ALLIED LANDINGS

IN WORLD WAR II

1942-1945

Allied Landings

0 ~ , . n, 300

Scale in Miles

TORCH

December 1942

V" Casablanca

MOROCCO

SPAIN;

TORCH

UNITED

KINGDOM

London

- - . " . ,v-'~~

frVERLJQRtf !

June 1944 •'£

Patlsl};:'_

FRANCE

ANVIL-DRAGOON

August 1944 CORSICA

SARDINIA

Salerno

TORCH

V

SHINGLE

AVALANCHE

\ GREECE

Qran

* Algiers |

*

ALGERIA 1

'. Tunis

HUSKY
supervision of tactical commanders from different armies that had

different operational habits. TORCH also taught Eisenhower, to his

surprise and chagrin, that politics and diplomacy demanded more

of his time than actual military command. As Allied commander,

he was not only a military leader but also the representative of the

Combined Chiefs of Staff and their respective governments when

such political issues as the handling of the Vichy regime had to be

resolved. His emergence as a diplomat thus began in North Africa.

Eisenhower's first exercise of Allied command revealed that it

held many frustrations, but he treated each problem or setback as a

lesson. As time went on, he became more skillful, gradually

mastering a job that was really without precedent in the history of

warfare.

At the end of 1943, after Eisenhower had conducted successful

landings in Sicily and Italy and negotiated an Italian surrender, the

Combined Chiefs of Staff named him Supreme Commander of the

Allied Expeditionary Force for the invasion of Europe. At the

Teheran Conference in November, Churchill, Roosevelt, and

Stalin had agreed upon the opening of a second front in northwest

Europe, thus validating what had been the essence of American

strategy since the beginning of the war. Operation OVERLORD, in

this sense, was the culmination of all of America's mobilization and

training efforts; all other campaigns had merely prepared the way.

Americans believed that Germany could only be defeated by

military operations on the Continent itself, and had made an attack

across the English Channel the heart of strategic planning since

the days before Pearl Harbor. In the eyes of American planners,

OVERLORD was to be the decisive act of the war. If it succeeded,

then eventual victory was not in question. Thus it was by far the

most important campaign the Allies would wage, a fact of which

Eisenhower was well aware when he took over from General Sir

Frederick Morgan, whose staff had made the preliminary studies

for the invasion.

Any residual concerns Eisenhower might have harbored about

the emphasis the alliance would place on the invasion were

eliminated by the Combined Chiefs of Staff directive for OVERLORD, which spelled out its participants and objectives:

You will enter the continent of Europe and, in

conjunction with the other Allied Nations, undertake operations aimed at the heart of Germany and

the destruction of her Armed Forces.

The proposed invasion was manifestly to be the determining Allied
campaign of the war. Its object was to destroy the Wehrmacht,

and only secondarily to attain specific geographical objectives.

The essence of success was therefore to seek decisive battle with

the German forces on the Continent. Eisenhower's staff selected

the Ruhr, the industrial heart of Germany, as the objective of an

attack that would undoubtedly serve to bring the main body of the

German Army to battle.

;j The general plan of the Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF), was to land on the Normandy coast and

build up resources for a breakout into the interior of France.

Thereafter, the Allies would pursue the Germans with two army

groups on a broad front, emphasizing the left to capture necessary

ports and threaten the Ruhr. The right army group was to link up

with forces attacking northward from a separate invasion on the

beaches of southern France. The two army groups would defeat

all German forces west of the Rhine, establish forward logistical

bases for the final battle, and seek bridgeheads across the river.

The final attack was to be a double envelopment of the Ruhr,

followed by an exploitation into Germany with the direction to be

determined according to the circumstances at that time.

To execute the plan, the first essential was proper organization.

The virtue of the Combined Chiefs of Staff was that, as the only

organization that gave orders to Eisenhower, it was the nearest

thing possible to having only one government to which to answer.

The corollary within his own headquarters was to build a structure

of command and staff that emphasized Allied unity and the

harmonious cooperation of the several national armed forces that

would fight the battle. Eisenhower therefore drew men he knew

from his previous staffs and blended British and American officers

into an organization that reflected his own outlook. The primary

objective of the SHAEF staff, he said, was to "utilize the resources

of two great nations . . . with the decisiveness of a single authority." This would obviously not be easy, as the example of World

War I proved, and Eisenhower continuously returned to the

subject of cooperation. His personality, his sense of optimism and

determination, permeated the staff, creating the technical and

emotional atmosphere necessary for the Allied command to work

properly. Even so, an enormous responsibility lay with the Allied

commander in chief to make the system function.

