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The Normandy landings (D-Day), the largest land, sea and air invasion in history, continue to resonate with people even 80 years after it occurred.
On June 6, 1944, Allied forces boldly invaded Nazi-controlled Europe and began to turn the tide of World War II. In the 80th anniversary of that day, it’s good to remember that it’s “one of the most famous days in human history,” historian Garrett Graff writes in his new book, “When the Sea Came to Life: An Oral History of D-Day,” out this week.
“There were other dates in the past century that changed the trajectory of our collective history, but arguably none had a greater impact than the day 160,000 men stormed the beaches of Normandy,” he writes.
In addition to feelings of gratitude, the 80th anniversary also evokes feelings of sadness as it “marks the death of the last of the Greatest Generation and an event that has completely faded from memory into history,” Graf told USA Today.
“Of the approximately one million Allied troops who served in Operation Overlord, only a few thousand remain alive today,” he said, “which means that the memories and first-hand experiences we have today of D-Day are essentially all the memories we will have for the rest of our lives.”
Here’s everything you need to know about D-Day and why it’s still so important today.
Commemorating D-Day:World War II veterans return to Normandy on 80th anniversary of invasion.
What was D-Day and when did it happen?
According to History.com, it was more than four years after the start of World War II, when Germany’s invasion of Poland in September 1939 triggered a global conflict, that major Allied powers, including the United States, Britain, France and Russia, sought to invade Germany to weaken its already-stretched military.
In his book, Graf writes that the operation, which assembled the largest naval and air fleet in history, had been planned for years.
According to the National WWII Museum, significant preparations began in December 1943, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed General Dwight D. Eisenhower as Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Forces.
Why is D-Day still important today?
“It’s simple: They gave us the world,” President Clinton said at a 50th anniversary event in France.
The troops who carried out the invasion “mean everything to us,” said Sergeant Nathan Rogers, an Army Ranger who was 23 at the time and attended the ceremony. “We wouldn’t be here without them. They definitely set the standard.”
Graf said he collected more than 5,000 personal accounts from participants in the Normandy landings in writing his new book, and gained key insights from them.
“Of course, we now recognise that the Normandy landings were a Herculean feat, but when you listen to the voices of Allied soldiers crossing the Channel in the fleet on the night of June 5, there’s little sense that what they were doing was historic or heroic,” he said. “They have no idea what’s coming. They’re worrying about whether they’ll make it to the end of the day.”
What does D-Day stand for?
The answer is simpler than you might think. D actually stands for “Day,” and is a coded designation used to denote the day of a major invasion or military operation. So, for example, an action four days before the actual operation would be a D-4 according to the U.S. Army.
What was Operation Overlord?
Operation Overlord, the code name for the Normandy landings, involved the transport of more than 150,000 infantry troops across the English Channel into German-occupied France.
According to the National WWII Museum, by the end of May 1944, more than 1.5 million US troops had arrived in Britain to participate in or support the operation. Overall, by June, more than 2 million soldiers from the US and 250,000 soldiers from Canada had arrived to prepare for and support the invasion, according to History.com. Also shipped were 450,000 tons of ammunition, out of 7 million tons of supplies.
According to the Imperial War Museum, Operation Overlord also included a fake operation called “Operation Fortitude” to fool Hitler into thinking Allied forces were planning to land in Norway and the Pas-de-Calais in France. The plan, which took months to develop, involved fake troops led by General George Patton preparing to cross the Channel in England, History.com points out.
Another fictional army, the British Fourth Army, stationed in Scotland to threaten Norway, where Hitler’s submarines were based, “existed only on the airwaves,” writes historian Stephen Ambrose in “D-Day: June 6, 1944: The Final Battle of World War II.” British officers and German spies sent realistic radio messages to convince the Germans of the operation’s authenticity, and fake wooden bombers were deployed.
These ploys were successful enough that Hitler initially considered the Normandy invasion a ploy to divert attention from Calais: “They had placed most of their panzer divisions north and east of the Seine, making them unavailable for a counterattack in Normandy,” wrote Ambrose, author of Band of Brothers.
“The world is watching you”Eisenhower’s Normandy landings order still inspires people 80 years later
Did D-Day go according to plan?
Operation Overlord had been years in the planning stages, but the complex operation did not go as planned and soldiers still faced incredible hardships upon landing on the beaches of Normandy.
