The untold brutality of D-Day: Antony Beevor on the carnage suffered on the beaches of Normandy | Daily Mail Online The untold brutality of D-Day: Antony Beevor on the carnage suffered on the beaches of Normandy comments Updated: 22:32 EST, 2 June 2009 On the eve of the anniversary of D-Day, one of our finest historians reveals the almost unimaginable horror Allied soldiers faced as they fought to free France from the grip of Hitler's most bloodthirsty and fanatical stormtroopers With biting irony, Soviet propagandists claimed in 1944 that the British and Americans in Normandy were facing only the dregs of the Wehrmacht. 'We know where young and strong Germans are now,' wrote Ilya Ehrenburg in Pravda. 'We have accommodated them in the earth, in sand, in clay.' But to claim that western Allies were fighting only second-rate troops was simply not true. By late June, the British Second Army was up against the largest concentration of SS panzer divisions assembled since their violent offensive against the Red Army in the Kursk the previous summer.

Contrary to received opinion, the fighting in Normandy was even bloodier than on the eastern front. At the beginning of June 1944, the war was reaching a climax. German troops had been brutalised by the savagery of the ongoing fighting in Russia Red Army was secretly preparing its vast encirclement of the Germans' Army Group Centre. Some of the Waffen-SS divisions facing the Allies in Normandy were the most fanatical and disciplined of all; soldiers indoctrinated by Hitler's propaganda and bent on revenge for the 'terror bombing' of German cities. The Allies, meanwhile, had launched the greatest amphibious operation in history, with more than 5,000 ships. And although planning for the cross-Channel phase of Operation Overlord was meticulous, perhaps inevitably the next stage was not so clearly thought through. Reluctant to accept heavy casualties after so many years of fighting, and almost unchallenged in the skies, the Allies decided to bomb towns and villages in Normandy at key road junctions to block the streets with rubble and hinder German divisions arriving to counter-attack their beach-heads. The Norman capital of Caen , just ten miles inland, was included on the list.

The relentless bombing of Caen over two days was a tragic blunder. It made a nonsense of General Montgomery's plan to take Caen within the first 24 hours of the campaign - turning it into rubble meant it was far harder for the Allies to penetrate the town and provided ideal terrain for its defenders. In addition, there were hardly any German troops left in the town, since they had all moved north towards their positions closer to the beaches. Instead, the civilians in the town suffered more than 2,000 casualties. In fact, on D-Day, as many French civilians died as Allied soldiers. This is why I said in a magazine interview this week that the bombing of Caen was 'close to a war crime'. I was no doubt overstating the case in the heat of the moment, but it is hardly a new controversy. The playwright William Douglas-Home, the brother of the future Prime Minister, was cashiered from the Army and served a year's hard labour for his protest over the bombing soon afterwards.

Whatever the case, the terrible fate of Caen was just one part of a campaign of untold brutality in Normandy in which the Allies encountered the worst fighting of what was already a long war - and responded to the savagery of German combat with equal ferocity. In the early hours of June 6, two divisions of American paratroopers Snubbing Britian: France's President Nicolas Sarkozy with his wife Carla Bruni dropped into battle in fired up to kill 'Krauts'. Some had bought commando knives in London , and several had equipped themselves with cut-throat razors. They had been instructed how to kill a man silently by slicing through the jugular and the voice box. Before departure, they had all received pep talks from their commanders. 'There was a great feeling in the air; the excitement of battle,' noted one paratrooper. After a short speech to arouse their martial ardour, their regimental commander swiftly bent down, pulled a large commando knife from his boot and waved it above his head.

'Before I see the dawn of another day,' he yelled, 'I want to stick this knife into the heart of the meanest, dirtiest, filthiest Nazi in all of Europe .' A baying cheer went up as his men brandished their knives in response. The drop in the early hours of June 6 was chaotic. Those paratroopers whose chutes caught in trees presented easy targets. A number were shot as they struggled. Atrocity stories spread among the survivors, with claims that German soldiers had bayoneted them from below or even turned flame-throwers on them. With revenge on their minds and nerves still taut after the jump, the American paratroopers-blood was up. A trooper in the 82nd remembered his instructions only too clearly: 'Take no prisoners because they will slow you down.' Stories about German soldiers mutilating paratroopers inflamed the Americans still further. A soldier in the 101st recounted how after they had come across two dead paratroopers 'with their privates cut off and stuck into their mouths', the captain with them gave the order: 'Don't you guys dare take any prisoners!

Shoot the bastards!' In a number of cases, the paratroopers shot prisoners captured by others. A Jewish sergeant and a corporal hauled a captured German officer and noncombatant from a farmyard. Those present heard a burst of automatic fire, and when the sergeant returned 'nobody said a thing'. Some men appear to have enjoyed the killing. A paratrooper recalled having come across a member of his company the following morning who appeared to be wearing red gloves instead of the standard issue yellow ones. Bravery: Commandos advance inland to gain first village in Normandy, France on D-Day In fact, they were the yellow ones - just soaked in blood. 'I asked him where he got the red gloves from, and he reached down in his jump pants and pulled out a whole string of ears. He had been earhunting all night and had them all sewn on an old boot lace.' There were cases of brutal looting. The commander of the 101st Airborne's MP platoon came across the body of a German officer and saw that somebody had cut off his finger to take the wedding ring.

A sergeant in the 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment was horrified when he found that members of his platoon had killed some Germans and then used their bodies for bayonet practice. On occasions, however, the killing of prisoners was prevented. A handful of paratroopers from the 101st, including a lieutenant and a chaplain, were standing in a farmyard talking to the French inhabitants. They were astonished when around a dozen troopers from the 82nd arrived at the double, herding a group of very young German orderlies. They ordered them to lie down. The terrified boys pleaded for their lives. The sergeant, who intended to shoot them all, claimed that some of the troopers' buddies caught by their parachutes in trees had been turned into 'Roman candles' by a German soldier with a flame-thrower. He pulled the bolt back on his Thompson sub-machine gun. In desperation, the boys grabbed the legs of the lieutenant and the chaplain as they and the French family shouted at the sergeant not to shoot them. Finally, the sergeant was persuaded. The boys were locked in the farm's cellar. But the sergeant was not put off his mission of vengeance.

'Let's go and find some Krauts to kill!' he yelled to his men and they left again at the double. The members of the 101st were shaken by what they had witnessed. 'These people had gone ape,' one of them remarked later. The hatred was equally intense 50 miles to the east, where paratroopers of the British 6th Airborne Division suffered from a drop every bit as chaotic as the American one. In one battalion alone, 192 men were never found. They had dropped into the flooded marshes round the River Dives and been sucked into the mud. And a German senior NCO in the 711th Infanterie-Division executed eight captured British paratroopers on the spot, probably in obedience of Hitler's notorious 'Kommandobefehl' order which demanded the immediate shooting of all special forces. Although the Allied invasion troops on June 6 managed to secure their beachheads, neither General Eisenhower nor Montgomery-had foreseen that the battle ahead would be far deadlier. The Americans in the west had to fight across marshland and the small fields and tall, dense hedgerows of Normandy .

The British and Canadians around Caen , on the other hand, had to cross huge, rolling wheatfields, while the Germans turned solid stone farmhouses and hamlets into formidable defensive positions. United: American and allied troops wade through the water onto a beach in southern France during the D-Day landings On June 7, the 2nd Battalion of the Royal Ulster Rifles made a brave charge across open cornfields towards the village of Cambes . They fought their way in, but a newly arrived detachment of the 12th SS Hitler Jugend Panzer Division forced them to retreat. The Ulster Rifles had to leave their wounded from D Company in a ditch outside the village. They were certain that the young fanatics from the Hitler Jugend shot them all as they lay there. On their right, the Canadians soon became involved in a bitter cycle of revenge with the 12th SS. The fighting was pitiless. Accusations of war crimes were made by both sides. The Germans claimed that the British started it, and that they had shot prisoners in retaliation.