The preparations and decision for OVERLORD put both the

commander and his staff to the test. Although everyone was

committed to the concept of Allied unity of command, Eisenhower had a more advanced conception of it than most and insisted on
controlling everything that had any bearing on the battle he

believed would decide the outcome of the war. This determination

led him to a series of confrontations, both outside of SHAEF and

within his own command.

A typical case was the controversy over distribution of landing

craft among the several competing theaters, which set Eisenhower

at odds with the American Joint Chiefs of Staff. He succeeded in

squeezing out a sufficient number of those critical vessels to

conduct OVERLORD, although he could not get enough to mount

the planned simultaneous landing in the south of France (ANVIL,

later renamed DRAGOON). At the political level, he stood firm on

the necessity of ANVIL, although Prime Minister Churchill strongly believed it to be unnecessary and wanted to use ANVIL resources in the Mediterranean. Eisenhower, with Marshall's

support, prevailed in preventing the allocation of scarce men and

equipment for operations elsewhere in a theater both deemed

secondary.

There were similar debates within SHAEF itself. An essential

part of the operational plan was restricting the flow of German

The Supreme Command in London, February 1944. (Seated from left} Air

Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Tedder, Eisenhower, General Sir Bernard L.

Montgomery; (standing from left) Maj. Gen. Omar N. Bradley, Admiral Sir

Bertram Ramsay, Air Chief Marshal Sir Trafford Leigh-Mallory, and Lt.

Gen. Water Bedell Smith.
reinforcements to the coast after the invasion began. The Transportation Plan, executed by the U.S. 8th Air Force and Royal Air

Force Bomber Command, was to accomplish this through a

systematic and extended pre-invasion bombardment of rail centers

and bridges. The strategic air force chiefs preferred to continue

existing bombing programs over Germany and strenuously resisted

subordination to SHAEF, even for a limited period. Eisenhower

persistently argued for the plan and eventually offered sufficient

compromises to gain its acceptance. Another case involved the

airborne drops to seal off the coast from the interior, which Lt.

Gen. Omar Bradley thought vital to his troops' success on Utah

and Omaha beaches. Shortly before the attack, Air Chief Marshal

Trafford Leigh-Mallory argued that poor landing zones and German resistance would result in the "futile slaughter" of two fine

airborne divisions. Eisenhower stoutly insisted that the landings

could not proceed otherwise and overrode his air commander's

objections.

In the end, Eisenhower proved to be correct on all of these

issues, and his determination to prevail in the debates reinforced

his authority as Supreme Commander. Achieving a consensus was

more important to him than merely winning an argument, however, because success depended upon enthusiastic execution of the

plans SHAEF approved. Eisenhower consistently won over men

with different ideas by assuring that their points of view had a full

airing and fair consideration. He was rarely abrupt and never

arbitrary and applied the particular genius of his own personality

to persuade other men to accept a common strategy. Eisenhower's

reputation for honesty and openness had much to do with his

success in developing and implementing a truly Allied plan of

campaign, rather than parallel national plans.

The importance of OVERLORD justified the Supreme Commander's insistence on absolute unity of effort, but the final

decision to launch the invasion was still fraught with consequence.

Eisenhower's decision came down simply to go or not to go on

one of the dates his staff had selected as optimum, yet the apparent

simplicity of that decision veiled its difficulty. Eisenhower had to

set the complex plan into motion at the correct time and without

hesitation. The proper conditions of tide and moon occurred only

twice in June, and postponement past June effectively meant that

the attack would have to be put off until 1945, because several

months of good campaigning weather were essential for the

subsequent operations on the Continent.
The Germans, conscious that the Allies were accumulating

manpower and materiel in the United Kingdom, anticipated an

attack somewhere on the French coast. Surprise, and therefore

success, was possible only in terms of the time and place of the

landings; delay would increase the chances that the enemy might

penetrate Allied intentions. Beyond the obvious consequences of

failure was Eisenhower's knowledge that Allied resources were

sufficient for only one try. After due deliberation, he determined

on 5 June to go ahead with the landings the next day. In effect his

decision reflected all of the education and experience of his many

years as a soldier.

