THE 156,000 ALLIED troops who landed on D-Day were successful in carving out a beachhead, but it was neither as large nor as secure as intended. If all had gone to plan, the liberated zone would have covered fifty miles of Normandy coast and included four of the landing beaches (Omaha, Gold, Juno and Sword). Perfectly executed, D-Day would also have seen the full capture of the cities of Bayeux and Caen. A further liberated zone was to have stretched eight miles inland from Utah Beach, encompassing Sainte-Mère-Église and a dozen or more nearby villages.
The reality after twenty-four hours was somewhat different: the Allies occupied little more than a precarious ribbon of coastline, with eleven miles of enemy territory between Utah and Omaha and three miles of still vulnerable no-man’s-land between Juno and Sword. Only the Gold and Juno beachheads had managed to link up.
Nor had the Allies penetrated far inland. At Juno, the Canadians had managed to advance six miles from the coast, but the American-controlled enclave at Omaha was just 2,000 yards deep. At Pointe du Hoc, the Ranger assault battalions were desperately clinging to their cliff-top position despite heavy casualties.
Those who planned the Allied landings always knew there would be a high cost in human life on that first day of combat. No definitive roster of the dead and wounded was ever compiled for 6 June itself, but subsequent research suggests that there were approximately 8,200 casualties on the right flank – Omaha, Utah and the Cotentin peninsula – and a further 3,000 British and Canadian casualties on the three other beaches. The number of German dead and injured remains unknown: estimates range from 4,000 to 9,000.
The death toll of French civilians is rarely mentioned, despite their many trials in the wake of the invasion. An estimated 3,000 men, women and children died in the forty-eight hours that followed the Allied landings.
This bloodshed was the price to be paid for the coastal bombardment, which aided the landing of massive quantities of military hardware. On Utah Beach, 1,742 vehicles were brought ashore before nightfall, while a further 6,000 vehicles were landed in the British sector, including 900 tanks and armoured vehicles. This was woefully short of the planned totals. The British alone were meant to have landed 10,000 vehicles. But although the beachhead was small, it enabled the Allies to pour in huge quantities of men and machines over the days that followed. Three weeks after D-Day, by the end of June, 850,000 men, 148,000 vehicles and 570,000 tons of supplies had been landed in Normandy. Five days after that, the number of troops would top 1 million.1
Securing the beachhead was just the beginning: it was followed by a ferocious battle for the rest of Normandy over the next eleven weeks as German panzer divisions fought with skill and determination. Although Bayeux was liberated on 7 June, the vital intersection city of Caen remained stubbornly in enemy hands. The Panzer Lehr division advanced rapidly towards the city, bringing 3,000 tanks and armoured vehicles. They joined forces with the 21st SS Panzer Division and the 12th SS Panzer and formed a near-impregnable belt around the outskirts. Caen would not be liberated until 21 July, by which time it was in ruins.
Smaller Normandy villages became the focus of vicious battles. At Tilly-sur-Seulles, the Panzer Lehr fought with tenacity; at Villers-Bocage, the British advance was brutally halted by German Tigers. The charred ruins of the town, which lay just thirteen miles from the coast, were not captured until 4 August.
On the right flank of the landing zone, the American drive towards Cherbourg proved equally taxing. They launched their attack on 22 June, but it took four days of intense fighting before the city’s Germans finally capitulated, by which time the port’s facilities had been systematically destroyed.
The great Allied break-out from Normandy began in the third week of July, a multi-stage operation with the British and Canadians driving southeastwards beyond Caen and the US Third Army pushing through German lines at Saint-Lô. Almost simultaneously, Hitler was severely wounded in the attempted assassination at his Wolf’s Lair field headquarters. The ‘July plot’ and its aftermath sent shock waves through the army high command. Among those implicated was Field Marshal Rommel, who had been injured in an Allied air attack three days earlier.
Rommel was given the choice to defend himself before a kangaroo court or commit suicide. He chose the latter after assurances that his family would be spared and he would be buried with full military honours. After denying any involvement in the plot – a source of controversy to this day – he swallowed cyanide.
As the Germans retreated in the wake of the great Allied advance, much of Army Group B and Panzer Group West were trapped at Falaise, in Calvados, where they suffered massive losses. Just a few days later the Allies reached Paris, which was liberated on 25 August.
It would take a further six months before Allied forces crossed the Rhine, with many hard-fought battles on the way. The collapse of the last German counter-offensive in the Ardennes – the so-called Battle of the Bulge that ended in January 1945 – paved the road to victory. The first Allied forces crossed the Rhine at Remagen on 7 March 1945, by which time the Red Army was fast approaching Berlin. The city was liberated on 2 May.
In all, D-Day would be followed by 335 days of fighting before Germany’s unconditional surrender on 7 May 1945 brought the war in Europe to a close.