But the Hitler Jugend argument sounds unconvincing, especially when a total of 187 Canadian soldiers are said to have been executed during the first days of the invasion, almost all by members of the 12th SS. And their first killings had taken place on June 7. , who had walked to the town of Authie to see if an old aunt was all right, discovered 'about 30 Canadian soldiers massacred and mutilated by the Germans'. The Royal Winnipeg Rifles later found that the SS had shot 18 of their men, who had been taken prisoner and interrogated at their command post in the Abbaye d'Ardenne, an ancient church surrounded by medieval buildings. One of them, Major Hodge, had apparently been decapitated. Again, this was the work of the Hitler Jugend which was probably the most indoctrinated of all Waffen-SS divisions. Many of its key commanders came from the 1st SS Panzer-Division Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler. They had been formed in the Rassenkrieg, or 'race war' of the eastern front.

Kurt Meyer, the divisonal commander, had shot 50 Jews near Modlin in Poland Later, during the invasion of the Soviet Union, he ordered a village near Kharkov to be burned to the ground. All its inhabitants were murdered. Nazi propaganda and the eastern front had brutalised them, and they saw the war in the west as no different. Killing Allied prisoners was seen as their revenge for the horror being inflicted by Bomber Command on German cities. SS discipline was pitiless. According to a F&cedil;hrer decree, SS soldiers could be accused of high treason if taken prisoner by the enemy unwounded. They had been forcefully reminded of this just before the invasion, so it was hardly surprising that the British and Canadians captured so few SS alive. But perhaps the most horrific story of SS fanaticism came from a soldier from Alsace who was drafted into the 1st SS Panzer-Division Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler. A fellow Alsatian in his company, who had also been forcibly recruited, could not face the fighting any more and tried to escape in a column of French refugees. He was spotted by members of their regiment and brought back.

Their company commander then ordered his men to beat him to death. With every bone in his body broken, the corpse was thrown into a shell-hole. The captain declared that this was an example of 'Kameradenerziehung', an 'education in comradeship'. But it was not just the brute fanaticism of the Germans that the Allies had to contend with. Fighting in the claustrophobic confines of hedgerows and small fields of the Normandy <cite>bocage </cite>prompted American commanders to compare it to jungle warfare. The Germans described it as a 'schmutziger Buschkrieg' - a 'dirty bush war', but the great advantage lay with them, the defenders. The fear aroused by fighting in the <cite>bocage </cite>produced a level of hatred that had never existed before the invasion. 'The only good Jerry soldiers are the dead ones,' a soldier in the 1st Infantry Division wrote home in a 'Dear Folks' letter to his family in Minnesota . 'I've never really hated anything quite as much. And it's not because of some blustery speech of a brass-hat. I guess I'm probably a little off my nut - but who isn't?

Probably that's the best way to be.' Combatants were shown no mercy. Snipers on both sides were almost always shot on capture. American soldiers were advised to lie still if wounded by a sniper. He would not waste another round on a corpse, but would certainly fire again if they tried to crawl away. Shoreward: WWIILanding ship tanks steaming ahead are silhouetted beneath the long muzzle of a gun German snipers climbed trees and tied themselves to the trunk so that if hit they would not fall out. Another favourite hiding place in more open country was in a hayrick. That practice, however, was soon dropped when both American and British soldiers learned to fire tracer bullets to set the rick aflame, then gun down the hidden rifleman as he tried to escape. Both the British on the Caen front and the Americans found that the Germans were brilliant at camouflage and concealment. They dug themselves in like 'moles in the ground', with overhead cover against artillery treebursts and tunnels under the hedgerows. A small opening onto the field from their hideout provided the ideal aperture from which to scythe down an advancing American platoon with the rapid fire of an MG 42 machinegun.

Fighting against the Red Army had taught German veterans of the eastern front almost every trick imaginable. If there were shell-holes on the approach to one of their positions, they would place anti-personnel mines at the bottom. An attacker's instinct would be to throw himself into it to take cover when under machine-gun or mortar fire. If the Germans abandoned a position, they not only prepared booby-traps in their dugouts, they would leave behind a box of grenades in which several had been tampered with to reduce the time delay to zero. They were also expert at concealing an S-Mine known to the Americans as a 'Bouncing Betty' in ditches. It was also called the 'castrator' mine, because it sprang up when released to explode shrapnel at crotch height. Another German trick when the Americans launched a night attack was for one machine gun to fire high with tracers over their attackers' heads. This encouraged them to remain upright, while the other machine-gunners fired low with conventional bullets. Both American and British tank crews had many dangers to fear. The 88mm anti-aircraft gun used against tanks was terrifyingly accurate, even from over a mile away.

And in the close country of the bocage, German tank-hunting groups with the shoulderlaunched Panzerfaust armourpenetrating missile would hide and wait for several tanks to pass, then fire at them from behind at their vulnerable rear. But however great the fear of being trapped in a burning tank, it was the infantry that suffered the greatest casualties. Only 14 per cent of U.S. servicemen sent abroad during World War II were infantrymen, yet in Normandy the infantry suffered 85 per cent of the casualties. No fewer than 30,000 American soldiers suffered from the psychological breakdown of 'combat fatigue'. British soldiers also suffered from acute stress. The advanced dressing station of the 210th Field Ambulance had to deal with 'a group of terrified, disorientated lads - battle shocked, jittering and yelling in a corner', a doctor wrote in his diary. 'Several SS wounded came in - a tough and dirty bunch - some had been snipers up trees for days.

One young Nazi had a broken jaw and was near death, but before he fainted he rolled his head over and murmured "Heil Hitler!".' Both British and American psychiatrists after the war concluded that the much lower rate of combat fatigue among German prisoners could only be explained by the militaristic nature of Nazi society which had prepared them better. Honour: Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh in Bayeux Cemetary during the 50th anniversary of the D-Day landings in Northern France The greatest heroes of the Normandy battlefield were the unarmed medics, whom snipers often shot at despite their Red Cross armbands. One wrote of the 'light of hope' in the eyes of wounded men when he appeared. It was easy to spot those about to die with 'the greygreen colour of death appearing beneath their eyes and fingernails. These we would only comfort. Those making the most noise were the lightest hit, and we would get them to bandage themselves'. He concentrated on those in shock or with severe wounds and heavy bleeding.

He hardly ever had to use tourniquets, 'since most wounds were puncture wounds and bled very little or were amputations or hits caused by hot and high velocity shell or mortar fragments which seared the wound shut'. Newly arrived recruits were usually the first to die. Otherwise large men, however strong, were the most likely to be killed. 'The combat men who really lasted,' the American medic noted, 'were usually thin, smaller of stature and very quick in their movements.' Real hatred of the enemy came to soldiers, he noticed, when a buddy was killed. 'And this was often a total hatred; any German they encountered after that would be killed.' Work parties took the bodies back to Graves Registration services, which buried them. They were usually stiff and swollen, and sometimes infected with maggots. A limb might come off when they were lifted. The stench was unbearable, especially at the collection point.

