DDay June 6 1944 Essay Research Paper

D-Day June 6, 1944 Essay, Research Paper

On June 6th, 1944, thousands of Allied soldiers boarded landing craft off of the Normandy coast, for many of them, these would be the last hours of their life. The Allied invasion of the French coast was the turning point of Second World War. This single event paved the way for the liberation of Nazi-occupied Europe. Hitler had worked his way into total seclusion from the Allies, except for the Soviet Union in the East, where the German Army was currently on the offensive. There were natural boundaries all around him, the Mediterranean to the south, the Atlantic and English Channel to the West, and the Arctic to the North. He knew that the Allies would have to stage a landing from the sea, and that was the way he liked it. Since the evacuation of the British and French armies from Dunkirk, not a single Allied soldier had set foot on the Mainland. The almost daily air raids by American and British bombers brought millions of tons of high-explosives deep into Germany. Despite the fury of these raids, the German war machine could not be stopped; factories were being built as fast as they were being destroyed.

For years, British and American Generals had been trying to devise a plan for an invasion of Europe. In 1944, they came up with what they saw as the best possible option, a sea and air invasion through France. The plans looked perfect on paper, but when put into action, there were many unseen flaws. Minesweepers would clear lanes through the English Channel, through which would sail the

largest armada of warships ever seen in human history. Nearly six thousand ships of all kinds would be used for the invasion. Although they outnumbered the

Germans, it would still be a tough fight, as the soldiers would have to run across open beach while under fire from machine guns, mortars, and artillery. The element of surprise and deception of the enemy would play important roles in the planning of the assault. (Vail 7)

Facing the invaders was Hitler s Atlantic Wall . This was a wall of concrete and steel encompassing the entire French Coast, and bristled with machine guns, artillery, barbed wire, and anti-tank guns. Almost five million mines, eighty thousand troops, and seven hundred and fifty tanks would greet the invaders (Britannica)

There were two types of German troops in the Normandy area: garrison troops, and units there resting from the war on the eastern front with Russia. The garrison troops were the handful of soldiers assigned to protect the coast from a possible invasion. Many of them had been stationed in France since 1940. These troops also constituted an Army of occupation, and controlled the day-to-day operations of France. Since France was considered a quiet zone by the Germans, troops were sent there that had been mauled on the Eastern front, and were there to be brought back to strength (Patrick 30).

Unfortunately for the Allies, there were several other units in the area that had not been anticipated. These extra troops made the landings even more costly,

especially at Omaha beach where the veteran and extremely formidable 352nd infantry division was stationed.

It was Germany s attitude of superiority that lost them the Battle of Normandy. Several years before the invasions, Hitler had ordered Field Marshal Rommel to contrive tactics to defend the French coast from an attack. Rommel came up with several ideas that were pure genius, but for some reason nobody listened to him. The Germans had a new weapon, the V-1 Buzz-bomb , which was a primitive ballistic missile (Vail 104). Rommel wanted to use it to bomb the Allied troop concentrations that would undoubtedly form around the coast of England. His plan also called for the mining of British harbors, and raiding of docked ships with U-boats. This plan could have ended the assault before it could even commence, for an unknown reason, Hitler and his advisors paid little to no attention to this tactic. Rommel also drew up a secondary plan that outlined the defense of the French beaches and countryside in the event of an allied break-through. The Germans would defend the beaches for as long as possible, but at the first sign of a break-through, they would retreat to more defensible ground, and then quickly follow with a counter-attack. Hitler was outraged at this. He would not have his army run in the face of an enemy (Patrick 27).

Deception and trickery played a critical role in the allied victory. For months before June 6, the Americans and British had been sending easily de-coded messages between fake armies, making plans for an invasion one hundred miles from the actual one. They told of a huge invasion force consisting of hundreds of thousands of troops, and thousands of tanks. However, radio signals alone couldn t fool the German Recon planes that flew over Britain. If the Germans heard about this great army, but couldn t find it, they wouldn t believe it existed, so false staging areas were set up all around the coast of England. Inflatable tanks, ships, and artillery were set up, along with thousands of tents, to give the impression of a functional army base preparing for an invasion. To top it all off, a dead body was dropped from a ship off the coast of Spain in the Mediterranean Sea dressed as a high-ranking British General. He had a briefcase hand-cuffed to his wrist that contained fake do