How many people died on D-day in World War 2?

Answer 1

This question is more difficult to answer than may appear at first. The assault on Nazi-occupied France represented the largest military armada in history. More than 5,000 ships and landing craft participated in the operation. In all, some 160,000 men participated in the first wave (three paratroop and six infantry divisions, tank and commando units) commencing on June 6, 1944. With such a massive force on the Allied side, combined with an unknown number of German troops, an exact death toll is not now known and may never be since bodies are even yet being unearthed on the beaches. Part of the difficulty is the number of attack fronts (beaches) and push beyond the beaches and into the French interior following the initial wave. In short, estimates of allied deaths range from 2,500 to 5,000 on D-Day. Numbers of German dead range from 4,000 to 9,000. "It's very difficult to get accurate figures. People get buried. Bodies disintegrate. Evidence of the deaths disappeared. People drowned," said John Keegan, author of "Six Armies in Normandy: From D-Day to the Liberation of Paris." Carol Tuckwiller of the National D-Day Memorial Foundation reports, "We feel like we're probably going to end up with a total of about 4,500 fatalities for both the Americans and Allied countries. Right now, we have about 4,200 names confirmed." Her organization has spent four years combing through government, military and cemetery records for names of Allied dead on D-Day. Adding to the difficulty identifying a valid number of deaths associated with D-Day operations is the deaths involved in the preparations for the assault. The D-Day Museum in Portsmouth, England claims more than 19,000 civilians in Normandy also died in Allied bombing before and after D-Day to soften up German defenses. And Allied air forces lost nearly 12,000 men in April and May 1944 in operations ahead of the invasion. These deaths, including civilians and military personelle who lost their lives before and after D-Day are clearly associated with the battle, and a part of the terrible cost of freedom, but may be overlooked in may accountings of D-Day death tolls. Additionally, D-Day marked only the start of the battle of Normandy, which claimed many more lives as troops fought in the region's hedgerows over the next three months. More than 425,000 Allied and German troops were killed, wounded or went missing, the D-Day Museum says. The American Cemetery overlooking Omaha Beach holds the remains of 9,383 servicemen and four women, perhaps one of the only sure quantifiable sources to the terrible conflict's death toll (the German cemetery itself contains 80,000 graves for German soldiers killed in the area during the battles).