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In June 1944 America and her Allies were steeled to confront Germany's war-loving Nazis on their own soil and restore the ideals of the unified democracies to the Continent.
IN A RADIO SPEECH IN October 1940, Winston Churchill told France: "Good night then: Sleep to gather strength for the morning. For the morning will come. Brightly will it shine on the brave and the true, kindly upon all who suffer for the cause, glorious upon the tombs of heroes. Thus, will shine the dawn." But the dawn Churchill had forecast did not break until four years after the Germans had expelled British forces from Dunkirk's beaches. On June 6, 1944, the Allies returned to the Continent in Operation Overlord-the most important effort that Anglo-American military forces executed during the war.
By 1943, Allied planners had chosen France's Normandy Peninsula as their invasion site. The ill-fated 1942 Dieppe raid had taught them that the cost of taking a French port would probably be too high. By assaulting beaches rather than docks and piers, they would still face two huge challenges: crossing open beaches under fire, and then facing an engineering nightmare, running supply lines over those same beaches. By selecting Normandy, they rejected a more obvious choice, Pas de Calais, which was nearer to Britain-the invasion's point of origin-and to the Allies' ultimate destination, Germany. However, Pas de Calais was better defended than Normandy. That made all the difference.
Supreme commander General Dwight Eisenhower and land force commander General Bernard Montgomery knew they needed more than the four divisions (three infantry divisions and a single airborne division) they had been authorized. They demanded five infantry divisions and three airborne divisions. Air commanders objected to the airdrop, but Eisenhower backed Montgomery's request for massive airborne operations even after Sir Trafford Leigh-Mallory, commanding Allied air forces, estimated paratroops would suffer 90 percent losses.
Planning the buildup phase was a daunting problem because the Germans could use western France's road and rail networks to reinforce their units in Normandy faster than the Allies could get off the beaches. So Eisenhower's renowned chief deputy, Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Tedder, planned to use air power-including strategic bombers-to destroy the French transportation network.
First, Tedder and Eisenhower had to fight...