US Third and Seventh Armies' March 1945 offensive cleared the Rhineland, pushing deep into Germany and decisively weakening German defenses before the final Allied push.

In the annals of US Marine Corps history, few battles resonate like that of Iwo Jima. 

Before the Allies could cross the Rhine River, Bernard Montgomery’s forces first had to pry the German defenders away from its western bank with two simultaneous operations: Veritable and Grenade. 

As dozens of their players left the gridiron for battlefields overseas, the cities of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh joined forces to keep the decimated NFL squads up and running.

Desperate for slave labor to continue the doomed war effort and fearful of camp survivors exposing Nazi crimes, German decision-makers put in motion nearly three-quarters of a million concentration camp prisoners. Of this number, 250,000 died in these death marches.

If the American forces could break through the Hürtgen Forest, there was a chance they could reach the Rhine near Cologne, threatening the German industrial region along the Ruhr River and possibly even force a crossing. 

Underscoring its ferocity, future commandant of the Marine Corps General Clifton Cates argued that “the fight for Peleliu was one of the most vicious and stubbornly defended battles of the war.” 

Beyond commentary on the burgeoning Cold War, many of Eiji Tsuburaya’s and Ishiro Honda’s production decisions are meant to reflect the Japanese experience of World War II.