D-Day

FactsBattle fact sheet

Move 1The opening: don't attack where the opponent most expects it

The Allied planners of 1943, under General Frederick Morgan, looked first at the Pas-de-Calais, the shortest route from England to France and, from there, to Germany. The German command had done the same math and fortified that coast more than any other. That is what ruled it out.

Normandy was less defended and close enough for fighter aircraft to cover the beaches from England — at the limit, with little combat time over the area. It had ports within reach, Cherbourg and later Le Havre, and until they fell, the Allies would bring their own harbors: the Mulberries, assembled in pieces off the coast. On 31 December 1943, Eisenhower and Montgomery expanded the initial assault from three to five divisions, and the date moved from May to June 1944.

In board terms, the choice was almost obvious. The hard part was something else: making the opponent believe, even after the first move, that the real blow was still to come somewhere else.

Move 2The bluff: a whole army that did not exist

Operation Fortitude created, in southeastern England, the 1st U.S. Army Group, under the command of George Patton, the Allied general the Germans feared most. The army group did not exist. It was kept alive by fake radio traffic, some inflatable equipment and, above all, double agents controlled by the British. The main one, the Spaniard Juan Pujol García, codenamed Garbo, ran for the Germans a network of 27 informants, all invented.

The Germans did not ignore Normandy. In March 1944, Hitler began pointing to the Cotentin and Brittany as likely targets, and in May the 91st Division and the 6th Parachute Regiment were sent to the Cotentin. What the bluff did was turn Normandy into one of the blows, and not the blow. At the end of May, according to Showalter, the German command reckoned there were 89 Allied divisions in Britain; there were 47. On 9 June, three days after the landing, Garbo reported that Patton's units had not gone into action and that Normandy should be seen as a diversion.

How much the bluff weighed is debated. Roger Fleetwood-Hesketh, who wrote the internal history of the operation, found no proof that the radio deception or the inflatable equipment had contributed: what worked were the agents. But the effect on the board is on record. The 15th Army stayed put in the Pas-de-Calais through June and much of July, and the 116th Panzer only received the order to march to Normandy at the end of July.

Move 3The armor dispute: three ideas and none

On the German side, the board question was where to put the armored divisions. Rommel wanted them all close to the coast. He thought the decision would come in the first forty-eight hours and that Allied air power would keep any distant reserve from arriving in time. Rundstedt and Geyr von Schweppenburg wanted a reserve concentrated inland, for a massed counterattack once the main blow had been identified. Guderian, inspector of armored troops, argued for a strategic reserve of ten divisions.

Hitler chose none of the ideas: he split the pieces. Rommel got three panzer divisions — the 2nd, the 21st and the 116th. Four others — the 1st SS Panzer, the 12th SS Panzer, the 17th SS Panzergrenadier and Panzer Lehr — became the high command's reserve and could only move with his express authorization. The result, in the words of the U.S. official history, left both commanders without decisive control.

On the morning of 6 June, the only panzer division within immediate reach of the beaches was the 21st. The other strong pieces were on the board, but tied to a signature.

Move 4The weather clock: a day and a half of opening

The landing needed a moon close to full, for the paratroopers, and a rising low tide at dawn, so the boats could see the obstacles. That gave a window from 5 to 7 June. On 3 and 4 June, Eisenhower's chief meteorologist, Group Captain James Stagg of the RAF, forecast overcast skies and strong wind, and the scheduled day, 5 June, was postponed. On the night of 4 June, Stagg announced a short improvement; at 4:15 on 5 June he confirmed it, and Eisenhower decided on 6 June. The alternative was to wait two weeks, until the next tide — and in that period a storm came that destroyed one of the two Mulberry harbors.

The German meteorologists, without the Allied observation network in the Atlantic, saw only the bad weather. By the German command's own criteria, reported in the U.S. official history, the conditions for a landing were not being met on 5 June. Rommel went home, to Herrlingen, in Germany: his wife's birthday was on 6 June, and he intended to see Hitler. Division commanders of the 7th Army were on their way to a war game in Rennes.

The weather improved enough, not much. At Omaha, in heavy waves, 27 of the 29 amphibious tanks of the first wave sank before reaching the beach.

Move 5The morning: the request at 04:45 and the idle reserve

The 7th Army went on maximum alert at 02:15, after the first paratrooper drops. During the night, according to the U.S. official history, Rundstedt, Rommel's chief of staff Hans Speidel and Admiral Krancke thought it was probably the diversionary operation. At 04:45, according to the Canadian official history, Rundstedt's chief of staff, Günther Blumentritt, asked General Alfred Jodl, at the high command, to release the armored divisions of the reserve. He had already put the 12th SS, Panzer Lehr and the 17th SS on alert.

The request was refused. German officers stated after the war that Jodl not only refused but ordered all movement stopped. No one in the high command wanted to commit the reserve in Normandy while the main blow, expected at Calais, had not appeared.

Meanwhile, the five beaches were being taken. At Utah, casualties were 197. At Omaha, where the 352nd Division was on the coast without Allied intelligence having located it, the U.S. V Corps counted 2,374 casualties, killed, wounded and missing. At the end of the day, there, the beachhead was shallow and far from the planned line.

Move 6The afternoon: a division reaches the sea and turns back

The 12th SS Panzer and Panzer Lehr were released in the afternoon — at 14:30 or at 16:00, depending on the source. The first units of the 12th SS reached the assembly area near Évrecy at 22:00, and the division only took up position northwest of Caen on the morning of 7 June. Panzer Lehr marched under air attack and fought from 8 June.

