Operation Overlord

Tuesday, 27 November 2012

D-Day invasion Operation Overlord, June 6 1944, Battle of Normandy

Operation Overlord 4: Race Extermination

Medal of Honor Allied Assault - Operation Overlord 1/5

Operation Overlord - A Tribute to the D-Day Allied Forces

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Australia
Australia ( /əˈstreɪljə/), officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent as well as the island of Tasmania and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area. Neighbouring countries include Indonesia, East Timor and Papua New Guinea to the north; the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and New Caledonia to the north-east; and New Zealand to the south-east.
For at least 40,000 years before European settlement in the late 18th century, Australia was inhabited by indigenous Australians, who belonged to one or more of roughly 250 language groups. After discovery by Dutch explorers in 1606, Australia's eastern half was claimed by Great Britain in 1770 and settled through penal transportation to the colony of New South Wales from 26 January 1788. The population grew steadily in subsequent decades; the continent was explored and an additional five self-governing Crown Colonies were established.

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Battle for Caen
The Battle for Caen from June-August 1944 was a battle between Allied (primarily British and Canadian troops) and German forces during the Battle of Normandy.
Originally, the Allies aimed to take the French city of Caen, one of the largest cities in Normandy, on D-Day. Caen was a vital objective for several reasons. Firstly, it lay astride the Orne River and Caen Canal; these two water obstacles could strengthen a German defensive position if not crossed. Secondly, Caen was a road hub; in German hands it would enable the enemy to shift forces rapidly. Thirdly, the area around Caen was relatively open, especially compared to the bocage country in the west of Normandy. This area was valued for airfield construction.
On D-Day, Caen was an objective for the British 3rd Infantry Division and remained the focal point for a series of battles throughout June, July and into August. The battle did not go as planned for the Allies, instead dragging on for two months, because German forces devoted most of their reserves to holding Caen, particularly their badly-needed armor reserves. As a result German forces facing the American invasion thrust further west were spread thin, relying on the rough terrain of the back country to slow down the American advance. With so many German divisions held up defending Caen, the American forces were eventually able to break through to the south and east, threatening to encircle the German forces in Normandy from behind.

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Battle of Caen
The Battle for Caen from June-August 1944 was a battle between Allied (primarily British and Canadian troops) and German forces during the Battle of Normandy.
Originally, the Allies aimed to take the French city of Caen, one of the largest cities in Normandy, on D-Day. Caen was a vital objective for several reasons. Firstly, it lay astride the Orne River and Caen Canal; these two water obstacles could strengthen a German defensive position if not crossed. Secondly, Caen was a road hub; in German hands it would enable the enemy to shift forces rapidly. Thirdly, the area around Caen was relatively open, especially compared to the bocage country in the west of Normandy. This area was valued for airfield construction.
On D-Day, Caen was an objective for the British 3rd Infantry Division and remained the focal point for a series of battles throughout June, July and into August. The battle did not go as planned for the Allies, instead dragging on for two months, because German forces devoted most of their reserves to holding Caen, particularly their badly-needed armor reserves. As a result German forces facing the American invasion thrust further west were spread thin, relying on the rough terrain of the back country to slow down the American advance. With so many German divisions held up defending Caen, the American forces were eventually able to break through to the south and east, threatening to encircle the German forces in Normandy from behind.

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Battle of Dunkirk
The Battle of Dunkirk was a battle in the Second World War between the Allies and Germany. As part of the Battle of France on the Western Front, the Battle of Dunkirk was the defence and evacuation of British and allied forces in Europe from 26 May to 4 June 1940.
After the Phoney War, the Battle of France began in earnest on 10 May 1940. To the east, the German Army Group B invaded and subdued the Netherlands and advanced westward through Belgium. In response, the Supreme Allied Commander—French General Maurice Gamelin—initiated "Plan D" which relied heavily on the Maginot Line fortifications. Gamelin committed the forces under his command, three mechanised armies, the French First and Seventh and the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) to the River Dyle. On 14 May, German Army Group A burst through the Ardennes and advanced rapidly to the west toward Sedan, then turned northward to the English Channel, in what Generalfeldmarschall Erich von Manstein called the "Sickle Cut" (known as "Plan Yellow" or the Manstein Plan), effectively flanking the Allied forces.

