Tomorrow, the world will recognize the 75th anniversary of D Day.
Although the term D-Day is used routinely as military lingo for the day an operation or event will take place, for many it is also synonymous with June 6, 1944, the day the Allied powers crossed the English Channel and landed on the beaches of Normandy, France, beginning the liberation of Western Europe from Nazi control during World War II.
‘D-Day’ is a general term for the start date of any military operation – the ‘D’ stands for ‘day’. It is often used when the exact date is either secret or not yet known.
Within three months, the northern part of France would be freed and the invasion force would be preparing to enter Germany, where they would meet up with Soviet forces moving in from the east.
With Hitler’s armies in control of most of mainland Europe, the Allies knew that a successful invasion of the continent was central to winning the war. Hitler knew this too, and was expecting an assault on northwestern Europe in the spring of 1944.
He hoped to repel the Allies from the coast with a strong counterattack that would delay future invasion attempts, giving him time to throw the majority of his forces into defeating the Soviet Union in the east. Once that was accomplished, he believed an all-out victory would soon be his.
On this date June 5, in 1944, U.S. General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the supreme commander of Allied forces in Europe gave the go-ahead for Operation Overlord, the largest amphibious military operation in history.
On his orders, 6,000 landing craft, ships and other vessels carrying 176,000 troops began to leave England for the trip to France. That night, 822 aircraft filled with parachutists headed for drop zones in Normandy. An additional 13,000 aircraft were mobilized to provide air cover and support for the invasion.
Cross Channel Invasion, At Last – “D” Day
In November 1943, Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin met at Tehran. This was the first face to face meeting of what was known as “The Big Three.” It took place in the Capital of Iran, a country that Soviet and British troops had occupied jointly in the summer of 1941.
At the meeting, Churchill continued to push for operations in the Mediterranean and postponing the Cross Channel invasion. Stalin supported the Americans and insisted that they need to launch the offensive as soon as possible.
Confronted by the opposition of both Roosevelt and Stalin, Churchill reluctantly agreed that the Cross Channel invasion would have top priority in 1944.
It was also decided at Tehran that Eisenhower would become supreme commander of the allied expeditionary forces that would carry out the invasion on “D” Day.
The Allies chose the coast of Normandy for the invasion site. Normandy contained two important ports: Cherbourg (to the west) and Le Havre (to the east), either of which would be valuable for supplying the invading troops.
Until the Allies were successful in capturing these two ports, the invasion force would rely on prefabricated concrete harbors called Mulberries.
Allied ships would tow the Mulberries across the channel in sections and put them into place off the Normandy coast. They also had to lay pipeline to provide badly needed fuel to shore.
The Germans had expected the invasion to come at the Pas de Calais, 200 miles to the northeast and only 20 miles from England across the Strait of Dover.
Preparations for the invasion took many months including transportation of 1.5 million American soldiers across the Atlantic and from the Mediterranean.
600 war ships and over 4000 transports and landing craft also had to be moved into position. In addition, we utilized 12,000 planes providing support for the operation.
In the meantime, Germans made preparations to resist the invasion. In charge of the resistance and the defense was Field Marshall Erwin Rommel. Rommel created as powerful a combination of obstacles as he could and this became known as the Atlantic Wall.
His biggest problem was not knowing for sure where the Allies would actually land. As a result he had to order defenses built on every beach where landing might be made. This thinned out his resources considerably.
The Germans laid almost 4 million mines and built huge amounts of underwater obstacles, thousands of bunkers encasements, some housing 155 millimeter guns. The underwater obstacles were especially important because they forced the Allies to land at low tide to prevent landing craft from snagging them.
The allied leaders went to great lengths to convince the Germans that an American Army under Patton’s command was present in Southeast England. Here they constructed dummy headquarters and utilized blow up replicas of tanks and artillery.
The German leaders were convinced they had nothing to fear for the foreseeable future. Rommel, on the day of the invasion, had actually gone home to Berlin to celebrate his wife’s birthday.
