On June 6, 1944, 156,000 American, British, and Canadian soldiers marched to the gates of hell, fought the devil, and won.
Before we get to the D-Day landings on Normandy, there is some background information about the war that you need to know. Where we start our story is back in the summer of 1941. At this time the Nazis were fighting on the Eastern Front after they invaded Russia. Before the Nazis invaded Russia they were cutting through Europe like a hot knife through butter. So, Adolf Hitler assumed that he could betray his ally, Joseph Stalin, and the Soviets (yes, the Germans and Soviets were allies at the beginning of the war) and march his army into Russia and take it with ease. At the beginning of Operation Barbarossa (that’s what the Nazis called the offensive) it was working out just as Hitler had hoped. The German Army was making huge inroads in the Soviet Union, that is until they got stopped at the Battle of Moscow. Then the Russian winter hit the Germans hard and they could not advance any further. The Germans restarted their offensive on the Soviets in the Summer of 1942 at the Battle of Stalingrad. Stalingrad was where a major part of the Soviets manufacturing was and if the Germans took Stalingrad, then the Soviets would be cut off at the knees, and it would’ve only been a matter of time until the Germans marched back into Moscow. The Battle of Stalingrad was one of the bloodiest battles of the war and to make a long story short (maybe we’ll go deeper into this topic later hint hint) the Soviets were able to hold off the Nazis and defeat them at the Battle of Stalingrad in early 1943.
The Soviets were able to entrench the Germans in the east and this opened the door for an allied invasion in the west. Up until this point the allies were not able to get a foothold in Western Europe after the fall of France, although they had started an invasion into Italy. If the allies in the west could successfully mount an offensive into Western Europe, it would be the turning point in the war. If they were successful it would force the Nazis to have to fight a war on two fronts, and the allies could squeeze the Germans from two sides until the forces in the West and East could meet and sandwich the Germans.
The wheels were set in motion for an allied invasion into Western Europe in November of 1943 when U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Soviet Union dictator Joseph Stalin met at the Tehran Conference where they decided to launch an invasion by May of 1944. The planning for Operation Overlord had begun.
The allies decided that General Dwight Eisenhower (that name sound familiar?) would be the commander of this operation. The first thing they had to decide was where they were to land for the invasion. There were four possibilities: Brittany, the Cotentin Peninsula, Pas-de-Calais, and Normandy. Brittany and Cotentin were both peninsula’s so the Germans could cut them off in a narrow isthmus. Pas-de-Calais was a good spot, but the main problem was that it was the closest point in mainland Europe to Britain, and because of that it was heavily fortified by the Germans. Normandy wasn’t a perfect spot for an invasion because some of the beaches had high cliffs and it would lead to high casualties, and there weren’t a lot of port facilities on the coast, but it was a better spot than the other three so they decided on Normandy.
The Allies then launched a naval attack (Operation Neptune) on Western Europe so they could get a secure foothold in Europe. They then launched an aerial attack on Germany (Operation Pointblank) to hit their aircraft production, fuel supplies and airfields to put Germany’s elite Luftwaffe (Air Force) out of commission for enough time to establish the Western Front. The allies were also very deceptive in the lead up to the invasion. Operation Bodyguard was designed to mislead the Germans, and the allies did this a couple of different ways like spreading misinformation about an allied invasion into Norway. Another thing the allies did was make the Germans believe that they were going to launch an invasion with the (fake) First United States Army Group under General George Patton. They actually gave Patton fake tanks to put out on the English Coast to make the Germans think an invasion was imminent. The night before the invasion, the British SAS (Special Air Service) dropped dummies dressed as paratroopers to make the Nazis think an airborne landing had occurred, and the British RAF (Royal Air Force) dropped metal foil to mess with German radar and make the Germans believe that there was a naval convoy getting ready to invade.
All the preparation and training was done, now it was time for the invasion. The invasion of Normandy was supposed to take place on June 4, but they got a bad weather report so the next day they could land with satisfactory conditions (tides, moonlight, time of the day, etc.) would be on June 6. There were five beaches where the allies landed that day and they were Utah and Omaha Beach (American invasion), Sword and Gold Beach (British invasion) and Juno Beach (Canadian invasion).
The Germans, even with all of the deception from the allies, were not as ill prepared for the invasion as the allies had hoped. General Erwin Rommel convinced Hitler to fortify the Normandy coast because he thought the allies would invade there. The Atlantic Wall as the Germans called it was supposed to fortify the French coast from an invasion. Rommel was correct, but unfortunately for him and the German army, he was in Berlin for his wife’s birthday when the invasion happened and most of the leadership was not at Normandy. Also, according to Rommel the Atlantic Wall was only 18 percent completed so they were still vulnerable to an invasion. Because of the bad weather reports the Germans didn’t anticipate an attack, so their top brass went to Germany to watch war games, and some of their military units were on leave. They thought the allies wouldn’t try anything. They were dead wrong.
Just before dawn on the Morning of June 6, 1944, a heavy barrage of aerial and naval attacks were launched against the Nazi fortifications on the beaches of Normandy. The American invasion on Utah beach and Omaha beach took place at 6:30 AM that morning. Unfortunately the visibility was not good for an aerial attack and the bombs that were supposed to soften the German military capabilities did not hit their marks. This led to higher casualties for American soldiers. Also Omaha and Utah were the two most heavily guarded by the Germans. The British and Canadians landed on Gold, Sword and Juno beaches an hour later due to a change in the tide. With the British and Canadians covering the Americans flank from a German counterattack, each army was able to push forward up the beaches and successfully overtake the Germans. While the fighting on the beaches were going on, the French Resistance was busy destroying German infrastructure. They were able to destroy the railroads to Normandy and cut all of the electrical and phone lines to Normandy, and by June 7, Normandy was completely isolated from the rest of the German war machine.
By the time the dust settled on June 6, the allies were able to successfully pull off the largest seaborne invasion in history. There were over 10,000 allied casualties with 4,414 dead, and the Germans lost over 1,000 men. Most of the allies desired objectives for June 6 were not met, but over the next several days they were able to complete their mission objectives. This battle changed the tide of the war and over the course of the next several months, close to one million allied soldiers crossed the English channel to go fight in Western Europe. Germany was now forced to fight on two fronts, and even for the mighty German war machine, it was too much for them to handle, and less than a year later, on May 7, 1945, Germany surrendered.
The anniversary of D-Day should be a reminder to all Americans that freedom isn’t free. These men went to hell and back and defeated an evil that the world had never seen before. This was our greatest generation, and not many of these men are left. They don’t make men like these anymore, but if they did the world would be a much better place. Never forget the sacrifices they made to protect the freedoms that we hold so dearly today.