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Battle of Stalingrad
Coordinates: 48°42′N 44°31′E / 48.7°N 44.517°E / 48.7; 44.517
The Battle of Stalingrad was a major and decisive battle of World War II in which Nazi Germany and its allies fought the Soviet Union for control of the city of Stalingrad (now Volgograd) in southwestern Russia. The battle took place between 23 August 1942 to 2 February 1943 and was the largest battle on the Eastern Front, marked by brutality and disregard for military and civilian casualties. It is among the bloodiest battles in the history of warfare, with the higher estimates of combined casualties amounting to nearly two million. The heavy losses inflicted on the German army made it a significant turning point in the whole war. After the Battle of Stalingrad, German forces never recovered their earlier strength, and attained no further strategic victories in the East.
The German offensive to capture Stalingrad commenced in late summer 1942, and was supported by intensive Luftwaffe bombing which reduced much of the city to rubble. The German offensive eventually became mired in building-to-building fighting; and despite controlling nearly all of the city at times, the Wehrmacht was unable to dislodge the last Soviet defenders clinging tenaciously to the west bank of the Volga River.

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Belgium
Belgium (ⁱ/ˈbɛldʒəm/ BEL-jəm), officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO. Belgium covers an area of 30,528 square kilometres (11,787 sq mi), and it has a population of about 11 million people. Straddling the cultural boundary between Germanic and Latin Europe, Belgium is home to two main linguistic groups, the Dutch-speakers, mostly Flemish (about 60%), and the French-speakers, mostly Walloons (about 40%), plus a small group of German-speakers. Belgium's two largest regions are the Dutch-speaking region of Flanders in the north and the French-speaking southern region of Wallonia. The Brussels-Capital Region, officially bilingual, is a mostly French-speaking enclave within the Flemish Region. A German-speaking Community exists in eastern Wallonia. Belgium's linguistic diversity and related political conflicts are reflected in the political history and a complex system of government.

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Blenheim Palace
Blenheim Palace (/ˈblɛnəm/) (pronounced "Blen-im") is a monumental stately home situated in Woodstock, Oxfordshire, England. It is the seat of the Dukes of Marlborough. The palace, one of England's largest houses, was built between 1705 and circa 1724. UNESCO recognised the palace as a World Heritage Site in 1987.
The palace's construction was originally intended to be a gift to John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough from a grateful nation in return for military triumph against the French and Bavarians at the Battle of Blenheim. However, it soon became the subject of political infighting, which led to Marlborough's exile, the fall from power of his duchess, and irreparable damage to the reputation of the architect Sir John Vanbrugh.
Designed in the rare, and short-lived, English Baroque style, architectural appreciation of the palace is as divided today as it was in the 1720s. It is unique in its combined usage as a family home, mausoleum and national monument. The palace is also notable as the birthplace and ancestral home of Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill.

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Brittany
Brittany (French: Bretagne [bʁətaɲ] ( listen); Breton: Breizh, pronounced [brɛjs]; Gallo: Bertaèyn) is a cultural region in the north-west of France. Previously a kingdom and then a duchy, Brittany was united to the Kingdom of France in 1532 as a province. Brittany has also been referred to as Less, Lesser or Little Britain (as opposed to Great Britain). Brittany is considered as one of the six Celtic nations.
Brittany occupies the northwest peninsula of continental Europe in northwest France. It is bordered by the English Channel to the north, the Celtic Sea and the Atlantic Ocean to the west, and the Bay of Biscay to the south. Its land area is 34,023 km² (13,136 sq mi). The historical province of Brittany is divided into five departments: Finistère in the west, Côtes-d'Armor in the north, Ille-et-Vilaine in the north east, Loire-Atlantique in the south east and Morbihan in the south on the Bay of Biscay.
In 1956, French regions were created by gathering departments between them. The Region of Brittany comprises, since then, four of the five Breton departments (80% of historical Brittany), while the remaining area of the old Brittany, the Loire-Atlantique department, around Nantes, forms part of the Pays de la Loire region. This territorial organisation is regularly contested. The Kingdom and the Duchy of Brittany, the province of Brittany, and the modern Region of Brittany cover the Western part of Armorica, as it was known during the period of Roman occupation.