'Here the smell was even worse, but most of the men working there were apparently so completely under the influence of alcohol that they no longer appeared to care.' BBC - History - World Wars: D-Day: Beachhead World Wars By Professor Duncan Anderson Last updated 2011-02-17 The landing by Allied troops on the beaches of Normandy could have been 'the most ghastly disaster of the whole war'. Duncan Anderson explains how meticulous planning, good luck and sheer guts made D-Day one of the greatest triumphs. On this page Print this page A controversial plan The Allied landings in Normandy on 6 June 1944 were among the most desperate undertakings in the history of war. Amphibious operations against an enemy in a strong defensive position will almost always lead to heavy casualties. In November 1943, the United States Marine Corps' capture of the tiny atoll of Tarawa in the central Pacific had cost more than 3,000 casualties. American censors banned a public screening of the US Navy film of this event, arguing that its shocking images of a lagoon red with soldiers' blood would undermine the morale of US forces and the Home Front.

The British and Canadians had suffered their own disaster at Dieppe on 18 August 1942. More than two thirds of a 6,000-man raiding force had been left behind on the shingle beach, dead, wounded and prisoners. ... by the time you wake up in the morning twenty thousand men may have been killed... On the eve of D-Day the Allied leadership was in a state of neurotic anxiety. Just after midnight on 6 June, a restless Churchill, haunted by memories of the disastrous Allied landings at Gallipoli 29 years earlier, bade his wife goodnight with the words, 'Do you realise that by the time you wake up in the morning twenty thousand men may have been killed?' The same night, the chief of the imperial general staff, General Alan Brooke, confided to his diary that '... it may well be the most ghastly disaster of the whole war. I wish to God it were safely over '. At about 22.00 the supreme allied commander, General Dwight Eisenhower, had made an impromptu visit to paratroopers of the 101st Airborne at Greenham Common airfield near Newbury.

His driver, Kay Summersby, recorded that the general, overwhelmed by emotion, climbed back into the car with his shoulders sagged. Eisenhower had already written a letter accepting full responsibility if D-Day turned out to be a disaster. Churchill had assured him that they would go together. The Allied high command anticipated that a successful landing would cost 10,000 dead and perhaps 30,000 wounded, but were steeling themselves for much heavier casualties. Top Choosing Normandy The Allies were reluctanct to launch a direct frontal assault © The British had never liked the idea of a direct assault on the coast of north-west Europe. They much preferred an indirect strategy - operations in the Mediterranean and the Balkans. Since the late summer of 1942 the Germans had been constructing the 'Atlantic Wall', a formidable complex of defences running from the Franco-Spanish border to Denmark. It was the largest construction project in European history, involving at any one time more than 100,000 workers.

Under the direction of General Erwin Rommel, all beaches on which a landing was considered possible had been festooned with belts of obstacles and minefields, and covered by machine-gun and mortar emplacements. Further back, bunkers of enormous strength at Merville, Longues and Pointe du Hoc on the Normandy coast enabled large-calibre German guns to bombard a landing force. In order to frustrate an airborne attack, German engineers flooded low-lying areas and strung wires across fields to deter glider landings. The Americans had come to Europe to finish the war as quickly as possible, and this meant taking the shortest, most direct route to Germany. However, the disaster at Dieppe and their own experiences in the Pacific had qualified their optimism. Thus the D-Day landings were to be the most highly planned operations in military history. ... the two large ports, Cherbourg and Le Havre, could be captured from the landward side. In spring 1943, Lieutenant General Frederick Morgan was appointed chief of staff supreme allied commander (COSSAC). He took charge of planning until the appointment of Eisenhower as supreme allied commander at the end 1943.

Aided by Lord Louis Mountbatten, the head of Combined Operations, they chose Normandy; although further from Germany than the Pas de Calais, Normandy's long sandy beaches were sheltered from the prevailing south-west winds by the Cotentin Peninsula, and the two large ports, Cherbourg and Le Havre, could be captured from the landward side. Top Build-up and bluff The Allies developed floating 'Mulberry' harbours © Meanwhile Operation Bolero, codename for the American build-up in Britain, transformed southern England into an armed camp. By early June 1944 more than two million Americans had arrived, along with a quarter-of-a-million Canadians. Despite massive amounts of equipment, including thousands of aircraft, tanks and guns, many American divisions were poorly trained. Some British veteran formations, survivors of action in North Africa, Sicily and Italy, were unenthusiastic about a frontal assault on Hitler's Fortress Europe. The planners did all they could to ensure a successful assault. By the spring of 1944 all the divisions taking part in the initial seaborne landing had participated in extensive amphibious exercises, usually off the coast of Scotland.

During one exercise, off Slapton Sands in Devon, German E Boats sank three landing craft, drowning more than 700 American personnel. The British created 79th Armoured Division, a formation of specialised armoured assault vehicles, including Duplex drive (DD) 'swimming' tanks, mine-clearing (Flail) tanks, tanks with enormous Petard mortars which could drop explosive charges next to bunkers, cracking the concrete, and tanks with flame-throwers (Crocodiles), which would then pump liquid fire through the cracks, effectively cooking the defenders. All the British and Canadian assault divisions had units of the 79th Division attached to them. The British offered the Americans the equipment as well, but the US High Command turned down everything except the DD tanks. Vast, fake army camps appeared around Maidstone and Canterbury... Secrecy was absolutely crucial. To mislead the Germans, the British devised ingenious deception plans, notably Operation Fortitude. They deliberately transmitted and broadcast all the radio traffic generated by US forces in south-west England, and British and Canadian forces in south central England, from radio stations in Kent.

Vast, fake army camps appeared around Maidstone and Canterbury, with thousands of partly concealed dummy tanks and aircraft. One of the Allies' most flamboyant generals, George Patton, toured the area. German agents 'turned' by MI5 leaked the news that the Allies' most powerful assault formation, US 3rd Army, was destined to assault the Pas de Calais. The deception worked. The Germans concentrated their most powerful formation, 15th Army, in the Pas de Calais. Normandy was held by the smaller, but still formidable 7th Army. Had 15th Army had turned up on D-Day, the landings would probably have ended in disaster. Top Window of opportunity British glider-borne forces contributed to the air assault © A successful operation required air superiority and tactical and operational surprise. The planners had to persuade the 'Bomber Barons' of the RAF and USAAF to divert resources from what they regarded as the main effort - the strategic bombing of Germany. It took many months of table-thumping argument to win their support. From March 1944, north-western France became the focal point for air activity, the largest sustained air offensive of the war, codenamed the Transportation Plan.

By the first week in June, French rail and road communications had been seriously degraded and the Luftwaffe in France reduced to about 800 operational machines. But the cost had been enormous. Two thousand Allied aircraft were lost and 12,000 airmen killed. The Allies' D-Day Armada in the Channel © On the 6 June, Allied planning paid off, but they also had luck. Eisenhower's exploitation of a small window in a period of very bad weather caught the Germans completely off guard. Rommel thought an invasion so unlikely he left for Germany on the morning of 5 June to celebrate his wife's 50th birthday. Key officers in many formations also took advantage of the bad weather to attend a war game in Rouen, while the commander of 21st Panzer Division, the only armoured formation within striking distance of the invasion beaches, went to visit his mistress in Paris. ... the commander of 21st Panzer Division ... went to visit his mistress in Paris ... German communications had been severely weakened by bombing. Allied paratroopers and the French Resistance made them worse by cutting telephone lines.