The Invasion Begins
The Germans were so convinced that the attack would take place at the Pas d Calais, that even after the initial invasion took place at Normandy the commanders, including Hitler, still contended it was simply a diversion and that the real attack would take place to the north.
As a result the German leaders, at first, refused to divert forces from the northern territory, south to Normandy. The Allies planned to carry out Operation OverLord in three stages: Break In, Build UP, and Break Out.
Break In included the actual landings on the beach head.
Build up focused on expanding the beachhead and increasing the size of the force
Break out was when the Allies were to execute when the Build Up was complete by punching through the German defenses around the beachhead and breaking out in the direction of the German border.
Allied forces executed the Break In stage successfully starting on D-Day, June 6th.
Before the amphibious landings took place, the 82nd and 101st airborne divisions dropped inland to control the approaches to the beaches. They made their drops under cover of darkness and the paratroopers were badly scattered, but groups of them caused confusion among the Germans and distracted their attention from the beaches.
In another preliminary action, three companies of rangers scaled Pointe-Du-Hoc (pronounced, “point de hook”), a sheer 100 ft cliff, 10 miles west of Omaha Beach.
Their mission was the destruction of a battery of 155 millimeter guns. Despite heavy casualties they made it to the top, only to find that the guns were not there.
The Germans had moved them. The rangers later discovered the guns as the fought their way inland and disabled them, the price had been high, all but 50 of the 200 rangers had either been killed or wounded.
The amphibious landings at Omaha Beach had all kinds of problems, the navy launched many landing craft too far out and the choppy sea swamped them, taking a heavy toll of men, tanks, and artillery.
Once they reached the shore the men encountered devastating enemy fire, many never made it out of their landing craft. 2500 Americans lost their lives on Omaha Beach that day.
The Americans that landed on Utah beach, to the west, encountered fewer obstacles and far fewer casualties, although; here too they moved inland more slowly than expected.
British and Canadian troops landed at Gold, Juno, and Sword beaches to the east of Omaha Beach. Slightly over 100,000 Allied troops reached shore during the first two days of the invasion.
Within 10 days Allied manpower at Normandy had increased to over 500,000 and by July 1st almost 1 million men were inside the beach head.
The buildup of Allied strength, in Normandy, led to the creation of two army groups: the 21st Army Group was under British General Montgomery’s command. The 12th Army Group was under US General Bradley’s command.
Adding to the Germans’ problems Rommel suffered injuries when a British plane attacked his staff car on July 17th ending his role in the defense at Normandy.
Now while all of this was happening, there was an attempt to kill Hitler on July 20, 1944. When the tide turned against Germany in Russia a small group of officers on the eastern front concluded it was necessary to end the war and this would be possibly only if Hitler were eliminated.
Six attempts to kill Hitler had taken place in 1943 and all their efforts failed.
Colonel Klaus Von Stauffenburg would lead the attempt on Hitler’s life in 1944. Von Stauffenburg had lost his right hand and two fingers on his left hand and an eye in Tunisia.
Von Stauffenburg, with the help of officers in Berlin and on the western front, put together a plot to kill Hitler. The plot took place at Hitlers’ Wolf’s lair.
Von Stauffenburg had attended a planning meeting with Hitler and had placed a briefcase containing a bomb under the conference table and then excused himself to go to the restroom.
When the bomb exploded a few minutes later, it killed 4 men and wounded 20 others, but the tables’ heavy oak top absorbed enough of the blast to spare Hitler. In addition, the bomb had been placed into a room that was a screen porch as opposed to traditional bunker where the meetings were previously been held.
Stauffenburg and his fellow conspirators had planned to follow the assassination by seizing control of the government in Berlin and seeking an end to the war.
The officers who remained loyal to Hitler received word that Hitler was still alive and quickly arrested Stauffenburg and several others. They shot Stauffenburg and his immediate associates shortly thereafter.
Hitler now sought out everyone involved in the plot, high ranking officers and civilians were drug before a kangaroo court set up by Hitler, many of the condemned were hanged by piano wire suspended from meat hooks.
