Battle of Normandy

  by Staff Editor

Table of Contents

- Before Battle
- Germany Prepares
- D-Day
- Juno Beach
- Gold Beach
- Omaha Beach
- Pointe du Hoc
- Utah Beach
- After the Landing

Code-named Operation Overlord, the Battle of Normandy went down in history as the largest seaborne invasion ever, with nearly three million Allied troops crossing the English Channel into Normandy in an effort to liberate occupied France. Its start date, June 6, 1944 is celebrated around the world by many of the 12 nations who saw action on the beaches of northern France.

Twelve Allied nations participated in the attack that ultimately culminated in the liberation of Paris: Australia, Belgium, Canada, Czechoslovakia, France, Greece, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, Norway, the U.K. and the U.S. all played key roles in the seminal invasion and are still revered as heroes today.

Before the Battle:

After Operation Barbarossa in 1941 saw Germany invade the Soviet Union, Stalin and his men retaliated, becoming the foremost aggressors against Germany in the war. Seeing this, both President Franklin Delano Roosevelt of the United States and Prime Minister Winston Churchill of England pledged to open up a second front in Europe to relieve the Soviets of some of the burden of battle and to aid in their advance on Germany.

But both countries differed on just how to open up this front. Britain preferred to attack Germany from the peripheries on in while the U.S. insisted on exploiting the shortest route to Germany and was adamant that it was the only position it would support. America eventually won out and plans for what would become Operation Overlord were subsequently put in motion.

Plans were initially begun in 1943 but the operation was delayed until 1944, when it was taken over and refined by U.S. General Dwight D. Eisenhower after he became Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces, putting him at the helm of all Allied forces across Europe.

Where to land was the next big question. The Allies had to choose their locations carefully but the limited selections they had made that choice even more difficult than it already was. The small operating range of Allied fighters coupled with the geography of war-torn Europe narrowed the choice down to two regions: the Pas de Calais and Normandy in France.

The favored landing point was the Pas de Calais for its ideal beaches, its proximity to the U.K. (facilitating the crossover from the English Channel) and its direct land route to Germany. For this reason it was also the most anticipated landing point by the Germans who in turn, installed heavy defense lines and fortifications there.

Given this, the Allies chose Normandy. Despite its less favorable qualities when compared to Pas de Calais, it offered the ultimate benefit: no one suspected it.

The plan called for 6,900 vessels and 12,000 aircraft to descend on Normandy, fronted by 47 troop divisions which included 26 divisions of British, Canadian and Commonwealth soldiers and 21 U.S. divisions. The invasion procedure also called for the use of more than 10,000 tons of bombs.

The German army already suspected an attack at Pas de Calais so fooling them into believing that their suspicions had merit was not difficult. Even so, the Allies prepared a massive deception plan called Operation Bodyguard that consisted of, among other things, a fake U.S. First Army group. The phony battalion had mock buildings and equipment and even sent out fake radio messages in an effort to feign authenticity. (The unit even let it "slip" that they were being led by U.S. General George Patton.)

The Germans were eager to pinpoint the Allies' exact landing location and dispatched a vast network of undercover spies across southern England to uncover the information. Unbeknownst to them, their spies were also doing double duty for the Allies, having been converted as part of the Double Cross System. They kept up the charade by reporting back to German army intelligence and confirming that the likely point of attack would be Pas de Calais. The Allies further played out the pretense by launching a few minor attacks on the area right after the invasion of Normandy.

Now sufficiently fooled, Hitler dispatched his elite Panzer army division to hold down the fort at Pas de Calais in order to fend off the Allied "attack" and, thinking that a larger scale assault was imminent, ordered his generals to check with him before mobilizing any troops. By the time word got back to him that the real action was happening at Normandy, it was too late to do much about it.

A further deception had the Germans thinking that an attack on either Norway or Denmark was planned as well. Operation Skye as it was known, used fake radio signals to convince German traffic analysts that an invasion of one of the two nations was being mounted. They bought into the ruse and sent troops to Norway, troops that could have otherwise been sent to defend France.

Germany Prepares:

By November of 1943, Hitler was convinced of an impending Allied invasion of France and appointed General Edwin Rommel Inspector of Coastal Defenses and later on commander of the army group charged with defending northern France.

Rommel was of the belief that the best way to defend against an attack was to properly counterattack the beaches as quickly as possible and insisted on armoring the areas close to the beaches without delay. His superiors instead preferred to concentrate their forces further inland so an enemy line of advance could be established and a proper counterattack launched to thwart it.

D-Day:

"D-Day" as it was known, was actually supposed to take place on June 5, 1944. In order for the invasion to go smoothly, the Allies required ideal weather conditions, which included calm waters in the English Channel as well as a full moon, which was required both to provide light in the nighttime raid and for the spring tide.

