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World War 2:
Invasion and Campaign for Normandy
Invasion
Battle of the Hedgerows
Breakthrough
Breakout into Brittany
Breakout to the East
Liberation of Paris
Invasion
On May 8, General Eisenhower designated D-day as June
5, but because of bad weather he decided on June 4 to postpone the invasion
to June 6. Though the weather remained poor, further delay would have
necessitated waiting until June 19, when tidal conditions and the light
of the moon would again have been propitious. In one of the most momentous
decisions of the war he decided to proceed despite the unfavorable weather
conditions. Meanwhile, the invasion troops had moved to concentration
areas in the United Kingdom. There they received special equipment and
waterproofed their vehicles. Then they marched to marshaling areas close
to the embarkation points, where the troops received additional supplies,
maps, and final briefings. About 60,000 men and 6,800 vehicles were
scheduled to go ashore on D-day at Omaha Beach and equal numbers at
Utah. On D plus 1 and 2, an additional total of 43,500 troops and 6,000
vehicles were scheduled to go ashore at both beaches. Roughly equal
numbers were to land on the British beaches. Altogether in the United
Kingdom, General Eisenhower had a force of 2,876,000 men, including
45 divisions.
Some 5,000 ships and craft made up the invasion fleet.
During the night of June 5, despite a gusty wind blowing at a rate of
15 to 20 knots and churning up waves in mid-Channel as high as five
and six feet, the invasion fleet took assigned places in the transport
areas off the coast of France in the Seine Estuary. Minesweepers cleared
and marked 10 lanes through minefields in the Channel. In the early
minutes of June 6, RAF bombers ranged the entire invasion coast, striking
at coastal batteries and other targets. In the second hour, paratroopers
of the 82d and 101st Airborne divisions landed in the eastern part of
the Cotentin Peninsula astride the Merderet River to facilitate the
seaborne landings of the 7th Corps. The 101st Division secured its objectives
with surprisingly light losses, but the 82d had to fight severely, taking
heavy casualties, to secure Ste.-Mere-Eglise. At the same time the British
6th Airborne Division was securing the other Allied flank between the
Orne and Dives rivers. As dawn approached, while fighter squadrons flying
at from 3,000 to 5,000 feet maintained an aerial umbrella, the landing
craft came toward shore through a heavy sea.
Because lack of planes in France denied adequate aerial
reconnaissance, the Germans had no advance knowledge of the invasion.
They also relied on the bad weather, considering it too inclement for
the Allies to try an invasion at that time. Their first reaction occurred
early in the morning of June 6, when several German torpedo boats left
Le Havre to engage the invasion fleet. They were driven off by Allied
naval fire and air attack. The German coastal batteries began to fire
sporadically at the invasion fleet at 5:35 A.M. At 5:50 A.M., the Allied
naval bombardment began. This fire not only detonated large mine fields,
on which the Germans had counted heavily to block the invaders, but
also knocked out many defensive installations.
At 6:30 A.M., H-hour for the United States beaches,
American troops touched down on Omaha and Utah beaches. At Utah the
4th Division under the 7th Corps had little difficulty getting ashore
against intermittent artillery shelling. The beach area was cleared
in three hours, and the follow-up troops and supplies began to come
ashore with little trouble. About 23,000 men landed that day. At Omaha,
where the 1st Division of the 5th Corps assaulted with two regiments
abreast, high seas, early morning mist, smoke, dust, and a lateral current
scattered men and units badly. German fire was exceptionally strong,
and many wounded Americans were drowned in the rising tide. In a daring
operation two Ranger battalions took out large coastal guns at Pointe
du Hoe after scaling cliffs with rope ladders, but after the first three
hours of the invasion it appeared for a while that the Omaha invaders
had been stopped on the beach. The presence of an elite German infantry
division that for three months had escaped Allied intelligence accounted
in large measure for the difficulties of the 5th Corps. Only through
improvisation and courageous personal leadership were the troops at
last able to get off the beach and onto the cliffs beyond. Even then
the infantry had very few heavy weapons and no supporting artillery.
The beach was congested with disabled and burning vehicles, and the
beachhead was a strip of land less than 2 miles deep. Nevertheless,
as night fell, 34,000 men were ashore.