At the strategic level, neither Rommel, nor von Rundstedt, could move powerful armoured reserves without Hitler's express approval. Thus the German response in the first hours was spasmodic and uncoordinated. Top D-Day Airborne troops hindered German reinforcements © In the early hours of 6 June RAF bombers dropped aluminium foil of the Pas de Calais to simulate the radar profile of a great invasion fleet. Meanwhile more than 7,000 vessels, the largest naval task force ever assembled, moved to the Normandy coast. Shortly after midnight the British 6th and American 101st and 82nd Airborne divisions began landing. On the eastern flank, British glider-borne troops seized the vital 'Pegasus' Bridge across the Orne River, while others attacked and temporarily disabled a German battery at Merville, the guns of which covered Sword Beach. Subsequent drops allowed 6th Airborne Division to form a defensive crust protecting the eastern flank of the beachhead. The American airborne landings went less well. Cloud cover and heavy flak over the Cotentin Peninsula broke up the formations, causing the Americans to be dropped over an area of 1,000 square miles.

But this in itself caused the Germans immense confusion. The divisional reserve for the Omaha beach defences, for example, went racing south at 03.00 to attack paratroopers they couldn't locate. By the time they returned to the beach, the Americans were well ashore. British troops suffered high losses at Ouistrehem © Shortly after 05.00 naval gunfire opened up on German defences along 50 miles of Normandy coast. Chief amongst these was Pointe du Hoc, the guns of which could hit both Utah and Omaha beaches. The task of silencing the battery, already bombed and shelled, was carried out by a Ranger battalion, who scaled the 100-foot vertical cliffs, and discovered the guns camouflaged in fields about a mile inland. It was up to the bravery of men carrying the thermite explosive charges to ensure that these guns remained silent on D-Day. First to land was the US 4th Division on Utah beach. It came ashore about 1,000 yards south of its intended landing place, luckily avoiding heavy defences, and consequently suffered few of the expected casualties. But the situation was very different only a few miles further east on Omaha beach.

Here the first elements of the US 29th Division and the 1st Division ran into stiff opposition. Without armour support - most of the DD 'swimming' tanks had foundered in the heavy swell - the infantry was cut down by heavy German fire. ... hundreds of bodies floated in the blood-red surf ... Very soon an immense traffic jam of landing craft and amphibious vehicles built up about 1,000 yards offshore. By 09.00 the beach was packed with thousands of dead and wounded men, while hundreds of bodies floated in the blood-red surf. The American operational commander, General Omar Bradley, radioed Eisenhower for permission to evacuate the beachhead, but the signal got lost in radio traffic. By the time it reached Eisenhower, naval gunfire support and the sheer guts of some exceptional officers and men had pushed the Germans from the bluffs. Top Beachhead secured Losses on D-Day were less than anticipated © On Gold, Juno and Sword beaches, British and Canadian troops were supported by the specialised assault vehicles of 79th Armoured Division. On all three, German strongpoints initially inflicted heavy casualties, but a combination of Petard mortar and Crocodile tank soon smashed the defences.

On Gold and Juno, British and Canadian forces pushed inland rapidly. On Sword, British 3rd Division was held up three miles short of Caen by a network of German defensive positions along a ridge. Finally, late that afternoon, the 21st Panzer Division launched a counterattack. Some units managed to reach the coast, though they were too weak to hold their positions. British troops at Sword beach failed to take Caen as planned © The world learned the invasion was underway from German state radio, which announced landings in Normandy on its 07.00 news service, and promised the invaders would be swiftly annihilated. A special BBC news bulletin came two-and-a-half hours later. John Snagge announced that D-Day had come and all was going according to plan. At 12.00 Churchill repeated this news in a statement to the House of Commons. Despite Eisenhower's worries about the situation on Omaha beach, by mid-afternoon it was clear that even on Omaha the battle was running in the Allies' favour. When Churchill ... addressed the House of Commons at 18.00 it was to announce an astounding success.

When Churchill again addressed the House of Commons at 18.00 it was to announce an astounding success. To secure a lodgement on the coast of France, the Allies had taken 10,000 casualties, 3,000 of whom were dead - mostly airborne troops or those who had landed at Omaha Beach. Losses were far lighter than anticipated, a tribute to years of planning and preparation, a bold command decision, and a lot of good luck. The Longest Day by Cornelius Ryan (Wordsworth Editions, 1999) Battlefront: D-Day Public Record Office (1999) Overlord; D-Day and the Battle for Normandy 1944 by Max Hastings (Pan, 1999) D-Day and the Invasion of Normandy by Anthony Kemp (Harry N Abrams, 1994) Ten Days to D-Day: Countdown to the Liberation of Europe by David Stafford (Little and Brown, 2003) Top About the author Duncan Anderson joined the War Studies Department at Sandhurst as a senior lecturer in 1987, and has been Head of Department since 1997.

He has written several books on World War Two, and worked for the British Army and other NATO forces in Germany, both lecturing and conducting staff tours. What if D-Day Had Failed? | Armchair General | Armchair General Magazine - We Put YOU in Command! Posted on Jun 13, 2005 in Carlo D'Este , Front Page Features What if D-Day Had Failed? By Carlo D'Este What if D-Day Had Failed? June 6, 2005: A Look Back at What Might Have Been "Our landings have failed and I have withdrawn the troops. My decision to attack at this time and place was based on the best information available. The troops, the air and the Navy did all that bravery could do. If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt it is mine alone." Nothing was a sure thing on D-Day. (National Archives) General Dwight D. Eisenhower scribbled these chilling words on a piece of paper shortly before D-Day, June 6, 1944. Ike’s naval aide, Captain Harry C. Butcher, found it crumpled in his shirt pocket weeks later and saved it for posterity.

In contrast to a message of hope that Eisenhower had recorded before the invasion, which was broadcast on the BBC the morning of June 6 announcing the invasion of France, the world never knew until years later of its existence – and then only as an insight into Ike’s remarkable character. Subscribe Today Subscribe online and save nearly 40%! Another anniversary of that historic day is upon us – the 61st of the greatest military operation of its kind in the history of warfare. This was the date when American, British and Canadian troops launched the greatest battle for freedom ever fought. They called it Operation Overlord, and it marked the beginning of the most important western battle of the Second World War. The success or failure of Overlord would determine the course of the war in Europe. Hindsight and the passage of time often evolve into the deepening of already established beliefs about historic events. And, while the focus of our remembrance is quite properly on the drama of the invasion, it also leads to, I believe, a tendency to take the success of D-Day too much for granted.

Of course, we are fully cognizant that D-Day was a costly and bloody military operation; that Omaha Beach was nearly lost the morning of June 6 and held only by the bravery of the GI’s pinned down there under murderous fire. Such scenes are etched into history and our collective memory through photographs, books, oral histories and films such as The Longest Day and Saving Private Ryan. History, however, can sometimes mislead us into false perceptions. D-Day might have failed for any number of valid reasons. One of its perceptions is that it was always destined to succeed; yet what is rarely ever discussed or written about is the compelling possibility that D-Day might actually have failed – and what the consequences of that failure might have been. Is it possible Rommel could have forced an Allied surrender, as he did in 1940? (National Archives) What follows is not a fanciful supposition but a sobering look at the inevitable consequences of an Allied failure on June 6, 1944. The truth is that it was never a certainty that Overlord would succeed. Of course, no commander undertakes a military operation of the magnitude of Overlord without confidence in its success.

However, given the enormous obstacles that had to be overcome, Eisenhower unquestionably not only recognized that failure was entirely possible but also prepared in advance to accept full responsibility. A brief look at the daunting challenge Eisenhower and his planners had to accomplish in 1944 reveals why failure was possible. If the D-Day landings were to succeed, each of the following criteria had to be fully met: Plan and successfully carry out the largest amphibious operation in the history of warfare. Land over 150,000 troops on D-Day by sea and by air on a strongly defended hostile shore. Accomplish this while at the same time deceiving the Germans over where the Allies would invade. Successfully execute this extraordinary operation even though – until the very last minute – the actual site of the invasion was the most heavily guarded secret on the planet, kept from all but the key invasion force commanders. Individually, each of these prerequisites held the potential to fail; collectively, they represented a very high risk. World War II amphibious operations were all perilous.

