CONTENTS

       Cover

       Title Page

      Introduction

      Background

      Deception

      Eisenhower

      The Atlantic Wall

      Bombing

      Training

      Eve of the Invasion

       6 June: D-Day (the 1,738th day of the war)

       Five Beaches

       The Battle of Normandy

       Liberation

       What Might Have Been…

       Appendix 1: Key Players

       Appendix 2: Timeline

       Appendix 3: D-Day and Battle of Normandy Statistics

       Appendix 4: Normandy Cemeteries

       Copyright

       Got Another Hour?

       About the Publisher

       INTRODUCTION

      D-Day, 6 June 1944, was a date that altered the course of history. The invasion of Occupied France by Allied forces, codenamed Operation Overlord, had been years in the planning and subject to the utmost secrecy. The Germans knew that an attack would come but when and where was the subject of much speculation for Adolf Hitler and his generals. For the operation to succeed, it was vital for the Allies to maximize the element of surprise. The Allied commanders, planning the assault, could not allow the enemy to meet the attack in strength at the very moment it was at its most vulnerable – the time it took to land troops on the beaches of Normandy. The stakes could not have been higher – the liberation of Western Europe from the occupying forces of Nazi Germany, ahead of the assault on Germany itself and, ultimately, the defeat of Hitler.

      In order to trick the Germans into believing the invasion would take place elsewhere, the Allies embarked on an elaborate campaign of deception. The ruse worked and on D-Day 156,000 Allied troops managed to land along a fifty-mile stretch of Normandy coastline. It was vital, also, to maintain the deception even after D-Day to oblige Hitler into keeping much of his force back in preparation for a possible assault elsewhere.

      D-Day was, for the Germans, the beginning of the end. Now the prospect of liberation from Nazi rule was within reach. The sixth of June was the day that millions of people across occupied Europe had hoped and waited for. Among them was 14-year-old Anne Frank. On 22 May 1944, Anne wrote in her diary, ‘All of Amsterdam, all of Holland, in fact the entire western coast of Europe all the way down to Spain, are talking about the invasion day and night, debating, making bets and… hoping. The suspense is rising to fever pitch.’

      This, in an hour, is the epic story of D-Day.

       BACKGROUND

      D-Day initiated the end-game of what had been an unprecedented struggle for supremacy in Europe. If the Second Battle of El Alamein in 1942 had been what Winston Churchill called ‘the end of the beginning’, then D-Day was perhaps the beginning of the end.

      Almost five years before D-Day, on 1 September 1939, Hitler had launched the German invasion of Poland. Two days later, Great Britain and France had declared war on Germany – and so the Second World War had begun. While German forces then struck Poland from the west, from 17 September, forces of the Soviet Union attacked from the east.

      With Poland crushed between two totalitarian heavyweights, Hitler focused his attention on Scandinavia. On 9 April 1940, German forces attacked both Denmark, which capitulated within six hours, and Norway, which held out until 10 June.

      On 10 May, Hitler launched the German invasion of Western Europe. By 28 May, Luxembourg, Belgium and the Netherlands had surrendered. On 10 June, Germany invaded France. On the same day, Benito Mussolini, fascist dictator of Italy, keen to share in Germany’s spoils of victory, declared war on France and Britain. British troops, sent to aid the French, were forced back to the French port of Dunkirk before being evacuated back to Britain. On 22 June, France, under its new prime minister, Philippe Pétain, surrendered. The dark years of Nazi occupation had begun.

      During the summer of 1940, the Battle of Britain raged above the skies of southern England as the RAF saved Britain from the German Luftwaffe, while, soon after, Britain endured the Blitz, the aerial bombardment of its cities.

      In 1941, the German juggernaut continued on its course of destruction. Greece fell, as did Yugoslavia. Then, on 22 June, Hitler launched the invasion of the Soviet Union, opening up the Eastern Front, which, over the coming four years, would experience the most brutal fighting perhaps ever seen.

      The war became truly global when, on 7 December 1941, Japan attacked the American fleet anchored at Pearl Harbor, on the Hawaiian island of Oahu. Four days later, Hitler and Mussolini declared war on the USA.

       The Dieppe Raid

      In August 1942, Winston Churchill, Britain’s wartime prime minister, flew to Moscow and there met for the first time the Soviet leader, Joseph Stalin. Stalin had been urging Churchill to open a second front by attacking Nazi-occupied Europe from the west, thereby forcing Hitler to divert troops to the west and alleviating in part the enormous pressure the Soviet Union found itself under. Now, as Churchill prepared to meet Stalin, German forces were bearing down on the strategically and symbolically important Russian city of Stalingrad.

      Churchill knew that if Germany were to defeat the Soviet Union then Hitler would be able to concentrate his whole military strength on the west. But although tentative plans for a large-scale invasion were afoot, to act too quickly, too hastily, would be foolhardy. Churchill withstood Stalin’s pressure. There would be no second front for at least another year. But, in the meantime, Churchill was able to offer a ‘reconnaissance in force’ on the French port of Dieppe, with the objective of drawing away German troops from the Eastern Front. Whether Stalin was at all appeased by this morsel of compensation, Churchill does not say.