Troops of the British Second Army meanwhile began to
land at 7:20 A.M. On Gold Beach the advance elements of the 50th Division
were pinned down at first by German fire, but gradually they worked
their way around the resistance and pushed rapidly inland. By the end
of the day they had advanced about 5 miles. The Canadian 3d Division
on Juno Beach met even stiffer resistance, but once clear of the beaches
the Canadians moved rapidly and by the end of the day had reached the
Caen-Bayeux highway. The British 3d Division on the left also met intense
opposition on Sword Beach, but by the end of the day linked up with
the 6th Airborne Division.
Despite the immense problems at Omaha Beach, the Allies
by the end of D-day had established apparently solid footholds on the
Continent. Casualties everywhere, including bloody Omaha, were lighter
than expected. They were lightest of all at Utah Beach (less than 200),
though the airborne divisions behind the beach lost 2,499 men, including
338 known dead and 1,257 missing. At Omaha the Americans lost approximately
2,000 men. British and Canadian casualties were about 4,000.
Though German opposition had been firm on all beaches except Utah and
particularly disturbing at Omaha, D-day passed with a surprising lack
of counterattacks. Only near Caen, where a panzer division in late afternoon
struck the British 3d Division, was there more than passive resistance,
and the 3d Division stopped this thrust with little loss of ground.
The most significant German development was the ordering of a panzer
corps to the Caen area, a harbinger of the fact that the Germans saw
the British landings and their threat to open ground leading toward
Paris as the Allied main effort.
By the end of D-day, the Americans had landed the equivalent
of 8 regiments amphibiously. By the end of the following day, 5 divisions
(including the 2 airborne divisions) were ashore and operational, though
all were deficient in transportation facilities, tank support, artillery,
and supplies. An ammunition shortage was serious, particularly on Omaha.
The Americans had planned to have about 107,000 troops ashore by the
end of the second day, but the total was approximately 20,000 short.
Only about half the planned 14,000 vehicles had been disembarked, and
only a fourth of the anticipated 14,500 tons of supplies were on the
beaches.
Meanwhile, Eisenhower ordered Bradley's First Army to
give priority to the task of linking the two American beachheads and
of making contact with the British. In compliance with this order the
1st Division pushed eastward to gain contact with the British on June
8, the 29th Division took Isigny on June 9, and the 101st Airborne Division
captured Carentan on June 12. With Carentan in hand and the beachheads
joined, the 7th Corps turned its attention to Cherbourg. Halting further
expansion inland of Maj. Gen. (later Gen.) Leonard T. Gerow's 5th Corps,
which had taken Caumont and was near the road center and departmental
capital of St.Lo, Bradley on June 13 placed the bulk of the incoming
resources at the disposal of Maj. Gen. (later Gen.) J. Lawton Collins'
7th Corps. During the night of June 17, the 7th Corps cut the Cotentin
Peninsula and sealed off Cherbourg from German reinforcement. Two days
later, Collins began to push northward toward the port city with 3 divisions.
Organized resistance in Cherbourg ceased on June 27. Meanwhile, headquarters
of the 19th Corps, commanded by Maj. Gen. Charles H. Corlett, had entered
the line near St.-Lo on June 14. Maj. Gen. (later Lt. Gen.) Troy H.
Middleton's 8th Corps also arrived and took control of the forces at
the base of the Cotentin Peninsula on June 15. The British had meanwhile
captured Bayeux and expanded and enlarged their beachhead, but Caen,
a D-day objective, remained out of reach.
In these early days the Allies used two methods to get
supplies ashore: direct discharge onto the beach from landing craft
and unloading the cargo carried by larger vessels moored offshore into
ferry craft and DUKW's (amphibious trucks) for transport either to the
beach or to the artificial ports (Mulberries). Not until the destroyed
facilities at Cherbourg were repaired in mid-July was this port to begin
to take some of the logistical strain from the beaches. A great storm
that raged between June 19 and June 22 wrecked scores of craft and smashed
the artificial harbors. High winds demolished the American Mulberry
beyond repair, but the British artificial quay was later restored to
full use. Nearly 100 LCVP's and LCM's, plus many LCT's and larger craft,
were lost and 19 of 20 rhino ferries were destroyed. Despite this calamity,
which stopped unloading operations for several days, the Allies developed
an ability to bring ashore over the open beaches surprisingly large
amounts of tonnage.
