World History - D-Day

D-Day

The USSR had battled the Axis since the summer of 1941 and had faced the bulk of German military strength. Joseph Stalin continually pressured the Western Allies to open a second front; North Africa and Italy had not done enough to draw off German forces from the Soviet Union.

On June 6, 1944, the Western Allies invaded France’s Normandy coast. Months of carefully planned deceptions had convinced Hitler the invasion would come at Calais, the closest point on the French coast to England. The actual targets of Operation Overlord were further west. Even so, Erwin Rommel, the Desert Fox, had established formidable defenses that included massive concrete bunkers, four million mines, and a half-million obstacles.

By the day of the invasion, called D-Day, the Allies had established complete air superiority. The invasion began in darkness with three divisions of airborne troops, delivered by parachute and by glider. Many men were lost in glider crashes; descending paratroopers were shot down by German fire. Airborne troops were scattered across many miles, often far from their objectives, but they coalesced into ad hoc groups and successfully captured and held bridges and other strategic points.

In the early morning hours of June 6, five Allied divisions splashed ashore along 50 miles of coastline that had been divided into five operational beaches codenamed Sword, Juno, Gold, Omaha and Utah. British divisions were to capture two, Americans were to capture two, and a Canadian division was to secure one. It was the largest amphibious operation in history. By the end of the day, over 75,000 British and Canadian troops and more than 57,000 Americans held the beaches; within a month, those numbers swelled to over a million.

Moving inland proved to be a bloody slugfest. In Normandy, farmers’ fields were separated by hedgerows comprised of banks of earth covered with trees, the roots of which had intertwined over centuries to form impenetrable barriers. Roads were narrow. German defenders covered every road and every hedgerow opening. Not until Operation Cobra, July 25–31, a sweep around the Germans’ western flank, were the Allies able to break out of the hedgerow country and begin a fast-moving drive on Paris and then to the German border.