June 6, 1944 will be remembered by posterity as D-Day. Eighty years have passed since the day that was cataloged by historians as “the longest of the century”, when the Allied forces unleashed, within the framework of the Second War World, the largest invasion by water, land and sea in the history of warfare (Jeffrey Markowitz/Sygma via Getty Images)
“Normandy was undoubtedly a battle of material, and the soldiers could see the effect of this at all times,” described the German historian specialized in the Second World War and doctor from the Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich, Peter Lieb, in relation to the massive use of weapons and war materials. He spoke of the largest and most complex landing carried out in the history of war (English Heritage / Heritage Images / Getty Images)
The operation was named Overlord, the translation of “supreme chief”, and codenamed Neptune. It consisted of liberating northwest Europe from the Azi invasion. American President Franklin Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill had decided where the fight would be fought: on the beaches of Normandy, on the coast of the English Channel east of Cherbourg and west of Le Havre (AP)
When Roosevelt and Churchill decided, at the Third Washington Conference, codenamed “Trident,” to orchestrate the attack on Normandy, World War II had come full circle: the Nazis had been defeated in their attempt to take Stalingrad, the German campaign in the USSR began to crumble, the army of Marshal Friedrich von Paulus had been captured by the Russians and the troops of the Red Army had already set out to conquer Berlin and destroy Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich (CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images)
The landing should have been on Monday, June 5, and not the 6th. James Martin Stagg was to blame for the postponement. As a meteorologist attached to the Royal Air Force, he had in his hands to forecast the weather over the English Channel and on the French coasts on the day of the military advance. Time was vital: dark clouds and storms would prevent air support for the landing and, also, the deployment of paratroopers who would arrive on the continent aboard gliders the night before, to take over the rear of the German lines (Steck/MPI/Getty Images )
American General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Forces, with Lieutenant Wallace Strobel, twenty-two years old, platoon leader of the 502nd Parachute Regiment of the 101st Division. A famous photo shows the two in full conversation: the officer, with a sooty face and a sign with the number “23″ on his chest, the number of the glider he was to board.
The commander wanted to know if Strobel and his men were ready, and the lieutenant told him yes, that according to him, there were not going to be too many problems: “Stop worrying, general, we are going to take care of everything for you.” Strobel also survived the war and seven years before he died, in 1992, he donated his combat uniform to the Dwight D. Eisenhower Library (Keystone Features/Getty Images)
The largest war operation in history depended on the flow of wind and the capricious climate of the North Sea. Five thousand warships from twelve different countries, a formidable European and American air force, more than two million men, civil and military, were waiting in the hatches, ready to invade the continent and put an end to Nazism and the Second World War.
The political leaders of the allied troops pointed out the five beaches where they would begin combat actions. They were given a code name: from west to east, Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno and Sword. Utah and Omaha would be attacked by the Americans, Sword and Gold by the British and Canadians, and Juno taken by Canadians, British, French, Poles and Norwegians (Fox Photos/Getty Images)
D-Day represented a monumental challenge in terms of organization and cooperation. First, millions of American soldiers arrived in the British Isles, where they trained for months alongside British troops and participated in numerous naval trials. Then, fleets of ships and planes of unprecedented dimensions were deployed, and finally, hundreds of thousands of people were moved from the south of England, through a hostile channel full of mines, to the French northwest, which had become a fortress (Bert Hardy/Getty Images)
Despite the risks, the operation was a success. 156,115 troops landed on the Normandy coast, including 23,400 airborne troops (paratroopers and gliders) and 132,600 regular troops, according to data from the D-Day History Museum in Portsmouth, England, and the US National Archive. . Of this total, 73,000 soldiers were American (15,500 airborne and 57,500 regular), 61,715 British (7,900 airborne and 53,815 regular), and 21,400 Canadian (Fox Photos/Getty Images)
This huge contingent was transported by sea from numerous ports in the south of England by a fleet of 6,939 vessels of all types. Among them were 1,213 warships, including the battleships HMS Rodney and USS Nevada, 736 auxiliary ships, 864 merchant ships and a total of 4,126 ships and landing craft of various classes. This gigantic fleet, rarely assembled, was operated by 195,700 sailors: 112,824 British, 52,889 Americans and 4,988 from other member countries of the alliance (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
