Normandy campaign

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Normandy campaign (1944). The western Allies had long agreed that continental Europe should be invaded as soon as practicable, and the Soviets vigorously demanded a second front to reduce German pressure in the east. However, the British, with imperial commitments and the painful legacy of WW I, were more cautious than their allies. In August 1942 a raid on Dieppe by a Canadian division failed with heavy casualties, but by illustrating the problems of cross-Channel assault it gave planners an early indication that specialized armoured vehicles and landing craft would be required for a subsequent attack. At the Casablanca conference in January 1943 Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt agreed that the Allies would develop operations in the Mediterranean and continue with the bombing of Germany. Although there was as yet no supreme commander for the operation, the British Lt Gen Morgan, COS Supreme Allied Commander (Designate) (COSSAC), began planning an invasion, and a target date of 1 May 1944 was set.

The Normandy campaign, June 1944: the Normandy landings, Operation OVERLORD.
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The Normandy campaign, 1944: the breakout
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COSSAC staff considered two main invasion sites: the Pas de Calais, across the Channel at its narrowest point, and Normandy. They decided on the latter. It was less obvious and less heavily defended; the port of Cherbourg might be captured early on; and, although Normandy was further away than the Pas de Calais, it was well within range of fighters based in Britain and conveniently placed for the many ports and anchorages on the south coast. Morgan believed that it would take two weeks to capture Cherbourg, and in the meantime the Channel weather might make it difficult to land supplies: work was begun on two huge floating sectional harbours (Mulberries) which would be towed to France. Maj Gen Hobart, a pioneer of armoured warfare, had been brought back from retirement to command an armoured division composed of ‘funnies’, specialist vehicles which would help the attackers get ashore and fight their way through the beach defences. In addition to the naval plan for the invasion (NEPTUNE) and the invasion itself (OVERLORD), a comprehensive deception plan (FORTITUDE) would seek to persuade the Germans first that the Pas de Calais would be attacked and second that the invasion of Normandy was simply a diversion.

In December 1943 Eisenhower was appointed Supreme Allied Commander, with a British deputy, ACM Tedder. The component commanders were all British. Naval forces would be commanded by Adm Ramsay, ground forces (Twenty-First Army Group) by Montgomery, and air forces by ACM Leigh-Mallory. Montgomery decided that the COSSAC team had allocated too few troops to the initial attack, and directed that five divisions—from east to west British, Canadian, British, and two American—would form the first wave, their flanks protected by three airborne divisions, the British 6th to the east and the US 82nd and 101st to the west.

Concurrent activity proceeded on a massive scale. Intelligence on the invasion area was gleaned from the French Resistance, air reconnaissance, and even holiday postcards requested by the BBC. Air attacks wreaked havoc on German road and rail communications, though in such a way that the invasion sector was not especially favoured. The Mulberries and landing craft were built, and as Montgomery's plan demanded more of the latter the invasion date slipped to 5 June. FORTITUDE gained momentum, persuading the Germans that an American army group under Patton was in south-east England, ready for a descent on the Pas de Calais.

The Germans knew that invasion was likely. Their forces in France and the Low Countries, under C-in-C West Rundstedt, comprised Army Group G, in southern France, and Rommel's Army Group B. The latter's Seventh Army held Normandy, with the Fifteenth responsible for the Pas de Calais, Belgium, and the Netherlands. The Germans had been at work on the defences of the Atlantic wall since 1942, and Rommel pushed the work ahead as quickly as he could. His own experience in North Africa persuaded him that the textbook solution for dealing with amphibious invasion—identifying its main thrust, and then concentrating reserves to meet it—would not work in Normandy because of Allied air power. He was convinced that the invasion would have to be stopped on the beaches, and that, for Allies and Germans alike, the first day would be the longest. Both Rundstedt and the commander of Panzergruppe West, Gen Geyr von Schweppenburg, disagreed. The argument was made more complex by the fact that most German armoured divisions in Normandy could not be moved without Hitler's personal authority. When the invasion came Rommel had only one usable armoured division, 21st Panzer, in the immediate area.