By July 1, three weeks after the initial landings, the
first phase of the invasion came to an end. Almost 1,000,000 men, more
than 500,000 tons of supplies, and 177,000 vehicles had been landed
in the American and British zones. A total of 27 Allied divisions had
arrived on the Continent, and more were about to come. The German's
golden opportunity to smash the invasion by decisive counterattack before
the Allies were firmly established had passed. German failure to react
in strength was attributable to the condition of the French railroads
and to unrelenting air attacks that enabled German divisions to reach
the battle zone only with utmost difficulty and after serious delays.
Units arrived piecemeal, often lacking essential weapons and short of
fuel and ammunition. Continuing pressure of Allied attacks then forced
German commanders to commit the new divisions as they arrived so that
a major counterattacking force could never be assembled. The two leading
German commanders on the scene, Rundstedt and Rommel, both were convinced
that they now had no chance to drive the Allies into the sea. Persuaded
that Germany had lost the war, Rundstedt asked to be relieved from command.
Granting the request, Hitler replaced him as commander in chief in the
west with Field Marshal Hans Gunther von Kluge. Rommel, though discouraged,
remained. The strategy enunciated by Hitler for the western front was
essentially negative: hold fast until miracle weapons might turn the
course of the war.
Battle of the Hedgerows
Despite Allied success in getting ashore in Normandy,
the lodgment secured by the beginning of July was much smaller than
had been anticipated. Because the British seemed stalled before Caen,
Bradley's First Army initiated on July 3 the offensive that became known
as the battle of the hedgerows. The hedgerows are walls, half earth
and half hedge, that enclose the tiny fields in the Cotentin, the region
south of Cherbourg. As each of four American corps launched an attack
in turn, the Americans struck across a waterlogged and hedgerow-laced
area that was perfectly suited to defense. Confined in a relatively
small sector and confronted with difficult terrain and inadequate roads,
the Americans fought an enemy favored by endless lines of natural fortifications
(the hedgerows) and aided by daily rains which negated Allied tactical
air support and reduced observation. Though inferior in numbers and
deficient in supplies and equipment, the Germans inflicted 40,000 casualties
on the First Army, which gained only a few miles of ground. The climax
of the battle occurred on July 18, when the 19th Corps at last captured
St.-Lo.
The British meanwhile had thwarted dangerous armored
counterattacks at the end of June, and then secured half of Caen by
launching a massive attack on July 8 supported by heavy bombers. This
was an unusual use of aircraft normally employed against strategic targets
far in the enemy rear. In this attack, 460 planes dropped 2,300 tons
of high-explosive bombs in 40 minutes. Following the aerial attack,
British and Canadian ground troops, though hampered by bomb craters
and debris-clogged roads, reached the Orne River, which flows through
Caen. Ten days later, on July 18, General Montgomery launched a similar
attack, code named Goodwood. After 2,100 planes dropped more than 8,000
tons of high explosive, British and Canadian ground troops advanced
from Caen toward Falaise. Despite high optimism for a decisive penetration
of the enemy defense line, the attack carried for only 6 miles before
bogging down.
Rommel had on July 17 been eliminated from the battle
when an Allied plane strafed his staff car and forced it into a ditch.
Suffering a brain concussion, he was taken to a hospital. Kluge assumed
his place, commanding both the theater headquarters and Army Group B.
Three days later, on July 20, a conspiracy among German officers almost
succeeded in assassinating the furer and gaining control of the government
with the aim of ending the war. From this point on, Hitler became ever
more suspicious of his subordinates. He eventually forced Rommel, who
was implicated in the plot, to commit suicide. He took stronger control
of battlefield operations. Though the plot had no visible effect on
the campaign, the miracle of Hitler's survival impressed the German
people and gave Hitler's unilateral direction of the war even greater
strength.
