World War II in Europe: Normandy Weekend with extensions to Bavaria, Italy, and Switzerland (6 Days) 

     Fly this afternoon from your departure city to Paris. Cocktails, dinner and continental breakfast will be served in flight. There is also a movie for your in-flight enjoyment.

     Arrive Paris in the morning, local time. Upon arrival, you will be met and transferred to your hotel.

The balance of the morning is at leisure.

This afternoon we have included a panorama tour of the major sights of Paris.

Those who already know Paris may wish to spend the afternoon at the Louvre or another of the city's world class museums. Or, you may prefer just to stroll along the Champs Elysees, or while away the afternoon at a sidewalk cafe.

     This morning we'll follow the Seine west to Normandy, a land of rich pastures and orchards; of castles, cathedrals and medieval towns.

Two of history's greatest epics occurred in Normandy. William the Conqueror invaded England from Normandy in 1066. In 1944, green and peaceful Normandy with its picturesque landscape and villages was the setting for the greatest military invasion from the sea in world history. On June 6, 1944 - called the Longest Day - General Eisenhower's allied forces landed on the beaches of Normandy.

This afternoon we'll visit the Memorial Museum of Caen to introduce us to the events of D-Day and the summer of 1944.

Next, we will pay homage to our British allies and visit Pegasus Bridge, where British glider troops landed and captured the span over the River Orne, preventing the Germans from using the bridge to reinforce their defenders at the landing beaches. Landing at 12:30 AM on June 6, these British airborne troops had the honor of beginning the Battle of Normandy.

     Today and tomorrow we will follow the paths of the American Infantry, rangers, and paratroopers in Normandy.

The first Americans to land on June 6 were our paratroopers of the 82nd and 101st airborne divisions. We will visit the Airborne Museum at Ste. Mère Eglise, the first village to be liberated. Today, this village still hangs a parachute on its church steeple as a reminder of its liberation.

We will visit the bridge at La Fière, where the 82nd Airborne Division sealed the Ste. Mère Eglise – Carentan – Utah Beach area against German reinforcements from the North. We will see the foxhole of General Gavin, Commander of the 82nd, still largely intact.

Next we will proceed to Utah Beach, where our troops landed about a mile from its intended point. Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., senior officer present, and at age 57 the oldest person to land at D-Day, declared “We’ll begin our war right here.” We will visit the museum at Utah Beach.

Among the bravest of brave on D-Day were the Rangers, led by Lt. Col. James E. Rudder, who scaled the vertical cliffs at Pointe Du Hoc in face of opposing enemy fire. As General Omar Bradley wrote, “Never has any commander been given a more desperate mission than that assigned to James Earl Rudder.”

We will visit Pointe Du Hoc to see the German fortifications and pock-marked landscape resulting from the massive pre-assault bombardment.

We will walk on the beach at “Bloody Omaha” and visit the cemetery overlooking the beach, where more than 9,000 Americans are buried.

     During the ensuing weeks, fierce battles were fought throughout the Normandy hedgerows. The largest battle was around the town of St. Lô, which was almost totally destroyed. We will visit the surrounding hedgerow (bocage) country and see the monument to Major Tom Howie, the “Major of St. Lô,” who was killed on the Martinville Ridge.

The hedgerows in the “bocage” (a French word meaning a mixture of pasture and wooded land) are small fields ringed by earthen banks of dirt and roots four to six feet high, with trees and shrubs growing out of them—tight enough to serve as fences that cattle and other farm animals could not get through.

Combat in the bocage was like fighting in a maze, making it impossible to see beyond a single field at a time. It was terrain which greatly favoured the defender against the Allied forces, who were not trained to fight in such country.

Between the hedgerows, dirt farm tracks, that had sunk beneath the level of the surrounding fields by centuries of erosion and use, formed a labyrinthine pattern. Units commonly found themselves lost a few minutes after launching an attack. Just as typically, two outfits could occupy adjacent fields for hours before discovering each other’s presence.

Our historian will walk with us along a typical hedgerow near St. Lô, and show us why the Normandy hedgerows were so extremely difficult for the American troops to attack, and so advantageous for the Germans to defend.

The break-out from Normandy took 75 days.

The invasion of 1944 was not the first invasion across the English Channel. Nearly 900 years earlier in 1066, William the Conqueror invaded England from Normandy.

     This morning we will be transferred to Paris airport to board our return flight to the U.S. Cocktails and meals will be served in flight, and a movie will also be available. Arrive back in the U.S. this afternoon.

OR STAY WITH US ON THE OPTIONAL EXTENSION: $1195 per person ($142 single occupancy)

You're already over there, so it's easy - and inexpensive - to follow the advance of our troops across France to the Siegfried Line, Battle of the Hürtgen Forest, Battle of the Bulge, the Rhine.

Belleau Wood – Argonne Forest – Verdun – Luxembourg
What were the causes of World War II? The war can be considered as an extension of the First World War, which destroyed the European civilization that existed in 1914.

Woodrow Wilson called World War I “The war to end all wars.” Although hindsight is always 20-20, this prediction was wildly wrong. In one of the ironies of history, our troops in eastern France in 1944 retraced some of the same battlefields where American “doughboys” fought in 1918.

This morning we will proceed to Belleau Wood, where U.S. Army and Marine Corps troops in 1918 helped to stop the German advance from reaching Paris.

