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D-Day

History of the Allied landing on Normandy on 6 June 1944 and the following campaign to take Cherbourg and break out of the beach head.

3,775 Questions

Why do you think the allied forces chose to invade five different beaches instead of one or two beaches?

The allied forces chose to invade 5 different beaches because they needed alot of room for the millions of people coming in to help the invasion.

When and where did d day occur?

it happened in July 1947 in Toronto Canada

How did D-Day turn the tide in Europe?

Once the Normandy beachhead was established - and the unbroken supply line it allowed back to England - Germany was caught in a noose that merely tightened over the next eleven months.

D-Day was the "beginning of the end" for the Nazi war machine.

How did the operation overlord compare to the landing at Anzio?

Both were amphibious attacks on an enemy coast. But a lot of planning went into Overlord, while the Anzio landings (Operation Shingle) were mounted very hurriedly, with little in depth planning, and with a strategic goal that amounted to wishful thinking. The Allied staff in the Mediterranean had considered mounting an operation along the lines of Anzio, to break the bloody deadlock on the Cassino front ninety miles south of Anzio, but had discarded the possibility, mainly because they could not anticipate having sufficient resources to carry through the operation. Overall planning called for making the landings in southern France, on the Riviera, the Mediterranean coast of France, at the same time as the landings in Normandy. This was going to require the transfer of an entire corps of three very veteran and experienced US infantry divisions from Italy, but more importantly, was also going to require that most of the LSTs in Italy be assigned to support the southern France landings, or moved to England to take part in the Normandy landings. LSTs were Landing Ship, Tanks.

These were the largest of the numerous specialized landing vessels the US Navy developed during the war, large enough to carry a fully armed and equipped infantry company, or a dozen tanks, and able to drive their flat-bottomed bows right up onto the beach to discharge their load. There were never enough LSTs to meet the world-wide demand, and many an operation was delayed or never took place because LSTs for it could not be had. (The Normandy landings were delayed for a month, from May to June 1944 due to weather, but the bright side of that was the invasion force would benefit from the extra month's production of LSTs). In the face of these facts the planners in Italy could not find enough men or LSTs to make an operation like Anzio, even though most Allied leaders agreed it would be a good thing to make an amphibious "end run" in Italy to break the deadlock at Cassino.

At this juncture fate took a hand, in the person of Winston Churchill, who went on a personal inspection tour to Egypt and the Middle East, where he caught the flu. While he was in bed recuperating, he revived the idea of a landing behind German lines in Italy. The whole "plan" was thrown together in about two weeks. There were several problems with the "plan", fairly clearly seen with hindsight. The first was, the landings were in the wrong place. If an amphibious attack was to be made, the place to do it was NORTH OF ROME. Anywhere north of Rome. Not south of Rome. Landing north of Rome, if the landings succeeded in causing the Germans to evacuate their forces to the south of the beachhead, would cause Rome to fall into the laps of the Allies as an extra fruit of the operation. But landing south of Rome, as the Allies did at Anzio, meant even if the Germans to the south at Cassino broke off and withdrew, Rome still had to be captured. Of course, eventually the Allies did cause the Germans to withdraw from the Cassino front - it just took four and one half months, and then the Allies did capture Rome, and it was the first time in 2000 years Rome had been captured from the south.

Another problem with Churchill's plan was that the initial landing force was too small, all part of his airy optimism characterizing the entire scheme - it would only take a relatively small force, it would be over quickly so the vital LSTs would be free in time for the simultaneous landings in southern France with Overlord (then scheduled for around the first week of May). Only two divisions were in the initial landing force, one British, and one American. The American division was probably the best the US had, Army or Marine, in the entire war, but Anzio was to be its costliest campaign of the war. This was the 3rd Infantry Division, veterans of North Africa, Sicily and southern Italy. It was the "3rd ID, Reinforced" for the Anzio operation, having with it three of the four battalions of Darby's Rangers (the second battalion had been removed to England to attack Pont du Hoc on the Normandy D-Day), the joint American-Canadian First Special Service Force ("The Devil's Brigade"), and the 509th Parachute Infantry Battalion. So, with the "Reinforcements" there were an additional seven battalions to the US component, or 7/9th of the rifle strength of a division, roughly. But still this was not enough, because of the goals of the operation at Anzio. The German forces at Cassino depended on two highways runing south out of Rome for their supplies, Highway 7, near the landing beaches running near the coast, and Highway 6, which was about 25 miles inland. So even a bit of cursory thought would reveal that this initial landing force of two divisions - even if one of them was "Reinforced" - was going to have to take and hold a perimeter of more than fifty miles, if it was to successfully interrupt the flow of supplies to the Germans in the south, and cause them to withdraw.

As it worked out, the landing force never did get to Highway 6, though after the breakout from the beachhead in late May (after four months of punishment) they did get close enough to hear the German traffic moving north on it, before Mark Clark ordered them to turn left and make straight for Rome, for fear the British (despite their promises) would try to steal the glory of capturing Rome from him and the US 5th Army. Another problem with this whole "strategic" notion of the Anzio campaign was that there were ample side roads available, further east than Highway 6, used successfully by Germans fleeing from the south, which could have been used to supply the Cassino front if the Germans wanted to keep fighting there, so even successfully capturing both Highways 6 and 7 by the landing force would not necessarily have resulted in achieving the goal of forcing a German withdrawal from the south.

