D-day
June 6, 1944 is truly a day of infamy that will live forever in the hearts of millions of civilizations and servicemen. This day was the first day of Operation Overlord; the official name General Eisenhower gave it. Never before had a greater invasion been planned or executed (Ambrose 71). Over 200,000 allied troops were involved in the operation along with over 150,000 German troops (Ambrose 33). The buildup of so many troops took well over a year, coming from primarily three nations: Canada, Great Britain, and The United States (Ambrose 42). The strength of all these nations would be needed for the assault on Hitler's "Fortress Europe."During the first six months of 1944, the United States and Great Britain gathered land, naval, and air forces in England to prepare for Operation Overlord, the assault on Hitler's "Fortress Europe." During this time, the Soviet Union tied down large amounts of German troops on the Eastern Front, while the Western Allies gathered their resources and trained their forces. They also spent a great amount of time searching the French Coast for a suitable landing point. Throughout 1942 and 1943, the BBC sent out broadcasts telling anyone who had postcards of the French coast to send them in. By
The Navy cleared mines out of the channel as well as run covert operations along the French coast (Ambrose 47). He spent most of his time and resources building and reinforcing the costal defenses (Ambrose 118). the end of 1943 they had over 10 million pictures (Ambrose 74). The reason that the D-Day invasion effects history today is that without the invasion many different scenarios could have come into play. In Phoebe-Lou Adams' review of the book D-Day she says "This is the account of the Allied invasion of Normandy in 1944. He deliberated many weeks over the task, but finally decided on General Eisenhower (Ambrose 39). General Rommel faced the task of defending the entire coastline from Southern Norway to Southern France with a very limited air force, navy and army. General Eisenhower reviewed all of his options and selected the Normandy beach in northern France. The invasion plan had the Canadian troops landing at Juno beach, the British troops landing at Gold and Sword beaches, and the American troops landing at Utah and Omaha beaches (Ambrose 79,80,81,82). The invasion was originally planned for late May 1944, but bad weather pushed the date to June. By the end of the second day of the invasion, the Allied lines were as deep as ten miles into Normandy and as little as two miles inland, but all the mattered was that the Allies had established a firm foothold in northern Normandy.
Common topics in this essay:
Beach Americans,
June Eisenhower,
Operation Overlord,
Southern France,
Air Force,
French Coast,
Eisenhower Chief,
United Army,
George Marshall,
Air Forces,
air force,
fortress europe,
date june,
french coast,
operation overlord,
day invasion,
troops landing,
hitler's fortress europe,
chief staff,
beach defenses,
june 6th,
assault hitler's fortress,
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Acceptance Essays