In the Meuse-Argonne Region, we’ll see the Pennsylvania State Monument and the American Memorial at Montfaucon. It was
in the Argonne Forest that Sergeant Alvin York showed his extraordinary courage and marksmanship, and where the “Lost Battalion,” led by a Wall Street lawyer called up from the reserves, was surrounded by Germans for five days, refusing to give up. A precursor to Bastogne!

World War I on the Western Front was largely trench warfare - a four year stalemate where millions of soldiers were killed or wounded. Although American troops were not involved, we will also visit Verdun. The Battle of Verdun, lasting from February to December 1916, was the longest and largest single battle in world history. We will visit the trench at Fort de Vaux above Verdun. In planning for the Second World War, senior generals on both sides were determined to avoid the futile slaughter of trench warfare.

Next, we enter Luxembourg and return to World War II. We’ll visit the American Military cemetery, were General Patton is buried.

     Bastogne – Battle of the Bulge
The Battle of the Bulge, as the Ardennes Campaign is widely known, was the largest land battle of World War II. It was also the largest battle ever fought by the American Army.

The last offensive of the German Army, the battle cost 19,000 Americans killed in action. But our troops held the line and the offensive was a disaster for the Germans, who had put their soldiers in a noose to be cut off by reinforcing Americans under General Patton. The above comments during the siege, from an unnamed army medic and General McAuliffe, became the most widely quoted comments of the war in Europe. We’ll visit Bastogne, where our soldiers were surrounded for a week, and see the town’s monuments to this epic battle.

The noose was closed on January 16, 1945, when the 2nd Armored Division of our First Army linked up with the 11th Armored Division of our Third Army at Houfalize, north of Bastogne.

Near Malmedy we will visit the site where Nazi troops massacred 85 American prisoners.

We will visit the Battle of the Bulge Museum at Diekirch, where Colonel James E. Rudder and his troops fought to prevent Germans from expanding the southern shoulder of their penetration. By this time, Rudder was a regimental commander with the 28th Infantry Division.


Greatly assisting General Patton’s 4th Armored Division in its drive north to relieve Bastogne was the close air support provided by XIX Tactical Air Command under General Otto P.Weyland.The book Air Power and Ground Armies from the Air University at Maxwell AFB described the cooperation between Patton’s Third Army and Weyland’s XIX TAC as “the most spectacular Allied air-ground team of the Second World War.” Patton himself called the relationship “love at first sight.”

     The Hürtgen Forest and Siegfried Line
The battle of the Hürtgen Forest, lasting from September, 1944, to February, 1945, was one of the worst battles ever experienced by the American Army. Negligently planned by senior generals who had no knowledge of forest combat, we could not employ in the dense forest the advantages of air superiority, artillery, and armor, which had been decisive for us since D-Day. The crucial objective of the Roer River dams was ignored for weeks.

The battle of the Hürtgen Forest has been overshadowed in historical memory by the Battle of the Bulge. A text book example of high command negligence and its disastrous consequences, the Hürtgen Forest battles have been presented as case studies to classes at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.

Accompanied by our historian, we will walk on the Kall Trail near Vossenack, reflecting back on that horrible time in the autumn of 1944 when thousands of American soldiers became casualties among the firs of the black Hürtgen Forest.

“We’re gonna hang out our washing on the Siegfried Line, if the Siegfried Line’s still there.”

This humorous song was popular in England and the U.S. during
World War II.

But nothing was humorous about the Siegfried Line Campaign. There was enormous, brutal combat, with American soldiers pitting their courage and stamina against extremely cold weather and a fiercely stubborn enemy.

From D-Day on June 6, it took our troops 96 days to reach the border of Nazi Germany and the Siegfried Line (also known as the West Wall), a complex of pillboxes, dragon’s teeth, and strongpoints built during the 1930’s to protect the Reich against invasion from the West.

It took us almost five additional months to advance beyond the Siegfried Line and continue less than 100 miles into Germany to reach the Rhine River.

We will visit a German pillbox along the Siegfried Line, and then drive east to Remagen.

Remagen – The Rhine – Darmstadt

By 1945, both the American and German armies assumed that all permanent bridges across the Rhine would soon be destroyed and any crossing by the Allies would be via boat or pontoon bridge. But the retreating Germans failed to bring down the Ludendorff Bridge over the Rhine at Remagen; our Ninth Armored Division captured the structure on March 7.

The capture of the bridge at Remagen enabled thousands of our troops to cross the Rhine “with dry feet.” General Eisenhower called the bridge “worth its weight in gold.”

The enormous benefit of the bridge to the Allied advance was recognized by Hitler, who ordered an all-out assault against the bridge by aircraft bombing, rockets (the V-2 had just become operational), frog men, and artillery.

At Remagen, we will visit the site of Ludendorff Bridge and see the imposing towers that still stand today.

We will visit the small museum inside the west bank towers.

This afternoon enjoy a delightful drive along the Rhine. See the vineyards of the famous Rhine wines, the many barges on the busy waterway and perhaps best of all, the fairy tale castles around almost every bend in the River. Of particular note are the famous Lorelei rocks, immortalized in the classic poem of Heinrich Heine. Set to music, the poem tells the story of the boatmen lured to their death by a beautiful maiden sitting on the rocks, combing her long blonde hair while singing her fateful song.

Dinner this evening, with German entertainment, will be at a popular Rhineland restaurant.

     Frankfurt – USA
This morning we will be transferred to Frankfurt airport to board our return flight to the U.S. Cocktails and meals will be served in flight, and a movie will also be available. Arrive back in the U.S. this afternoon.