Normandy D'Day History

The month of May 1944 had been chosen by the allies at a conference in Washington in May of 1943 as the time for the invasion of France at Normandy. Difficulties in assembling landing craft for the invasion forced a postponement until June. June 5, 1944 was fixed as the unalterable invasion date by General Eisenhower on May 17, 1944 . As d-day approached and troops began to embark for the crossing from England into France, bad weather set in, threatening dangerous landing conditions. After tense debate, Eisenhower and his subordinates decided on a 24-hour delay, requiring the recall of some ships already at sea off the Normandy coast. On the morning of June 5 an armada of 3,000 landing craft, 2,500 support ships, and 500 naval vessels—escorts and bombardment ships—began to leave English ports. That night 822 aircraft, carrying paratroopers and gliders, roared overhead to the Normandy landing zones. They were a fraction of the air armada of 13,000 aircraft that would support D-Day.

The airborne troops were the vanguard, and their landings were a heartening success. The American 82nd and 101st airborne divisions, dropping into a deliberately inundated zone at the base of the Cotentin Peninsula, suffered many casualties by drowning but nevertheless secured their objective. The British 6th Airborne Division seized its unflooded objectives at the eastern end more easily, and its special task force also captured key bridges over the Caen Canal and Orne River. When the seaborne units began to land about 6:30 AM on June 6, the British and Canadians on Gold, Juno, and Sword beaches overcame light opposition. So did the Americans at Utah. The U.S. 1st Division at Omaha Beach, however, confronted the best of the German coast divisions, the 352nd, and was roughly handled by machine gunners as the troops waded ashore. During the morning, the landing at Omaha Beach threatened to fail. Only dedicated local leadership eventually got the troops inland—though at a cost of more than 2,000 casualties.

Meanwhile, the German high command—in the absence of Rommel, who was home on leave—began to respond. Hitler was initially unwilling to release the armored divisions for a counterattack. When he relented after midday, elements of the 21st Panzer Division drove into the gap between the British 3rd and Canadian 3rd divisions at Sword Beach and Juno Beach and almost reached the sea. Had they done so, the landings might have failed. Fierce resistance by British antitank gunners at Periers-sur-le-Dan turned the tide in late evening.

On June 7 the beachhead consisted of three separate sectors: that of the British and Canadians, between Caen (not taken) and Bayeux; that of the U.S. V Corps, between Port-en-Bessin and Saint-Pierre-du-Mont; and that of the U.S. VII Corps, west of the Vire River behind Utah Beach. The narrow gap between Gold and Omaha at Port-en-Bessin was quickly closed, but it was not until June 12 that the American corps were able to join hands after a bitter battle to capture Carentan. The beachhead then formed a continuous zone, its deepest point being southwest of Bayeux, where the V Corps had driven nearly 15 miles (25 km) inland. 

Meanwhile, work had been proceeding to complete two artificial harbors, known by their code name, Mulberry, that were intended to off-load vehicles and supplies until the northern port of Cherbourg was secured. An outer breakwater of sunken ships for each harbor was in place by June 11. Floating piers, designed to rise and fall with the tides, were half-finished by June 19, when a heavy storm destroyed much of the material. The Americans then decided to abandon their Mulberry, while the British harbor was not in use until July. Most supplies meanwhile had to be beach-landed by assorted landing craft, landing ships, and amphibious trucks (DUKWs).

Fighting inshore, the Allies also encountered difficulty in the dense hedgerow country known to the French as the bocage. Thanks to the success of the airborne landings, the flanks of the beachhead were firmly held, but efforts to break out of the centre were frustrated by fierce German resistance and counterattacks, particularly around Caen in the British-Canadian sector. A British armored thrust at Villers-Bocage was defeated on June 13. A large-scale infantry offensive west of Caen, called Operation Epsom, was also defeated on June 25–29. There was gloom at SHAEF; it seemed that stalemate was descending. The gloom was deepened by Montgomery's strategy. His plan was to draw German armor toward the British front and win a battle of attrition between tank forces. The successful German defense, however, led the Americans to doubt the plan's viability

In fact, the Germans were also depressed, for their bitter defense was using up men and equipment that could not be replaced. Moreover, the Americans were now able to profit from the deployment of most of the enemy's armor against the British and break into the base of the Cotentin Peninsula and advance on Cherbourg. The last bastion in the heavily fortified city fell on June 28, and clearance of the port began at once.

