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A Brief History of D-Day
Since Nazi Germany forced the British out of France
to Great Britain in the spring of 1940, the Allies
had begun planning a cross-Channel assault to retake
the continent and defeat Hitler's Third Reich. By
the spring of 1944 an elaborate plan--code-named
Operation
Overlord--was secretly in place to launch the
attack. The Allies, led by American General Dwight
Eisenhower faced an enemy
determined to keep them from landing successfully
anywhere along the western European coastline. To
ensure against such a landing, Hitler ordered Field
Marshal Erwin Rommel to complete
the Atlantic Wall--2,400
miles of fortifications made up of concrete bunkers,
barbed wire, tank ditches, landmines, fixed gun
emplacements, and beach and underwater obstacles.
These obstacles were specially designed to rip out
the bottoms of landing craft or blow them up before
they reached the shore.
On the eve of June 5, 1944, more than 150,000 men,
a fleet of 5,000 ships and
landing craft, 50,000 vehicles, and 11,000 planes
sat in southern England, poised to attack secretly
across the English Channel along a 50-mile stretch
of the Normandy coast of
France. This force was the largest armada in history
and represented years of rigorous training, planning,
and supplying. It also represented a previously
unknown level of cooperation between allied nations,
all struggling for a common goal-the defeat of Germany.
Because of highly intricate Allied deception
plans, Hitler and his staff believed that the
Allies would be attacking at the Pas-de-Calais,
the narrowest point between Great Britain and France.
In the early morning darkness of June 6, thousands
of Allied paratroopers and glider troops landed
silently behind enemy lines, securing key roads
and bridges on the flanks of the invasion area.
As dawn lit the Normandy coastline the Allies began
their amphibious landings, traveling to the beaches
in small landing craft lowered from the decks of
larger ships anchored in the Channel. They assaulted
five beaches, code-named
Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno, and Sword. By nightfall
nearly all 175,000 men were ashore at a cost of
4,900 Allied casualties. Hitler's vaunted Atlantic
Wall had been breached in less than one day. The
beaches were secure, but it took many weeks before
the Allies could fight their way out of the heavily
defended Normandy countryside
and almost a full year to reach and defeat Germany
in the spring of 1945.
Operation Overlord was not just another great battle,
but the true turning point of WWII in Europe. While
the US and Great Britain had earlier engaged the
Axis powers on the periphery of Europe (North Africa,
Sicily, Italy), it was the invasion at Normandy
that brought on the beginning of the end for Hitler
and his Nazis. Had the invasion failed (See Eisenhower's
Order of the Day), Hitler would have been able to
pull troops from France to strengthen his Eastern
Front against the encroaching Soviet Union.
A second Allied invasion into France would have
taken more than a year to plan, supply, and assemble.
Hitler, meanwhile, would have further strengthened
his Atlantic Wall, his newly developed V-1
flying bombs and V-2 rockets would have continued
to rain down on England from launching pads across
the Channel, and the Nazis' Final Solution against
European Jews might well have succeeded completely.
Operation
Overlord
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Allied troops land
on the beach at Normandy.
|
Formal planning for the invasion
of Northwest Europe began in 1943. A group led by
British General Frederick Morgan searched for the
best point along the coast to strike and started
drawing up assault plans. In May, at an Allied conference
in Washington, a target date of spring, 1944 was
set for the long-awaited attack. In December 1943
General Dwight Eisenhower was selected as Supreme
Allied Commander of the operation. Eisenhower had
directed Allied invasions of North Africa and Italy.
He took up his new post in January 1944. Eisenhower
approved of Morgan's selection of the Normandy coast
in France as the invasion site, but he increased
the size of the assault force. The operation was
code-named "Overlord." The outcome of the war rested
upon its success.
Eisenhower
 |
General Eisenhower
(left) prepares for battle.
|
Dwight Eisenhower's military
career began at West Point, where he met classmate
and future colleague, Omar Bradley. Although "Ike"
showed promise, he was notorious for playing pranks
and flaunting regulations. In a class of 164, he
ranked 125th in discipline. After graduation he
distinguished himself as a trainer and strategist.
But he was eager to experience combat, and frustrated
when he was kept stateside during World War I. His
opportunity for combat command finally came during
World War II, when he directed Allied Forces in
North Africa, Sicily, and Italy. He was selected
to lead Overlord not only because of his success
in the Mediterranean, but because of his ability
to balance the diverse personalities of the commanders
involved in the operation. Even Bernard Montgomery,
whose relationship with Eisenhower was often strained,
said of him, "He has the power of drawing the hearts
of men towards him…. He merely has to smile
at you, and you trust him at once."
