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Operation Overlord
On June 6, 2004, a series of U.S.-sponsored
events were held in Normandy, France, to
celebrate the 60th anniversary of D-Day, the
largest amphibious landing operation in
history. The success of D-Day led to the
liberation of France in late August 1944 and
to the end of World War II in Europe in May
1945. Although D-Day was a combined
effort by the Allied forces, the United States
played a major role in the planning and
execution of the bold operation, which has
been reenacted for movie and television
audiences time and again.
the United States, Great Britain, and the
Soviet Union seized the initiative from
Nazi Germany and began to take the
offensive on all fronts. That month, the
three nations' leaders—U.S. president
Franklin D. Roosevelt, British prime
minister Winston Churchill, and Soviet
leader Joseph Stalin—met at the Tehran
Conference to discuss future strategy.
Stalin felt that his country had borne the
brunt of Nazi aggression because of
American and British hesitation about
launching major offensives, and he was
determined to force the two countries to
strike hard at Germany.
The Allies' plan for an invasion of Western
Europe began soon after Germany declared
war on the United States on December 11,
1941. Dwight D. Eisenhower, who began
the war as the assistant chief of staff to U.S.
Army head George C. Marshall, quickly
developed two plans for an Allied victory in
Europe: one in 1942 called Operation
Sledgehammer, in case the Soviets were
routed in the east, and a 1943 invasion plan
called Operation Roundup. In June 1942,
Eisenhower was appointed to lead U.S.
forces in the European theater of operations.
Meanwhile, back in America, Marshall
continued to expand the U.S. Army into a
force of millions that would be able to fight
a large-scale war against superbly trained
and equipped, battle-hardened enemy forces.
Roosevelt and Churchill were now
agreeable to a major attack, but the three
leaders had difficulty deciding where
such an assault should take place. An
Allied attack into the Balkans was
seriously discussed, since German forces
and defenses were weak there.
(Historians still debate whether that idea
was Churchill's or Roosevelt's.) A
Balkans strike would put American and
British forces directly on the German
flank and provide the Soviets with the
most direct assistance. However, Stalin
argued in favor of an Anglo-American
landing on the coast of France. By
striking the German rear, it would force
Hitler to fight a two-front war rather
than concentrate his troops only in the
east. Churchill and Stalin were both
likely looking ahead at a postwar world.
Churchill did not want to see
communism extended past the Soviet
Union's borders into the Balkans, while
Stalin did not want to see British and
U.S. forces, his potential enemies, on his
doorstep.
The invasion of Western Europe was
initially put on the back burner as British
officials persuaded Americans leaders to
focus on Operation Torch, the Allied
invasion of North Africa, and later on
operations in Sicily and Italy. However,
by November 1943, the Allied forces of
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Europe had been established, additional
divisions would be shipped from the
United States and from across the
channel. With Eisenhower and
Marshall's participation, the plan went
through some major changes, but the
location of the landing remained the
same.
Roosevelt also saw into the political
future, but his focus was elsewhere. In
November 1943, the U.S. Marine Corps
was just beginning its island-hopping
campaign in the Pacific theater and had
met fierce resistance from the Japanese.
The president's advisers had estimated
an extremely costly campaign to capture
the Japanese homeland, and Roosevelt
wanted help. He reasoned that, if he
cooperated with Stalin on the European
strategy, he could get Stalin to provide
troops to fight Japan when the war in
Europe was completed. That hope
helped lead him to support Stalin's
demand for an invasion of France in
May 1944, with the Soviets promising to
mount an attack on German forces to
coincide with the European invasion.
The United States had been massing
forces in Great Britain for months.
Though many of them had gone on to
fight in North Africa or Italy, many more
were on British bases waiting for the big
invasion. In September 1943, Gen. Omar
Bradley was placed in charge of the U.S.
1st Army in England. By that time,
American and British air forces had
already begun strategic bombing of
industrial sites on the Continent and, in
the first months of 1944, began hitting
targets in France as well. Meanwhile,
Eisenhower oversaw the largest armada
ever assembled. More than 5,000
warships and landing craft gathered off
England's shores in preparation for the
invasion. However, logistical problems
and poor weather postponed the
scheduled May operation until the first
week in June.
In December 1943, Eisenhower was
designated supreme commander of the
Allied forces in Europe. He immediately
set out to fine-tune the Allies' invasion
plan. Even though Churchill had been
reluctant to launch an Allied invasion of
Western Europe, British lieutenant
general Frederick Morgan had been
working on an invasion plan called
Operation Overlord since the Casablanca
Conference in January 1943. The
landings were to be at Normandy,
between Caen and the Cotentin
Peninsula. Three Allied divisions were
to be part of the landing, and two other
divisions were to be air-dropped, with 11
other divisions to land within 14 days.
Two artificial harbors were to be towed
from England, and once a foothold in
The Germans, aware that something was
afoot, had brought one of their most
skilled generals, Erwin Rommel, to
supervise the construction of defenses
along the English Channel coast.
