Operation Overlord or D-Day | Past to Future
This video presents Operation Overlord or best known today as D-Day - the Allied invasion of Normandy during World War II.
By June 1940, France had fallen to the Nazis and Adolf Hitler was gloating over it as “the most famous victory in history.” With more than 300,000 British troops evacuating from the beaches of Dunkirk, in a famous speech, the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill vowed to liberate France from Nazi Germany. A year later, the German invasion against Russia made the Soviets become one of the Britain allies. Six month after that, American entered the war in an attempt to win it.
Two preliminary proposals were drawn up: Operation Sledgehammer and Operation Roundup. The latter was adopted but delayed due to the Allied invasion of French North Africa in November 1942, the invasion of Sicily in the following year, and Italy in two months after that. In December 1943, at the Tehran Conference in Iran, Roosevelt and Stalin combined against Churchill to insist on launching the invasion across the English channel within the next year.
In the months leading up to the invasion, the Allies conducted Operation Bodyguard – the overall strategy designed to mislead the Germans about the date and location of the landings. Three months later, Allied forces launched Exercise Tiger, a rehearsal for the D-Day invasion.
Between April 1 and June 5, over 11,000 aircraft were deployed, 200,000 sorties were launched and 195,000 tons of bombs were dropped on French rail centres and road networks, etc., succeeding in isolating the invasion area from the rest of France. By early June, the number of troops present in Britain reached more than 2 million Americans, along with 250,000 Canadians in preparation for the Normandy invasion. Millions of tons of supplies were shipped from America to the staging area, including 450,000 tons of ammunition.
In November 1943, aware of a threat of an invasion along France’s northern coast, Adolf Hitler appointed Erwin Rommel to spearhead defense operations in the region and finish the Atlantic Wall, a 2,400-mile fortification of bunkers, landmines and beach and water obstacles. Believing that the Allies would invade Pas de Calais (the narrowest point between Britain and France), the German heavily defended the place. In the Normandy area, the best fortifications were concentrated at the port facilities at Cherbourg and St Malo. By June 5, 1944, Rommel had been able to have some four million more mines laid on the beaches.
By dawn of June 6, U.S., British, and Canadian forces simultaneously landed on five separate beachheads of Normandy, France. The British Army landed in the east on the code-named beaches Sword and Gold. The Canadians invaded Juno beach. The American Army captured Omaha and Utah beach.
In those fateful 24 hours of June 6, approximately 156,000 Allied troops had successfully stormed Normandy beaches, and Allied casualties were at least 10,000 with more than 4,000 confirmed dead. Meanwhile, German casualties numbered at least 4,000 but some other documents claimed statistics of more than 9,000.
Although all of the Allies’ objectives have not been completed on the first day of D-Day, the operation gained a foothold that the Allies gradually expanded over the ensuing months. On June 12, the key town of Carentan was captured by US troops, allowing five Allied beachheads to be connected for the first time. A week after D-Day, the Allies had landed 327,000 troops, 54,000 vehicles and 103,000 tons of supplies in Normandy. On June 26, the Allies captured the French port of Cherbourg. A month later, the city of Caen was captured. On August 15, the Allies launched Operation Dragoon, the code name for the landing operation of the Allied invasion of Provence and liberated most of Southern France in just four weeks. 10 days later, the French capital of Paris was liberated. And just 5 days after that, the 3rd Canadian Infantry Division crossed the Seine as the Germans continued to fall back, marking the close of Operation Overlord.
On April 30 of the following year, Adolf Hitler committed suicide. On May 7, less than a year after D-Day, Germany signed its unconditional surrender. The day after that, the Allies accepted Germany’s surrender, marking the official end of World War II. This day was also announced VE Day - Victory in Europe to celebrate the end of the Second World War.
What do you think about the D-Day and its contribution to Allied victory in WWII?
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