World War II | D-Day | Part 1

It was the late spring of 1944, and the Hitler empire, which once stood at the gates of Moscow and the doorway to Suez, had been shrinking. North Africa had fallen, Sicily was gone, the Italian mainland was conquered to Rome and beyond, and Italy was out of the war. The Russians were driving the Nazis from the Red soil and at some points were into Romania and Poland. In the west, the German still stood at the Atlantic Wall, waiting for the Anglo-American invasion from England. A debate was raging over the defense: Stop the enemy on the beaches or keep a mobile force inland to stop him after landing. Field Marshal Erwin Rommel said, "An attempt must be made to fend off the enemy landing on the coast and to fight the battle in a more or less strongly fortified coastal strip." Adolf Hitler cast his vote with the field marshal.

The Allied forces, based in Britain, decided to begin the D-Day invasion by landing a huge army at a place called Normandy Beach, which is located on the northwest coast of France. Code-named "Operation Overlord", and commanded by American General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Allies landed on June 6, 1944 at five beaches in the Normandy area with the code names of: Utah Beach, Omaha Beach, Gold Beach, Juno Beach and Sword Beach. Prior to the actual amphibious invasion, Allied planes pounded the Nazi defenders and dropped thousands of paratroopers behind German lines the night before the seaborne landings. Local French Resistance forces, alerted to the imminent invasion, engaged in behind-the-lines sabotage and combat against the occupying Germans.

Eisenhower planned to drop his paratroopers behind German defenses and put his infantry ashore under mass bombing and a naval bombardment. On June 5th, the weather had turned bad. Ike (Eisenhower) debated and decided: "How long can you hang this operation on the end of a limb? Give the order."

H-Hour was 6:30 a.m. on June 6th. In the hours before dawn, the warships bombarded the beaches and the little landing craft circled before forming into the assault waves. The first men ashore took what shelter they could find behind iron obstacles that Rommel had built in the shallows to tear the bottoms from the landing craft.

LUCK ON THE BRITISH BEACHES

The Germans had expected the landing farther north in the Pas de Calais area, which was closest to England, and Eisenhower had deceived them by bombing the site heavily. The ruse worked, tying down German troops, and on two out of three British beaches the men got ashore against second-rate enemy units. Larger landing craft carrying tanks and artillery rammed onto the beaches to give the infantry the weapons needed against the counterattack.

BAD LUCK ON OMAHA BEACH

On the Americans' Omaha Beach, the story was bloodily different. Unknown to Allied intelligence, a crack German outfit had been moved onto the bluffs covering the beach for coast-defense exercises. These veterans lay low in the shelling, then emerged to inflict casualties as high as 40% on the first units ashore. Officers lost their men in the confusion and made do with pickups. A lieutenant yelled at the men crouching in the shale, "Are you going to lay down there and get killed or get up and do something about it?" General Omar Bradley confessed. "I reluctantly contemplated the diversion of Omaha forces to the British beaches."