Once the machinery of OVERLORD had been set in motion,

there was nothing more the Supreme Commander could do to

affect the results. He placed the issue in the hands of the few

thousand brave men at Gold, Sword, Juno, Omaha, and Utah

beaches. OVERLORD, the largest amphibious assault ever undertaken in the history of warfare, began with British and American

airborne landings in the hours before dawn. The accumulated

experience and knowledge gleaned from the earlier landings in

North Africa, Sicily, and Italy, incorporated by solid staff work

into a comprehensive plan, succeeded in lodging a beachead on the

continent of Europe by the late afternoon. As of the end of June,

the Allies had put nearly one million men and over 585,000 tons of

supplies over the beaches. On 15 August, Operation DRAGOON, the

complementary landings in the south of France, set another army

ashore. By the end of August, the two million Allied troops in

France had broken out of their landing sites, liberated Paris,

established supplementary supply ports at Toulon and Marseilles,

and were racing toward Germany. Threatened by converging

pincers from north and south, the German occupiers retreated

from France to their frontier fortifications. Through D-Day,

Eisenhower's most marked characteristics were his unfailing optimism about the success of the invasion and his determination to

overcome all obstacles that stood in its way. As the subsequent

campaigns developed across northern Europe, he demonstrated an

exceptional mental flexibility that enabled him to exploit German

weaknesses. Since the days of his tutorials with Fox Conner, he

had despised rigid adherence to preconceived plans as unimaginative, closed-minded, and potentially dangerous. Thus, while Eisenhower hewed closely to the broad outlines of the strategic plan he

had enunciated before D-Day, he had no objection to deviations at

the tactical level. From August of 1944 through the end of the
The Supreme Commander talks with men of Company E, 502d Parachute

Infantry Regiment, at the 101st Airborne Division's camp at Greenham

Common, England, 5 June 1944. Eisenhower had the highest regard for

America's citizen-soldier; the soldiers recognized and returned the trust.

war, he made a series of important decisions that exploited

circumstances.

The first of these was his decision after the breakout at St. Lo

to cross the Seine River on the run, instead of pausing there to

gather strength for a deliberate crossing. German resistance had

suddenly crumbled and the Wehrmacht was in full retreat to the

east. Eisenhower saw the situation as a great opportunity to drive

the Germans into their homeland before the end of the year.

Perhaps, he thought, recalling the German collapse of 1918,

pursuit might force an early capitulation. In consequence, he

abandoned major attacks to secure the Breton ports and turned his

armies to the east. As it turned out, Germany did not collapse, and

the army groups outran the ability of their logistical systems to

supply them. But when that happened, the Allied forces stood on

the German frontier, far ahead of their predicted advance.

Eisenhower's decision to fight on a "broad front," part of the

original plan, repeatedly came under question during the attack

across France. There naturally were political imperatives that

made it essential for the Supreme Commander to use both army

groups to fight the Germans. Destruction of the German armies
D-Day Assault, 6 June 1944. Eisenhower placed the issue in the hands of

the few thousand brave men at Gold, Sword, Juno, Omaha, and Utah

beaches.

west of the Rhine was also an important objective that he could

accomplish only by maintaining a steady advance with all of his

forces. In the process, the Allies would close on the Rhine River, a

defensible terrain feature that would allow great economy of force

in case of a German counterattack. Furthermore, a broad-front

attack used all of the Allies' military power against the Germans,

rather than just a portion. Finally, a broad attack offered more

chances of finding, and exploiting, enemy weaknesses. Eisenhower, concentrating on the objective of destroying the German

armed forces rather than on the occupation of terrain, firmly

resisted both military and political arguments against the broadfront attack.

He was as resolute in adversity as in success. When the

Germans launched their counterattack through the forest of the

Ardennes in December 1944, Eisenhower recognized it as a major

attack well before intelligence reached the same conclusion. He

moved quickly and calmly to cope with the situation, adjusting

command arrangements to suit the geographical conditions under

which his armies had to fight. Most significantly, he treated the

developing Battle of the Bulge as an opportunity to destroy
The Supreme Allied Commander

at 8th Infantry Division headquarters in Belgium, November

1944. The Allied forces stood on

the German frontier, far ahead of

their predicted advance.

German reserves, turning an enemy attack to the Allies' advantage.