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Camp Griffiss
Camp Griffiss was a US military base in the United Kingdom during and after World War II.
Camp Griffiss was located in the Teddington end of Bushy Park, London, England.
From 1942, Camp Griffiss in Bushy Park became the site of a large US base, headquarters to a number of the Allied departments. The camp served as the European Headquarters for the USAAF from July 1942 to December 1944. General Dwight Eisenhower was averse to working in the centre of London during World War II. He decided instead to make Bushy Park the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) centre for planning Operation Overlord, the code name for the Allied invasion of north-west Europe that began with the D-Day landings.
The base was named after Lieutenant Colonel Townsend Griffiss. Griffiss had been aide to Major General James E. Chaney, and was killed in a friendly fire incident when the aircraft in which he was a passenger was mistakenly shot down by Royal Air Force (RAF) Polish fliers. He was the first US airman to die in the line of duty in Europe since the US entered World War II.

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Canada
Canada ( /ˈkænədə/) is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean. Spanning over 9,900,000 km² (3,800,000 sq mi), Canada is the world's second-largest country by total area, and its common border with the United States is the longest land border in the world.
The land that is now Canada has been inhabited for millennia by various Aboriginal peoples. Beginning in the late 15th century, British and French colonial expeditions explored, and later settled, along the region's Atlantic coast. France ceded nearly all of its colonies in North America in 1763 after the Seven Years' War. In 1867, with the union of three British North American colonies through Confederation, Canada was formed as a federal dominion of four provinces. This began an accretion of provinces and territories and a process of increasing autonomy; the Canada Act 1982 severed the vestiges of legal dependence on Britain.

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Chartwell
Coordinates: 51°14′39″N 0°04′57″E / 51.244090°N 0.082450°E / 51.244090; 0.082450
Chartwell was the principal adult home of Sir Winston Churchill. Churchill and his wife Clementine bought the property, located two miles south of Westerham, Kent, England, in 1922. Extensive renovations simplifying and modernising the home were undertaken directly, completely transforming it when complete.
When it became clear to the Churchills in 1946 that they could not afford to run the property, a consortium of wealthy businessmen organized by Lord Camrose purchased the estate. The arrangement was that for payment of nominal rent both Sir Winston and Lady Churchill would have the right to live there until their deaths, when the property would be presented to the National Trust. When Sir Winston died in 1965, Clementine decided to present Chartwell to the National Trust immediately.
The site had been built upon at least as early as the 16th century, when the estate had been called 'Well Street'.Henry VIII is reputed to have stayed in the house during his courtship of Anne Boleyn at nearby Hever Castle. The original farmhouse was significantly enlarged and modified during the 19th century. It became, according to the National Trust, an example of 'Victorian architecture at its least attractive, a ponderous red-brick country mansion of tile-hung gables and poky oriel windows'.

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Cotentin Peninsula
The Cotentin Peninsula, also known as the Cherbourg Peninsula, is a peninsula in Normandy, forming part of the north-western coast of France. It juts out north-westwards into the English Channel, towards Great Britain. To its west lie the Channel Islands and to the southwest lies the Brittany Peninsula.
The peninsula lies wholly within the département of Manche, in the région of Basse-Normandie.
It is part of the Armorican Massif and lies between the estuary of the Vire River and Mont Saint Michel Bay. It is divided into three areas: the headland of La Hague, the Cotentin Pass (Le Plain), and the valley of the Saire River (Val-de-Saire). It forms the bulk of the Manche département. Its southern part called "le Marais"(Marshlands) Crosses from Est to West Just in the north of Carentan and Lessay and marks a natural border with the rest of La Manche.
The largest town in the peninsula is Cherbourg on the north coast, a major cross-channel port. Other towns of note: Valognes, Barfleur, Bricquebec, Barneville-Carteret, Beaumont Hague, Les Pieux, La Haye du Puits, Montebourg.

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Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia or Czecho-Slovakia (Czech and Slovak: Československo, Česko-Slovensko) was a sovereign state in Central Europe which existed from October 1918, when it declared its independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, until 1992. From 1939 to 1945, the state did not de facto exist because of its forced division and partial incorporation into Nazi Germany, but the Czechoslovak government-in-exile nevertheless continued to exist during this period. In 1945, the eastern part of Carpathian Ruthenia was taken over by the Soviet Union. On 1 January 1993, Czechoslovakia peacefully split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
Form of state:
Neighbours:
Topography:
The country was of generally irregular terrain. The western area was part of north-central European uplands. The eastern region was composed of northern reaches of Carpathian Mountains and Danube River basin lands.
Climate:
The weather was predominantly continental, but varied from the moderate temperature of Western Europe in the west, to more severe weather of Eastern Europe and the western Soviet Union in the east.