Breakthrough
To penetrate the German defenses and make a limited
exploitation to the town of Coutances, General Bradley on July 13 drew
an outline plan called Cobra. This plan projected a heavy attack on
a narrow front just west of St.-Lo, the ground effort to be propelled
forward by a mighty air attack. Bradley concentrated 6 divisions under
Collins' 7th Corps and called for support by heavy bombers. Some planes
in Operation Cobra were already under way when overcast skies forced
a day's postponement. Failing to receive word of the delay, approximately
350 bombers already over the target dropped around 700 tons of bombs,
some of which struck American troops. On July 25, the operation officially
got under way as 2,500 planes dropped approximately 4,000 tons of bombs
on a rectangular "carpet" 7 miles long and 2 miles wide along
the Periers-St.-Lo highway. Though some bombs again fell short and caused
casualties among the American ground troops, 3 infantry divisions followed
the bombardment closely and attempted to open a hole for exploiting
forces. The Germans, though badly hurt, appeared to be holding, but
commitment of 2 additional American divisions on the second day and
a third on the next opened a tremendous breach. General Bradley had
achieved his breakthrough. Modifying his plans, he broadened the scope
of the operation, and all four corps of his First Army drove ahead.
By the end of the month the 7th and 8th Corps in less than a week had
advanced about 30 miles. Far beyond Coutances, Americans took Avranches
and gained the base of the Cotentin. This made possible not only a swing
to the west into Brittany but a swing to the east, around the German
left flank, toward the Seine River and Paris.
The outstanding achievement of the last week in July
was the result of many factors. The Americans had outmaneuvered the
Germans. Hard fighting by the 19th Corps at Tessy-surVire had blocked
Kluge from sending two panzer divisions into the Cobra area to disrupt
the breakthrough operation. Aggressive armored action, supported by
tactical aircraft giving excellent close support, trapped considerable
German forces near Coutances. Bradley's forces had, in effect, crushed
the German left flank and thereby invalidated Hitler's tactic of standing
fast until new developments in weapons might alter the situation. On
August 1, Bradley turned over the command of the First Army to Lt. Gen.
(later Gen.) Courtney H. Hodges. On the same day, General Patton's Third
Army became operational. Both armies went under the command of Bradley,
who became the commander of the Twelfth Army Group.
Breakout into Brittany
Middleton's 8th Corps, now under the Third Army, turned
west from Avranches and entered Brittany. One armored division drove
to Rennes and then to Lorient, another armored division drove to Brest,
and an infantry division moved to St.-Malo. The entrance of American
troops into Brittany chased the Germans into these port cities, as well
as St.Nazaire and Nantes, which Hitler had designated as fortresses
to be held to the last man. While small American forces contained the
Germans in the port cities, siege operations got under way at St.-Malo,
which was finally captured on August 17. The 8th Corps then moved to
Brest and initiated siege operations on August 25. A fierce battle at
that city finally ended on September 18. Meanwhile, headquarters of
the United States Ninth Army, under Lt. Gen. William H. Simpson, had
been committed in Brittany in order to provide control over operations
that were increasingly farther behind the main front.
Though operations in Brittany had been undertaken with
the object of gaining the port cities as points of entry for additional
troops and supplies coming directly from the United States, the strong
German defenses at St.-Malo and Brest and the accompanying destruction
of the port facilities prompted a change in Allied plans. Not only did
the Allies decide not to rehabilitate the destroyed port cities; they
also decided not to commence constructing the port complex at Quiberon
Bay, the project code named Chastity, for by this time Brittany was
far removed from the main stage of operations. Early in August, the
main Allied armies had swept eastward from Avranches.
Breakout to the East
When the Third Army became operational on August 1,
General Patton took control not only of the 8th Corps operations in
Brittany but also of Maj. Gen. (later Gen.) Wade H. Haislip's 15th Corps,
which turned southeastward toward Mayenne. Taking Mayenne on August
4, capturing Laval on August 5, and seizing Le Mans on August 8, the
15th Corps formed an enveloping pincer that extended more than 75 miles
around the German left flank. Meanwhile, the First Army also swung southeastward
toward the road centers of Vire and Mortain, thereby starting a swinging
movement designed to carry the Allies to the Seine River and the periphery
of the lodgment area envisioned by the Overlord planners. But the Germans
turned and sprang. Hoping to regain Avranches and thereby to close the
holethat Bradley had punched in their defenses, the Germans launched
a counterattack at Mortain on August 7. They were motivated by the desire
to reestablish the conditions of static warfare that had served them
well during June and most of July. They struck the 30th Infantry Division
of Collins' 7th Corps with full force. Quickly reinforced by Bradley,
the 7th Corps fought a magnificent defensive battle to halt the German
threat.