Sicily, Salerno and the numerous landings in the Pacific were all testaments to the complexity of such endeavors, particularly when the unpredictability of Murphy’s Law was added to the mix. The Sicily landings, for example, were plagued by numerous unexpected and unforeseen problems that included inexperienced transport pilots and lack of aerial discipline, so-called "friendly fire" from Allied ships at sea, high winds and smoke from fires burning on the island. Likewise, Salerno was nearly lost as the result of faulty planning and Mark Clark’s decision not only to ignore the advice of his naval commanders and forego a pre-invasion bombardment, but also to embark the landing craft from far too great a distance from the beaches. Before the Normandy landings, D-Day was nearly postponed until at least July by bad weather and it was only thanks to the most important and accurate meteorological forecast in the history of warfare that Eisenhower was able to sanction its launch under minimally acceptable conditions.

On this 61st anniversary I’d like to share with you some rather different thoughts about D-Day, written in 1994 by the esteemed British historian, Alastair Horne in his book, Monty: The Lonely Leader, 1944-1945 (published in the US by HarperCollins and in the UK by Macmillan, 1994). On reopening the files on Overlord, 1944, one’s immediate reaction is: What a staggering risk! Across the years, it now comes across as a much nearer-run thing . . . than one had previously realized. There was absolutely no margin for error, and the penalties for failure would have been inestimable . . . With the brilliance of hindsight it seems inconceivable today that the Allies could then still actually have lost the war. Yet history has a way of springing surprises. There were at least three ways in which the OVERLORD landings could have been defeated: by misfortune, by lack of resolve or by a bad plan incompetently executed. As we know, there was neither lack of resolve, a bad plan or incompetence in its implementation.

Misfortune, however, was always the X-factor in the D-Day landings. As Horne notes, a sudden change for the worse in the weather could have swept away the invasion force much like it did the Spanish Armada in 1588. Rommel’s presence might likewise have made a difference. For example, it is doubtful he would have waited for Hitler to awaken late on the morning of June 6 to request permission to move the panzer reserves to the beaches. Moreover, even good plans go awry and each of these and other factors singly, or collectively, could have defeated the invasion. Consider the consequences of defeat on D-Day. The Allies would have lost their almost irreplaceable fleet of landing craft . . . Britain would have sacrificed her last available army. It would have taken at least another year, well into the summer of 1945, before another invasion could have been mounted . . . largely by Americans . . . Hitler would have been developing his deadly new jet aircraft, and new technology would have enhanced the striking power of his U-boats. Possibly (though improbably) his scientists might have developed an atomic bomb.

But, with certainty, Britain would have been hammered unmercifully by Hitler’s V-weapons, constantly increasing in numbers in the Pas de Calais and the Low Countries and largely immune to air attack. The face of Europe would be much different if D-Day had failed (National Archives) By the late summer of 1944, the V-1 and V-2 "buzz bomb" attacks would have left Britain’s morale shakier than at any time since the Blitz. With the West temporarily neutralized, it is not inconceivable that the German Army might have fought the Red Army in East to some sort of bloody stalemate. . . . if an Allied repulse on D-Day did not actually lead to some form of victory for Hitler, at best it would have meant another costly year of war, ruinous for Britain, the extinction of the last remaining remnants of European Jewry through completion of the Final Solution, culminating almost certainly with the employment of the first atomic bombs in the summer of 1945 — on Germany, not Japan. Sweeping through a ‘nuked’ Germany, the victorious Red Army would have stopped nowhere short of the Rhine.

Lost to Communism, Europe, and the world, would have been a very different place today. This chilling scenario and its dire consequences is all the more reason to reflect – and to marvel – at the success of the remarkable event which took place in Normandy that fateful June day in 1944 when valiant soldiers, sailors and airmen changed the course of history. Normandy Massacres - The Canadian Encyclopedia Military Engagements Normandy Massacres ​One of the worst war crimes in Canadian history occurred in June 1944, during the Battle of Normandy, following the D-Day landings of the Second World War. One of the worst war crimes in Canadian history occurred in June, 1944, during the Battle of Normandy , following the D-Day landings of the Second World War . As many as 156 Canadian soldiers, taken prisoner by German forces, were executed by their captors during various incidents in the Normandy countryside. Invasion of Normandy On 6 June 1944, Canadian, American and British forces began the liberation of Western Europe from German occupation, by launching the invasion of Normandy, France.

Allied forces landed on the Normandy coastline on D-Day, and then pushed inland, beginning a nearly three-month campaign to defeat the immediate German forces opposing them, before turning east towards Belgium, Holland and the German frontier. Soldiers of the 3rd Canadian Infantry Division came ashore at Juno Beach , and in the following days and weeks fought a series of difficult battles in the countryside south of Juno against a regiment of the German 12th SS Panzer Division. Abbaye d'Ardenne On 7 June dozens of Canadians with the North Nova Scotia Highlanders and the 27th Canadian Armoured Regiment were taken prisoner following heavy fighting around the village of Authie. The Germans took their prisoners to the nearby Abbaye d'Ardenne, an ancient stone church where Colonel Kurt Meyer, one of the 12th SS commanders, had set up his headquarters after D-Day. Later that night, 11 of the Canadian prisoners of war were taken into the Abbaye's garden and shot in the head. The next morning seven more POWs, all North Nova Scotia Highlanders, were taken outside the Abbaye and shot.

Château d'Audrieu On 8 June 64 other Canadians, including several dozen members of the Royal Winnipeg Rifles, were taken prisoner during fighting near the village of Putot-en-Bessin. The prisoners were marched to the Château d'Audrieu, a Normandy estate commandeered by officers of the 12th SS. Later that day 45 of the Canadians were murdered, in batches, in the grounds of the Château. Among the executed Canadians were George Meakin, 23, and his younger brother Frank, 20, from the tiny Prairie town of Birnie, Manitoba, both of whom had come ashore and survived the fighting of D-Day. "This may be the last chance I get to write to you before the big day," wrote George Meakin in a letter to his mother before the invasion. "If you don't hear from me for a while don't worry... Keep on smiling and everything will turn out for the best." The Battle of Normandy was still underway, weeks later, when news of the massacres reached Canada. "Canuck Soldiers 'Murdered,'" said one headline in the Halifax Herald that summer.

"Prime Minister [ William Lyon Mackenzie King ] reveals horrible German atrocity." Prosecution After the war, the murders were examined in 1945 by United States military investigators, who recommended that five former officers of the 12th SS be tried for failing to prevent crimes against prisoners of war. Ultimately only Kurt Meyer, himself taken prisoner in 1944, was put on trial by Canada for some of the murders. Meyer was court-martialled in December 1945, convicted of inciting his troops to execute Canadian prisoners, and sentenced to death. Meyer's sentence was commuted to life imprisonment by the Canadian government. He served five years at Dorchester penitentiary in New Brunswick before being transferred to a West German jail. In 1954, with Canada's blessing, he was set free. Remembrance Precisely how many Canadian POWs were executed by the Germans during the Battle of Normandy has never been clearly established. In 1998, author Howard Margolian, a former war-crimes investigator with Canada's Department of Justice, wrote about the murders in his book Conduct Unbecoming.