The west played second fiddle to the eastern front, and the bulk of German combat-ready divisions were there. Many divisions in the west were understrength and still relied on horse-drawn transport. There were many foreign troops, most of them former Soviet POWs who spoke little German. Allied bombing wore down the German arms industry, forced the diversion of manpower and material to the air defence of the Reich, and had already done serious damage to the Luftwaffe.

Bad weather compelled Eisenhower to postpone the invasion for 24 hours, and even on 5 June the forecast was uncertain. Early that morning Eisenhower, in his headquarters at Southwick House near Portsmouth, took the brave decision to go ahead on the 6th, which was to become D-Day. Almost 5, 000 ships set out, and parachutists and glider troops prepared to board their aircraft. The first blow fell just after midnight on the 6th when a company of 2nd Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry secured the bridges over the Caen canal and the river Orne just north of Caen. Shortly afterwards the airborne divisions began to arrive, and although they were widely spread, with some men lost in the sea or flooded rivers, their arrival helped confuse German commanders. German response was not helped by the fact that Rommel was on leave in Germany and many senior officers were on their way to a war game at Rennes.

The British and Canadian landings on GOLD, JUNO, and SWORD beaches went much as planned, although exploitation inland was somewhat disappointing, and the British 3rd Division, in the east, failed to capture Caen. Although the American landing on UTAH beach went well, at OMAHA beach the Americans ran into a strong defence and, with most of their amphibious tanks swamped offshore and lacking the specialist armour used in the British sector, they suffered heavily before wresting a toehold. The results of D-Day were impressive enough. Over 150, 000 Allied soldiers were ashore, and the expected German counter-attack had failed to materialize: even 21st Panzer Division, dangerously close to SWORD beach and the British airborne landings, had not been committed until it was too late.

Over the days that followed, the Allies linked up their beachheads and, while the Americans swung up the Cotentin peninsula towards Cherbourg, Montgomery made the first of several attempts to take Caen. The 7th Armoured Division, with desert experience but uneasy in the very diffrent terrain of Normandy, was checked at Villers-Bocage on 12-14 June. Cherbourg fell at the end of June, but the harbour was so thoroughly damaged that it took months to repair. On 24-30 June the British launched EPSOM, another attempt to outflank Caen from the west, and made slow progress in very heavy fighting.

The characteristics of the battle for Normandy, where the intensity of the fighting at times resembled that on the western front in WW I, were already clear. The Allies enjoyed superior resources, and sustained themselves despite a storm which destroyed the American Mulberry and damaged the British. Their air power played havoc with German units on their way to the front and made movement in the battle area risky. But they lacked relevant experience, and sometimes their morale wavered. The bocage terrain of western Normandy favoured the resolute defender, and there was growing concern at an invasion which seemed to have stuck fast. Yet German commanders were no more sanguine. Hitler replaced the gloomy Rundstedt with FM von Kluge, who arrived filled with a confidence which soon evaporated. Rommel was wounded in an air attack on 17 July, and three days later the bomb plot increased the tensions between Hitler and his senior commanders.

Montgomery's role remains controversial. He was to maintain that his master plan involved fixing German armour in the east to allow the Americans to break out in the west, while his critics have suggested that he was in fact more opportunistic. He was under pressure to take decisive action when, on 18 July, he launched three armoured divisions east of Caen in GOODWOOD. The attack was preceded by a strike by Allied heavy bombers, and it may be that the need to secure the support of the strategic bombing force induced Montgomery to oversell the operation to Eisenhower. It cost almost 6, 000 casualties and 400 tanks, and produced no breakout. Montgomery argued that this did not matter, for he had attracted German reserves, giving Bradley, in command of the US First Army, the chance to break out.

