Wounded US soldiers after landing on Omaha beach.
Back in Germany, Rommel was told of the invasion at 10.15 a.m. Although assured that the attack was little more than a feint, Rommel, having been ordered by Hitler to push the invaders back to the sea by midnight, immediately embarked on the long drive back to France. He arrived at his French HQ at 6 p.m. Hitler, staying at Klessheim Castle near Salzburg in Austria, also thought that the invasion was little more than a diversionary tactic. Still believing the main thrust of the invasion would appear at the Pas-de-Calais, he kept most of his forces under alert – and, crucially – inactive. Hence, the immediate German response was, on the whole, lacklustre and haphazard. Eventually, at midday, Hitler ordered a panzer counterattack. It was all he could do – Germany’s aerial response was nullified by the Allies’ vast supremacy in the air. The Luftwaffe simply did not possess the resources to match the combined forces of the RAF and the USAAF. In response to the Allies’ 13,688 sorties on D-Day, the Luftwaffe managed to respond with only 319, shooting down just one Allied plane.
Utah
While the American troops on Omaha beach struggled to gain a foothold, their colleagues to the west, on the three-mile-wide Utah beach, faced relatively lighter opposition. However, this did not diminish the daunting task that still faced them. The objective of those landing at Utah was the occupation of the nearby port of Cherbourg, which, Eisenhower hoped, would provide the Allies’ first port for delivering further troops and supplies from England.
Luck played into the Allies’ hand at Utah. Strong currents had forced the landing crafts a mile south of their intended target. There the US 4th Infantry had come across a lightly defended stretch of coastline.
Utah beach was secured within a couple of hours, having forced the German defenders into surrender. By opening a number of sluice gates, the Germans had deliberately flooded the fields behind the beaches at Utah to restrict movement inland, but the Americans managed to advance over the causeways. By midday, they had linked up with the paratroopers of the 101st Airborne Division who, together with the 82nd, had been dropped two to five miles inland. By midnight, 23,250 troops had landed in France via Utah beach at the cost of 210 men killed or wounded, considerably less than the casualties sustained during Exercise Tiger on Slapton Sands, and had advanced four miles inland.
Sword
British tank coming ashore on Sword Beach on D-Day.
The objective of the British commandos landing on Sword beach was to advance towards the city of Caen, eight miles inland. By 8 a.m., they were already breaking out behind the five-mile wide beach, the furthest east of the five beaches, and advancing on the nearest German-held villages, hoping to reach Caen by nightfall. Behind them, arrived more waves of British troops. By 1 p.m., the commandos had linked up with the paratroopers guarding Pegasus and Horsa bridges over the Caen Canal and River Orne. But heading towards them was a division of 127 panzers.
Hitler’s panzers, realizing the enemy had taken Pegasus Bridge, were forced to cross the Orne at a bridge further south, hence losing valuable time. Meanwhile, at 8 p.m., the 192nd Panzer division threatened to split the British and Canadians at Sword and Juno beaches but was eventually repulsed by aerial attacks and Allied tanks that had already secured their position on Sword. By midnight, 29,000 British troops had been landed at Sword for the cost of 630 casualties and had penetrated six miles inland.
In Caen, the Gestapo hastily gathered eighty of their prisoners, leading members of the French resistance, and executed them. Having done their work, as Allied bombs rained down on the town, they prepared to evacuate south to the town of Falaise, taking with them resistance members that had been spared for further interrogation.
Gold
The five-mile-wide Gold beach, the central beach, was to be the site for one of the two Mulberry Harbours. The objective for the British troops landing at Gold was the capture of nearby Bayeux and to enable east–west communication along the Caen–Bayeux road. Landing at 7.45 a.m., troops secured three beach exits within the hour.
By 9 p.m., troops had reached the outskirts of Bayeux and seized the town of Arromanches. By midnight, having landed 25,000 troops for fewer than 400 casualties, they had linked up with Canadians at Juno beach.
Juno
German soldier captured by Canadian troops near Juno beach, 7 June.