By attacking westward through Mortain toward Avranches,
the Germans had placed their heads into a potential noose. Bradley saw
the possibility of encircling the Germans and proposed this maneuver
to Montgomery, who agreed. Bradley therefore directed Patton to turn
the 15th Corps northward from Le Mans toward the successive objectives
of Alengon and Argentan with the purpose of cutting behind the Germans
at Mortain. If Montgomery's forces drove southward from the Caen area
and reached Falaise, the Allies would form a pocket and threaten the
enemy's Fifth Panzer and Seventh armies with encirclement and annihilation.
General Crerar's Canadian First Army, which had become operational on
the Continent on July 23, attacked southward toward Falaise on August
8, but gained little ground. In contrast, Haislip's 15th Corps took
Alengon and was within sight of Argentan by August 13. Because the American
troops had reached the boundary line separating American and British
zones of operations, Bradley ordered Patton to halt further advance
by Haislip's corps. This decision was dictated in part by the fact that
Crerar was about to launch a heavy attack on the following day. On August
14, after 800 planes had dropped 3,700 tons of bombs to clear a path
for the ground troops, the Canadians launched their attack. Two days
later they reached Falaise. Allied forces were then only 15 miles apart,
but the Germans were escaping eastward out of the pocket through this
15-mile sector, called the Argentan-Falaise gap.
Bradley had meanwhile approved Patton's plan to send
part of the 15th Corps to the Seine. This movement got under way on
August 14. Five days later the 79th Division was crossing the Seine
River and establishing a bridgehead on the east bank. Other troops of
the 15th Corps, soon joined by the First Army's 19th Corps under Corlett,
were driving down the west bank of the Seine and pushing the Germans
toward the mouth of the river, where escape crossings were harder to
find. While this secpnd encirclement at the Seine was in progress, the
Allied troops holding the shoulders of the first encirclement at Argentan
and Falaise were at last making contact at Chambois and Trun. They thus
closed the pocket on August 20, trapping more than 50,000 German troops,
destroying an additional 10,000, and sending the Fifth Panzer and Seventh
armies reeling eastward across the Seine in defeat. Field Marshal Walter
Model meanwhile had become commander in chief in the west, replacing
Kluge, who committed suicide.
By this time two more American corps had come on the
scene. Maj. Gen. (later Gen.) Walton H. Walker's 20th Corps, after taking
Angers, turned to take Chartres. Maj. Gen. Gilbert R. Cook's 12th Corps
drove toward Orleans. By August 20, when the First and Third armies
pulled up to the Seine, Eisenhower had already decided to ignore the
original limits of the lodgment area and cross the river in strength
in pursuit of the disorganized enemy force. Meanwhile, as British and
Canadian armies moved to the Seine, American and French troops liberated
Paris.
Liberation of Paris
The climactic incident in the Normandy campaign was
the liberation of Paris, which occurred almost by accident. In order
to avoid a battle that would damage the French capital and inflict casualties
on its inhabitants, General Eisenhower intended originally to bypass
Paris. Hitler for his part wished to retain the city for the prestige
involved, and he designated it a "fortress" to be fought over
until it was, as he put it, "a field of ruins." The French
wanted Paris liberated not only because its capture would signify a
crowning achievement for the resistance, but also because it would establish
General de Gaulle in the seat of government. Thus a three-cornered struggle
developed, with the Germans preparing to fight on the western outskirts
and, if necessary, inside the city, with the French putting pressure
on Eisenhower to send troops to liberate the capital, and with the Allies
preparing to go around the city in the more important pursuit to the
German border and in the hope that the capital would fall into Allied
hands once it was isolated. A spontaneous uprising within the city on
August 19 changed all plans.
Lacking the means to put down the uprising in the face
of Allied advances near the city and unwilling to destroy the capital,
the German commander concluded a truce with the resistance leaders.
Erroneous reports that the Germans were about to destroy the city before
withdrawing, as well as news of grave food shortages in Paris, prompted
Eisenhower to change his mind. When he directed Bradley to take the
city, Bradley sent a Franco-American force under Gerow's 5th Corps to
perform the act. Gen. Jacques Philippe Leclerc's 2d Armored Division
was given the honor of the first entry into the city. But the German
defenses on the outskirts of Paris proved stronger than had been anticipated.
Though a small French unit penetrated into the center of the city around
midnight of August 24, the actual liberation had to await the next day,
when both French and American troops entered Paris. The German defense
quickly collapsed, and the German commander surrendered.
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