Hitler ordered the executions be filmed so he could view the victims’ deaths at his leisure. Rommel himself was implicated in the conspiracy and was forced to commit suicide. The attempt on Hitler’s’ life increased his suspicion of even generals who remained loyal to him.
In the meantime, back at the front, the Americans took Saint-Lo on July 18th and the British captured Caen (pronounced “con”) two days later. We were now in a situation where we had troops to the north and south of the Germans at a place known as the Falaise (pronounced, “Fa lez”)Gap.
Unfortunately, our troops both to the north and south, could not close the gap quickly enough and almost 35,000 Germans were able to escape to the east. Nevertheless 10,000 Germans died in the Falaise Gap and another 50,000 surrendered.
While the battles raged along the beaches of Normandy, Allied forces landed on the French Mediterranean coast as well. The invaders to the south met little resistance compared to those who landed at Normandy and very quickly made progress inland.
French troops joined up with the Allies. At this point, the Allies received word that Hitler had ordered all German troops in southern France to withdraw northward. This information enabled them to pursue the enemy up the valley of the Rhone River. The progress was so quick, that on September 12th they made contact with the US 3rd Army north of Dijon in Eastern France.
American troops now marched into Paris on August 25th liberating the city. Soon after the liberation of Paris, the British moved into Belgium, while Patton drove into Lorraine and by September 15th most of Belgium and Luxemburg had fallen into Allied hands and the German border was only a few miles away.
The big problem now, became logistics. The Allies had outdistanced their supply lines and were experiencing shortages of fuel as well as all the other necessities needed to keep such a huge force moving forward in the attack.
The Push to Cross the Rhine
General Bernard Montgomery, British commander, came up with a plan to have a massive airborne operation aimed at crossing the Rhine in the Netherlands. The key to this was to land paratroops behind German lines, who would then capture most of the Bridges crossing the Rhine River.
Montgomery gained Eisenhower’s approval for this plan, which was given the code name, “Operation Market Garden.” The plan called for the US 101st Airborne division to capture the bridge across the Maas River. They would also take a number of bridges over lesser streams and canals. The 82nd Airborne division was to seize the span over the Waal River, a branch of the Rhine.
The British 1st Airborne division drew the most difficult assignment of all and that was to capture the northern most bridge across the lower Rhine at Arnhem.
“Market Garden” began on September 17th with daytime landings, but soon encountered bad weather that delayed the dropping of some of the paratroops. The British added to the problem by dropping their forces too far from the objective, this enabled the Germans to split them into two segments and prevent the capture of the bridge.
Only after a bloody crossing of the Waal, in flimsy canvas boats, was the 82nd Airborne able to secure their bridge. The British 30th Corp, comprised of relief forces had to move through swampy terrain along one narrow road that the Germans bombed with artillery fire. Ultimately the relief force came to the rescue of all the airborne troops except those at Arnhem.
After 9 days of heavy fighting only 2400 of the original 9000 troops managed to break through enemy lines and escape. The failure of Market Garden ended Allied hopes of crossing the Rhine in 1944.
The End of the 1000 Year Reich
As the Allies prepared to make their final thrust into Germany, Hitler had one final counter attack to play. This was strictly Hitler’s idea, and even his Generals didn’t agree. He chose to strike in the Ardennes Forest.
The Germans had done so in WWI and had an amazing victory. Hitler realized this was a weak point in the Allied line again, the main reason why was that the Allies figured there was no way that Germany could maneuver its tanks though the heavy forests.
Hitler now planned to crash through the Ardennes Forest and drive all the way to Antwerp. If he could do this he would isolate the British Army under Montgomery to the north and the American armies to the south.
To do this, Hitler now pulled troops from the eastern front to provide a striking force to the western front.
The Allies simply did not see this coming and thought there was no way Hitler would be able to launch this force through the forest.
There were only 4 American divisions (10,000 to 30,000 in a division) under General Hodges who held the Ardennes Front, the Allied leaders were oblivious to the counter attack coming.
