The Western Front was a military theatre of World War II that encompassed the countries of Denmark, Norway, Luxembourg, Belgium, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, France, and Germany. In 1940, the German Wehrmacht occupied most of Western and Northern Europe after a series of blitzkrieg offensives, but Germany's planned invasion of the British Isles was thwarted by the Luftwaffe's defeat in the Battle of Britain in late 1940. Over the next four years, the front remained quiet apart from the Blitz of 1940-1941, the Battle of the Atlantic, and the Luftwaffe's defense of the Reich against Allied strategic bombing. On 6 June 1944, the second phase of the Western Front was inaugurated with the American and British-Commonwealth landings in Normandy, occupied France during Operation Overlord. The Allied advance was temporarily halted and repelled during the German Wehrmacht's Ardennes offensive in December 1944-January 1945, but the last major German counteroffensive on the Western Front was ultimately repelled with heavy losses. On 7 March 1945, the Western Allies crossed the Rhine at Remagen, and the spring of 1945 saw the collapse of the German military as Allied armies pushed into the Third Reich. As the Soviet Red Army on the Eastern Front pushed into Germany from Poland and captured Berlin in early May 1945, the Western Allies met the Soviets along the Elbe River, pushed into German-occupied Czechoslovakia, pushed surviving German forces into Austria, and the British Eighth Army emerged from Italy to defeat the remaining Wehrmacht elements in Yugoslavia. On 8 May 1945, Germany unconditionally surrendered to Allies, who divided Germany into occupation zones divided by an invisible, yet politically important "Iron Curtain."
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