Concrete bunkers and gun positions
covered the beaches from Calais to
Cherbourg, with most of the works
concentrated near Calais, where the
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channel is narrowest and therefore the
easiest location for bringing in supplies
and reinforcements. The Allies went to
great lengths to convince the Germans
that they were defending the correct
place. A huge disinformation campaign,
using false radio traffic and troop
movements, attempted to confirm the
German belief that the Pas-de-Calais
region was the invasion site. The Allies
also created an entire phantom army
supposedly under the command of U.S.
general George S. Patton—complete
with inflatable aircraft, tanks, and
trucks—in southeastern England to give
the impression of an Allied buildup
there. The landing site in Normandy,
farther southwest, was successfully
hidden until the landings actually took
place.
Hitler's orders, German reinforcements
were not allowed to move from the
Calais area to counter the invasion
because Hitler was convinced that the
landing was a diversion. By the time
German forces were released to
counterattack two weeks later, it was too
late.
Still, Allied progress in France was not
easy. Though the beachhead was secure
and supplies began to flow in through
artificial harbors created by the Allies,
German resistance in the farm country of
Normandy was intense. Each small field
was surrounded by an impenetrable
hedgerow that made it very easy to
defend and extremely difficult to
capture. On August 1, a massive carpet
of bombs from a huge air assault
paralyzed the Germans, and an Allied
armored attack finally broke through.
The race to Germany was on, and Patton
was determined to be at the forefront. On
the same day as the carpet bombing,
Patton led the 3rd Army in the breakout
from Normandy. His troops relentlessly
pressed the retreating Germans, driving
them back 30 miles a day. Meanwhile, a
combined U.S.-French force liberated
Paris from the Germans in late August,
by which time a second invasion had
occurred along the French Riviera, and
American forces were racing northward
to link up with troops of the first
invasion. By September, they had outrun
their supply lines and had to halt along
the German frontier.
Despite threatening weather, Eisenhower
ordered the forces to invade on June 6.
American and British airborne forces
landed in the dark, with mixed success,
to seize bridges and roadway junctions
to slow or halt German reinforcement.
When the naval bombardment opened at
dawn, the Germans were completely
surprised. One Canadian, two American,
and two British armies landed at five
beaches, some of which were easily
secured while others were not. The
American forces landing at the beach
farthest west (designated "Omaha") met
the most resistance and suffered the
greatest casualties. However, by the end
of the day, all the armies had men in the
nearby countryside and had secured a
beachhead. On German leader Adolf
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Eisenhower ordered the Allied armies to
consolidate their positions and dig in for
the winter; once fully supplied in the
spring, they would drive into Germany.
Only a Allied defeat during Operation
Market Garden at the Dutch city of
Arnhem in September 1944 and Hitler's
Ardennes offensive from mid-December
through mid-January—the famous Battle
of the Bulge—gave the Allies any pause.
At the Battle of the Bulge, Patton saved
the day, completing one of the most
intricate marches of the war by
disengaging in front, rotating his army
90 degrees northward, and hitting the
Germans in the flank. On December 26,
1944, Patton's 4th Armored Division
under Col. Creighton Abrams relieved
the siege of Bastogne, leading to the
defeat of Germany's last major offensive
in January.
The
courageous performance of the Allied
forces on D-Day and in the subsequent
march on Germany has been celebrated
in Europe and North America since the
end of World War II. In the United
States, the invasion of Normandy lives
on in the form of movies and television.
The first major Hollywood extravaganza
to tackle D-Day was The Longest Day
(1962), which showcases the
international flavor of the attack. The
film boasts an impressive cast, including
American actors John Wayne, Henry
Fonda, and Robert Mitchum, as well as
numerous international movie stars from
England, France, and Germany.
Patton resumed his offensive in January
1945 by fighting his way through
Oppenheim and crossing the Rhine
River on March 22, a day ahead of his
rival, British general Bernard
Montgomery. That same month, the U.S.
1st Army, led by Gen. Courtney H.
Hodges, had reached Remagen on the
Rhine and seized the bridge there. In
addition, the U.S. 9th Army under Gen.
William H. Simpson had fought its way
to the Rhine in the area of Dusseldorf.
The U.S. armies were all ordered to put
on the brakes to allow Montgomery's
main force to launch a major assault
across the Rhine, which occurred on the
night of March 23. The U.S. armies then
advanced into Germany, eventually
linking up with the Soviet forces that
had swept into Germany from the east.
On May 8, V-E Day, the war in Europe
officially ended.
More recently, director Steven
Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan (1998),
the winner of five Academy Awards,
featured a graphic opening sequence on
the D-Day landing that raised the bar
significantly in portraying the reality of
the battlefield. On the television side, in
2001, HBO aired the highly acclaimed
Band of Brothers, a 10-part miniseries
based on Stephen Ambrose's best-selling
World War II book. Band of Brothers
focused on the real-life exploits of the
506th regiment of the 101st Airborne
Division as it parachuted into Normandy
on D-Day and fought its way through
France, the Netherlands, and Germany.
The commercial and critical success of
Saving Private Ryan and Band of
Brothers makes it likely that U.S.
audiences haven't seen the last of the
Normandy invasion on the silver screen
and television.
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