On 25 July Bradley mounted COBRA, west of Saint-Lô. Its initial aims were modest, but Lt Gen Collins, commanding the assaulting corps, realized that he had achieved a breakthrough and hustled on towards Avranches. It had been planned that when the Americans had sufficient forces in theatre they would activate the US Third Army under Patton, with Lt Gen Hodges taking over First Army while Bradley became commander of Twelfth Army Group. Patton, ideally suited to fighting a mobile battle, sent some of his troops to Brittany but swung others eastwards. The British and Canadians continued the long slog around Caen, the former taking Mont Pincon and the latter mounting two methodical attacks, operations TOTALISE and TRACTABLE, down the Caen-Falaise road. Hitler insisted on a counter-attack at Mortain with the intention of cutting off Patton, but despite initial progress on 7 August it foundered in the face of Allied air attacks.

German forces in Normandy were squeezed into a pocket around Falaise, with the Americans curling round from the south while the British, Canadians, and a Polish armoured division, thrust down from the north. Although the Allies were slow to seal off the pocket, enabling many determined Germans to escape, it was the climax of the campaign. The Germans lost most of their guns and vehicles, mainly to Allied air attack. Paris was liberated on 25 August, and the tide of war rolled away. German defeat in Normandy was serious in itself, and on the eastern front operation BAGRATION destroyed Army Group Centre: Germany's strategic position, parlous three months before, was now impossible.

Bibliography

• d'Este, Carlo, Decision in Normandy (London, 1983).
• Hastings, Max, Overlord: D Day and the B battle for Normandy (London, 1984).
• Keegan, John, Six Armies in Normandy (London, 1982)

— Richard Holmes

(1944)

On the morning of 6 June 1944, a radio broadcast announced the start of the invasion of Normandy: “Under the command of General Eisenhower, Allied naval forces, supported by strong air forces, began landing Allied armies this morning on the northern coast of France.”

But this was not the beginning of the operation. Its roots can be traced back to September 1941, when, after the British evacuation from Dunkirk in northern France, Winston S. Churchill and the British chiefs of staff directed Adm. Lord Louis Mountbatten to begin planning for the invasion of Europe. This mission was transferred in March 1943 to British Lt. Gen. Frederick Morgan, who was appointed chief of staff to the Supreme Allied Commander (Designate). He assembled a joint British‐American planning staff, which became known as COSSAC.

For another year, COSSAC continued to refine and develop plans for an assault landing in France. While the Pas de Calais appeared to be the logical target—closest to England, its beaches were easily defensible—the Germans had heavily fortified the area, and no large ports were nearby. Normandy had relatively undefended beaches and Cherbourg was an excellent port. Thus the choice was made.

Initially, it was hoped to make the landings in 1942, but over Russian objections the North Africa Campaign was chosen instead. Despite American objections in 1943, a lack of landing craft and the need for troops for the Italian campaign postponed Operation Overlord, the code name for the liberation of northwestern Europe.

The Normandy invasion was a joint enterprise. In December 1943, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower was named Supreme Allied Commander. He asked Gen. Bernard Law Montgomery to be the ground force commander during the invasion phase. Sir Bertram Ramsay would be the naval commander; Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Tedder became Eisenhower's deputy and would coordinate the air effort.

Montgomery felt that the projected three‐ to five‐division assault was inadequate for the task and the beaches were too far from Cherbourg (its capture essential to secure a flow of supplies). Eisenhower agreed. However, he lacked landing craft to expand the attack. The landing day was postponed from May to early June, allowing the accumulation of landing craft and aircraft to support an expanded assault and follow‐up forces.

Two field armies would make the assault (see map of the Normandy invasion) Lt. Gen. Omar N. Bradley's First American Army, consisting of VII Corps and V Corps, on the west and the Second British Army to the east. On the American beaches, the Fourth U.S. Infantry would assault on Utah Beach (V Corps). Behind Utah Beach, the U.S. 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions would land to protect the west flank and secure causeways crossing the flooded area inland from the beach.

