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D-Day 1944

© Ralph Zuljan

On the morning of June 6, 1944, an Allied armada arrived off the coast of Normandy, in France, and launched the largest amphibious assault in history. By the end of that day, American, British and Canadian troops were firmly established on each of the five beachheads. After a week of desperate fighting, the Allies could confidently claim that Hitler's Festung Europa had been permanently breached and the coup de grâce had been delivered to the Third Reich. An Allied victory in Europe was certain. That was not the case when the invasion was ordered.

In the four years since the British evacuated Dunkirk, there had been no direct challenge to the German occupation of the Low Countries and northern France. The overwhelming material superiority of the Wehrmacht made an invasion of northern Europe unthinkable at first. Even after the Third Reich attacked the Soviet Union and committed the bulk of the German army to the eastern front, the daunting scale of the resources required to mount an invasion of northern Europe produced wariness in British military and political circles. They preferred a peripheral strategy that attacked the Nazis where they were weakest -- North Africa, southern Europe, in the Atlantic and, of course, nighttime aerial bombardment. Stalin's sometimes vehment clamoring for a "Second Front" in Europe was politely dismissed as unrealistic by Churchill and Roosevelt. American commanders seemed to show less hesitation, but the logistical realities behind mounting such an operation -- with a reasonable chance of success -- seemed to weigh in favor of British caution.

Planning and preparation for a sea borne invasion of northern Europe proceeded in spite of hesitation about actually carrying out the operation. An enormous buildup of military forces took place on the British Isles. Any thoughts Hitler may have entertained about carrying out Operation Sealion after a successful conclusion to the war against the Soviet Union were certainly fantastic by 1942. However, achieving the Anglo-American requirements for a successful Allied invasion of Europe seemed equally fantastic. It would take another two years before they would consider themselves ready to try.

In the meantime the Axis war machine was ground down on the Eastern Front with the USSR. The vaunted Luftwaffe was being destroyed in the defense of the Reich against the Anglo-American bombing campaigns. Axis forces were defeated in the Atlantic, in North Africa and Sicily. The latter operations, along with the invasion of Italy -- which proved to be less of a "soft underbelly of Europe" than Allied leaders had hoped, provided necessary operational experience in mounting large scale sea borne invasions. By the end of 1943, the strategic situation had shifted enough in favor of the Allies to make an invasion of northern Europe worth planning.