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Devon
Coordinates: 50°42′N 3°48′W / 50.7°N 3.8°W / 50.7; -3.8
Devon ( /ˈdɛvən/) is a large county in southwestern England. The county is sometimes referred to as Devonshire, although it has never been officially "shired" and that use often indicates a traditional or historical context. Nowadays, "Devonshire" is mostly a demonym.
The county shares borders with Cornwall to the west and Dorset and Somerset to the east. Its southern coast abuts the English Channel and its northern coast the Bristol Channel and Celtic Sea. The name "Devon" derives from the ancient Dumnonia, which was home to the independent kingdom of Brythonic Celtic speaking people who inhabited this area of the southwestern peninsula of Britain continuously from through the Roman era until partial absorption into the English-speaking Kingdom of Wessex some time in the eighth or ninth century, with some emigration to the sister Kingdom of Domnonee in Brittany taking place.
Devon is the fourth largest of the English counties by area and has a population of 1,141,600 making it the 11th most populous. The county town is the cathedral city of Exeter. In addition to Devon County Council, the county contains two unitary authorities (independent from Devon County Council's control): the port city of Plymouth and Torbay, a conurbation of seaside resorts. Plymouth is also the largest city in Devon. Much of the county is rural (including national park) land, with a low population density by British standards. It contains Dartmoor 954 km² (368 sq mi), the largest open space in southern England. It is the only English county to have two separate coastlines – a north and southern coastline.

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Dunkirk evacuation
The Dunkirk evacuation, commonly known as the Miracle of Dunkirk, code-named Operation Dynamo by the British, was the evacuation of Allied soldiers from the beaches and harbour of Dunkirk, France, between 27 May and the early hours of 4 June 1940, because the British, French, and Belgian troops were cut off by the German army during the Battle of Dunkirk in the Second World War. The evacuation was ordered on 26 May. In a speech to the House of Commons, Winston Churchill called the events in France "a colossal military disaster", saying that "the whole root and core and brain of the British Army" had been stranded at Dunkirk and seemed about to perish or be captured. In his We shall fight on the beaches speech on 4 June, he hailed their rescue as a "miracle of deliverance".
On the first day, only 7,011 men were evacuated, but by the ninth day, a total of 338,226 soldiers (198,229 British and 139,997 French) had been rescued by the hastily assembled fleet of 850 boats. Many of the troops were able to embark from the harbour's protective mole onto 42 British destroyers and other large ships, while others had to wade from the beaches toward the ships, waiting for hours to board, shoulder-deep in water. Others were ferried from the beaches to the larger ships, and thousands were carried back to Britain by the famous "little ships of Dunkirk", a flotilla of around 700 merchant marine boats, fishing boats, pleasure craft and Royal National Lifeboat Institution lifeboats—the smallest of which was the 18 ft (5.5 m) fishing boat Tamzine, now in the Imperial War Museum—whose civilian crews were called into service for the emergency. The "miracle of the little ships" remains a prominent folk memory in Britain.

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English Channel
The English Channel (French: la Manche, Breton: Mor Breizh, Cornish: Mor Bretannek), often referred to simply as the Channel, is an arm of the Atlantic Ocean that separates southern England from northern France, and joins the North Sea to the Atlantic. It is about 560 km (350 mi) long and varies in width from 240 km (150 mi) at its widest to 34 km (21 mi) in the Strait of Dover. It is the smallest of the shallow seas around the continental shelf of Europe, covering an area of some 75,000 km² (29,000 sq mi).
The International Hydrographic Organization defines the limits of the English Channel as follows:
On the West. A line joining Isle Vierge (48°38′23″N 4°34′13″W / 48.63972°N 4.57028°W / 48.63972; -4.57028) to Lands End (50°04′N 5°43′W / 50.067°N 5.717°W / 50.067; -5.717).
On the East. The Southwestern limit of the North Sea.
The IHO defines the southwestern limit of the North Sea as "a line joining the Walde Lighthouse (France, 1°55'E) and Leathercoat Point (England, 51°10'N)". The Walde Lighthouse is 6 km east of Calais (50°59′06″N 1°55′00″E / 50.985°N 1.9166667°E / 50.985; 1.9166667), and Leathercoat Point is at the north end of St Margaret's Bay, Kent (51°10′00″N 1°24′00″E / 51.1666667°N 1.4°E / 51.1666667; 1.4).

