D-Day For many Americans, the story of World War Two is reduced to two events. Pearl Harbor and D-Day. These are surely important, but the Allied D-Day invasion comes very late in the game. The Germans have been reeling back from their defeat at Moscow for over a year, abandoning equipment as they go, and the Allies have regained momentum in Italy. Despite Hitler's delusions, the handwriting is clearly on the wall.

	German Hail Mary Fails Hitler still has manic dreams of a miraculous reversal. His scientists are producing increasingly deadly rockets, which can be flung across the English Channel, and are making progress towards developing the ultimate doomsday weapon, the atomic bomb. To gain time, he launches the remainder of his ground forces on a Hail-Mary assault to stop the Allied advance in France (4). With little fuel, his troops bring empty fuel cans they hope to fill along the way, but are stopped at the Battle of the Bulge.
	Mindless Bombing? As Germans continue their apparently hopeless resistance, the Allies continue to bomb industrial sites, and continue to take losses. Bombers now have precision bombsight mechanisms, which are actually mechanical computers. Still, it proves maddening difficult to hit specific targets, such as individual factories, even when pilots know their exact position. Instead, bombs often fall on housing. By the time it's all over, half the buildings in Germany's 20 largest cities have been destroyed.
	Slave Labor Hitler is able to keep up the fight largely through the use of slave labor. 'Work camps' are sprinkled all over Germany (BLUE dots), manned by civilians from conquered nations who have been essentially kidnapped, and transported to Germany. These are not the ghastly extermination camps, like Auschwitz, or even the less deadly 'concentration' camps (YELLOW), used to house 'undesirables.' Instead, workers at the camps receive enough food to keep them at their tasks, making replacement munitions.
	Japan on the Ropes The situation for Japan is similarly hopeless. Without air support, the Japanese cannot hope to stop the rapidly approaching Americans. Near the end, they literally fling teenage pilots at American ships, to hopefully crash themselves into the ships with their bombs still aboard. These 'Kamikaze' pilots are committing suicide at the command of their God-like emperor. The Emperor himself is impervious to pleas to accept reality, and admit defeat.
	Hitler Dead Germans retreat back to Berlin itself, yet still Hitler persists, living in a delusional dreamworld and demanding ever greater sacrifice. This cannot stop the Soviets, who are at the very gates, yet Hitler commands obedience until all ammunition is exhausted. Only then does he commit suicide in his basement bunker, without making any statement. None. The British and Americans, meanwhile, are waiting on the other side of Berlin, having been ordered to halt, so that Soviets get the satisfaction of the final kill.