Western Front (World War II) in the context of "19th Army (Wehrmacht)"

Brigadier General Charles Elwood Yeager (/ˈjeɪɡər/ YAY-gər, February 13, 1923 – December 7, 2020) was a United States Air Force officer, flying ace, and record-setting test pilot who in October 1947 became the first pilot in history confirmed to have exceeded the speed of sound in level flight.

Yeager was raised in Hamlin, West Virginia. His career began in World War II as a private in the United States Army, assigned to the Army Air Forces in 1941. After serving as an aircraft mechanic, in September 1942, he entered enlisted pilot training and upon graduation was promoted to the rank of flight officer (the World War II Army Air Force version of the Army's warrant officer), later achieving most of his aerial victories as a P-51 Mustang fighter pilot on the Western Front, where he was credited with shooting down 11.5 enemy aircraft. The half credit is from a second pilot assisting him in a single shootdown. On October 12, 1944, he attained "ace in a day" status, shooting down five enemy aircraft in one mission.

The European theatre of World War II was one of the two main theatres of combat during World War II, taking place from September 1939 to May 1945. The Allied powers (including the United Kingdom, the United States, the Soviet Union and France) fought the Axis powers (including Nazi Germany and the Kingdom of Italy) on both sides of the continent in the Western and Eastern fronts. There was also conflict in the Scandinavian, Mediterranean and Balkan regions. It was an intense conflict that led to at least 39 million deaths and a dramatic change in the balance of power in the continent.

During the 1930s, Adolf Hitler, the leader of Nazi Germany, expanded German territory by annexing all of Austria and the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia in 1938. This was motivated in part by Germany's racial policy that believed the country needed to expand for the pseudoscientific "Aryan race" to survive. They were aided by Italy, another fascist state which was led by Benito Mussolini. World War II started with Germany's invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939, and the Soviet Union, led by Joseph Stalin, joined the invasion later that month. The two nations then partitioned Poland between them.

The M18 Hellcat (officially designated the 76 mm Gun Motor Carriage M18 or M18 GMC) was a tank destroyer used by the United States Army in World War II and the Korean War. Despite being equipped with the same main gun as some variants of the much larger Sherman tank, the M18 attained a much higher top speed of up to 55 mph (89 km/h) by keeping armor to a minimum, and using the innovative Torqmatic automatic transmission.

The M18 Hellcat was the culmination of the development of various prototypes of fast tank destroyers dating back to 1941. Entering production in summer 1943, the M18 first saw combat service in spring 1944. The M18 served primarily in Western Europe, but was also present in smaller numbers in Italy and the Pacific. Production continued until October 1944, with 2,507 built.

France was one of the largest military powers to come under occupation as part of the Western Front in World War II. The Western Front was a military theatre of World War II encompassing Denmark, Norway, Luxembourg, Belgium, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, France, Italy, and Germany. The Western Front was marked by two phases of large-scale combat operations.

The first phase saw the capitulation of the Netherlands, Belgium, and France during May and June 1940 after their defeat in the Low Countries and the northern half of France, and continued into an air war between Germany and Britain that climaxed with the Battle of Britain.

The Romanian Bridgehead (Polish: Przedmoście rumuńskie; Romanian: Capul de pod român) was an area in southeastern Second Polish Republic that is now located in Ukraine. During the invasion of Poland in 1939 at the start of the Second World War, the Polish commander-in-chief, Marshal of Poland Edward Rydz-Śmigły, ordered all Polish troops fighting east of the Vistula (approximately 20 divisions still retaining the ability to co-operate) to withdraw towards Lwów and then to the hills along the borders with the Kingdom of Romania and the Soviet Union on 14 September. After the Soviets attacked on 17 September, Rydz-Śmigły ordered all units to withdraw to Romania and the Kingdom of Hungary, but communications had become disrupted although smaller units crossed outside the major battles.

The plan was a default plan in case it was impossible to defend the Polish borders, and it assumed that the Polish forces would be able to retreat to the area, organise a successful defence until the winter and hold out until the promised French offensive on the Western Front had started. Rydz-Śmigły predicted that the hills, valleys, swamps and the rivers Stryj and Dniester would provide natural lines of defence against the Nazi German advance. The area was also home to many ammunition dumps that were prepared for the third wave of Polish troops, and it was linked by transport to the Romanian port of Constanța, which could be used to resupply the Polish troops.

