Next Day German Troops example essay topic

Invasion of Normandy Invasion of Normandy, also known as D-Day or Operation Overlord, was a cross channel attack planned by the allies that took place over the English channel. Not only was D-Day the largest amphibious assault the world had seen, it was a critical point in World War II. (Locke, Alain, ed. Pg 203) The Invasion of Normandy is when the allies decided that they must take an offense and invade Germany on their home land if Hitler was to be stopped. The allies put all of their power together, for failure was not an option.

If the invasion was to fail it was quite likely that the United States would have to postpone their fight against Germany and turn their full attention to the war in the Pacific, leaving the fate of Europe to Britain and the Soviet Union. Chances are that by the time the United states returned to fight Germany, Hitler would have overrun the continent since all of Britain's resources had been drained, leaving the majority of the fighting to the Soviet Union. Towards the end of November 1943, President Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin met in Tehran for the first meeting about how to invade Germany. Roosevelt and the prime minister had already agreed that it would be best to launch a cross-channel attack, code named Overlord. President Roosevelt was in full favor of launching operation Overlord as soon as the weather permitted. With Stalin's agreement to join in, operation Overlord was set for May 1944, depending on the weather.

(Anderson, Jervis. Pg 86) American General Dwight D. Eisenhower was named supreme commander for the allies in Europe. British General, Sir Frederick Morgan, established a combined American-British headquarters known as COSSAC, for Chief of Staff to the Supreme Allied Commander. COSSAC came up with a number of plans for the Allies, including Operation Overlord. Eisenhower felt that operation Overlord was a sound plan in general, but needed a few revisions. After the disastrous hit-and-run raid in 1942 in Dieppe, planners saw that (Candaela, Kerry.

Pg 73) German defenses were simply too strong and could easily fight off a number of small assaults. So instead it was decided that it would be better to choose a single main landing where an immense amount of firepower and soldiers could be concentrated. The invasion site needed to be close to at least one major port and airbase to allow for efficient supply lines. The decision came down to two sites, the Pas de Calais across the Strait of Dover, and the beaches of Cotentin. Of the two landings it was decided that the beaches of Cotentin would be the best landing site for Operation Overlord.

Months ahead of time allies spent day and night producing war materials. When invasion day came allies had assembled an unbelievable amount of war materials. In total, 5,000 ships, the largest armada ever, 11,000 aircraft's, and approximately 154,000 British, Canadian and American soldiers, including 23,000 that were to arrive by parachute and gliders. War materials were only half the battle. Deception was the key to the whole invasion. Much time was spent sending small campaigns over to Germany to cause a ruckus in German defenses, eventually becoming a daily routine.

Germans intelligence never knew if it was the big invasion or just another little deception by the allies to throw them off. The allies had also been keeping in contact with tens of thousands of allied resistance fighters in Nazi-occupied countries in Western Europe. (Lewis, David Levering, ed. Pg 5) The resistance fighters spent many hours setting up small tasks forces that would help to cut German communication lines when the invasion was to start. There was so much deception going on that the British even code named it as an actual operation, known as Jael, whose primary objective was to keep German eyes focused anywhere but on the coast of northwestern France. The British became a key player in deception when British intelligence known as Ultra, had early on in the war broken the code of the standard German radio enciphering machine, the Enigma.

With the use of German intelligence, Allies could tell exactly what the Germans were planning to do, and thus could plant information to either reinforce an existing false view or to feed information through German agents. The allies weren't the only ones preparing for an invasion. Hitler had long been aware that Allies would eventually mount a cross-channel invasion, but, as long as they dissipated their forces in the Mediterranean and as long as the campaign in the East demanded the commitment of all available German forces, he put off the threat for another day. By November 1943, Hitler had accepted that it could no longer be ignored, so he now welcomed it as a chance to win the war. (Anderson, Jervis. Pg 19) If he could throw the Americans and British off the beaches, then hopefully they would not try again.

He could then concentrate all of his forces, nearly half of which were in the west, against the USSR. To oversee defensive preparations, Hitler appointed Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, former commander of the Afrika Kors. To prepare for the Allied attack, Rommel had German troops setup what was to be known as the Atlantic Wall. The Atlantic wall consisted primarily of pillboxes and gun emplacements embedded in cliff sides or placed on the waterfronts of seaside resorts and ports. Included were massive blockhouses with disappearing guns, antitank guns, and light artillery, newsreels of which the Germans sent out through neutral sources in an effort to awe their adversaries. Many underwater obstacles and mines were also planted in the waters just offshore to destroy Allied landing craft.

Low-lying river and estuarine areas were permanently flooded. By the time of the invasion, the Germans had laid about 5,700,000 mines throughout northern France. (Anderson, Jervis. Pg 34) Six days before the targeted date of June 5, troops boarded ships, transports, and aircraft all along the southern and southwestern coasts of England. Troops stood waiting for days to hear the word go, at which point they would engage the Germans in the largest amphibious assault in history.