The objective for the Canadian troops landing at Juno was to link-up with their British colleagues landing at Gold and Sword beaches either side of them. Beach mines destroyed a third of the landing craft. Despite coming under heavy fire, they secured the first beach exit within three hours. By midnight, 21,000 troops had landed via Juno, at the cost of 1,200 casualties, and the advance guard had pushed seven miles inland.
At 9.32, the morning of D-Day, the BBC announced the invasion: ‘D-Day has come. Early this morning the Allies began the assault on the northwestern face of Hitler’s European fortress.’ Next came a pre-recorded message from Eisenhower, extolling the French resistance to play their part as previously instructed and telling all citizens of occupied Western Europe: ‘the hour of your liberation is approaching’. At midday, Churchill addressed the House of Commons. De Gaulle, having initially refused to broadcast to the French people, finally relented and did so: ‘Submerged for four years but at no time reduced nor vanquished, France is arising to do its part there.’ Pétain was also quick to the airwaves, urging French citizens to ‘Obey the orders of the Government… The circumstances of battle will lead the German army to take special measures in the zones of combat. Accept this necessity.’
In her diary for 6 June, Anne Frank wrote,
Is this really the beginning of the long-awaited liberation? The liberation we’ve all talked so much about, which still seems too good, too much of a fairy tale ever to come true? Will this year, 1944, bring us victory? We don’t know yet. But where there’s hope, there’s life. It fills us with fresh courage and makes us strong again.
And so as 6 June became 7 June, the Allies had landed 156,000 men in France for the loss of about 9,000 casualties, of whom 4,571, over half, had been killed.
THE BATTLE OF NORMANDY
During the following morning, 7 June, British troops captured Bayeux with relative ease; the first French city to be liberated.
British soldier inspecting identity cards of French civilians, Normandy.
In the days following D-Day, both the Allies and the Germans fought for control of Normandy and the Cotentin Peninsula. The Allies’ first objective was to connect the gains they had made on 6 June on and around the five beaches. On 12 June, this was achieved when, after an intense house-to-house battle, the 101st Airborne Division captured the village of Carentan. The Allies now controlled an area, a bridgehead, forty-two miles wide and, at its deepest, fifteen miles deep. From this base, the US troops laid siege to Cherbourg and the British and Canadians to Caen.
As planned, the defunct merchant ships were tugged or, in some instances, sailed across the Channel and then sunk in rows, forming the sheltered conditions for the two Mulberry Harbours. The harbours, which themselves were towed across by 150 tugs, were pieced together and ready for use within two days – the British one at Arromanches, off Gold beach, and the US harbour off Omaha beach. Within the first two weeks, almost 500,000 men had poured in via the harbours or the beaches, together with almost 100,000 vehicles. But on 19 June, severe gales destroyed the American harbour and rendered the British one almost unserviceable for several days. Later, on 12 August, the first PLUTO pipeline, running from the Isle of Wight to Cherbourg, became operational. Over the coming weeks, another seventeen lines were laid. By March 1945, the PLUTO lines were pumping up to a million gallons of fuel each day into France.
Meanwhile, in June, having secured their bridgehead, the Allies now had to break out of the Cotentin Peninsula but in this they were, for the time being, frustrated. The Germans rushed in reinforcements – although Allied bombing and resistance sabotage delayed them – and encircl
ed the Allies within their bridgehead. The battle now became a war of attrition as opposing forces fought field for field, town for town. The terrain of Normandy, dense hedgerows and sunken lanes, known by the locals as bocage, favoured the defence and proved difficult for the Allied tanks. In mid-July, the Americans nullified the German advantage, to an extent, by inventing what they called a ‘hedgebuster’, akin to a large garden fork, which they attached to the front of their tanks, making them capable of quickly cutting through the hedges.
US troops during the Battle of Cherbourg.