The 21st Panzer, the only one within reach, spent the morning between orders to attack the paratroopers east of the Orne and orders to attack the beaches. Only in the afternoon did it attack northward. Elements of the 192nd Panzergrenadier Regiment reached the coast at Lion-sur-Mer, in the gap between Juno and Sword, at around 20:00 — that is what English Wikipedia gives; the Canadian official history records that the arrival at the sea was later claimed by the division commander, Edgar Feuchtinger, and that the British evidence does not fully support it.

At around 21:00, hundreds of British gliders passed over them to reinforce the Orne bridgehead. Fearing encirclement, the Germans pulled back. Caen did not fall that day, and at nightfall only Gold and Juno were linked; all five beachheads joined up on 12 June. But no German counterattack had put the landing at risk.

VerdictWhy it ended the way it did

MythsWhat is told and what the record shows

• What is told

  Hitler was asleep, no one dared wake him, and that is why the panzers did not arrive in time.

  What the record shows

  Hitler went to bed in the early hours and, in one version, only learned of the invasion around noon. But the release request of 04:45 was refused by the high command, with Jodl, and the reason was the doubt about Calais, not sleep. The Canadian official history records the sleep version and also the opposite: Hitler's valet, Heinz Linge, said he was informed early, and that the operations staff needed until 10:00 to form an opinion. For the historian Dennis Showalter, Hitler was awake early, and what mattered was the uncertainty.

• What is told

  The Germans never thought of Normandy.

  What the record shows

  Hitler pointed to the Cotentin and Brittany as likely targets in March 1944, and in May the 91st Division and the 6th Parachute Regiment were sent to the Cotentin. What the Allied bluff achieved was making Normandy look like a secondary blow, with the main one still to come at Calais.

• What is told

  The inflatable tanks fooled the Germans.

  What the record shows

  Roger Fleetwood-Hesketh, who wrote the internal history of Operation Fortitude, found no proof that the visual or radio deception had contributed. What worked were the double agents, Garbo first among them, whose messages the Germans took to be true.

• What is told

  Omaha was a massacre with thousands of dead.

  What the record shows

  Omaha was the costliest beach: 2,374 casualties in the U.S. V Corps' count, adding killed, wounded and missing. The Allied dead for the whole day, on all the beaches, in the air and at sea, were 4,414 in the National D-Day Memorial's historical count and 4,436 in the updated list. At Utah, next door, casualties were 197.

QuestionsFrequently asked questions

SourcesSources

1. Gordon A. Harrison, Cross-Channel Attack (United States Army in World War II), Center of Military History, 1951 — ch. VII, German Defense Measures, 1944. — ibiblio.org
2. Gordon A. Harrison, Cross-Channel Attack, ch. VIII, The Sixth of June. — ibiblio.org
3. C. P. Stacey, The Victory Campaign: The Operations in North-West Europe, 1944–1945, official history of the Canadian Army, 1960 — ch. 6. — ibiblio.org
4. U.S. Army Center of Military History, Normandy (campaign brochure). — permanent.access.gpo.gov
5. Dennis Showalter, "The Convenient Opponent: The Wehrmacht and D-Day", Eisenhower Lecture, Kansas State University. — k-state.edu
6. Robert M. Citino, "D-Day Through a German Lens", MHQ, 2017. — historynet.com
7. John Curatola, "Pressure: The D-Day Weather Forecast Story", The National WWII Museum. — nationalww2museum.org
8. National D-Day Memorial Foundation, The Necrology Project. — dday.org
9. The D-Day Story, Portsmouth, "What is D-Day?". — theddaystory.com
10. Juno Beach Centre, "Canada on D-Day by the Numbers". — junobeach.org
11. Roger Fleetwood-Hesketh, Fortitude: The D-Day Deception Campaign, 2000 (as cited).
12. Operation Fortitude — English Wikipedia. — en.wikipedia.org
13. Normandy landings — English Wikipedia. — en.wikipedia.org

Images

• Fig. 01 — American soldiers leave a Coast Guard landing craft for Omaha, on the morning of 6 June 1944. At Omaha, V Corps counted 2,374 casualties on the day, killed, wounded and missing.: Robert F. Sargent, U.S. Coast Guard · NARA 26-G-2343 · Public domain
• Fig. 02 — Eisenhower talks with paratroopers of the 101st Airborne Division at Greenham Common, England, on the evening of 5 June 1944 — hours after deciding, on James Stagg's forecast, that the landing would go in the next day.: Unidentified photographer, U.S. Army Signal Corps · NARA 778813 (SC-194399) · Public domain
• Fig. 03 — Anti-tank obstacles on a beach in the Pas-de-Calais on 18 April 1944. It was the coast the German command most expected to see attacked, and the most fortified — the reason the Allies ruled it out.: Jesse · Bundesarchiv, Bild 101I-719-0240-05 · CC BY-SA 3.0 DE
• Fig. 04 — Rommel visits the 21st Panzer Division in May 1944. It was the only armored division within reach of the beaches on 6 June; the four of the high command's reserve could only move on Hitler's order.: Speck · Bundesarchiv, Bild 101I-300-1865-06 · CC BY-SA 3.0 DE
• Fig. 05 — American sketch from June 1944, on the Isigny sheet of the 1:50,000 map: the stretch from Omaha to Pointe du Hoc, with the defensive perimeter ordered at the end of D-Day and the advances of 8 to 12 June. At the end of the first day, the beachhead at Omaha was far from the planned line.: U.S. Army · NARA 18558250 · Public domain