Call of Duty: WWII — Normandy to the Rhine

The game starts where the invasion did. On 6 June 1944 Private First Class Ronald "Red" Daniels of the 16th Infantry Regiment, 1st Infantry Division, assaults Omaha Beach with his platoon; the first mission, D-Day, begins in a landing boat about to reach the shore. With him are Zussman, Aiello and Stiles, plus Sergeant Pierson and Lieutenant Turner, and Daniels drags a stabbed Zussman to safety. In reality the 1st Infantry Division was given the eastern half of the beach, and American forces suffered 2,400 casualties there that day.

Location precision: The game's beach is a recreation; the pin marks Omaha Beach as a whole, not a particular stretch of sand.

Visitor guidance: The remains of the coastal defences can still be visited, and the Normandy American Cemetery on the bluff above has a visitor centre.

Next the platoon rides with the 745th Tank Battalion in Operation Cobra, dated 25 July 1944 in the game, and liberates the town of Marigny. The following mission, Stronghold, is set there on 26 July: the squad has to secure the church and defend the market square. Daniels also learns that Pierson was demoted after Kasserine Pass. The real Cobra opened on 25 July with a bombardment by thousands of Allied aircraft, and the plan gave the 1st Infantry Division the job of taking Marigny.

Location precision: The mission is set in Marigny; the pin marks the modern commune of Marigny-le-Lozon, not a specific church or square.

On 18 October the platoon assaults Aachen in Collateral Damage. The player first takes the tank driver's seat with Staff Sergeant Pérez's Sherman, then plays Daniels again. After taking a hotel the squad finds civilians sheltering in the basement; Turner orders them evacuated over Pierson's objections. Daniels rescues a young girl named Anna, but German soldiers then open fire on the truck carrying the civilians. The real battle ran from 12 September to 21 October 1944, and on 18 October the 1st Infantry Division's 26th Infantry assaulted the Hotel Quellenhof.

Location precision: The mission's streets and hotel are a game setting, not a mapped address; the pin marks the city of Aachen.

The mission Hill 493 is dated 14 November 1944. The squad, waiting for Pierson in the rain in the Hürtgen Forest, is ordered to capture the hill. They destroy artillery positions but are attacked by a Tiger II; Daniels is injured destroying it, and Turner sacrifices himself to cover the platoon's escape. Pierson then heads the platoon and Daniels becomes a corporal. The real battle lasted 88 days, the longest on German ground in the war, and cost the U.S. First Army at least 33,000 killed and wounded.

Location precision: The game does not tie Hill 493 to a mapped hill; the pin marks the Hürtgen Forest as a whole.

Visitor guidance: The 1944 Hürtgen Forest Museum commemorates the battle. The forest is still contaminated with munitions, so keep to marked paths.

On 25 December 1944, in the Belgian Ardennes, the platoon is surrounded by Germans. Engineer Marcus Howard helps contact air support, and the player briefly flies a P-47 Thunderbolt as Lieutenant Weber. Two days later, in Ambush, Daniels learns from a German prisoner of a plan to destroy the Remagen bridge. The platoon's attack fails and Zussman is captured, while Daniels is awarded a Bronze Star. The real Battle of the Bulge ran from 16 December 1944 to 25 January 1945, and the 1st Infantry Division helped fortify Elsenborn Ridge.

Location precision: The game's Ardennes setting is not named; the pin marks Elsenborn Ridge, where the real 1st Infantry Division fought in the Ardennes.

The final mission, The Rhine, is set on 7 March 1945 at Remagen, where the platoon captures the last bridge over the Rhine. It follows Daniels's lowest point: he disobeyed Pierson to chase the truck carrying Zussman and was fired from the platoon, yet refused to go home to his pregnant wife, still wanting to rescue Zussman. The real Ludendorff Bridge was found still standing on 7 March by troops of the 9th Armored Division and collapsed on 17 March, ten days after its capture.

Location precision: The pin marks the site of the Ludendorff Bridge; the mission's towers and approaches are the game's own layout.

Visitor guidance: The surviving towers on the Rhine's western bank house the Peace Museum Bridge at Remagen; the bridge itself collapsed in 1945.

The epilogue follows the platoon into Germany to look for Zussman. They reach the Berga concentration camp and find it abandoned; its survivors had been sent on a death march. Daniels finds and saves Zussman and then goes home to Texas. The developers chose to include atrocities and the camps in the campaign. Berga an der Elster was a subcamp of Buchenwald where prisoners were intentionally worked to death; on 4 April the surviving American prisoners were marched out ahead of approaching U.S. troops.

Location precision: The pin marks the town of Berga/Elster; the game does not show the camp's exact site.