Margolian claimed that more than 150 Canadians POWs were killed by the 12th SS. Canada's Department of Veterans Affairs says up to 156 Canadian soldiers were illegally murdered "in scattered groups, in various pockets of the Normandy countryside." Historian Terry Copp, a Battle of Normandy expert, says there is no evidence of Canadian soldiers executing German POWs. He says that soldiers on both sides certainly killed enemy troops during the moment of surrender in the heat and chaos of battle. "There's no doubt that we did this, and they did," Copp says. "But the point of the atrocities by the 12th SS is, these were executions that occurred long after the battle was over. At the Abbaye d'Ardenne, they put a pistol to each of [the Canadians'] heads and shot them through the back of the head." The memory of the murdered soldiers is honoured on various commemorative plaques in the Normandy countryside. At the Abbaye d'Ardenne, a memorial in the garden where 18 executions took place is frequently covered in small maple leaf flags, left by Canadian pilgrims to the site. "They are gone but not forgotten," says the memorial inscription.

Suggested Reading Howard Margolian, Conduct Unbecoming: The Story of the Murder of Canadian Prisoners of War in Normandy, 1998. Links to other sites Five Ways D-Day Could Have Been a Disaster | The National Interest Search Five Ways D-Day Could Have Been a Disaster With hindsight, it is easy to assume that by 1944, the Third Reich was doomed. It could have all gone very wrong. Tweet Share Share General Dwight D. Eisenhower's face was grim but composed as he read a short message to the assembled group of reporters on the morning of June 7, 1944. "Our landings in the Cherbourg-Havre area have failed to gain a satisfactory foothold and I have withdrawn the troops. My decision to attack at this time and place was based upon the best information available. The troops, the air and the navy did all that bravery and devotion to duty could do. If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt, it is mine alone." Eisenhower never actually uttered these words. But he did scribble them down in the tense days before the Normandy invasion.

Despite the years of planning for D-Day, and the awesome armada of men, ships and planes that he commanded, Eisenhower knew how risky it was to storm ashore into the heart of Hitler's Atlantic Wall. With seventy years of hindsight, it is easy to assume that by June 1944, the Third Reich was doomed. Russian armies were relentlessly advancing from the East; Anglo-American armies were invading from the West, while German cities and factories burned under around-the-clock attacks by American and British bombers. But those who fought the Germans knew better than to underestimate them. As Eisenhower contemplated the assault on Hitler's Fortress Europe in the hours before D-Day, he knew how dangerous the operation was. D-Day was a success. But here are five ways that D-Day could have ended in disaster: The Germans could have learned the location of the invasion. By early 1944, everyone knew the invasion would soon be coming. British civilians knew, as they watched their island practically sink under the weight of division after division of American troops. Hitler also knew, which is why he transferred his elite panzer divisions from the Eastern Front to the West. The big question wasn't if the Allies would come, but where.

Control of the seas gave the Allies immense flexibility in picking an invasion site, which meant the Germans had to be prepared for landings anywhere from France, to Belgium, to the Netherlands (Hitler was even convinced there would be a landing in Norway). Nonetheless, the Germans could make some educated guesses. The ideal invasion site would be within range of fighter cover from English airfields. It would also be as close as possible to ports in southern England, to minimize sailing time for invasion convoys. The Normandy peninsula was a possibility. But the obvious candidate was the Pas-de-Calais region, just twenty miles across the English Channel from the cliffs of Dover. The Germans kept many of their troops around Calais, and the Allies happily encouraged them to do so. They even created a fake army—commanded by George Patton—that appeared poised for a Calais invasion. The result was that the Germans maintained substantial forces in Pas-de-Calais for months, convinced that Normandy was just a decoy landing. Meanwhile, their armies in Normandy were relentlessly chewed up until the Allies achieved a breakthrough in August that took them all the way to Germany. It could have turned out differently. Perhaps the Germans might have guessed that Normandy was the real invasion site.

Perhaps a German spy in England had managed to penetrate Allied security. A careless word, a stolen document...there were so many ways that the secret of D-Day might have been compromised. Whatever the reason, the result would have been catastrophic. German defenses would have been strengthened; every beach would have become a kill zone like Omaha Beach, where the first waves of U.S. soldiers were almost wiped out. But the death blow to D-Day would have been the panzer divisions massing in Normandy to drive the invaders into the sea. At the least, substantial reinforcements would have been transferred from Pas-de-Calais to Normandy, which would have delayed the Allied breakout. Instead of celebrating New Year's Eve 1944 on the German border, the Allies armies might have spending it on an overcrowded beachhead in France. The German panzers might have counterattacked. Even if the Allies managed to breach the German pillboxes and minefields on the invasion beaches, the danger was only just beginning. The most vulnerable time for an amphibious invasion is just after the landing, when the shallow beachhead lacks defensive depth, and the invaders haven't had time to bring ashore armor and artillery.

If the Germans had been able to quickly launch a massed counterattack at Normandy with their panzer divisions, Eisenhower might have been forced to read his somber speech. Yet it wasn't that simple. The Germans didn't know where the invasion would come. They had ten panzer divisions in France and the Netherlands. But where to place them? Hitler and his generals couldn't make up their minds. On one side, were the commanders of Panzer Group West, the central armored reserve in France, who urged that the tanks be massed in a central position near Paris, from where they could respond with a concentrated blow to any Allied landing. That was the way it was done in Russia, where the panzers functioned as a "fire brigade," moving up and down the front to defeat Soviet offensives. BBC ON THIS DAY | 6 | 1944: D-Day marks start of Europe invasion Search ON THIS DAY by date About This Site | Text Only 1944: D-Day marks start of Europe invasion Thousands of Allied troops have begun landing on the beaches of Normandy in northern France at the start of a major offensive against the Germans.

Thousands of paratroops and glider-borne troops have also been dropped behind enemy lines and the Allies are already said to have penetrated several miles inland. The landings were preceded by air attacks along the French coast. About 1,300 RAF planes were involved in the first wave of assaults then 1,000 American bombers took up the attack dropping bombs on targets in northern France. Dawn revealed the astonishing sight of serried ranks of ships heaving over the horizon and passing in wave after wave, packed to capacity with soldiers and weaponry People's War memories » The Prime Minister Winston Churchill has told MPs that Operation Neptune - the codename for the Normandy landings - is proceeding "in a thoroughly satisfactory manner". He said the landing of airborne troops was "on a scale far larger than anything there has been so far in the world" and had taken place with extremely little loss. The assault began shortly after midnight under the command of General Bernard Montgomery. Timing of the Normandy landings was crucial. They were originally scheduled to take place in May - then postponed until June and put off again at the last minute for 24 hours by bad weather.

Upwards of 4,000 ships and several thousand smaller craft crossed the Channel to the northern coast of France. Enemy reports say the landings took place between the port of Le Havre and the naval base at Cherbourg. King George VI broadcast a message last night warning of the "supreme test" the Allies faced and he called on the nation to pray for the liberation of Europe. The Allied naval commander, Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay, said the landings had taken the Germans completely by surprise. There were no enemy reconnaissance planes out and the opposition of coastal batteries was much less than expected. He added: "There was a slight loss in ships but so slight that it did not affect putting armies ashore. "We have got all the first wave of men through the defended beach zone and set for the land battle." A statement broadcast from Berlin at midday said the German troops were "nowhere taken by surprise". It said many parachute units were wiped out on landing or taken prisoner. Hits were also scored on battleships and on landing craft from the "guns of the Atlantic Wall" - the German defensive positions. President Franklin D Roosevelt told a news conference the invasion did not mean the war was over.