The Battle for Cherbourg raged on. Although well entrenched, the German defenders soon began to run out of food and supplies and after three weeks of constant battle and aerial bombardment were on the point of exhaustion. Closing in, US troops took the town on 27 June. The German general commanding Cherbourg, Friedrich Dollmann, having been informed that he was to be court-martialled for losing the town, died of a supposed heart attack the following day. The town’s harbour facilities had been so severely damaged that it took until mid-August for the port to be rendered even partially accessible.
Germany
Flats in London’s East End damaged by a V-2 rocket attack.
While his armies tried to contain the enemy within the Cotentin Peninsula, and in retaliation for the bombing of German cities, on 13 June Hitler unleashed on London the first of his long-awaited new, super weapons – the flying bomb, the V-1 (or ‘Doodlebug’). Three months later came the even more frightening V-2, first used against London on 8 September. The V-2, flying faster than the speed of sound, caused much devastation and fear in south-east England. In response, Allied bombers, in an operation codenamed Crossbow, targeted manufacturing sites. Nonetheless, at the peak of the bombing up to eight V-2s were landing on British soil per day. Nothing in Britain’s armoury could cope: radar, anti-aircraft guns, fighter planes were all rendered obsolete against these new weapons of terror but, despite the damage they inflicted, they arrived too late in the war to make an impact on its outcome.
On 2 July, Hitler replaced Rundstedt, who, lacking the necessary gumption, had become too pessimistic for the Führer’s liking. In his place, full of optimism, arrived Field Marshal Günther von Kluge. Within days, Kluge, realizing the precariousness of the situation and that Rundstedt’s pessimism was perhaps well founded, also succumbed to melancholy. Kluge’s responsibilities were enhanced to that of the Supreme Field Commander West when, on 17 July, Rommel was wounded while travelling in his car by a British fighter plane and had to be invalided back to Germany.
Even six weeks on, Hitler was still under the illusion that a second, much bigger invasion would come at any time and hence remained determined not to commit the full force of his resources into Normandy. Continued reports from top (double) agent Arabel helped sustain the illusion. The fictional First US Army Group, commanded by George Patton, was still perceived as a threat, ready to spring into action at any moment.
The Germans had several other disadvantages to contend with – having to fight the Allies on one side and deal with the resistance on the other; their supplies of war material were running low and, unbeknownst to the German command, much of their communication was still being intercepted by Bletchley Park’s codebreakers, giving the Allies crucial information as to German plans and manoeuvres. Further afield, on the Eastern Front, on 22 June, Stalin had launched Operation Bagration, the Soviet Union’s great counteroffensive against the Nazis.
On 20 July, Hitler survived an assassination attempt in his Wolf’s Lair in East Prussia, the ‘July Bomb Plot’, perpetuated by Nazi officers who hoped to shorten the war with his removal. Hitler, although shaken, suffered only superficial injury and those responsible were soon rounded up and executed. The finger of suspicion fell on Kluge. It was known that the field marshal had previously met with anti-Hitler conspirators. On 17 August, while in France, news came through that he was to be replaced by Walter Model. On being ordered back to Berlin, Kluge, fearing what lay in store, committed suicide by swallowing a cyanide pill.
Rommel was to become another victim. Although not directly involved, Rommel had previously voiced sympathy for the plan. Once his endorsement had come to light, he was given the option of honourable suicide or subjecting himself to humiliation and the kangaroo court of Nazi justice, and his family deported to a concentration camp. He chose the former and, on 14 October, accompanied by two generals sent by Hitler, Rommel poisoned himself. He was, as promised, buried with full military honours, his family pensioned off.
LIBERATION
Meanwhile, throughout France, the resistance continued to play their part – aiding the Allies wherever possible. Reprisals were often swift and brutal. On the 10 June, SS soldiers of the Der Führer regiment entered the small village of Oradour-sur-Glane, near the city of Limoges in central France, and murdered almost every inhabitant – 642 civilians, including 205 children. (When Rommel heard of the atrocity, he sought, unsuccessfully, Hitler’s permission to punish the perpetrators. Following the war, a new village bearing the same name was built while the original village remains as a memorial. Adolf Diekmann, who led the massacre, was killed in action nearly three weeks later.)
Canadian troops in action during the Battle of Caen.
