The Normandy invasion of June 6, 1944, was so vast in scope — and so punishingly effective in establishing an Allied beachhead on European soil — that people sometimes forget just how long the war lasted, and how brutal it remained, in both Europe and the Pacific afterD-Day. The successes at Omaha, Utah, Juno, Gold and Sword beaches remain, rightly, among the most celebrated military operations in history — but for more than a year following those landings, the fighting went on, and on, and on in some of the war’s most appalling battles and campaigns.
Hundreds of thousands of Allied and Axis troops and untold thousands more civilian men, women and children died before Japan surrendered in September 1945, finally ending the war that for six years had reshaped the globe. This gallery features photographs — some of them iconic, many of them little-known — from Saipan, Bastogne, Iwo Jima, Berlin, Nagasaki: places where the war did not stop when Operation Overlord ended.
Rescue workers help pull victims from ruins of a building hit by a German V-1 "flying bomb," July 1944.Mansell—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty ImagesA grizzled, battle-weary Marine peers over his shoulder during the final days of fighting on Saipan, July 1944.W. Eugene Smith—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty ImagesAmerican Marines in action during the fight for control of Saipan, summer 1944.W. Eugene Smith—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty ImagesMarines tend to wounded comrades while the fighting rages on during the battle to take Saipan from the Japanese, 1944.W. Eugene Smith—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty ImagesSt. Lo, France, summer 1944.Joe Scherschel—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty ImagesSt. Lo, France, summer 1944.Joe Scherschel—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty ImagesA Free French soldier dashes to aid a French resistance fighter taking aim at a German sniper attacking a crowd during a tour by Gen. Charles DeGaulle following the liberation of Paris, August 1944.Ralph Morse—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty ImagesSniper attack, Paris, August 1944.Ralph Morse—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty ImagesA crowd of jubilant French civilians and Allied troops celebrate the end of the war in Europe, Paris, May 8, 1945.Ralph Morse—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty ImagesGrim-faced American soldiers fighting on Okinawa listen to a radio broadcast of the surrender of Germany and the end of WWII in Europe, May 1945.US ArmyCathedral turned into a makeshift hospital during the Allied campaign to retake the Philippines, Dec. 1944.W. Eugene Smith—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty ImagesA nurse tends to wounded soldiers in a makeshift hospital located in a cathedral during the campaign to retake the Philippines, Dec. 1944.W. Eugene Smith—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty ImagesA tired American soldier just back from the front lines near the town of Murrigen during the Battle of the Bulge, December 1944.George Silk—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty ImagesAmerican General Anthony McAuliffe, commander of the 101st Airborne during the Battle of the Bulge. When the Germans demanded the surrender of American troops who were outnumbered and surrounded in the town of Bastogne, McAuliffe replied to the ultimatum with a now-legendary one-word response: "Nuts!” -- which a milder way of saying "F— you." His men withstood several German attacks until they could be relieved by the 4th Armored Division.
US ArmyGerman POWs carry the body of an American soldier killed in the Battle of Bulge, January 1945.George Silk—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty ImagesLace curtain shrouds body of an American soldier awaiting burial in Bastogne cemetery, January 1945.Russ Engel—US ArmyUnited States Marines (foreground) blow up a cave connected to a Japanese blockhouse on Iwo Jima, March 1945.
W. Eugene Smith—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty ImagesU. S. Coast Guardsmen assist a wounded Marine returning from the fight on Iwo Jima, 1945.US Coast GuardCrewmen fight fires on the deck of the USS Saratoga, which was badly damaged and set ablaze after being hit several times by Japanese bomber planes and kamikaze attacks off of Iwo Jima, 1945.US NavyU.S. Marines of the 28th Regiment, 5th Division, raise the American flag atop Mt. Suribachi, Iwo Jima, on Feb. 23, 1945. Joe Rosenthal—AP PhotoOberwallstrasse, in central Berlin, saw some of the most vicious fighting between German and Soviet troops in the spring of 1945.William Vandivert—The LIFE Picture Collecton/Getty ImagesRussian soldiers and a civilian struggle to move a large bronze Nazi Party eagle that once loomed over a doorway of the Reich Chancellery, Berlin, 1945.
William Vandivert—The LIFE Picture Collecton/Getty ImagesAmerican infantryman Terry Moore takes cover as incoming Japanese artillery fire explodes nearby during the fight to take Okinawa, May 1945.W. Eugene Smith—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty ImagesU.S. Marines wait to pick off enemies who flee cave after it was attacked with an explosive charge during the vicious fight for control of Okinawa, 1945.US Marine CorpsA gutted trolley car amid Hiroshima ruins, months after America's August 1945 atomic bomb attack on the city.Bernard Hoffman—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty ImagesNagasaki, September, 1945.Bernard Hoffman—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty ImagesMother and child in Hiroshima, Japan, December 1945.Alfred Eisenstaedt—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty ImagesA photo album, pieces of pottery, a pair of scissors — shards of life strewn on the ground in Nagasaki, 1945.Bernard Hoffman—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty ImagesAmerican officers (including neck-craning skeptic William "Bull" Halsey, third fr. left) line deck of battleship USS Missouri (BB-63) while Japanese delegation signs official surrender document, Sept. 2, 1945.Carl Mydans—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty ImagesV-J Day, Aug. 14, 1945. Caption from the Aug. 27, 1945, issue of LIFE: "In the middle of New York's Times Square a white-clad girl clutches her purse and skirt as an uninhibited sailor plants his lips squarely on hers."Alfred Eisenstaedt—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
