June 6, 1944, began the triumph of freedom and democracy over tyranny and oppression.
June 6, 1944, began the triumph of freedom and democracy over tyranny and oppression.
T oday marks the 80th anniversary of the most important day of the 20th century — June 6, 1944, forever known as D-Day. World War II was the preeminent event of the 20th century and the bloodiest event in human history, and D-Day was the most important day of that conflict. June 6, 1944, was the day it would be determined whether the United States and her allies could execute by far the largest and most daring amphibious assault in military history and successfully establish a strong, secure beachhead in Normandy, on France’s northern coast. From there, they would begin the liberation of Western Europe and the final defeat of Nazi Germany.
As I write this article, it is a bittersweet reality that the unyielding effect of time now dictates that, as the 80th anniversary of this monumental event approaches, only a tiny handful of D-Day veterans remain alive who can bear witness to their personal experiences on that decisive day. The D-Day invasion, code-named “Operation Overlord,” was a massive undertaking involving over 6,000 ships, ranging from battleships to troop carriers, along with nine combat divisions of roughly 175,000 troops who would be sent into action on the first day. Five of the combat divisions were American: the 1st, 4th, and 29th Infantry divisions and the 82nd and 101st Airborne divisions. Three British and one Canadian division constituted the rest of the initial combat force.
The planning for this huge and risky operation had not been easy. From the beginning, the British were not enthusiastic about the idea of a direct assault on the heavily defended French coast. France had surrendered to the Nazis in 1940, so the Germans had almost four years to work on defense preparations. In 1943 and 1944, fortifying the beachheads intensified under the command of the famed Field Marshall Erwin Rommel.
The British apprehension clearly illustrated the difference in strategy between American and British war planners. The Brits, with more-limited resources, had been at war since September 1939 and were more war-weary and risk-averse. They were horrified at the thought that a cross-channel amphibious invasion could turn into a disaster for the Allies. On the other hand, the American high command was convinced the only way to keep the war from dragging on indefinitely was to launch a massive assault against the German coastal defenses and speed up the necessary destruction of the Nazi army.
President Franklin Roosevelt had appointed General Dwight Eisenhower to command the Allied Expeditionary Force. However, early in the winter of 1944, Eisenhower had become so frustrated with what he perceived as lack of British cooperation that he was openly complaining. Roosevelt, alarmed and concerned about the future of the Normandy operation, sent a strong protest to British prime minister Winston Churchill. Wisely recognizing that a fractured alliance would compromise Allied war strategy, Churchill sent the word up and down the British command: Cooperate or get out of the way.
As part of the planning for the D-Day invasion, the Allies cleverly created what became the greatest “intelligence” deception of the war. Early in the war, the British broke the German military code known as ‘Ultra,” enabling the Allies to diligently monitor most German coded military communication. Through “Ultra,” Eisenhower learned that the Allied commander most feared by the Germans because of his daring and aggressive tactics was General George Patton. The Germans fully expected Patton to be the commander of any invasion of France.
But Patton was not going to be the commander of the cross-channel assault on Normandy. Command of American forces at Normandy was given instead to General Omar Bradley, who had been Patton’s deputy commander in Sicily and North Africa. While visiting wounded soldiers in a field hospital during the Sicily campaign, Patton had lost his cool and slapped a couple of able-bodied GIs and accused them of cowardice. The American media got wind of the story and turned it into a full-fledged scandal. Several reporters even demanded that Patton be relieved of duty and sent home.
Despite the bad press, the Allied high command knew that Patton was too valuable to the war effort to be sent home. They also knew, but the Germans did not, that Patton would be punished by not being given command of the invasion. And to the Germans, not using your best battlefield commander because he slapped some scared soldiers would be unthinkable.
So the Allies decided to play on German fears and use Patton as a decoy. A large, fictitious, Army unit was created under Patton and located at Dover, which is the closest English city to the French coast at Calais. The deception was made convincing by numerous troop movements through Dover, setting up several major radio-transmitting stations to produce constant radio traffic and, amazingly, the deployment of hundreds of inflatable rubber tanks, trucks, and other motorized vehicles that appeared completely authentic when photographed from a few thousand feet by German reconnaissance aircraft.
The idea was to make the Germans believe that Patton was commanding the real invasion force that would attack across the narrowest part of the English Channel and land in the Calais area. The effectiveness of this great deception was born out on D-Day. Nazi leader Adolf Hitler and the German high command refused to rush two Panzer divisions stationed near Calais to counterattack on the Normandy beachhead, when such a move might have turned the tide of battle. Only after 48 hours did the Germans finally realize that Normandy was the real invasion and not a decoy and that there would be no Patton attack against Calais. By then, enough Allied armor had been brought ashore to mount a strong defense against German Panzer tanks.
The invasion date was originally set for June 5, but on June 2 the Allied weather forecasters told Eisenhower that a storm was brewing in the notoriously rough English Channel. On June 4, after thousands of soldiers had already begun loading onto ships, the weather forecast was so bad that Eisenhower had no choice but to postpone the invasion for one day and pray that the weather would improve.
Because of the effect of the tides and the moon on the Normandy coast, if the invasion had to be postponed again, after June 6, it would be another month before conditions would again be favorable. Eisenhower dreaded the possibility of another postponement. He thought it would depress the morale of the troops who were primed and ready to go, and he was worried about maintaining secrecy and security for another month. Perhaps reflecting divine intervention, the meteorologists reported on June 5 that the weather should moderate for a few days. Not ideal conditions, but probably manageable. It was a tough and risky decision to make. Eisenhower gave the invasion order with two words, “Let’s go.”