Rommel
 |
Rommel (left) shakes
hands
with Hitler.
|
During World War I Erwin Rommel
saw active service in the Battle of the Argonne,
in Rumania, and Italy. Between the wars he became
commander of his regiment. In 1939, now a colonel,
Rommel commanded the Fuhrer Bodyguard Battalion
at Hitler's headquarters. He soon requested command
of a Panzer division and by February 1941 was posted
to North Africa. There he commanded Germany's Afrika
Korps, receiving the nickname Desert Fox for his
skills as a desert strategist. Although he was eventually
defeated there by the Allied powers and forced to
surrender North Africa, he gained fame and admiration
among the German people and became a favorite of
Hitler. In November 1943, Hitler named Field Marshal
Rommel Inspector of Coastal Defenses in France and
charged him with strengthening the Atlantic Wall
along the Western coast of Europe. He was soon in
command of Army Group B. By May 1944 he commanded
45 infantry, airborne and Panzer divisions. These
forces would be the first to respond to an Allied
invasion. Rommel believed that due to superior Allied
air power and unlimited Allied resources, an invasion
of Western Europe had to be stopped on the beaches.
In this, he disagreed with Field Marshal Gerd von
Runestedt, overall commander of German forces in
the West, who believed that it would be impossible
to stop an invasion on the beach, but that one could
be defeated by German divisions further inland.
Atlantic
Wall
 |
Concrete bunker.
|
Early in the war, Hitler ordered
construction of defenses along the English Channel and
Atlantic coasts of Western Europe. By the spring of 1944,
more than 10,000 fortified positions were in operation
along the "Atlantic Wall." The Atlantic Wall stretched
along the 3,000-mile coastline of France, Belgium, Holland,
Denmark, and the entire coast of Norway. But the most
heavily defended area was along the Channel, where Hitler
expected the Allied invasion. Hitler envisioned the Atlantic
Wall as an unbreakable barrier, fortified with enough
artillery and manpower to foil even a massive invasion
attempt. Plans called for 15,000 concrete bunkers, ranging
in size from small pillboxes to great fortresses. Three
hundred thousand troops would man these defenses. Organization
Todt, the elite construction group of the Nazi Party,
would build the fortifications.
 |
German mines lay scattered
across the beaches.
|
The workforce consisted of over
500,000 men, many of them prisoners of civilians
from German-occupied nations, who were used as slave
labor. As further protection against invasion, Rommel
ordered the placement hundreds of thousands of mined
beach obstacles along the French coast. Simple yet
deadly, these obstacles were positioned along entire
beachfronts. At high tide many of them were virtually
invisible. These obstacles created a dilemma for
Allied invasion planners. If their attack came during
high tide many landing craft would hit mines. But
if it took place during low tide, troops would have
to cross a wider portion of beach while under enemy
fire.
Landing
Craft
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A soldier's view from
the inside of the
LCVP, or "Higgins Boat."
|
Allied planner knew that large
troop-carrying ships could not land soldiers directly
on a beach. They needed smaller landing craft that
could be carried on ships, lowered into the water,
loaded with troops, and piloted a short distance
to shore. While several types of landing craft were
used during World War II for amphibious assaults
around the globe, the most famous was the LCVP (Landing
Craft Vehicle Personnel), or "Higgins Boat." New
Orleans boat builder Andrew Jackson Higgins designed
the LCVP and his company built more than 20,000
of the craft and other vessels during the war. They
were used in the major amphibious invasions of North
Africa, Sicily, Italy, Normandy, and the invasions
in the Pacific Theater. The boats could carry up
to 36 infantry troops or a jeep, land them close
to shore, and then return to troop ships to collect
more soldiers. By lowering a steel ramp in the front
of the boat troops and vehicles could be quickly
and efficiently unloaded. Higgins was a master of
rapid production. During the war he operated eight
factories in New Orleans. His workforce grew from
50 employees in 1937 to 30,000 at its wartime high.
At its peak, Higgins Industries produces more than
700 boats a month.
Normandy
 |
Map of the English
Channel, England and the
Normandy Coast.
|
The Allied commanders of Overlord
searched for the most vulnerable point in the German
coastal defenses. The assault area had to be close
enough to Britain to allow adequate air cover. This
meant it had to be somewhere between the Pas de
Calais and Normandy's Cotentin Peninsula. It could
not be heavily defended and had to be large and
flat enough to enable the Allies to move large numbers
of troops and supplies ashore. They chose a section
of the Normandy coast between the Seine River and
the Cotentin Peninsula. Because this area had no
ports, they decided to build two huge artificial
floating harbors, called "Mulberries," which would
be towed to Normandy after D-Day to allow the supply
of the landing force.
Deception
Plans
 |
A dummy tank joins
the phantom army designed
to fool Hitler.
|
"In wartime, truth is so
precious that she must always be attended by a bodyguard
of lies."
Winston Churchill, 1943
The success of Operation Overlord depended heavily
on preventing Hitler from learning the date and
location of the invasion. The Allies needed to devise
a plan that would keep the Germans in the dark about
the invasion plans.