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Gold Beach
Gold Beach was the code name of one of the D-Day landing beaches that Allied forces used to invade German-occupied France on 6 June 1944, during World War II.
Gold Beach lay in the area assigned to the 50th (Northumbrian) Infantry Division commanded by Major General Douglas Alexander Graham, and the 8th Armoured Brigade, part of Lieutenant General Miles Dempsey's British 2nd Army. Gold Beach had three main assault sectors – these were designated (from west to east): Item, Jig (split into sections Green and Red), and King (also in two sections named Green and Red). A fourth, named How, was not used as a landing area.
The beach was to be assaulted by the 50th Division between Le Hamel and Ver sur Mer. Attached to them were elements of 79th (Armoured) Division. The 231st Infantry Brigade would come ashore on Jig Sector at Le Hamel/Asnelles and the 69th Brigade at King Sector in front of Ver sur Mer. No. 47 (Royal Marine) Commando, attached to the 50th Division for the landing, was assigned to Item sector.

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Greece
Greece ⁱ/ˈɡriːs/ (Greek: Ελλάδα, Ellada, IPA: [eˈlaða] ( listen) historically in Katharevousa and Ancient Greek: Ἑλλάς, Hellas, IPA: [eˈlas] and [helːás] respectively), officially the Hellenic Republic (Ελληνική Δημοκρατία, Elliniki Dimokratia, IPA: [eliniˈci ðimokraˈtia]), is a country in Southern Europe, politically considered part of Western Europe.Athens is the capital and the largest city in the country (its urban area also including Piraeus). The population of the country is around 11 million.
Greece has land borders with Albania, the Republic of Macedonia and Bulgaria to the north, and Turkey to the east. The Aegean Sea lies to the east of mainland Greece, the Ionian Sea to the west, and the Mediterranean Sea to the south. Greece has the 11th longest coastline in the world at 13,676 km (8,498 mi) in length, featuring a vast number of islands (approximately 1,400, of which 227 are inhabited), including Crete, the Dodecanese, the Cyclades, and the Ionian Islands among others. Eighty percent of Greece consists of mountains, of which Mount Olympus is the highest at 2,917 m (9,570 ft).

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Hill 262
Hill 262, or the Mont Ormel ridge (elevation 262 metres (860 ft)), is an area of high ground above the village of Coudehard in Normandy that was the location of a bloody engagement in the final stages of the Normandy Campaign during the Second World War. By late summer 1944, the bulk of two German armies had become surrounded by the Allies near the town of Falaise. The Mont Ormel ridge, with its commanding view of the area, sat astride the Germans' only escape route. Polish forces seized the ridge's northern height on 19 August and, despite being isolated and coming under sustained attack, held it until noon on 21 August, contributing greatly to the decisive Allied victory that followed.
The American success of Operation Cobra provided the Allies with an opportunity to cut off and destroy most German forces west of the River Seine. American, British and Canadian armies converged on the area around Falaise, trapping the German Seventh Army and elements of the Fifth Panzer Army in what became known as the "Falaise pocket". On 20 August Generalfeldmarschall Walter Model ordered a withdrawal, but by this time the Allies were already blocking his path. During the night of 19 August, two battlegroups of Stanisław Maczek's Polish 1st Armoured Division had established themselves in the mouth of the Falaise pocket on and around the northernmost of the Mont Ormel ridge's two peaks.

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Invasion of Normandy
The Invasion of Normandy was the invasion and establishment of Allied forces in Normandy, France, during Operation Overlord in 1944 during World War II. It was the largest amphibious operation ever to take place.
Allied land forces that saw combat in Normandy on 6 June came from Canada, the Free French Forces, the United Kingdom, and the United States. In the weeks following the invasion, Polish forces also participated, as well as contingents from Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Greece, and the Netherlands. Most of the above countries also provided air and naval support, as did the Royal Australian Air Force, the Royal New Zealand Air Force, and the Royal Norwegian Navy.
The Normandy invasion began with overnight parachute and glider landings, massive air attacks and naval bombardments. In the early morning, amphibious landings on five beaches codenamed Juno, Gold, Omaha, Utah, and Sword began and during the evening the remaining elements of the parachute divisions landed. The "D-Day" forces deployed from bases along the south coast of England, the most important of these being Portsmouth.