Following the reduction of the Bulge, General Bradley presented him with the unanticipated capture of the Ludendorff

railway bridge across the Rhine River at the town of Remagen.

Eisenhower decided that, although it was somewhat south of his

planned Rhine crossing, Remagen would serve as the point from

which the final attacks could be made. He therefore diverted

supplies and forces to exploit the Remagen crossing and made it

the point of departure for the decisive double encirclement of the

Ruhr valley that captured more than 325,000 prisoners and ended

organized enemy resistance.

The enemy High Command collapsed after Hitler's suicide on

30 April 1945. Within a few days all remaining enemy forces

surrendered, and the Third Reich officially ended on 7 May when

Eisenhower received the unconditional surrender from General

Alfred Jodl at the SHAEF headquarters in Rheims.

Postwar Leader

With Europe in the early stages of reconstruction, Eisenhower

returned to the United States in November 1945 to replace his

mentor as Chief of Staff of the United States Army. Whereas
George C. Marshall had overseen the building of the largest Army

in the nation's history, Eisenhower presided over the postwar

demobilization of that Army. In an echo of his duties in the 1930s,

he found himself testifying before Congress to oppose cuts in the

military appropriation that would hinder the maintenance of an

adequate force to defend American interests in the postwar world.

With the passage of the National Security Act of 1947, Eisenhower became the Army's first Chief of Staff to participate in the

newly created unified Joint Chiefs of Staff. In 1948 he retired from

the Army to become president of Columbia University.

In December 1950, at the request of the European allies,

President Harry Truman recalled Eisenhower to become the

Supreme Allied Commander, Europe, where he directed the

buildup of military forces for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). In dealing with the creation of a common defense

against the threat of Communist aggression, Eisenhower and his

allied staff worked within the constraints of a Europe that was

recovering from the ravages of World War II and still stood on the

edge of economic collapse. His most enduring contribution was

developing a sense of partnership and self-confidence among the

NATO member nations. Europeans found that they could trust a

man who conspicuously shared their desire for peace. Eisenhower

believed that his NATO command was unique. It was the first

time, as he later commented, that a multinational army was created

"to preserve the peace and not to wage war."

In 1952 he accepted the Republican Party's nomination for

president and defeated Democrat Adlai E. Stevenson in the

November elections. The quality of leadership that distinguished

Eisenhower the soldier also served him well in the presidency. The

diverse challenges of more than thirty years of service in the Army

and as an international leader amplified his natural gift for command. He had the considerable advantage that many of the leaders

of the postwar world were old friends whom he had come to know

well during the war, and with whom he already had a sound

working relationship. Eisenhower's military experience also

proved invaluable in determining his style of presidential leadership. Based on techniques that had served him well in SHAEF and

NATO, he used a chief of staff to keep track of the day-to-day

operations, freeing him to maintain an overview of all of the

administration's business. The new President's major concern was

the continued quest for international peace that had been his focus

in his years with NATO. A truce was finally signed to end the
President-elect Eisenhower with

15th Infantry Regiment troops,

Korea, December 1952. The new

President's major concern was

the continued quest for international peace.

Korean War in July 1953, honoring one of Eisenhower's campaign

pledges. In December he proposed the Atoms for Peace program,

whereby nations would pool their atomic information for peaceful

purposes, an initiative that led to the creation of the International

Atomic Energy Agency in 1957. It was also during his first

administration that the United States and Canada drew closer

together in the joint project to build the St. Lawrence Seaway.

Trying to reduce tensions with the Soviet Union, in 1955 he

proposed the Open Skies plan that would allow the United States

and the USSR aerial inspection of each other's military bases.

In 1957 a series of Near Eastern crises led to the Eisenhower

Doctrine, which promised American aid to any Middle East nation

that asked for help against Communist attack. The following year,

the President sent troops to Beirut to aid the Lebanese government. In a similar action, he sent naval forces to support Nationalist China in a crisis with Communist China over the little islands of

Quemoy and Matsu. Overall, however, relations with the Soviet

Union deteriorated during Eisenhower's administration. The U-2

incident in May 1960 caused the breakup of a summit conference in

Paris with Premier Nikita Khrushchev and a general hardening of

relations between the two nations.