The largest part of the deception didn't take place until the night of the actual invasion. Upon the night of June 5th, American forces gathered across the channel from the Pas de Calais. Dummy troops, false radio traffic, dummy landing craft in the bay of the Thames river, huge but unoccupied camps, dummy tanks, all contributed to this mass deception. The American 82nd and 101st airborne divisions were dropped deliberately into an inundated zone at the base of the Cotentin Peninsula and suffered many casualties by drowning, but still secured their objective which was to mislead the Germans in where the actual invasion was going to take place. (Watson, Steve Pg 92 The British 6th Airborne Division seized its un flooded objectives at the eastern end more easily, and its special task force also captured key bridges over the Caen Canal and Orne River. Unfortunately Allied commanders could not know if their deception plan worked until their troops were ashore.

As the final invasion time neared, the Germans primary focus changed from the regions of the Balkans and Norway to the Pas de Calais. The concentration of Allied troops was so great, that an invasion of France seemed (Watson, Steve Pg 13) inevitable. Enormous Allied air superiority over northern France made it extremely difficult for Rommel, who was in German command on the scene, to move his limited reserves and could not scout out the seas to see if Allied ships were crossing the English Channel. Bombing attacks, sabotage by the French Resistance and false messages from compromised German agents all focused on the Pas de Calais with only minimal attention to Normandy. Also, German intelligence thought that the Allies had 90 divisions ready for the invasion (really only 39), so that even after the invasion of Normandy, the belief could still exist that Normandy was just a preliminary measure and the main invasion of the Pas de Calais was still to come. None of the German high command in France doubted that the invasion would strike the Pas de Calais.

The Fuhrer himself, Adolf Hitler, had an intuition that the invasion would come to Normandy but was unable to incite his commanders to make more than minimal reinforcement there. Due to weather conditions, the invasion had to be postponed a day. On June 6 around 12: 15 am, an air attack on Normandy started. The Germans saw the airborne assault as nothing more than a raid or at most a diversionary attack.

Pg 58) As the airborne landings continued, Field Marshal von Rundstedt believed that even if the assault was a diversionary attack, it had to be defeated. Around 4: 00 am, he ordered two panzer divisions to prepare for counter attack, but when he reported what he had done to the high command in Germany, word came back to halt the divisions pending approval from Hitler. Fortunately for the Allies the Fuhrer had taken a sleeping pill, and no one on the German command dared to wake him. When the seaborne units began to land about 6: 30 AM on June 6, for 12 hours the British and Canadians fought on Gold, Juno, and Sword beaches and overcame with light opposition. So did the Americans at Utah. The American 1st Division at Omaha Beach, however, confronted the best of the German coast divisions, the 352nd, and was roughly handled.

During the morning, its landing almost failed. Only dedicated local leadership eventually got the troops inland. (Locke, Alain, ed. Pg 53) It wasn't until 4 p.m. on D-Day that Hitler finally awoke and at last approved the deployment of the two reserve panzer divisions. Allied deception had been remarkably effective and because Hitler had been sleeping and was then slow to carry out any action.

The rest of the armored reserve in France-five divisions-and the 19 divisions of the massive Fifteenth Army in the Pas de Calais, stood idle feeling that the main invasion was still to come. Hitler became convinced that the Normandy landings were a feint and the main assault would come north of the Seine River. So Hitler refused to release the divisions he had there and insisted on drawing in reinforcements from more distant areas. (Locke, Alain, ed.

Pg 51) The next day German troops had found copies of U.S. operation orders indicating that the landing in Normandy constituted the main invasion. Hitler immediately ordered the panzer reserve into action, but Allied intelligence was ready for such an emergency. Because of Ultra the Allied command learned of Hitler's orders, and through a (Watson, Steve Pg 92) compromised German agent known as Brutus, it sent a word that the American corps orders were a plant. The main invasion, Brutus reported, was still to come in the Pas de Calais. Hitler canceled his orders. The Seventh Army (German defense of Normandy) had thrown into the battle every major unit available.

The commander of the Seventh Army refused to commit any forces from the West to the invasion, for fear of a second Allied landing. Meanwhile, most German officials were still being thrown off by Allied deceptions that continued to make Germans believe that a bigger landing was still to come in the Pas de Calais. By the end of June, Eisenhower had 850,000 men and 150,000 vehicles ashore in Normandy. After roughly 15 hours Allied troops had broken out of the beach heads, some secured, and headed deep into Normandy.

(Locke, Alain, ed. Pg 19) D-day was a critical point in the war for the allies. It was when the allies really took an offensive position against Germany for the first time. Although many men were lost, I feel that it was a nes sary step in the war, if the Invasion of Normandy had not taken place then I might be speaking German right now. Deception was the whole key to the plan, the allies managed to keep German (Watson, Steve Pg 53) eyes focused somewhere else while the main part of the war took place on five beaches. With the exception of Omaha beach, the rest were reasonably easy compared to past battles.

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Locke, Alain, ed. The Longest Day. New York: Atheneum, 1992. Studio Museum, The. Music, the once great art.

New York: Abrams, 1987 Watson, Steve. Nothing Less then Victory. New York: Pantheon, 1995 Candaela, Kerry. The Voices of D-Day.

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