D-Day: the Normandy landings

The Normandy landings, on 6 June 1944, were the Allied seaborne and airborne invasion of German-occupied France, often known simply as D-Day. Nearly 160,000 American, British, Canadian and other Allied troops came ashore or landed by air on the first day, opening a second front in western Europe during World War II. The operation began the liberation of France and western Europe and was the largest seaborne invasion in history.

By 1943 the Soviet Union was pressing its allies to open a second front in the west. The landing, part of a wider plan codenamed Operation Overlord, with the assault phase called Operation Neptune, was placed under the supreme command of the American general Dwight D. Eisenhower, with the British general Bernard Montgomery commanding the ground forces. Normandy was chosen over the narrower crossing to Calais, which the Germans expected. A large deception, Operation Fortitude, used dummy equipment, false radio traffic and double agents to suggest the main blow would fall near Calais. To supply the army without a captured port, the Allies built prefabricated harbours, the Mulberries, to be towed across the Channel.

Germany had fortified the coast with bunkers, guns, minefields and beach obstacles, known as the Atlantic Wall. Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, responsible for much of the defence in northern France, wanted to defeat the invasion on the beaches, but German armoured reserves were held back inland under a divided command.

The invasion was planned for 5 June but postponed by a day because of storms; on the strength of a forecast of a brief break in the weather, Eisenhower gave the order to go. During the night some 24,000 airborne troops landed by parachute and glider to secure the flanks: two American divisions behind the western beaches and one British division to the east, near the River Orne. At dawn, after heavy naval and air bombardment, troops landed on five beaches along about 80 kilometres of coast. American forces landed at Utah and Omaha, British forces at Gold and Sword, and Canadian forces at Juno, with Free French, Polish, Norwegian and other contingents also taking part. Around 5,000 ships and landing craft and thousands of aircraft supported the assault.

Utah was taken with relatively light losses, but at Omaha strong defences on the bluffs above the beach pinned the attackers down for hours, and it saw the heaviest casualties of the day. By nightfall the Allies held beachheads on all five beaches, though they were not yet joined up and most first-day objectives, including the city of Caen, had not been reached. Allied casualties on D-Day are estimated at around 10,000, including over 4,400 confirmed dead; German losses are estimated at between 4,000 and 9,000.

The bridgehead was expanded over the following weeks amid fierce fighting in the hedgerow country, the bocage. Caen fell only in July. At the end of July American forces broke out to the south and west, and much of the German army in Normandy was trapped and destroyed in the Falaise pocket in August. Paris was liberated on 25 August 1944, with Free French troops leading the way, and Charles de Gaulle arrived the same day, leading a victory parade on the 26th.

Together with the advance of the Red Army in the east, the landings placed Nazi Germany in a war on two fronts that led to its defeat in May 1945. D-Day is commemorated each year on the beaches, where large military cemeteries hold the dead of both sides.

Our 1938 map shows France before the war, and our 1945 map shows western Europe after the liberation and Germany's surrender.