In Normandy, thrice the British, led by Montgomery, tried to capture Caen in operations named after English racecourses – Epsom, Charnwood and Goodwood – each attempt more ferocious than the last. Progress was slow, the fighting intense. Caen had been Montgomery’s objective within the first twenty-four hours following D-Day. In the event, it took five weeks, until 9 July, by which time the town was flattened and 6,000 civilians had been killed.
Eisenhower’s deputies felt that Montgomery was being overcautious, and conspired to have him replaced. Churchill too was having his doubts about the hero of El Alamein. Eisenhower almost agreed with them. But Monty had a plan, and in executing it he refused to budge, even if it took time to come to fruition. He intended to draw the bulk of the Germans to the east of the bridgehead to allow the Americans to break out from the west which, indeed, they eventually did.
On 25 July, while the Germans were preoccupied to the east of the Allies’ bridgehead, US general, Omar Bradley, launched Operation Cobra. Bradley’s troops captured the town of Saint Lô, leaving it 95 per cent flattened, and from there advanced to Avranches at the base of the Cotentin Peninsula. From Avranches, the advance was able to drive west and south, into Brittany, and eastwards.
A German counterattack launched on 7 August floundered – again in large part because the Allies had intercepted German communications and were ready for the coming onslaught. Allied air supremacy again played a major part. The counterattack having failed, Hitler ordered the withdrawal of his troops from Normandy. As Kluge tried to retreat, Allied forces approaching from different directions squeezed his forces around the town of Falaise. The fighting around Falaise was intense. Eisenhower, on visiting the town following its capture, compared it to a scene of Hell as envisaged by Dante: ‘It was literally possible to walk for hundreds of yards at a time, stepping on nothing but dead and decaying flesh.’ Such was the extent of ‘decaying flesh’, both civilian and military, and the fear of disease, the Allies declared the area an ‘unhealthy zone’.
By now Hitler had replaced Kluge with Field Marshal Walter Model.
The Allies had closed the gap at the ‘Falaise Pocket’ by 20 August. Up to 15,000 German troops had been killed at Falaise, and another 50,000 taken prisoner, but still nearly 50,000 had managed to escape eastward towards Belgium.
Meanwhile, on 15 August, a secondary Allied attack, Operation Dragoon, landed in the south of France and rapidly advanced northwards.
General Charles de Gaulle and entourage set off from the Arc de Triomphe down the Champs Elysees to Notre Dame for a service of thanksgiving following the city’s liberation, 26 August 1944.
The German army in France was now shattered, and the Allies rapidly advanced southwards from the Cotentin Pen
insula. With the enemy about to enter Paris, Hitler ordered his commander there, Major-General Dietrich von Choltitz, to destroy much of the city. Choltitz refused and surrendered as, on 25 August, the French general, Jacques-Philippe Leclerc, led the Allies into the city. They were ecstatically welcomed and the witch-hunt for collaborators began immediately.
The following day, De Gaulle made his triumphant return to Paris.
On 1 September, Canadian troops captured Dieppe, just over two years after their failed attempt in August 1942. On the 3rd, British troops entered Brussels to an equally joyous reception and, two days later, liberated Antwerp. On the 10th, US troops liberated Luxembourg.
On 17 September, Montgomery launched Operation Market Garden, the biggest airborne operation in history. Its objective was to cut through the Siegfried Line, Germany’s line of defences on the Dutch–German border. In doing so Monty planned to capture the bridges over the River Rhine, near the town of Arnhem, thereby opening the road to Berlin. Faulty radio transmitters severed communication between the British troops, and determined resistance by the Germans doomed the operation to failure. Any hopes of finishing the war by Christmas 1944 were now dashed. Instead, seven months of hard fighting were still to come.
On 16 December 1944, Hitler launched a last-ditch and ultimately doomed counteroffensive through the Ardennes Forest in Belgium. The Battle of the Bulge, as it became known, held up the Allied advance by about six weeks. From the end of January 1945, German forces were on constant retreat as the Allies pressed forward.
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