Hitler had also insisted on complete radio silence in connection with the operation, therefore ULTRA was unable to read any messages indicating that the assault was coming.
Hitler also had another trick up his sleeve. He had placed English speaking German commandos behind US lines who caused great confusion. Dressed in American uniforms they cut telephone lines, changed road signs and killed military policemen in charge of directing troop convoys.
Americans now began to suspect everyone and subjected strangers to informal questioning. They asked them everything from major league batting champions to the names of state Capitols. At one point General Bradley had to confess he didn’t know the identity of the husband of the popular movie star Betty Grable.
The SS Panzer division inspired more fear by murdering Americans who fell into their hands. The most notorious massacre occurred near the town of Malmedy, where German machine gunners killed 86 Americans, these Americans had surrendered as prisoners of war only to be slaughtered.
German armor did push through the Ardennes forest and badly outnumbered the American forces along the 70 mile front. The Americans fell back and eventually set up defenses at two road junctions in eastern Belgium. St. Vieth and Bastogne. Although St. Vieth fell on December 22nd Bastogne continued to hold out.
Eisenhower, seeing that Bastogne was surrounded, now ordered the 101st Airborne division to reinforce the towns’ garrison. German troops, who surrounded Bastogne, sent a note to the defenders to surrender. General Anthony Mccollough, the American commander in charge, sent a note back with one word “Nuts!”
When the skies finally cleared on December 23rd Allied fighter bombers came in and lay waste to the enemy armored spearheads.
The Germans would also experience a severe fuel shortage and had no choice but to break off their offensive. Hitler’s dream of reaching Antwerp had been way too ambitious and his counter offensive had simply created a bulge in the allied line, thus the Battle of the Bulge.
Allied forces soon struck against the flanks of the Bulge. Patton executed one of the most remarkable feats of the war when he pivoted two of Third Armies three corps 90 degrees from Lorraine to Bastogne.
Despite intense cold, snow, and icy roads, his Fourth Armored division arrived in Bastogne on December 26th to save the day.
By January the Allies had eliminated the Bulge. Hitler had used up his last reserves and his greatest concentration of armor in an enterprise that never had a chance to win. By January 25th the Germans broke off their offensive and began to transfer some of their best divisions back to the eastern front.
By early July the Allied armies had captured 41,000 German troops while sustaining 60,771 casualties, including 8,975 dead. French losses in the Normandy campaign have been calculated at fifteen thousand civilian dead.
The total number of casualties that occurred during Operation Overlord, from June 6 (the date of D-Day) to August 30 (when German forces retreated across the Seine) was over 425,000 Allied and German troops. This figure includes over 209,000 Allied casualties:
• Nearly 37,000 dead amongst the ground forces
• 16,714 deaths amongst the Allied air forces.
• Of the Allied casualties, 83,045 were from 21st Army Group (British, Canadian and Polish ground forces)
• 125,847 from the US ground forces.
The losses of the German forces during the Battle of Normandy can only be guessed. Roughly 200,000 German troops were killed or wounded. The Allies also captured 200,000 prisoners of war (not included in the 425,000 total, above). During the fighting around the Falaise Pocket (August 1944) alone, the Germans suffered 90,000 losses, including prisoners.
Now folks, if you learned nothing else today, I hope that you can now see why this group of people is called “The Greatest Generation”.
It was none other than Tom Brokaw who coined the prase “Greatest Generation after attending the 40th anniversary commemoration of the D-Day invasion of mainland Europe.
There are no precise dates that define when the Greatest Generation was born, though many give a range of the early 1900s to the mid-1920s. The common theme of the Greatest Generation is that its members lived through and experienced the hardships of the Great Depression and later either fought in World War II or worked in the industries that contributed to winning the war.
We owe them everything. There are few of them left, but if you have the opportunity to meet someone from that period, take the time to stop and thank them. Every last one of them played a part in gaining you the freedoms you enjoy today.
Callers, Do you agree? Were they the Greatest Generation?
Better yet, do we currently have what it takes to match their achievements?