In domestic affairs, President Eisenhower managed a balanced

budget and cut military spending through the New Look program
that resulted in smaller forces and reliance on strategic deterrence

for defense. Several weeks after taking office, he created a new

cabinet office, the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare.

To promote the development of the postwar economy, he successfully lobbied Congress to pass the Federal Aid Highway Act in

1956. This project launched the biggest peacetime construction

program in the nation's history. In 1957 he used federal troops to

enforce school desegregation in Little Rock after Governor Orval

Faubus of Arkansas refused to comply with the 1954 Supreme

Court decision that ordered integration. In 1958, following the

launch of Explorer I, the first American satellite, Eisenhower

signed into law a bill that created the National Aeronautics and

Space Administration (NASA). In his second term Alaska and

Hawaii became states. After turning the presidency over to John

F. Kennedy in January 1961, Eisenhower retired to Gettysburg,

Pennsylvania.

The central fact about Dwight David Eisenhower is that he

accepted the responsibility for making pivotal decisions at critical

points in the history of his nation and the western alliance. The

most dramatic of those decisions, and the ones for which he had

consciously prepared himself throughout a long military career,

produced the Allied victory in Europe in 1945. Less spectacularly,

but just as resolutely, Eisenhower dedicated himself to the cause of

peace and sought the national good as he conceived it during eight

years in the White House. He won the trust and confidence of the

common man, both in the United States and abroad, and personified the goodwill and altruism of American policy in his era. As

soldier and as statesman, duty came first. Perhaps the best characterization of the man comes from his own words in a speech he

delivered in June 1945, to acknowledge being awarded the Freedom of the City of London. "Humility," he said, "must always be

the portion of any man who receives acclaim earned in the blood

of his followers and the sacrifices of his friends."
Further Readings

There are many excellent books about Eisenhower, both as wartime commander and as President. For the years as Supreme

Commander, see his own recollections, Crusade in Europe (1948).

The President's memoirs have been published in two volumes:

Mandate For Change: 1953-1956 (1963), and Waging Peace,

1956-1961: The White House Years (1965). His At Ease—Stories I

Tell Friends (1988), reveals something of the inner man. Stephen

Ambrose, editor of Eisenhower's personal papers, has written the

definitive biography in Eisenhower: Soldier, General of the Army,

President Elect, 1890-1952 (1983); and Eisenhower: The President

(1984). A recent addition is David Eisenhower, Eisenhower at War:

1943-1945 (1987). The memoirs of the Supreme Allied Commander's principal subordinates enhance Eisenhower's own account of

the victory in Europe. Of particular value are Omar N. Bradley, A

Soldier's Story (1951); and Walter Bedell Smith, Eisenhower's Six

Great Decisions: Europe, 1944-1945 (1956). Russell F. Weigley

provides not only a discussion of personalities, but also of strategic

and operational considerations in Eisenhower's Lieutenants: The

Campaigns of France and Germany, 1944-1945 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1981). The official history series United

States Army in World War II provides detailed accounts of each

campaign of the war in Europe. Forrest C. Pogue, The Supreme

Command (1954), which surveys the coalition command and its

campaigns from 1943 through 1945, is particularly useful.

CMH Pub 71-40
SUPREME HEADQUARTERS

ALLIED EXPEDITIONARY FORCE

Soldiers, Sailors and Airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Force!

You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward

which we have striven these many months. The eyes of

the world are upon you. The hopes and prayers of libertyloving people everywhere march with you. In company with

our brave Allies and brothers-in-arms on other Fronts,

you will bring about the destruction of the German war

machine, the elimination of Nazi tyranny over the oppressed

peoples of Europe, and security for ourselves in a free

world.

Your task will not be an easy one. Your enemy is well

trained, well equipped and battle-hardened. He will

fight savagely.

But this is the year of 1944! Much has happened since the

Nazi triumphs of 1940-41. The United Nations have inflicted upon the Germans great defeats, in open battle,

man-to-man. Our air offensive has seriously reduced

their strength in the air and their capacity to wage

war on the ground. Our Home Fronts have given us an

overwhelming superiority in weapons and munitions of

war, and placed at our disposal great reserves of trained

fighting men. The tide has turned! The free men of the

world are marching together to Victory!

I have full confidence in your courage, devotion to duty

and skill in battle. We will accept nothing less than

full Victory!

Good Luck! And let us all beseech the blessing of Almighty God upon this great and noble undertaking.