In late 1943, more than six months before D-Day,
the Allies-aided by the French Resistance, German
double agents, and their own elaborate intelligence
operations-began strategic and tactical operations
to keep the Germans out of Normandy. The main objective
of the Allied deception strategy was to convince
the Germans that an invasion would indeed take place-but
not at Normandy. The most obvious choice for an
invasion site was Calais, located at the narrowest
part of the English Channel, only 22 miles from
Britain. Hitler was almost certain that the Allies
would attack here. The Allies encouraged Hitler's
belief by employing an ingenious ruse. Throughout
southeastern England they built phony armies, complete
with dummy planes, ships, tanks, and jeeps. With
the help of British and American motion picture
crews, they created entire army bases that would
look authentic to German reconnaissance aircraft.
These "bases" gave the impression of a massive Allied
buildup in preparations for an invasion of France
at Calais.
The ruse worked. Hitler ordered a heavy concentration
of troops and artillery in the Pas de Calais region.
In doing so he left Normandy less heavily defended.
Utah,
Omaha, Gold, Juno, and Sword
As dawn came to
the coast, Allied troops in landing craft approached
the beaches. The American 4th Division landed at
Utah Beach and the 1st and 29th Divisions landed
at Omaha Beach. The 2nd and 5th US Rangers assaulted
the cliffs at Pointe du Hoc between the two American
sectors. The British landed at Gold and Sword Beaches
and the Canadians landed at Juno Beach. The first
waves included 30-man assault teams and amphibious
duplex drive (DD) tanks that plowed through the
water under their own power. There were also Army
combat engineers and Navy demolition teams. Their
job was to clear beach obstacles and mark safe pathways
for the later waves. Aboard the landing craft the
men were pitched about. Many were violently seasick.
Behind them the naval bombardment of the area behind
the beaches continued, while, overhead, bombers
went on with their work. Closer to shore boats began
to hit mines. The explosions lifted some entirely
out of the water. As the first waves neared land,
shelling of the beaches ceased. It would not resume
until the men were ashore and could radio back targets.
Sometime around 6:30 a.m. the first landing craft
hit the beach. D-Day had arrived on the beaches
of Normandy.
Normandy
countryside
 |
Hedgerows hid German
snipers from view.
|
As the Americans moved inland
from the beaches they entered an environment perfectly
designed for their opponents. Western Normandy was
covered with a maze of hedgerows-thick banks of
earth 8 to 10 feet high covered with overgrowth
and trees. For centuries, local farmers had used
hedgerows to mark the boundaries of fields. Now
they formed excellent defensive terrain. The Germans
had pre-sited mortars and artillery on gaps in the
hedgerows. Behind them they dug rifle pits and tunneled
openings for machineguns. The hedgerows had to be
taken one by one. The cost in time and casualties
proved high.
Meanwhile, to the east, the Canadians and British
were bogged down in their effort to break out of
the beachhead and seize the city of Caen. The battle
for Normandy developed into a long and deadly struggle.
It was not until the end of July, after the British
took Caen and the Americans captured St.-Lô, that
the Allies broke out of Normandy. Only then Hitler
realize that the Normandy invasion wasn't a feint
for an invasion elsewhere.
Eisenhower's Order
of the Day
 |
| Eisenhower's Order of the
Day. |
Eastern
Front
Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941 and quickly drove
to the gates of Moscow, Leningrad, and Stalingrad. Soviet
leader Joseph Stalin was soon urging the British and Americans
to draw off German strength from the Eastern Front by
invading Europe from the west, opening a second front
against the Nazis. By 1944, the Soviets had gained the
upper hand and were driving their German foes out of Russia.
But the war had not yet been decided in the East. To prevent
an invasion of Western Europe by the Allies, Hitler kept
many of his best divisions in France. If those divisions
had prevented the Allied landing in Normandy, Hitler would
have been able to transfer those divisions to his Eastern
Front, stopping the Soviet advance and potentially reaching
a settled peace with Stalin.
V-1
flying bombs
 |
Vergeltungswaffe.
|
The German Air Force began launching
the V-1 (for Vergeltungswaffe, or vengeance weapon) against
London on June 13, 1944-one week after D-Day. These simple
guided missiles--called buzz bombs or flying bombs by
Londoners--would be launched from across the English Channel
and aimed at London, where they would land and explode
after traveling their preset distance at 400 miles per
hour. During an 80-day period, V-1s damaged more than
1,000,000 buildings in England, killed 6,184 people, and
wounded nearly 18,000 others.
The V-2 missile, unlike the V-1, could not be shot down
by anti-aircraft guns or fighters. Once launched, these
weapons would rise vertically more than 50 miles before
landing at a preset distance, detonating a 2,145-pound
warhead. The V-2 was the precursor to post-war intercontinental
ballistic missiles (ICBMs). In England, V-2s killed nearly
3,000 people and seriously injured 6,500 more. Hitler
held great hope that these newly-developed weapons would
lead to a German victory in the war. Along with advances
in jet engine technology and atomic bomb development,
Germany was on the threshold of producing the next generation
of weapons just as the invasion of Normandy commenced.
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