroup from mauling defeat, to reconstitute units under new leaders, and to keep fighting. Driven, determined and indoctrinated, the German soldier proved willing to fight on.

And while the victory in Normandy was critical, tens of thousands of Germans had escaped from the Falaise Pocket, even as much of their heavy weapons and vehicles were left behind or wrecked by the dominating air power of rocket-firing Hawker Typhoons, light bombers and fighter planes. Despite having the advantage in men and materiel, some 206,000 Allied soldiers were killed or wounded, but almost double that number of Germans—400,000—were killed or captured. Canada’s role in Normandy was significant, and so too was the cost: 18,444 Canadians were casualties, with more than 5,000 killed.

CANADIANS played a key role in liberating Europe, from Juno Beach to Caen and the Falaise Gap, through northern France, across Belgium and the Netherlands, and on into Germany. They fought alongside British, Americans, French and other Allied troops, along with partisans of various stripes, liberating towns, villages and toughly defended Channel ports. They crossed rivers, snow-covered forests and flooded fields, their progress sometimes measured in metres, or none at all. Fighter pilots had their backs the whole way, while bomber crews penetrated deep into Germany preparing the way by destroying German factories, roads and railways. For those who survived, the war ended in Dutch street celebrations and German anguish.