At 11 p.m. on the evening of June 5, the American and British Airborne divisions began loading into planes for their parachute drop behind enemy lines all along the Normandy coast. The cloudy, windy weather, combined with heavy antiaircraft fire, badly scattered the paratroopers, but that worked out fine because evidently it confused the Germans as to what the Allied targets and objectives were.
The Airborne troops did their job well. On the roads to the coast, they captured and held vital bridges, which the Allied armies needed to advance into France, before the Germans could destroy them. The Airborne troops set up strong defensive positions on both flanks of the Normandy beachhead to stop or delay any German counterattack. And by dawn of June 6, the first French town of Sainte-Mère-Église had been liberated by the 82nd Airborne.
There were five invasion beaches along the Normandy coast — code-named Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno, and Sword. Utah and Omaha were the American beaches. Gold and Sword were British, and Juno was Canadian. Allied planners had convinced themselves that substantial bombing from the air, combined with a massive pre-invasion naval bombardment, could neutralize many of the German beach defenses. Sadly, the bombing and bombardment proved ineffective, probably handicapped by the rough weather.
By pure chance and good luck, the wind and currents took the first waves of American landing craft headed for Utah Beach about one mile south of their intended landing zone, to an area between more-heavily defended German positions. General Teddy Roosevelt Jr., son of the former president, famously surveyed the situation on the beach and declared, “We will start the war from here.” Roosevelt immediately ordered all successive waves diverted to his new beach position and boldly attacked inland splitting the German defenses. By the end of the day, they were five miles inland and had linked up with units of the 82nd Airborne. For his personal bravery and intrepid leadership, General Roosevelt was posthumously awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. Sadly, he died of a heart attack on July 12, just over a month after the invasion, and is buried with his men at the American Military Cemetery in Normandy.
“Bloody Omaha” was where the carnage was. The bloody horror faced by the first waves of Americans to hit the beach at Omaha are graphically illustrated in the first 30 minutes of the movie Saving Private Ryan. The landing troops had to navigate a long stretch of beach that, with no cover or protection, ran into sandy bluffs that in places rose as high as 100 feet . The Germans had substantial manpower and firepower advantages, in addition to the vitally important high ground, all of which created a “mission impossible” scenario for the Americans. The first waves of troops on Omaha were largely decimated. They lost much of their heavy equipment and were barely able to return the German fire.
The Omaha landing was in danger of degenerating into a nightmare of contending against overwhelming odds. However, slowly but surely, individual soldiers performed acts of valor. One of the brave officers on the beach, Colonel George Taylor of the 1st Infantry Division (a.k.a. the Big Red One), rallied his men by constantly exposing himself to German fire and imploring his men to get moving and attack. He screamed at them: “There are only two kinds of men on this beach, those who are dead and those who are going to die. Now let’s get the hell off this beach.” Several American Navy destroyers, observing the chaos and confusion, acted without orders, charging in close to the beach so they could more accurately aim their guns on German defenses, exposing themselves to German artillery fire. One destroyer even ran aground in this valiant attempt to give fire support to the men desperately struggling on the beach.
Omaha Beach was the landing beach between Utah Beach to the west, for the Americans, and the British and Canadian beaches to the east. Had the landing at Omaha failed and the Americans been pushed back into the English Channel, the Germans could have split the Normandy invasion in two and probably made it impossible for the Allies to fortify the beachhead with men and material in preparation for the breakout and the planned attack across France. The duration of the war would have been substantially lengthened. For half a day the fate of Omaha was in grave doubt. By day’s end, though, the Americans had defied the odds and were a mile inland. Omaha Beach is a glorious example of what motivated American soldiers under the greatest duress are capable of doing when they know that losing is not an option.
On the morning of June 6, 1944, President Roosevelt gave a nationwide radio address. He called for a national day of prayer. The Normandy invasion had already begun, and the president had received the first action reports before he gave his memorable prayer to the nation that day. This is how FDR began: “Almighty God: Our sons, pride of our nation, this day have set upon a mighty endeavor, a struggle to preserve our republic, our religion, and our civilization, and to set free a suffering humanity.” That day, all across the country, tens of millions of Americans stopped what they were doing and went to their local church or synagogue to pray for their family members and friends in harm’s way.
With the element of surprise, and despite over 10,000 casualties, the Allies established the Normandy beachhead. By August, Patton’s 3rd Army was leading the drive across France and moving faster and farther than any other military unit in American history. On August 25, Paris was liberated in what some have called “the happiest day of the 20th century.”
To reflect on this period and take note of the almost inconceivable, unrelenting pace of operations is breathtaking. On June 5, 1944, Rome was liberated by the Americans, and in the Pacific, Americans launched three amphibious invasions in the Mariana Islands in rapid succession — Saipan on June 15, Guam on July 21, and Tinian on July 24. The American “Arsenal of Democracy” was on full display.
It is imperative that we, as Americans, remember and appreciate the honor, bravery, and sacrifice that our forefathers demonstrated during those perilous times. And equally important, full appreciation of this noble heritage must be passed to future generations by a reformed educational system and improved museums and institutions of American history. Being historically illiterate, as we have recently witnessed all over our country, is no longer acceptable.
Today, I encourage you to do what I’m going to do. Pour yourself a glass of your favorite libation and toast to the “greatest generation.” Remember the immortal words of President Ronald Reagan at the 40th anniversary of D-Day in 1984. He was standing in front of the magnificent Ranger Monument at Pointe du Hoc, speaking to the veterans of the Ranger battalion that had executed one of the most dangerous missions of D-Day. They had fought their way up the tall rocky cliffs at Pointe du Hoc and taken out large German guns that could have targeted both Omaha Beach and Utah Beach.
President Reagan looked at them with tears in his eyes and said, “These are the boys of Pointe du Hoc, these are the men who scaled the cliffs, these are the champions who liberated a continent.”