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Juno Beach
Juno or Juno Beach was one of five sectors of the Allied invasion of German-occupied France in the Normandy landings on 6 June 1944, during the Second World War. The sector spanned from Saint-Aubin, a village just east of the British Gold sector, to Courseulles, just west of the British Sword sector. The Juno landings were judged necessary to provide flanking support to the British drive on Caen from Sword, as well as to capture the German airfield at Carpiquet west of Caen. Taking Juno was the responsibility of the 3rd Canadian Infantry Division and commandos of the Royal Marines, with support from Naval Force J, the Juno contingent of the invasion fleet, including the Royal Canadian Navy (RCN). The beach was defended by two battalions of the German 716th Infantry Division, with elements of the 21st Panzer Division held in reserve near Caen.
The invasion plan called for two brigades of the 3rd Canadian Division to land in two subsectors—Mike and Nan—focusing on Courseulles, Bernières and Saint-Aubin. It was hoped that preliminary naval and air bombardment would soften up the beach defences and destroy coastal strongpoints. Close support on the beaches was to be provided by amphibious tanks of the 2nd Canadian Armoured Brigade. Once the landing zones were secured, the plan called for the 9th Canadian Infantry Brigade to land reserve battalions and deploy inland, the Royal Marine commandos to establish contact with the British 3rd Infantry Division on Sword, and the 7th Canadian Infantry Brigade to link up with the British 50th (Northumbrian) Infantry Division on Gold. The 3rd Canadian Division's D-Day objectives were to capture Carpiquet Airfield and reach the Caen–Bayeux railway line by nightfall.

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Liberation of Paris
The Liberation of Paris (also known as the Battle for Paris) took place during World War II from 19 August 1944 until the surrender of the occupying German garrison on 25 August. It could be regarded by some as the last battle in the Battle for Normandy, though that really ended with the crushing of the Wehrmacht forces between the U.S. Army under Lt. General George S. Patton, Jr., and the British Army under Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery in the Falaise gap in western France around the same time. The Liberation of Paris could be regarded as the transitional conclusion of the Allied invasion breakout in Operation Overlord into a broad-fronted general offensive, though this is a minority opinion.
The capital region of France had been governed by Nazi Germany since the signing of the Second Compiègne Armistice in June 1940, when the German Army occupied northern and westmost France, and when the puppet regime of Vichy France was established in the town of Vichy in central France.
The Liberation of Paris started with an uprising by the French Resistance against the German garrison. On 24 August, the French Forces of the Interior (Forces françaises de l'intérieur, FFI) received reinforcements from the Free French Army of Liberation and from the U.S. Third Army under General Patton.

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Luxembourg
Luxembourg (ⁱ/ˈlʌksəmbɜrɡ/ LUKS-əm-burg), officially the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg (Luxembourgish: Groussherzogtum Lëtzebuerg, French: Grand-Duché de Luxembourg, German: Großherzogtum Luxemburg, Dutch: Groothertogdom Luxemburg), is a landlocked country in western Europe, bordered by Belgium, France, and Germany. It has two principal regions: the Oesling in the North as part of the Ardennes massif, and the Gutland ("good country") in the south. Luxembourg has a population of over half a million people in an area of approximately 2,586 square kilometres (998 sq mi). A representative democracy with a constitutional monarch, it is ruled by a grand duke. It is now the world's only remaining sovereign grand duchy. The country has a highly developed economy, with the world's highest GDP (nominal) per capita according to the IMF. Its historic and strategic importance dates back to its founding as a Roman era fortress site and Frankish count's castle site in the Early Middle Ages. It was an important bastion along the Spanish Road when Spain was the principal European power influencing the whole western hemisphere and beyond in the 16th–17th centuries.

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Marrakech
Coordinates: 31°38′N 8°0′W / 31.633°N 8°W / 31.633; -8
Marrakech or Marrakesh (Berber: ⵎⴻⵕⵕⴰⴽⴻⵛ Merrakec or Murakuc, Arabic: مراكش‎ Murrākuš, local pronunciation: Mərrakəš), known as the "Ochre City", with a population of over 1,000,000 inhabitants is the most important former imperial city in Morocco's history. The city of Marrakesh is the capital of the mid-southwestern economic region of Marrakech-Tensift-Al Haouz, near the foothills of the snow-capped Atlas Mountains, being also the third largest city in Morocco according to the 2004 census.
Like many Moroccan cities, the city of Marrakesh comprises both an old fortified city (the medina) and modern neighborhoods, the most prominent of which is Gueliz, for a total population of 794,620 and 1,063,415 in the metropolitan area (2004 census). It is served by Ménara International Airport (IATA code: RAK) and a rail link to Casablanca and the north.
Marrakesh has the largest traditional Berber market (souk) in Morocco and also has one of the busiest squares in Africa and the world, Djemaa el Fna. The square bustles with acrobats, story-tellers, water sellers, dancers and musicians. By night food stalls open in the square turning it into a huge busy open-air restaurant.