Meanwhile, Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, commanding German Army Group B and responsible for repelling any invasion of northwestern Europe, had been feverishly strengthening the beach defenses. But the Allies' deception plan, Operation Fortitude, which included a phantom army near Dover, commanded by Gen. George S. Patton, complete with false radio messages and inflatable rubber tanks, had convinced Hitler and his General Staff that the Allies would land at the Pas de Calais, the most direct route to Germany. This belief was so strong that when the Normandy landings occurred, they were considered diversionary, and important reinforcements—including Panzer divisions—remained idle in the north until long after the D‐Day landing.

The invasion started shortly after midnight on 6 June 1944, when units of the British Sixth Parachute Division landed and captured two bridges over the Orne River and Caen Canal. The other British and American airborne units were not so immediately successful. Low clouds, flak, errors in map reading at night—all conspired to scatter them widely. This led the Germans to believe the airborne attack a diversion, thus hampering their countermeasures. Most of the airborne units' objectives were eventually achieved.

Rommel's superior, Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt, commanding Oberbefehshaber West, and responsible for the defense of Western Europe, at 0400 ordered two Panzer divisions to head for Caen. However, Hitler had kept personal control of the principal western reserve forces, and his permission had to be secured. This delay undoubtedly contributed to the comparatively easy landings on the British beaches.

In the American area, on Utah Beach, the landings went well. The enemy troops manning this portion of the West Wall (or Siegfried Live) surrendered after only three hours and inflicted only 197 casualties among the 23,000 men who came ashore on D‐Day.

On Omaha Beach, a different story unfolded. Preliminary bombardment by heavy bombers was mostly ineffective as low‐lying clouds led them to overshoot the targets for fear of hitting Allied assault troops. Many of the landing craft sank in heavy seas on their ten‐mile run to shore. Only about one‐third of the first landing wave reached the beach and practically none of the amphibious tanks did. Ashore, men huddled behind the sea wall. The situation became so chaotic that at one point General Bradley contemplated withdrawing the troops and diverting succeeding assaults to other beaches. But by nightfall things had greatly improved. Individual acts of heroism, the initiative taken by small units, and the accurate fire and close‐in support of Allied destroyers and other naval vessels suppressed enemy fire, enabling units to scale the cliffs and clear the enemy from the high ground. Thirty‐four thousand troops landed that day, but at a high cost, for over 2,500 became casualties.

In the British sector the landings were successful, but one of the principal objectives, the strongly defended communications hub of Caen, was not captured for another month.

By the end of D‐Day, more than 130,000 men had landed from the air and the sea at the cost of some 9,000 casualties. But the beachhead now had to be expanded to make room for supplies en route, airfields had to be built, the port of Cherbourg had to be captured and rehabilitated, and the lodgment area had to be made secure for the breakout to win northwestern Europe.

The U.S. VII Corps on 8 June attacked toward Cherbourg along the St. Mère Eglise–Montebourg highway, but stout German resistance with strong artillery support slowed their advance. Although the attack to the north continued, the emphasis shifted to the west. The veteran 9th Infantry Division cut the west coastal road by the 18th, and on the 19th, it joined the Corps attack to the north.

The Cherbourg defenses, in a rough semicircle about five miles in radius, were reached by the 4th, 79th, and 9th Infantry Divisions by the evening of 21 June and by the 9th Infantry Division a day later. But it took six more days of hard fighting, assisted by naval bombardment, before organized resistance in the city ceased. By the end of June the area was cleared and the American units were moving south, where VIII Corps had been holding a line across the base of the peninsula.

The Germans had so wrecked Cherbourg Harbor that it would be many months before appreciable tonnage could be landed there. Meanwhile, two artificial harbors (code‐named “mulberries”) and over‐the‐beach landings would have to suffice. On 19 June, a storm hit the coast and wrecked the mulberries: the American one was damaged beyond repair and the British one put out of action for several weeks. Still, over‐the‐beach operations proceeded better than expected, and by the end of June, over 1 million men and supplies to sustain them had been landed.

