There the division known as “Hell on Wheels” fought the Germans near Avranches and then crossed through France as part of the Third Army before reaching Germany in September 1944. On June 9, 1944, the 2 nd Armored Division landed on Omaha Beach in the invasion of the Normandy. After nine months the division moved on to Sicily in July of 1943. military armored divisions serving in North Africa when they landed at Casablanca on November 8, 1942. Parts of the division were among the first U.S. The 2 nd Armored Division was created in July 1940 under the command of then Colonel George S.

(Still from Universal News)įury’s fictionalized account of events at the end of the war focus on a small platoon within the 2 nd Armored Division. Allied tanks in the German city of Koblenz. The new feature film, Fury, depicts the last month of the war in these startlingly real terms. The men fighting in Germany were either battle-hardened or green recruits, but all of them were sleepless and racing to end the war at breakneck speed. In spite of Allied superiority in weaponry, divisions often had to fight in close quarters with hand-to-hand combat. Limited maneuverability in small German towns resulted in heavy losses. The culmination of the war in Europe brought with it the most mechanized force the planet had ever seen with the sheer firepower of the United States military. American troops encountered some of the most tenacious and ruthless fighting of the war and faced the cruelest and vilest of human nature as they liberated concentration camps throughout the region.

Small offensives, cutting supply lines, and rounding up fractured German units was far from the reality of the situation, however. Germany in April 1945 is often depicted as the Allies capturing scattered Axis soldiers and liberating citizens from the clutches of the Third Reich. Ten months after the D-Day invasion, Allied forces were sweeping through western Europe.

Criss is the supervisor of the National Archives Motion Picture Preservation Lab.

American tank battles ww2