Stepan Andreyevich Neustroyev commanded the battalion that stormed the Reichstag in 1945 and hoisted the flag over the building. This is one of the most famous images of World War Two and only in 1997 did it become known that the photo had been doctored. Photographer Khaldei had made the flag in the photograph himself from red tablecloths from Tass, the Soviet press agency, emblazoned with the Soviet hammer and sickle. Erich Kuby's book The Russians and Berlin, page 60, says:
It seems strange that the Russians should have looked upon the Reichstag, ... now an empty piece of masonry, its windows and doors bricked up, as the symbol of Germany. ... Mednikov describes this historic action in great detail:

"About noon on April 28 [1945], one of our battalions advanced on the Spree. At the same time the commander of the regiment, Col. F.M. Zinchenko, took charge of a red banner ... expressly set aside for planting on the dome. It was Red Banner No. 5 of the [150th Rifle Division] 3rd Shock Army ... [it was] twenty-three-year-old Capt. Stefan Andreyevich Noystroev men [who] battled their way into the building, fighting for every room and corridor. ... Noystroev ordered a shock detachment commanded by Lt. Berest to escort the two standard-bearers ... [who] took nearly half a day to reach the dome. At 10:50 p.m. on April 30, the banner of victory was unfurled over the Reichstag."

By nine in the morning, the sightseeing was finished. “It was the dream of my life to be permitted to see Paris,” Hitler told Speer. “I cannot say how happy I am to have that dream fulfilled today.”

A few hours later, Hitler spoke to Speer in the Führer field headquarters, a small room of a peasant house in Brûly de Pesche. “Draw up a decree in my name ordering full-scale resumption of work on the Berlin buildings...Wasn’t Paris beautiful? But Berlin must be made far more beautiful. In the past I often considered whether we would have to destroy Paris. But when we are finished in Berlin, Paris will only be a shadow. So why should we destroy it?” Hitler spoke with great calm, Speer remembered, as though the monstrous vandalism he contemplated was the most natural thing in the world.

I always see that Western Front has the most attention, I blame it on media.

Eastern Front (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Front_(World_War_II))

EF features some of the brutal battles and few mistakes made by both Hitler and Stalin. However I can't help but feel amazed how the Soviet beat back the Blitzkrieg from the Krauts parked their army right in front of Moscow's door step in winter all the way to Berlin to end the war.

North Africa Campaign (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_African_Campaign)

Another lesser known campaign that pit British Commonwealth against the Afrika Corps.

Last but not least.

Pacific Campaign (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_campaign)

With US leading against the Imperial Japan. BTW HBO new mini series The Pacific, brought to you by makers of Band of Brothers, is now airing, currently on part 2.

The raising of the flag over Mount Suribachi at Iwo Jima

^ this should be the "fake" flag raising event. The real flag raisers were off deeper into the island killing each other by now. The new recruits raised this backup flag and kept the real one.

The raising of the flag over Mount Suribachi at Iwo Jima

^ this should be the "fake" flag raising event. The real flag raisers were off deeper into the island killing each other by now. The new recruits raised this backup flag and kept the real one.

In Eastern Front, the so called invincible pan-European army led by the Nazi Germany become defeat-able. Thanks to the ferocity of the Soviet's resistance and counter-attack. Also inactivity of Imperial Japan against Soviet Union.
Hope people don't forget or belittle the role of the Soviet's heroic Red Army....

Wonder why you bring this up....Any reason? Any motives? The usual steps of trying to negate the contribution of the Soviet Red Army in defeating the Axis?  Or you dislike the truth that it was actually the heroic and notorious Soviet Red Army are the deciding factor of the Axis downfall?  

Never let atrocities over-shadowed contribution and vice versa. Remember both of them. Soviet Red Army major contribution in defeating the Axis should not be brush a side just because of some atrocities committed by them. American GI also did terrible things but I don't see you post them up here.
Also, a decision of a sadistic man over-shadowed the contribution of the soldiers fighting for their motherland  in the battlefront......tragic. 

Operation Market Garden (September 17–25, 1944) was an Allied military operation, fought in the Netherlands and Germany in World War II. It was the largest airborne operation of all time.[nb 3]

The operation plan's strategic context required the seizure of bridges across the Maas (Meuse River) and two arms of the Rhine (the Waal and the Lower Rhine) as well as several smaller canals and tributaries. Crossing the Lower Rhine would allow the Allies to outflank the Siegfried Line and encircle the Ruhr, Germany's industrial heartland. It made large-scale use of airborne forces whose tactical objectives were to secure a series of bridges over the main rivers of the German-occupied Netherlands and allow a rapid advance by armoured units into Northern Germany.