The successful lodgment in Normandy provided the base for the breakout at St. Lô on 25 July and the rapid clearing of German forces in France and Belgium. Had the invasion of Normandy failed, the defeat of Germany could have been delayed several years. This was a decisive battle in the history of the West.

[See also France, Liberation of; World War II: Military and Diplomatic Course.]

Bibliography

• E. Bauer, The History of World War II, 1966; repr. 1984.
• Charles B. MacDonald, Mighty Endeavor, 1969; rev. ed. 1986.
• John Keegan, Six Armies in Normandy, 1982.
• Carlo D’Este, Decision in Normandy, 1983.
• Max Hastings, Overlord: D‐Day and the Battle for Normandy, 1984.
• David D. Chandler and James Lawton Collins, Jr., eds., The D‐Day Encyclopedia, 1994

Nearly three years in the making, on June 6, 1944, this decisive campaign opened the long-awaited second front in World War II. Codenamed Operation Overlord, the invasion was led by Supreme Allied Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower, with ground forces led by British Gen. Bernard Law Montgomery, and air support led by British Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Tedder. Field Marshal Erwin Rommel was convinced—by a wood-figure army and inflatable rubber tanks—that the Allies would attack at Calais, the most direct route to Germany. This belief was reinforced by the initial ineffectiveness of the airborne D-Day attack that began early morning on June 6. The seaborne landing at Utah Beach proceeded quickly and with few casualties, while at Omaha Beach, Lt. Gen. Omar N. Bradley's army battled heavy seas and nearly aborted. Still, by the end of the day, 130, 000 troops had landed safely, and in the next three weeks, they expanded the beachhead and built airfields to allow roughly 900, 000 more men and requisite supplies to reach northern France. Though the aim of rebuilding the nearly annihilated port of Cherbourg was delayed for months, the successful lodgment in Normandy set the stage for the St. Lô breakout in late July and greatly hastened German surrender.

See the Introduction, Abbreviations and Pronunciation for further details.

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Normandy Invasion, Allied landings in France on 6 June 1944 (D Day), the prelude to the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II. Known as Operation Overlord, the invasion was scheduled for 5 June but was postponed because of stormy weather. It involved 5,000 ships, the largest armada ever assembled. Although more men went ashore on the first day in the earlier Allied invasion of Sicily, it was overall the greatest amphibious operation in history.

Under command of General Dwight D. Eisenhower, with General Bernard L. Montgomery as ground commander, approximately 130,000 American, British, and Canadian troops landed on beaches extending from the mouth of the Orne River near Caen to the base of the Cotentin Peninsula, a distance of some fifty-five miles. Another 23,000 landed by parachute and glider. Allied aircraft during the day flew 11,000 sorties. Airborne troops began landing soon after midnight; American seaborne troops at 6:30 A.M.; and, because of local tidal conditions, British and Canadian troops at intervals over the next hour. The Allies chose Normandy because of its relatively short distance from British ports and airfields, the existence of particularly strong German defenses of the Atlantic Wall at the closest point to Britain in the Pas de Calais, and the need for early access to a major port (Cherbourg).

On beaches near Caen christened Gold, Juno, and Sword, one Canadian and two British divisions under the British Second Army made it ashore with relative ease, quickly establishing contact with a British airborne division that had captured bridges over the Orne and knocked out a coastal battery that might have enfiladed (heavily fired upon) the beaches. By nightfall the troops were short of the assigned objectives of Bayeux and Caen but held beachheads from two to four miles deep.

The U.S. First Army under Lieutenant General Omar N. Bradley sent the Fourth Infantry Division of the VII Corps ashore farthest west on Utah Beach, north of Carentan, at one of the weakest points of the Atlantic Wall. The 82d and 101st Airborne divisions landing behind the beach helped insure success. Although the air drops were badly scattered and one division landed amid a reserve German division, most essential objectives were in hand by the end of the day.

