On February 23, 1945 Joe Rosenthal of the Associated Press took perhaps one of the most remembered pictures of World War II: the raising of the US Flag over Iwo Jima's most dominating physical feature - Mount Suribachi. Rosenthal's image was actually of the second flag raising. The first had been done earlier in the morning by men of the 5th Marine Division, but this second raising would be of a larger flag.  

All told five U.S. Marines and one U.S.

Early in 1943 the Red Army had launched a series of massive offensives across the breadth of the German Eastern Front. In particular, and as the German Sixth Army fought to its destruction at Stalingrad, multiple Soviet fronts, spearheaded by General N.F. Vatutin's Southwestern Front, surged across southern Russia. Meanwhile, Erich von Manstein, commanding the whole of the reconstituted German Army Group South, the former Army Groups A, B and Don, fell back before the Soviet advance and regrouped his armies.

Soviet General Cherniakhovsky’s 60th Army, part of Golikov’s Voronezh Front, took