The setbacks brought about a crisis in the German high command, which in any case now suffered unforeseeable casualties. Dollman, commander of the Seventh Army, died suddenly on June 28, just after the surrender of the main German garrison in Cherbourg; his death was blamed on a heart attack, though it is quite likely he committed suicide. Rommel was severely injured when his car was strafed by a British fighter on July 17. Worst of all, Rundstedt confessed defeatism to Hitler, urged him to make peace, and was dismissed on July 2 along with Geyr, the commander of Panzer Group West. Geyr was replaced by the capable veteran Heinrich Eberbach. Rundstedt himself was replaced by Günther von Kluge, who soon came round to sharing Rundstedt's doubts. On July 20 a conspiracy of officers (including former army chief of staff Ludwig Beck and reserve army chief of staff Claus, Count Schenk von Stauffenberg) who believed the only hope of securing a peace lay in Hitler's removal made an attempt on his life at his East Prussian headquarters, Rastenburg. The failure of the July Plot led to Hitler's taking draconian powers over the army and exacting terrible revenge on those suspected of complicity. Rommel was forced to commit suicide in October, and Kluge did so on August 18. 

The German defense of Normandy had by then taken a turn for the worse. Though a large British armored offensive west of Caen, Operation Goodwood, failed on July 18–19, the U.S. First Army conducted a bitter battle of attrition around Saint-Lo in the second and third weeks of July. Its success was to lay the basis for the long-awaited breakout.

By July 25, with most of the German tanks drawn westward by the British Goodwood offensive, the Americans faced a front almost denuded of armour. Reinforcement gave them a clear superiority in tank and infantry divisions, while the Allied Expeditionary Force had the bombardment power to devastate the Germans in their path. Operation Cobra, scheduled for July 25, opened with a devastating air attack (some of which fell on the waiting GIs). Through the gap thus opened, the U.S. First Army sped toward Avranches, taken on July 30. At this point George S. Patton's newly formed Third Army joined in the advance. A massive American spearhead now threatened to drive into Brittany and, by a left turn, to encircle the Germans in Normandy from the rear.

Hitler saw the breakout as an opportunity to restore the front. Bringing the 2nd, 116th, and 1st and 2nd Panzer SS divisions hastily westward, he issued orders for Operation Lüttich, designed to drive behind the point of the American spearhead and reach the sea at Avranches. However, Ultra interceptions of German cipher traffic alerted the Americans to the danger, and, when Lüttich opened on August 7, heavy antitank defenses were in place. The offensive was stopped and defeated in its tracks.

Meanwhile, as the American encirclement eastward from Brittany developed, the British and Americans began a strong advance west of Caen toward Falaise. On August 16, the day after a Franco-American force had landed on the Riviera (Operation Dragoon), Hitler at last recognized the inevitable and gave permission for a withdrawal from Normandy. The only route of escape lay through a gap between the converging American and British spearheads at Falaise. The position was held by the recently arrived Polish 1st Armoured Division. Despite its heroic efforts, the remnants of the German Seventh Army and Fifth Panzer Army—the latter now led by one of Hitler's top tank commanders, Josef (“Sepp”) Dietrich—succeeded in breaking through between August 16 and 19. Some 240,000 men, bereft of equipment, eventually reached the Seine River. They left behind in Normandy some 50,000 dead and 200,000 taken prisoner.

By 1944 the Germans, after two years of withdrawals in Russia, were expert at organizing retreats. They showed their expertise in the Seine River crossings. Though all bridges had been destroyed by Allied air attack, they improvised pontoons and ferries and conducted skillful rearguard actions to hold off the Anglo-American advance between August 19 and 31, when all survivors were rescued. By then the Allies commanded the west bank of the Seine from the sea to Fontainebleau, while their spearheads were on the Meuse River, 186 miles (299 km) farther on. The architect of the German withdrawal was Field Marshal Walther Model, the “Führer's fireman,” a veteran of the Eastern Front who had succeeded Kluge on August 17.

As Model drew the retreating Germans back across northern France at breakneck speed into Belgium, Resistance forces in Paris rose against what remained of the German garrison there on August 19. Fighting broke out, and, as news of the struggle reached the public in America and Britain, Eisenhower reversed his earlier decision to bypass the capital. The recently arrived Free French 2nd Armoured Division was ordered to liberate the city. Its vanguards arrived on August 24. Next morning the German city commander, Dietrich von Choltitz, surrendered to the Resistance and to Jacques-Philippe Leclerc, the 2nd Armoured commander. On August 26, General Charles de Gaulle, head of the Free French, made a triumphal parade down the Champs-Élysées to Notre-Dame Cathedral, where a mass of victory was celebrated.

Liberation had come at a high cost: more than 200,000 dead, wounded, and missing from the Allied armies, more than 300,000 from the German. French civilian losses numbered more than 12,000. Still, the Normandy campaign had been a stunning success. By early September 1944 all but a fraction of France had been liberated. The U.S., British, and Canadian forces had occupied Belgium and part of The Netherlands and had reached the German frontier. They had, however, outrun their logistical support and lacked the strength to launch a culminating offensive. The coming winter would see much hard fighting—and a German counteroffensive in the Belgian Ardennes, the Battle of the Bulge—before the German army in the west was finally to be beaten.