He said: "You don't just walk to Berlin, and the sooner this country realises that the better." D-Day - World War II - HISTORY.com Google Preparing for D-Day After World War II began, Germany invaded and occupied northwestern France beginning in May 1940. The Americans entered the war in December 1941, and by 1942 they and the British (who had been evacuated from the beaches of Dunkirk in May 1940 after being cut off by the Germans in the Battle of France) were considering the possibility of a major Allied invasion across the English Channel. The following year, Allied plans for a cross-Channel invasion began to ramp up. In November 1943, Adolf Hitler (1889-1945), who was aware of the threat of an invasion along France’s northern coast, put Erwin Rommel (1891-1944) in charge of spearheading defense operations in the region, even though the Germans did not know exactly where the Allies would strike.

Hitler charged Rommel with finishing the Atlantic Wall, a 2,400-mile fortification of bunkers, landmines and beach and water obstacles. Did You Know? The Normandy American Cemetery, overlooking Omaha Beach and the English Channel, was established on June 8, 1944, as the first U.S. cemetery in Europe during World War II. It holds the graves of more than 9,300 U.S. servicemen who died in the D-Day invasion or subsequent missions. In January 1944, General Dwight Eisenhower (1890-1969) was appointed commander of Operation Overlord. In the months and weeks before D-Day, the Allies carried out a massive deception operation intended to make the Germans think the main invasion target was Pas-de-Calais (the narrowest point between Britain and France) rather than Normandy. In addition, they led the Germans to believe that Norway and other locations were also potential invasion targets. Many tactics was used to carry out the deception, including fake equipment; a phantom army commanded by George Patton and supposedly based in England, across from Pas-de-Calais; double agents; and fraudulent radio transmissions.

A Weather Delay: June 5, 1944 Eisenhower selected June 5, 1944, as the date for the invasion; however, bad weather on the days leading up to the operation caused it to be delayed for 24 hours. On the morning of June 5, after his meteorologist predicted improved conditions for the following day, Eisenhower gave the go-ahead for Operation Overlord. He told the troops: “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.” Later that day, more than 5,000 ships and landing craft carrying troops and supplies left England for the trip across the Channel to France, while more than 11,000 aircraft were mobilized to provide air cover and support for the invasion. D-Day Landings: June 6, 1944 By dawn on June 6, thousands of paratroopers and glider troops were already on the ground behind enemy lines, securing bridges and exit roads. The amphibious invasions began at 6:30 a.m.

The British and Canadians overcame light opposition to capture beaches codenamed Gold, Juno and Sword, as did the Americans at Utah Beach. U.S. forces faced heavy resistance at Omaha Beach, where there were over 2,000 American casualties. However, by day’s end, approximately 156,000 Allied troops had successfully stormed Normandy’s beaches.According to some estimates, more than 4,000 Allied troops lost their lives in the D-Day invasion, with thousands more wounded or missing. Less than a week later, on June 11, the beaches were fully secured and over 326,000 troops, more than 50,000 vehicles and some 100,000 tons of equipment had landed at Normandy. For their part, the Germans suffered from confusion in the ranks and the absence of celebrated commander Rommel, who was away on leave. At first, Hitler, believing the invasion was a feint designed to distract the Germans from a coming attack north of the Seine River, refused to release nearby divisions to join the counterattack. Reinforcements had to be called from further afield, causing delays.

He also hesitated in calling for armored divisions to help in the defense. Moreover, the Germans were hampered by effective Allied air support, which took out many key bridges and forced the Germans to take long detours, as well as efficient Allied naval support, which helped protect advancing Allied troops. In the ensuing weeks, the Allies fought their way across the Normandy countryside in the face of determined German resistance, as well as a dense landscape of marshes and hedgerows. By the end of June, the Allies had seized the vital port of Cherbourg, landed approximately 850,000 men and 150,000 vehicles in Normandy, and were poised to continue their march across France. Victory in Normandy By the end of August 1944, the Allies had reached the Seine River, Paris was liberated and the Germans had been removed from northwestern France, effectively concluding the Battle of Normandy. The Allied forces then prepared to enter Germany, where they would meet up with Soviet troops moving in from the east. The Normandy invasion began to turn the tide against the Nazis. A significant psychological blow, it also prevented Hitler from sending troops from France to build up his Eastern Front against the advancing Soviets.

The following spring, on May 8, 1945, the Allies formally accepted the unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany. Hitler had committed suicide a week earlier, on April 30. Tags D-Day - A Critical Moment In History - YouTube D-Day - A Critical Moment In History Want to watch this again later? Sign in to add this video to a playlist. Need to report the video? Sign in to report inappropriate content. The interactive transcript could not be loaded. Loading... Rating is available when the video has been rented. This feature is not available right now. Please try again later. Published on Jun 6, 2014 The Normandy invasion was the largest seaborne assault in world history and was a pivotal moment in World War 2. This is a brief look back at that day. Subscribe to The Daily Conversation for more videos like this: D-day was the largest seaborne invasion in world history and was a pivotal moment in WWII. On the morning of June 6, 1944, nearly 160,000 allied soldiers crossed the English Channel and stormed five beaches along a 50-mile stretch of Normandy, France.

The United States led the assault to try to retake the western coast of Europe from the Germans, who had conquered and been occupying it for four years. In the months and weeks leading up to the invasion, the allies used a variety of means to deceive the Germans, who knew an attack was coming, but didn't know where it be focused. After postponing the invasion by a day because of bad weather, the Supreme Commander of the Allied forces, American General Dwight D. Eisenhower, gave the go-ahead for the operation, codenamed Neptune. Shortly after midnight, 24,000 British, US, and Canadian airborne troops parachuted into France. Around the same time, minesweepers began clearing channels for the invasion fleet, which was comprised of almost 7,000 boats of all types--although around 4,100 of these were landing crafts carrying infantrymen. The Germans, by contrast, had just over 100 total ships in the area at the time and were heavily outnumbered. The same was true for the German Air Force, which could muster only 815 aircraft over Normandy in comparison to the Allies' 9,500.

Naval bombardment of the beaches commenced at 05:45 AM, while it was still dark. Allied infantry and armoured divisions began landing on the coast of France starting at 06:30 . The men landed under heavy fire from gun emplacements overlooking the beaches. The shore was mined and covered with wooden stakes, metal tripods, and barbed wire obstacles, making the work of the beach clearing teams difficult and dangerous. Casualties were heaviest at Omaha, with its high cliffs. At Gold, Juno, and Sword, several towns were cleared in house-to-house fighting. The Allies did not achieve all of their goals on D-Day. Only Juno and Gold beach were linked in the first 24 hours, and all five bridgeheads were not connected until nearly a week had passed. However, the operation was successful as the Allies gained a precious foothold that gradually expanded as they drove into Germany from the west over the coming months. German casualties on D-Day were around 1,000 men. Allied casualties were at least 12,000, with 4,414 confirmed dead.

With Russia bearing down from the east, the European side of World War II ended with the surrender of Germany less than a year after the Normandy operation. Once Japan surrendered in September, 1945, the deadliest conflict in human history was over. It had taken the lives of anywhere from 50 to 85 million people. The outcome of the war has been critical in shaping the geopolitical landscape of the last 70 years. The victorious great powers—the United States, China, the United Kingdom, France, and what is now the Russian Federation—became the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council. Thanks for watching this historic episode of the daily conversation, I'm Bryce Plank. Category The Juno Beach Landings Canadian landings, Juno Beach, D-Day The Canadian advance south on June 6th, 1944 was the furthest inland penetration made of all of the five Allied landing beaches on D-Day. Despite fierce resistance from the German defenders on the coast and delays owing to the huge traffic jams that developed on the beaches as more and more vehicles and men came ashore, the Canadians overcame their difficulties.