The Anzio landings were easy at first. The Germans had not expected that the Allies would be so foolish as to land there, of all places, so the Anzio-Nettuno area was undefended, with only part of an engineer battalion on the scene. For long weeks though, until Allied strength in the beachhead was built up, there were not sufficient troops to form an actual front line - all that could be managed was a string of strong points.

Other problems at Anzio included that the entire beachhead was within range of German artillery, and since the entire beachhead was also ringed by hills, all held by the Germans, they had excellent observation to direct and correct their artillery fire, which made it swiftly fatal to try to move around in the beachhead during daylight. Far from withdrawing, trembling with fear at this bold Allied move, the German commander in Italy, "Smiling Albert" Kesselring, activated a new Field Army HQ and brought in troops from as far away as Yugoslavia, and within a week had the beachhead tightly hemmed in. There was no question of the landing force reaching its goals, way out there at Highway 6; the question was whether they would be annihilated and driven back into the sea, and it was a very near thing, heavy German attacks in early February coming very near to accomplishing just exactly that. So many, many more Allied divisions had to be fed into the fight, at first just to hang on, and then to build up sufficient strength to make a breakout, and the LSTs had to be kept in Italy as the sole lifeline of supply for this ever growing force. (Churchill said, somewhat disingenuously since the slender landing force was his idea, that he had hoped to fling a wildcat ashore, and instead had beached a whale).

Eventually of course, the Germans in the south did withdraw, Rome was captured, but at a heavy cost. And the southern France landings had to be delayed two and one half months, until August 15. One silverlining to that delay was the German forces which had been on the Riviera coast in early June had by mid-August departed for Normandy, so the southern France landings were not heavily opposed. This all was the result of poor planning, poor selection of a landing place, over-optimistic assumptions as far as achievable goals and German reactions.

What invasion took place on June 6 1944?

Normandy Invasion took place June 6th 1944n D-day Landings

Who were the significant people involved in the invasion of Normandy?

Americans: Dwight D. Eisenhower and Omar Bradley. British: Bernard Montgomery, Trafford Leigh-Mallory, Arthur Tedder, Miles Dempsey and Bertram Ramsay. Germans: Gerd von Rundstedt, Erwin Rommel, Friedrich Dollmann, Hans von Salmuth and Wilhelm Falley.

What were the two sides of the battle of D-Day?

The Germans vs. the Allies.

The Allied countries that took on the invasion were America (Utah and Omaha beaches), Britain (Sword and Gold beaches) and Canada (Juno Beach).

Although it is most commonly reported Omaha beach invaders faced the heaviest defence, the Canadian Juno beach actually had heavier defence and higher casulties. Juno Beach was reported to have had nearly none of the defenses wiped out by the coastal bombardment.

All 5 beaches were guarded by German Nazi soldiers.

Why it D-Day significant?

D-day was a plan to put a hole in the Atlantic Wall, exposing France to the Allies, in which they retook Europe from the Germans.

How might the outcome of WW2 have changed if the D-Day invasion had not been successful?

By the time the D-Day invasion occurred, Adolf Hitler was becoming more and more unstable in his thoughts and actions. He had visible signs of Parkinson's, and has been posthumously diagnosed with schizophrenia, drug addiction, and manic depression.

This was a psychotic man who had enormous power.

He was actually very pleased with the (beginning) D-day invasion because, as he said "we could never have taken the British in their own country, but now, they have come to us!".

Because the D-day invasion was a success for the Allied forces, Hitler realized that his troops were being over-run, and thus, began to realize that the war was coming to an end, and he was not the victor he thought he would be.

The failure of D-day for the Allied forces would have meant an invasion of England, and possibly even America!

There were U-boats that were approaching America, and Hitler and his scientists even had more advanced weapons that were in development to utilize. He also had recently come into possession of the American "mint" plates, which could have flooded America with counterfeit money, thereby destabilizing our entire economy, which would have been a disaster of epic proportions.

If invisible for a day the first thing you'd do would be?

i will search a terrerist and kill his beacuse its kill many huble persons

How was D-Day a big turning point for World War 2?

Operation Neptune-Overlord/D-Day represented the opening of the long-awaited "Second Front." With the Soviet Union and supporting partisan forces engaged in heavy, costly fighting on the Eastern Front, the Western Allies' invasion forced Nazi Germany to siphon off valuable resources to meeting this new threat.

Secondly, it was a symbolic gesture, a stunning reversal of the Allies' pell-mell defeat and narrow escape at Dunkirk in 1940; reminding Nazi Germany once again that the Allies would not back down from the conflict at hand.

What total defense day means to me?

It means all the Singaporeans unite as one to safeguard the country's future

How does wood help us?

Wood helps us get warm ( if a fire is going on).Also helps by making things that we need like shelter and pencils that we need to write with everyday.

What were the D-day landing craft called?

Higgens boats and AmTracks. AmTrack is short for amphibious tractor

What was the significance of the allied landing at Normandy on June 6 1944?

Show of force with regard to rolling back German forces from Europe and end the war.

Who took over Juno gold sword Utah and Omaha beaches?

Omaha and Utah beaches were assulted by American forces. Juno, Sword and Gold beaches were assaulted by British and Canadian forces...................

What were the outcomes in the blitz?

Britain did not surrender Germany after germany bombed Britain

What were the code names of the five beaches where the Allies began their assault?

the beach code names for June 6 1944 invasion of Normandy were:

Utah, Omaha, Juno, Sword and Gold

What was the battle during World War 2 in June 3 1942 and was considered a turning point in the pacific?

The battle of Midway was fought on June 4-7. This was the turning point in the Pacific Campaign. Four Japanese carriers were sunk.