“Despite tactical and strategic advantages and more than a year of planning, the success of D-Day was precarious and achieved at a staggering cost with more than 10,000 Allied soldiers killed, wounded or missing,” said now-retired Gen. Jeff Harrigian, who wrote a D-Day commemoration editorial for USATODAY.com in 2021. At the time, Gen. Harrigian served as commander of U.S. Air Forces Europe, U.S. Air Forces Africa and Allied Air Command, based at Ramstein Air Base in Germany.
The situation began when Eisenhower’s original choice for June 5, 1944, was canceled due to weather.
Anti-aircraft fire forced pilots to fly their planes faster than expected, and paratroopers who dropped behind enemy lines in the morning to cut off supply lines missed their landing targets, History.com details.
During the Allied landings, American troops landing on Utah Beach were blown off course, and the American landing on Omaha Beach, where the heaviest fighting took place, was also affected by wind and currents.
As the soldiers emerged from their landing boats onto the long, flat Omaha Beach, they were pinned down by enemy machine gun fire from the cliffs above. “If we stayed there we were going to die,” Lt. Col. Bill Friedman said at the National WWII Museum. “All we could do was try to get to the bottom of the cliffs, where the Germans were fortifying the area.”
According to the Naval History and Heritage Command website, U.S. and British destroyers arrived to attack enemy positions and support forces, including those attempting to seize the strategic Pointe du Hoc, a cliff top held by German forces between the Omaha and Utah coasts.
By the end of the day, approximately 156,000 Allied soldiers had successfully landed on and occupied the beaches of Normandy.
How did D-Day succeed?
According to the National WWII Museum, Operation Overlord involved more than 11,000 aircraft, more than 5,000 ships and landing craft, and 50,000 vehicles.
“The plan was for air and naval bombing to be followed by tanks and bulldozers to blow up the exits so the infantry could move up the valley and engage the enemy, but that plan completely failed,” Ambrose wrote. “As is almost always the case in war, it was up to the infantry, whose job it became to open the exits so that vehicles could move up the valley and engage the enemy.”
Junior officers and NCOs “quickly realized that the complex plan … had no bearing on the tactical problems they faced,” he wrote.
“They were trained and prepared for this challenge. They assessed the situation, knew what had to be done and did it,” Ambrose wrote.
Sergeant John Ellery of the 16th Infantry Regiment, 1st Infantry Brigade, also known as “The Big Red One,” was in the first wave to hit Omaha Beach. He told the survivors around him, “We have to get off the beach. I’ll lead the way,” and then scaled the cliffs to destroy a machine gun nest with a grenade, Ambrose wrote in “D-Day.”
“I think we sometimes forget that weapons can be made and ammunition can be bought,” Ambrose quotes Ellery, “but you can’t buy courage and you can’t pull heroes off an assembly line.”
But how many soldiers died on D-Day?
- According to the National Nordic Day Commemoration Foundation, 4,415 Allied soldiers died on Nordic Day, including 2,502 U.S. soldiers and 1,913 Allied soldiers from seven other countries.
- Between 4,000 and 9,000 German soldiers were killed, wounded, or missing during the battle.
- Approximately 200,000 German prisoners of war were taken.
- According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, an estimated 12,200 French civilians were killed or missing in the battle.
The invasion was successful, and Paris was liberated from German forces on August 25, 1944, and Germany surrendered on May 7, 1945, less than a year after the Normandy landings.
Special Online D-Day Observation
Here are some ways to celebrate the 80th anniversary of D-Day.
- National WWII Museum: The New Orleans museum is hosting a day-long event Thursday that can be viewed online. The program will begin with a vigil at 6:30 a.m. ET, followed by a performance by the 29th Division Band at 9 a.m. Registration to participate virtually is available on the museum’s website.
- “Frog Fathers: Lessons from Surfing in Normandy”“: This new documentary about the history of the Naval Combat Demolition Forces (now known as the Navy SEALs) follows four veterans who served in Normandy. The documentary is currently available to watch on the Fox Nation streaming service ($7.99 per month or $59.88 per year after a 7-day free trial). Starting Tuesday, June 11, you can watch it on MagellanTV ($5.99 per month or $59.98 per year after a 7-day or 14-day free trial) or on the World of Warships YouTube channel.
- World of Warships: The free historical online naval warfare video game includes a special mission tied to the D-Day invasion, available to play on PC and consoles this month.
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