D‐Day

D‐Day (1944). At 6:30 a.m. on 6 June 1944, after foul weather had postponed the operation for a day, forty‐seven Allied divisions invaded Normandy in the largest amphibious assault in history. Under Supreme Allied Commander General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the invasion armada constituted some 4,400 ships and landing craft, carrying 154,000 troops and 1,500 tanks, supported by some 11,000 aircraft. The invasion force included twenty‐one American divisions, plus British, Canadian, and Polish troops. Of sixty German divisions in France and the Low Countries, only six infantry divisions and one armored division defended Normandy, in part because Allied deception and disinformation pointed to Pas de Calais as the likely invasion site. Still, Germany's formidable coastal defenses included underwater obstacles and mines, concrete pillboxes, tank traps, artillery emplacements, and other hazards. To secure bridges and airfields, British and U.S. airborne divisions had dropped behind German lines in a predawn parachute‐glider assault.

The invasion targeted forty miles of coastline between the Orne River and the Cotentin peninsula, with British forces assigned the eastern sector and American troops the west. On Utah Beach, the American right, Major General J. Lawton Collins's VII Corps suffered only light casualties and quickly made contact with units of the Eighty‐second Airborne Division. At Omaha Beach, however, where the Germans had moved in a first‐rate division at the last minute, withering fire from machine gun emplacements on coastal cliffs cost more than two thousand casualties before General L.T. Gerow's troops dislodged the enemy. The British and Canadians suffered fewer casualties. The British Third Division repelled an armored counterattack northwest of Caen, throwing the Germans on the defensive. By the end of D‐Day, approximately 150,000 Allied troops and accompanying materiel had successfully landed. Within a week the build‐up had reached a half million men.

The German failure to grasp that the invasion was really taking place proved decisive to the successful Allied invasion at a time of overwhelming German superiority in troops, guns, and tanks. The German High Command, viewing the Normandy attack as a feint, failed until too late to commit their armored reserves. The largest German army remained in the Pas de Calais area, poised to resist an invasion that never occurred. Allied air power and sabotage by the French resistance impeded German movements and enabled the Allies to outpace the Germans in replenishing their forces. The Allied capture of the port of Cherbourg at the end of June set the stage for the American break‐out at St. Lô on 25 July. Fierce fighting lay ahead, but victory in Normandy helped end World War II within a year.

Bibliography

Stephen E. Ambrose , D‐Day, June 6, 1944: The Climatic Battle of World War II, 1994.
Theodore A. Wilson, ed., D‐Day 1944, 1994.

J. Garry Clifford