Medal of Honor: Allied Assault - 1.1.3

Prepare for your finest hour!

Set during the most trying years of the war, 1942-1945, Medal of Honor Allied Assault™ gives players a sense of the courage it took to survive the landings at Normandy, the assault at Arzew, a rendezvous with the Resistance outside the village of St. Lo, and the push through the heavily defended border of Germany itself to take the bridge at Remagen.

In Medal of Honor Allied Assault, you are Lt. Mike Powell, member of the famed 1st Ranger Battalion. Following your recruitment by the OSS, you'll battle through over 20 challenging levels, based on historical military campaigns of World War II.

The seeds of World War II are sown at the end of World War I; the treaties signed at the end of the Great War satisfy neither the victors nor the vanquished. Social, political, and economic changes nurture these seeds over the next 21 years, until they germinate in Poland. Barely 20 years after the "war to end all wars," German dictator Adolph Hitler plunges the world into a war that will take the lives of 50 million people.

In the months following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States is in no position to actively pursue the war in Europe. Its army is far below the strength required for the task, there are no U.S. forces in Europe, and the shipping needed to transport a massive invasion force does not exist.

Despite these problems, and within a month of the attack on Pearl Harbor, Churchill meets with Roosevelt at the Arcadia Conference in Washington, D.C., where they agree on a "beat Germany first" strategy. The American leadership acknowledges that the bulk of Allied ground forces will have to confront the German threat as soon and as decisively as possible. From Pearl Harbor to D-Day, American determination to confront the German army never wavers, but events make it clear that half-measures will not lead to victory.

In particular, the disastrous British & Canadian raid on the French port of Dieppe in August 1942, in which half of the attacking force of 6,000 Allied troops become casualties, shows that only a massive, coordinated Allied invasion will provide a firm foothold on the continent. Lieutenant General Albert Wedemeyer of the U.S. Army had reached the same conclusion three months before the Pearl Harbor attack. His "Victory Program" calls for a massive invasion of northwest Europe and a decisive confrontation with the German army. As elaborated by Generals Eisenhower and Marshall, it becomes the nucleus of Operation Overlord, with the invasion date initially set for April 1, 1943.

Dieppe changes all that. It is clear that an adequate buildup for Overlord will take longer than the Allies have hoped. In the interim the Americans agree to participate in joint operations in North Africa, Sicily, and Italy. At the Trident Conference, held in Washington, D.C., in May 1943, the date for the Allied invasion of France is tentatively reset for May 1, 1944. In the intervening year, the biggest buildup of men and materiel ever assembled for a military operation takes place in England.