Bad weather forced a postponement and though the weather on June 6 was not much better, General Eisenhower was not keen on waiting for the next full moon to attack. His decision to land on Normandy on the 6th further caught the Germans off guard, as they never expected anyone to attack in such bad weather conditions. The Germans were so convinced that no attack would be launched that General Rommel even traveled back to Germany on June 4 to celebrate his wife's 50th birthday.

The BBC, via its French-language service, would regularly broadcast coded messages to the people of occupied France during the war and June 6 was no exception. A few days before the Normandy landing, the broadcaster aired a reading of Verlaine's Chanson d'automne to French resistance officers in a coded warning of an impending invasion. Now warned that an invasion was imminent, they set about on pre-assigned resistance duties, which included demolishing water towers, roads and railways.

At 12:16 am, the British 6th Airborne Division got the ball rolling on the invasion with Operation Tonga, an overnight paratrooper and glider landing, followed by air and naval bombardments and an early morning marine assault.

While the Normandy landing went down in history, it also produced other memorable landings on neighboring beaches:

Juno Beach:

Canadian forces that landed on Juno Beach faced heavy resistance from the Germans and the first wave of soldiers who descended on the area encountered a dismal 50% casualty rate, second only to the losses suffered by the Americans at Omaha Beach. Despite the losses, the Canadians rallied back to land 14,000 troops and make a 15 kilometer inroads into the mainland, penetrating further into France than any other Allied force.

Gold Beach:

Strong German fortifications on Gold Beach spelled heavy casualties for the British soldiers who landed there as well but this did not deter them from being almost as successful as the Canadians at Juno Beach in achieving their D-Day objectives.

Omaha Beach:

Without a doubt the bloodiest landing beach on D-Day, Omaha Beach saw U.S. forces face some of the best-trained German soldiers head on in the most heavily fortified beach in Normandy. Pre-landing bombardment of the bunkers did little to free up the area for the landing and within hours, nearly 2,500 U.S. soldiers were dead. Commanders toyed with the idea of abandoning the rest of the invasion but a few groups of surviving soldiers banded together to press on.

Pointe du Hoc:

Two hundred twenty-five U.S. soldiers scaled 30-meter high cliffs while facing German fire at Pointe du Hoc to attain their objective of reaching and destroying the guns in the area. It was believed that these guns were commanding the Omaha and Utah landing beaches. The target was reached and the guns were found and destroyed.

Utah Beach:

Utah Beach had the lightest casualty rates of all the landing beaches with less than 200 out of 23,000 soldiers. The U.S. infantry soldiers who landed at Utah managed to easily hook up with their airborne counterparts and press inland.

After the Landing:

After making ground in Normandy, the Allies transported two makeshift harbors across the English Channel. These harbors were essential in the landing of nearly 9,000 tons of material daily in the area. They remained functional until August 1944 when the ports of Antwerp and Cherbourg were secured by the Allies and made operational for their shipping needs.

Since the cream of the German military crop had been sent to defend Pas de Calais, the troops who were left behind at Normandy were less competent and ill prepared for the Allied invasion. Because of this and because of a shortage of equipment, they put up little resistance, making the Allied press forward easier than expected. An exception was the strong 352nd Infantry division, which was moved from St. Lo to Omaha Beach by Rommel.

Another reason for the decreased resistance was the fact that German generals were reluctant to move troops to the area until they were sure that the Normandy landing was in fact a full on invasion and not just a series of raids. By the time the Allied invasion was confirmed, it was too late to send in troops with any hopes of turning the tides.

Little by little, the Allies were linking the beaches of Normandy and reinforcing the front faster than the Germans, despite the fact that they first had to land all their supplies. Allied air superiority, along with the destruction of the French rail system made German troop movements perilous at best. Cities began to fall across the country, culminating with the Allied liberation of Paris on August 25.

Allied troops continued arriving in Normandy until they hit the 1 million mark by the end of July 1944.

The Normandy invasion opened up the Western front, though at the rapid pace that the Russians were advancing toward Germany, this turned out not to be entirely necessary. By the time the Allies landed at Normandy, the Red Army had almost reached Germany and four-fifths of German military manpower was dispatched to the Eastern front to dissipate the Russian threat. Only roughly 20% of the German army battled the Allies in France. The opening of the Western front was beneficial in distracting the Germans and shortening the war somewhat.

The Allied invasion of the Western front also helped combat Communism to an extent. Given the Soviet domination of postwar Eastern Europe, it is conceivable that had the Russians been able to push farther west, their ideology would have pressed on with them and spread Communism into most of Europe.

Modern Normandy has commemorated the D-Day invasions in many ways. The beaches in the area are still referred to by their codenames, cemeteries have been built to honor the Allied dead and streets near the beaches were renamed to commemorate the units who fought there and memorials and museums were put up all over the area, honoring momentous events.