Initially the operation was successful and several bridges between Eindhoven and Nijmegen were captured. However the ground force's advance was delayed by the demolition of a bridge over the Wilhelmina Canal at Son,[7] delaying the capture of the main road bridge over the Meuse until September 20. At Arnhem the British 1st Airborne Division encountered far stronger resistance than anticipated. In the ensuing battle only a small force managed to hold one end of the Arnhem road bridge and after the ground forces failed to relieve them they were overrun on the 21st. The rest of the division, trapped in a small pocket west of the bridge, had to be evacuated on the 25th. The Allies had failed to cross the Rhine in sufficient force, and the Rhine remained a barrier to their advance until the offensives at Remagen, Oppenheim, Rees and Wesel in March 1945.

The Nazis grew out of a small right-wing party, which Hitler took over after 1919.   He developed a Twenty-Five Point Programme based on hatred, and built up a paramilitary group (the SA) to defend his meetings and attack other parties.
      
The Nazis appealed to a wide range of people, but especially the 'middling' sort of people, and the party grew rapidly in the years of crisis 1919-1923.

       After the disaster of the Munich Putsch, and during the prosperity of the Stresemann years, however, support for the Nazis fell.   During this time Hitler believed that he could be elected to power.   He used these years to develop and strengthen the party's organisation.

The German Workers’ Party, led by Anton Drexler, was formed in 1919.   Hitler joined and soon became leader.   His speeches gave people scapegoats to blame for Germany’s problems:
•      The Allies.
•      The Versailles Treaty and the ‘November Criminals’ (the politicians who signed it).
•      The Communists, and:
•      The Jews.

And so it follows in Hitler's thinking, if there is a supreme form of human, then there must be others less than supreme, the Untermenschen, or racially inferior. Hitler assigns this position to Jews and the Slavic peoples, notably the Czechs, Poles, and Russians.

"...it (Nazi philosophy) by no means believes in an equality of races, but along with their difference it recognizes their higher or lesser value and feels itself obligated to promote the victory of the better and stronger, and demand the subordination of the inferior and weaker in accordance with the eternal will that dominates this universe." - Hitler states in Mein Kampf

Hitler then states the Aryan is also culturally superior.

"All the human culture, all the results of art, science, and technology that we see before us today, are almost exclusively the creative product of the Aryan..."

On the first day, only 7,010 men were evacuated, but by the ninth day, a total of 338,226 soldiers (198,229 British and 139,997 French)[2] had been rescued by the hastily assembled fleet of 850 boats. Many of the troops were able to embark from the harbour's protective mole onto 42 British destroyers and other large ships, while others had to wade from the beaches toward the ships, waiting for hours to board, shoulder-deep in water. Others were ferried from the beaches to the larger ships, and thousands were carried back to England by the famous "little ships of Dunkirk", a flotilla of around 700 merchant marine boats, fishing boats, pleasure craft and Royal National Lifeboat Institution lifeboats—the smallest of which was the 15-foot fishing boat Tamzine, now in the Imperial War Museum—whose civilian crews were called into service for the emergency. The "miracle of the little ships" remains a prominent folk memory in Britain.

imma just put this here:

The 5 Most Widely Believed WWII Facts (That Are Bullshit)

The Normandy landings were the landing operations of the Allied invasion of Normandy, also known as Operation Neptune and Operation Overlord, during World War II. The landings commenced on Tuesday, 6 June 1944 (D-Day), beginning at 6:30 AM British Double Summer Time (UTC+2). In planning, D-Day was the term used for the day of actual landing, which was dependent on final approval.

The assault was conducted in two phases: an air assault landing of 24,000 American, British, Canadian and Free French airborne troops shortly after midnight, and an amphibious landing of Allied infantry and armoured divisions on the coast of France commencing at 6:30 AM. There were also subsidiary 'attacks' mounted under the codenames Operation Glimmer and Operation Taxable to distract the German forces from the real landing areas.[4]

The operation was the largest amphibious invasion of all time, with over 160,000[5] troops landing on 6 June 1944. 195,700[6] Allied naval and merchant navy personnel in over 5,000[5] ships were involved. The invasion required the transport of soldiers and materiel from the United Kingdom by troop-laden aircraft and ships, the assault landings, air support, naval interdiction of the English Channel and naval fire-support. The landings took place along a 50-mile (80 km) stretch of the Normandy coast divided into five sectors: Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno and Sword.