D-Day, or the invasion of the Normandy beaches,
involved thousands of planes, ships and soldiers from 12 different
countries.
Well, this week, leaders from the Allied nations will mark
80 years since this historic day,
and Ann Marie has a look at what exactly happened
during the operation.
Well, Vlad, at roughly midnight June 6,
the Allies began a complex plan called Operation Overlord.
The Allies wanted to prevent Germany from sending reinforcements when
the fighting started.
Of the red dots on the map right around here
show where planes dropped bombs to destroy German supply routes
and defenses before the beach invasion.
About 18,000 paratroopers also dropped down behind enemy lines shortly
after midnight on D-Day with similar aims.
Meanwhile on board ships, about
132,000 ground troops crossed the English Channel towards Normandy,
an invasion route that had not been successful since
1688 because of the waters very treacherous conditions and the
British naval strength.
So the Germans believed the Allied troops would invade at
Pas de Calais up here where the English Channel was
much narrower instead of the Normandy beaches.
So Eisenhower divided about 50 miles of coastline into five
invasion areas,
Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno and Sword.
the US troops handled operations on the 1st 2 while
British and Canadian troops LED assaults on the other three
beaches.
The fighting lasted 24 hours and ultimately resulted in the
German Atlantic Wall defense collapsing,
which had doomed fire Allied invasion attempts flat.
All right, Anne Marie, fascinating.
Thank you very much. D-Day was,
in fact, the largest air,
land and sea assault in history.
And it marked the start of a months long bloody
campaign to liberate France from Nazi Germany.
To help us understand the importance of this day,
we're joined by U.S. Army veteran Michael Bell.
He's also the executive director of the Jenny Craig Institute
for the Study of War and Democracy at the National
World War 2 Museum.
Thank you so much for joining us.
You're welcome. Glad. And Emery,
it's great to be with you.
So explain to our viewers just how
did the penetration of the German Atlantic Wall defense change
the trajectory of the war?
The Allies had been on the offensive for some time,
but with this invasion, things turned for the Allies and
for the worse for the Germans.
Yeah, you're exactly right. You know,
there had been what what Churchill called peripheral operations,
operations in North Africa, Sicily,
Italy, on the Eastern Front.
The Battle of the Atlantic had turned in
1943 and then the air campaign had really successfully attributed
the liftoff of the German Air Force to set the
conditions for the campaign.
But it was clear that without
the invasion you couldn't break up the German war making
machine
and also physically deliberate the oppressed peoples of Europe.
And so that was the concept behind this massive
operation, you know, very, very complex,
but also quite decisive because it does
initiate the liberation and will lead them to victory in
Europe
the following May. Can you dig a little deeper into
why this operation worked?
You know, I mentioned earlier that they crossed in an
area that was challenging,
to say the least. It was it about the element
of surprise.
You know, I, I think surprise is one key aspect.
They had developed a, a,
a very sophisticated deception plan in eastern England that had
Patton as the commander of this first US Army group
that convinced the Germans that the real attack was going
to be a Calais
and that Normandy was a diversion.
And therefore that would pin down a number of the,
the German Panzer, the tank divisions that could have decisively
affected the operation.
And then the the next piece they had was,
was they really worked hard to ensure that the,
the assault teams benefited from all the firepower and the
other
enablers, if you will, tanks,
artillery attached engineers.
They planned for air attacks
to break up the German
obstacles, gunfire from Navy ships.
It's very, very sophisticated, but but very comprehensive in that.
And I think those aspects helped.
And then they also tried to do everything from swimming
tanks
to setting up artificial harbors and pipelines under the water
to really enable the operation to continue because it would
have to continue to liberate not only Normandy,
but
progress on to Paris and ultimately to Berlin.
Yeah, the the operations that you're talking about,
I think it was called Operation Fortitude S,
which was the deception that the Allies,
in particular the English, were able to use to convince
the Germans that the attack was going to come in
Bada Kale. In fact, Erwin Rommel,
the great German field Marshall,
was actually, I think visiting his wife,
A lot of the senior commanders for the German military.
We're not anywhere near Normandy when the attack was launched.
But but talk to us about how fraught it was
because the part of the reason why the Germans weren't
convinced of that particular day in that particular area because
the the weather was so bad.
So what gave General Eisenhower the foresight to go ahead
with those conditions in place?
Yeah, that's a that's a great question.
The, the, the original date set was going to be
June 5th.
But the weather was so bad,
the sea state was so high and heavy that it
would swamp the landing craft or the
the amphibious trucks bringing artillery.
And so, but Allied weather stations,
you know, up in the British Isles had detected a
window where they thought it would be good enough.
You know, in, in some,
in some cases, like with the amphibious tanks,
you could argue that, that it wasn't good enough.
You know, for example, at at Omaha Beach,
of the 32 tanks that were supposed to swim ashore,
27 were sunk because the sea state was so high.
But that was enough to convince the Germans that there
was no way they saw that as a window where
they they could do that.
The other preparation that I thought was,
was pretty ingenious. So we'd actually sent
divers onto the Normandy beaches in the months before to
check the the composition of the sand,
you know, can our vehicles move on the sand,
things like that. And so the preparations were really quite
extensive.
The the other piece in Eisenhower's mind is you couldn't
delay too long.
If you wait till the ties are perfect again,
it will be weeks. And will your deception operation have
fallen apart,
which would add to the vulnerability.
Michael Bell, thank you so much.
Thank you, Michael.
Hey, you're welcome. Thank you.