Under the V Corps, two regiments of the First Infantry Division and one of the Twenty-ninth landed on Omaha Beach, between Bayeux and Carentan. Sharp bluffs, strong defenses, lack of airborne assistance, and the presence of a powerful German division produced near-catastrophic difficulties. Throughout much of the day the fate of this part of the invasion hung in the balance, but inch by inch American troops forced their way inland, so that when night came the beachhead was approximately a mile deep. At a nearby cliff called Pointe du Hoe, the First Ranger Battalion eliminated a German artillery battery.

The invasion sector was defended by the German Seventh Army, a contingent of Army Group B, under overall command of Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt. Deluded by Allied deception measures, based in large part on intelligence known as ULTRA, obtained as a result of the British having broken the German wireless enciphering code, the Germans believed, even after the landings had begun, that a second and larger invasion would hit the Pas de Calais and for several weeks held strong forces there that might have been decisive in Normandy. German defense was further deterred by difficulty in shifting reserves, because of preinvasion bombing of French railroads, disruption of traffic by Allied fighter bombers that earlier had driven German planes from the skies, and French partisans. The bad weather of 5 June and continuing heavy seas on 6 June lulled German troops into a false sense of security. Reluctance of staff officers back in Germany to awaken the German dictator, Adolf Hitler, for approval to commit reserves and tanks delayed a major counterattack against the invasion. The only counterattack on the first day, by a panzer division against the British, was defeated by fire from naval guns.

At the end of D Day, only the Canadians on Juno and the British on Gold had linked their beachheads. More than five miles separated the two American beachheads; the Rangers at Pointe du Hoe were isolated and under siege; and the Fourth Division at Utah Beach had yet to contact the American airborne divisions. Nevertheless, reinforcements and supplies were streaming ashore, even at embattled Omaha Beach, and unjustified concern about landings elsewhere continued to hamper German countermeasures. By the end of the first week, all Allied beachheads were linked and sixteen divisions had landed; only thirteen German divisions opposed them. By the end of June a million Allied troops were ashore.

Several innovations aided the invasion and subsequent buildup. Amphibious tanks equipped with canvas skirts that enabled them to float provided some early fire support on the beaches, although many of the customized tanks sank in the stormy seas. Lengths of big rubber hose (called PLUTO, for Pipe Line Under The Ocean) were laid on the floor of the English Channel for transporting fuel. Given the code name Mulberry, two artificial prefabricated harbors were towed into position at Omaha Beach and Arromanches. These consisted of an inner breakwater constructed of hollow concrete caissons six stories high, which were sunk and anchored in position, and a floating pier that rose and fell with the tide while fixed on concrete posts resting on the sea bottom. Old cargo ships sunk offshore formed an outer breakwater. Although a severe storm on 19 June wrecked the American Mulberry, the British port at Arromanches survived. A sophisticated family of landing craft delivered other supplies directly over the beaches.

Allied casualties on D Day were heaviest at Omaha Beach (2,500) and lightest at Utah (200).American airborne divisions incurred 2,499 casualties. Canadian losses were 1,074; British, 3,000. Of a total of more than 9,000 casualties, approximately one-third were killed.

Bibliography

Ambrose, Stephen E. D-Day, June 6,1944: The Climactic Battle of World War II. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1994.

Harrison, Gordon A. Cross-Channel Attack. Washington, D.C.: Office of the Chief of Military History, Department of the Army, 1951.

Keegan, John. Six Armies in Normandy: From D-Day to the Liberation of Paris. New York: Penguin, 1994.

Ryan, Cornelius. The Longest Day. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1994.

The American and British invasion of France in World War II; Normandy is a province of northern France. The successful invasion began a series of victories for the Allies, and Germany surrendered less than a year later. (See D-Day.)