However, although several impromptu solutions to unforeseen problems allowed the Canadian 3rd Infantry Division to push eight and a half miles (12km) south towards their main D-Day objective, the airfield at Carpiquet, they were still four and a half miles (8km) short when they dug in at nightfall on June 6th. As the advance south was resumed the following morning the Canadian forces were moving unknowingly into the waiting guns of the 12th SS Hitler Youth Panzer Division who had moved into the line opposite the Canadians after nightfall on June 6th. The SS counter-attacked and pushed the Canadian's back almost to their June 7th start line. The the front line was to advance little towards Carpiquet from it's D-Day position for almost the next five weeks. Canadian soldiers digging in, Juno Beach On the afternoon and evening of June 7th 1944 at the Headquarters of SS Commandant Kurt Meyer at the Abbaye d'Ardenne, certain Canadian prisoners-of-war were executed by their SS captors.

In a series of killings that would, by the time they stopped at the end of June, have claimed the lives of at least 139 Canadian and British POW's in SS captivity, these young Nazi soldiers ensured that the name of the 12th SS Panzer Division Hitler Jugend would always be associated with the brutality of the regime they so loyally followed. The Battle Sites/Sights Courseulles sur Mer Canadian Troops Landing Nan White Sector Courseulles sur Mer witnessed fierce fighting on the morning of June 6th, 1944 as the Winnipeg Rifles stormed ashore on the west bank of the river from which the town takes it's name. With the Regina Rifles on their left, landing on the east bank of the river Seulles. Although faced with what they had been told was a third rate German infantry division, lacking everything from motivation to transport, being in strong concrete defensive emplacements allowed the Germans to fight surprisingly effectively, their lack of transport giving them an otherwise absent tenaciousness as it removed the option of retreat. This led to the Canadians having to clear out each bunker, one at a time.

German Prisoners on Juno Beach The evidence of this is visible scattered among the dunes, such as the Cosy Bunker, stormed by Lt Cosy leading B Company, the Royal Winnipeg Rifles, showing the evidence of where the Allied tank shells hit it, the British Royal Engineers AVRE Churchill tank, now standing at the exit from the beach that it was clearing when it was disabled on the morning of D-Day, the Duplex Drive Sherman tank that never made it to the beach on that fateful morning, finally salvaged from the sea bed and now standing on the seafront it once failed to reach, the German 50mm Anti tank gun still showing the holes where the Canadian shells pierced the armoured shield, and the Juno Beach Centre, the new Canadian museum, all lie along the shore of this Norman Seaside town. Bernieres sur Mer The 'Canadian House' on Juno Beach It is here that the famous “Canadian House” can be found. Testament to the fighting on D-Day, this house featured in many film clips and photos taken of the D-Day landings in June of 1944.

It stands much as it did on the morning of June 6th, 1944, only the bullet holes, evident in the many pictures, having been repaired. 200 meters east lies the German strong point in front of which the assault Battalion of the Queens Own Rifles of Canada came ashore that morning and lost so many of their number in subduing. It too bears the scars of the mornings fighting and one of the bunkers still has an Allied 37mm cannon shell that was fired at it embedded in its concrete walls, the concrete paving slabs lining the road nearby showing where the Canadian tanks advanced inland, the tank tracks gouging out their mark forever on the paving stones lining the road. Les Hirondelles Canadian Troops landing, Les Hirondelles The only surviving film taken on D-Day of a first-wave assault landing taking place was shot here on the morning of June 6th 1944.

The shot, taken from the middle of a British Navy LCA, shows the front of the landing craft hitting the sand, the doors are kicked open and the ramp goes down, as the first few soldiers exit the craft, one of them carrying a ladder, a seafront villa can be seen in the background of the camera picture. Although often mistaken for the “Canadian House” at Bernieres sur Mer, this shot was actually filmed about a kilometer (two thirds of a mile) further east. St Aubin sur Mer German Machine Gun Position Juno Beach You will be shown here where the North Shore (New Brunswick) Regiments lead assault companies came ashore on the morning of June 6th, 1944. Accompanied by the tanks of the Fort Garry Horse Armoured Regiment, they faced stiff resistance from the German defenders who had fortified the seafront villas as well as installing concrete bunkers for their anti-tank guns. Beside one of these German Gun Bunkers is also a memorial that will remind you of the fact that not all the troops landed on Juno Beach were Canadian- over one third were British Troops, including the 48th Royal Marine Commandos.

These troops suffered huge casualties immediately east along the coast as they fought to meet up with the 41st Royal Marine Commandos who landed at the western end of Sword Beach. One of these bunkers can be seen here in St Aubin, with it's anti tank gun still in place. Believed to be responsible for knocking out 6 Canandian tanks on the morning of D-Day, this gun, too, still shows the scars of the battle, the hole where the shot which finally put it out of action came through the gun shield permanently there for all to see. The Advance inland and the SS counter-attack SS Colonel 'Panzer' Meyer Although meant to be captured on June 6th, 1944, when the Canadian 3rd Infantry Division dug in on the night of June 6 th, they were still 4 miles (six kilometers) short of their objective. Wanting to make up for lost time, and believing that the German forces in front of them were negligible, the Canadian 9th Brigade pushed forward on the morning of June 7th. You will be driven along the road that the Canadians took, advancing rapidly southwards until they had reached the hamlet of Franqueville.

From here, the lead Canadian tanks could see the airfield just eight hundred meters (half a mile)away. Unfortunately, the Canadian forces had underestimated the German resolve and in their haste that morning had failed to notice that the 12th SS Panzer Division was moving into the line in front of them. SS Troops driving into the Abbaye d'Ardenne You will be shown the positions from where the teenage soldiers of this, the Hitler Youth SS Panzer Division, watched the Canadians advance across their front for more than three hours, some of these positions just yards from the advancing Canadian columns, before opening fire. Watching from the roof of the Chapel in the Abbaye d'Ardennes just two kilometers (less than one and a half miles) away, the leader of the SS troopers, Standartenfuhrer Kurt 'Panzer” Meyer waited until he judged the moment right, then sent his young troopers into the attack. Fighting with ruthless savagery that belied their youth, these SS child-soldiers pushed the 9th Canadian Brigade back almost to the positions they had held at night-fall the previous evening.

As you will see on the monument to the 9th Brigade, the front line would not advance from this point, shortly to be christened “Hell's Corner”, for another month. Abbaye d'Ardenne The Chapel, Abbaye d'Ardenne after the battle Here you can visit the site of the 12 Century Abbey that from the evening of June 6th until the start of July 1944 housed the headquarters of the 25th SS Panzer Grenadier Regiment of the 12 SS Panzer Division. It was to this place that Canadian prisoners, captured during the German counter-attack of June 7th, were brought. You will be shown the stables where the prisoners were initially held before being brought out to a sheltered rear garden for interrogation. When the Canadians had refused to talk they were executed one at a time by their SS captors. There is some dispute as to how many soldiers were executed in this manner but it is generally agreed that there were about 18 soldiers executed in the Abbaye d'Ardenne.

Memorials to these unfortunate soldiers can be found in several locations throughout the Juno beach area as there were similar massacres of Allied POW's in several other locations, the worst being in the grounds of the Chateau d'Audrieu where the divisional Headquarters of the 12th SS Panzer Division was located. Here, over seventy Canadian and British Prisoners of War were executed by the 12th SS Panzer Division. Other similar executions of American Paratroopers were also carried out by the 17th SS Panzer Grenadier Division south of Carentan.

Question: In what month were the 'D-Day' landings executed?
Answer: JUNE