Bunuel wrote:
In 1945,
Germany was defeated by the Allies, ended its occupation of Denmark, and left behind hundreds of thousands of land mines along the country’s North Sea beaches and tasking the weary natives with a massive clean-up project.
(A) Germany was defeated by the Allies, ended its occupation of Denmark, and left
(B) Germany, defeated by the Allies, ended its occupation of Denmark, leaving
(C) Germany was defeated by the Allies, ending its occupation of Denmark, and left
(D) Germany, having been defeated by the Allies, ended its occupation of Denmark and left
(E) Germany defeated by the Allies, ended its occupation of Denmark and left
VERITAS PREP OFFICIAL SOLUTION:
The key to correctly solving this problem lies far away from the underlined portion and the answer choices: remember, in Sentence Correction, the whole sentence matters! Toward the end of the sentence, you see the phrase "...and tasking the weary natives with a massive-clean up project." Note that that portion is not underlined - you're stuck with that phrasing. So although the original sentence and answer choice A might suggest a list of past-tense actions that Germany did ("was beaten...ended...and left") you do not have the option to put "tasking" in the past tense.
Focus on that word "and," a conjunction that has to join two parallel/like items. "And tasking" must be parallel to another present participle, and the only answer that has that is choice B, with "leaving." As you examine choice B, it deals with two of the underlined verbs as modifiers. "Defeated by the Allies" is a past participial modifier, describing Germany. And "leaving behind land mines" is a present participle, modifying Germany and its abandonment of the occupation. Once you correctly identify those modifiers, the gist of the sentence, in subject-verb form, is "Germany ended its occupation," and the modifiers add color to discuss the importance/significance of that event.
Choice B is therefore correct, and the operative lesson is that you should pay particular attention to conjunctions (such as "and" and "or") far from the underline, as they often force a particular part of speech on you in the answer choices.