The German forces assigned to defend the entire French coast surpassed the Allied contingent in number and quality. Only an ingenious campaign of deception and strategy could make the invasion a success: forces dispersed or held in reserve was a crucial point in the dispute. The Nazis believed that the main landing would take place in the Pas de Calais, northwest France (MPI/Getty Images)
Although there was optimism among the allies, Eisenhower himself wrote a few lines to take responsibility for the failure: “Our landings in the Cherbourg-Havre area did not achieve a satisfactory foothold and I have withdrawn troops. My decision to attack at this time and place “It was based on the best information available. The troops, air and Navy did all that bravery and devotion to duty could do. If any blame or fault is attributed to the attempt, it is mine alone” (AFP)
But he also signed and distributed to the soldiers an Order of the Day in which he brimmed with optimism: “The eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes and prayers of freedom-loving people everywhere march with you. In the company of our brave allies and comrades in arms on other fronts, will achieve the destruction of the German war machine, the elimination of Nazi tyranny over the oppressed peoples of Europe and security for ourselves in a free world” (Keystone/Getty Images)
But Overlord did not begin on the morning of the 6th, but on the night of June 5 with two major airborne operations. 15,500 American paratroopers and glider troops were dropped on the outskirts of Carentan and Sainte-Mère-Église in western Normandy, while 7,900 British airborne troops descended around Ranville and Merville in the east. The objective was to secure the flanks of the invasion and control strategic bridges to allow the passage of allied troops and to stop German counterattacks (AP).
The landing of the paratroopers was close to becoming a tragedy. Many soldiers of the 101st Airborne Division died because the gliders flew so low that the parachutes did not open in time; Others fell into flooded areas, rivers or streams, tributaries of the Seine, and drowned due to the weight of the wet parachute or the equipment they were carrying. They were loaded with ammunition (Walter Rosenblum/US Army Signal Corps/Galerie Bilderwelt/Getty Images)
By the end of June 6, the Allies had consolidated a so-called “beachhead”, a portion of the coast under their control and defensible, and the landing of more men, tanks, trucks and all types of supplies began. By June 11, there were already 326,47 soldiers, 54,186 vehicles, and 104,428 tons of supplies on the beaches, and soon the number of soldiers would exceed one million. Thus began a new Allied offensive that would lead to the break of the German front, the encirclement of its armies in Falaise and the race towards the liberation of Paris, which would be achieved in August 1944 (Fox Photos/Getty Images)
Around ten in the morning, the first sign of weakness in the German troops occurred. The German 352nd Infantry Division sent a message to the headquarters of General Erich Marcks, a respected World War I veteran. Marcks read a message that said: “Northeast of Colleville an enemy force of between one hundred and two hundred men has penetrated our lines” (Robert Capa)
The fighting on D-Day was savage and fierce. Omaha Beach was recognized for posterity as “the bloody one.” When the sun fell, it had already been more than ten hours after the start of the Normandy Landing deployment. The result was positive: the Great Atlantic Wall that had taken four years to build was surpassed by the allies in just over half a day (S. Scott Wigle/US Coast Guard/FPG/Archive Photos/Getty Images)
From Normandy to Paris and then the German retreat, between June 1 and August 30, it is estimated that the Allies suffered about 200,000 casualties and the Germans another 240,000, according to British historian Antony Beevor in his book “D-Day.” : the battle of Normandy”. It is estimated, in turn, that 20,000 French civilians died trapped in the fighting and bombing (Fred Ramage/Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
Adolf Hitler was sleeping that morning and no one dared to wake him up to give him the bad news, and Marshal Erwin Rommel, in charge of coastal defense, had traveled to Germany to celebrate his wife’s birthday. Accidents that could have been fatal. If Hitler had made the decision that morning to move the entire Panzer Division, perhaps the story would have been different (Evening Standard/Getty Images)
The Allied raid on Normandy was the opening of the second front that would support the solitary Stalin. Nazi Germany was now pressured by the Soviet Union to the east and by the Allies to the west. At the end of June 6, 1944, Rommel exclaimed something that became true several months later: “The war is lost” (Kaye/US Army Signal Corps/PhotoQuest/Getty Images)
