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.
On D-Day, the Allies established their beachheads, but they failed to reach any of their key objectives. The beaches weren't linked up; Caen remained in German hands. Meanwhile, Panzer forces were approaching, determined to push the invader into the sea. For the next two months, the two armies would face each other in the fields and villages of Normandy, fighting a battle of attrition.
Hitler orders a massive counter-attack in an attempt to cut the Allies in two. But British and Canadian forces press in on Germans 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 victorious battle through mud, minefields and canals to secure the critical shipping supply route to the Allied troops waiting in Antwerp. In contrast, the British attempt to break through to the Rhine at 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 US 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 undertakes 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 Soviet troops at Torgau and the war reaches its endgame with the Soviet invasion of Berlin.