The British Expeditionary Force (BEF) was the contingent of the British Army sent to France in 1939 after Britain and France declared war on Nazi Germany on 3 September, beginning the Second World War. The BEF existed from 2 September 1939 when the BEF GHQ was formed until 31 May 1940, when GHQ closed down and its troops reverted to the command of Home Forces. During the 1930s, the British government had planned to deter war by abolishing the Ten Year Rule and rearming from the very low level of readiness of the early 1930s. The bulk of the extra money went to the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force but plans were made to re-equip a small number of Army and Territorial Army divisions for service overseas.

General Lord Gort was appointed to the command of the BEF on 3 September 1939 and the BEF began moving to France on 4 September 1939. The BEF assembled along the Belgian–French border. The BEF took their post to the left of the French First Army under the command of the French 1st Army Group (fr:Groupe d'armées n° 1) of the North-Eastern Front (Front du Nord-est). Most of the BEF spent the Phoney War (3 September 1939 to 9 May 1940) digging field defences on the border. When the Battle of France (Fall Gelb) began on 10 May 1940, the BEF constituted 10 per cent of the Allied forces on the Western Front.

Operation Overlord was the codename for the Battle of Normandy, the Allied operation that launched the successful liberation of German-occupied Western Europe during World War II. The operation was launched on 6 June 1944 (D-Day) with the Normandy landings (Operation Neptune). A 1,200-plane airborne assault preceded an amphibious assault involving more than 5,000 vessels. Nearly 160,000 troops crossed the English Channel on 6 June, and more than two million Allied troops were in France by the end of August.

The decision to undertake cross-channel landings in 1944 was made at the Trident Conference in Washington in May 1943. American General Dwight D. Eisenhower was appointed commander of Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force, and British General Bernard Montgomery was named commander of the 21st Army Group, which comprised all the land forces involved in the operation. The Normandy coast in northwestern France was chosen as the site of the landings, with the Americans assigned to land at sectors codenamed Utah and Omaha, the British at Sword and Gold, and the Canadians at Juno. To meet the conditions expected on the Normandy beachhead, special technology was developed, including two artificial ports called Mulberry harbours and an array of specialised tanks nicknamed Hobart's Funnies. In the months leading up to the landings, the Allies conducted Operation Bodyguard, a substantial military deception that used electronic and visual misinformation to mislead the Germans as to the date and location of the main Allied landings. Adolf Hitler placed Field Marshal Erwin Rommel in charge of developing fortifications all along Hitler's proclaimed Atlantic Wall in anticipation of landings in France.

The Western Allied invasion of Germany was coordinated by the Western Allies during the final months of hostilities in the European theatre of World War II. In preparation for the Allied invasion of Germany east of the Rhine, a series of offensive operations were designed to seize and capture its east and west banks: Operation Veritable and Operation Grenade in February 1945, and Operation Lumberjack and Operation Undertone in March 1945; these are considered separate from the main invasion operation. The Allied invasion of Germany east of the Rhine started with the Western Allies crossing the river on 22 March 1945 before fanning out and overrunning all of western Germany from the Baltic in the north to the Alpine passes in the south, where they linked up with troops of the U.S. Fifth Army in Italy. Combined with the capture of Berchtesgaden, any hope of Nazi leadership continuing to wage war from a so-called "national redoubt" or escape through the Alps was crushed, shortly followed by unconditional German surrender on 8 May 1945. This is known as the Central Europe Campaign in United States military histories.

By early 1945, events favored the Allied forces in Europe. On the Western Front, the Allies had been fighting in Germany with campaigns against the Siegfried Line since the Battle of Aachen, the Battle of Metz and the Battle of Hürtgen Forest in late 1944 and by January 1945, had pushed the Germans back to their starting points during the Battle of the Bulge. The failure of this offensive exhausted Germany's strategic reserve, leaving it ill-prepared to resist the final Allied campaigns in Europe. Additional losses in the Rhineland further weakened the German Army, leaving shattered remnants of units to defend the east bank of the Rhine. On 7 March, the Allies seized the intact bridge across the Rhine at Remagen, and established a large bridgehead on the river's east bank. During Operation Lumberjack, Operation Plunder and Operation Undertone, German casualties during February–March 1945 are estimated at 400,000 men, including 280,000 men captured as prisoners of war.