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Mulberry harbor
A Mulberry harbour was a British type of temporary harbour developed in World War II to offload cargo on the beaches during the Allied invasion of Normandy.
Two prefabricated or artificial military harbours were taken across the English Channel from Britain with the invading army in sections and assembled off the coast of Normandy as part of the D-Day invasion of France in 1944.
The Dieppe Raid of 1942 had shown that the Allies could not rely on being able to penetrate the Atlantic Wall to capture a port on the north French coast. Thus, the Mulberries were created to provide the port facilities necessary to offload the thousands of men and vehicles, and tons of supplies necessary to sustain Operation Overlord and the Battle of Normandy. The harbours were made up of all the elements one would expect of any harbour: breakwater, piers, roadways etc.
The actual proposer of the idea of the Mulberry harbour is disputed, but among those who are known to have proposed something along these lines is Hugh Iorys Hughes, a Welsh civil engineer who submitted initial plans on the idea to the War Office, Professor J. D. Bernal, and Vice-Admiral John Hughes-Hallett.

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Mulberry Harbour
A Mulberry harbour was a British type of temporary harbour developed in World War II to offload cargo on the beaches during the Allied invasion of Normandy.
Two prefabricated or artificial military harbours were taken across the English Channel from Britain with the invading army in sections and assembled off the coast of Normandy as part of the D-Day invasion of France in 1944.
The Dieppe Raid of 1942 had shown that the Allies could not rely on being able to penetrate the Atlantic Wall to capture a port on the north French coast. Thus, the Mulberries were created to provide the port facilities necessary to offload the thousands of men and vehicles, and tons of supplies necessary to sustain Operation Overlord and the Battle of Normandy. The harbours were made up of all the elements one would expect of any harbour: breakwater, piers, roadways etc.
The actual proposer of the idea of the Mulberry harbour is disputed, but among those who are known to have proposed something along these lines is Hugh Iorys Hughes, a Welsh civil engineer who submitted initial plans on the idea to the War Office, Professor J. D. Bernal, and Vice-Admiral John Hughes-Hallett.

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Mulberry harbour
A Mulberry harbour was a British type of temporary harbour developed in World War II to offload cargo on the beaches during the Allied invasion of Normandy.
Two prefabricated or artificial military harbours were taken across the English Channel from Britain with the invading army in sections and assembled off the coast of Normandy as part of the D-Day invasion of France in 1944.
The Dieppe Raid of 1942 had shown that the Allies could not rely on being able to penetrate the Atlantic Wall to capture a port on the north French coast. Thus, the Mulberries were created to provide the port facilities necessary to offload the thousands of men and vehicles, and tons of supplies necessary to sustain Operation Overlord and the Battle of Normandy. The harbours were made up of all the elements one would expect of any harbour: breakwater, piers, roadways etc.
The actual proposer of the idea of the Mulberry harbour is disputed, but among those who are known to have proposed something along these lines is Hugh Iorys Hughes, a Welsh civil engineer who submitted initial plans on the idea to the War Office, Professor J. D. Bernal, and Vice-Admiral John Hughes-Hallett.

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Nazi Germany
The Third Reich, also Nazi Germany, is the common name for Germany when it was a totalitarian state ruled by Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP). On 30 January 1933 Hitler became chancellor of Germany, quickly eliminating all opposition to rule as sole leader. The state idolized Hitler as its Führer ("leader"), centralizing all power in his hands. Historians have emphasized the hypnotic effect of his rhetoric on large audiences, and of his eyes in small groups. Kessel writes, "Overwhelmingly...Germans speak with mystification of Hitler's 'hypnotic' appeal..." Under the "leader principle", the Führer's word was above all other laws. Top officials reported to Hitler and followed his policies, but they had considerable autonomy. The government was not a coordinated, cooperating body, but rather a collection of factions struggling to amass power and curry favor with the Führer. In the midst of the Great Depression, the Nazi government restored prosperity and ended mass unemployment using heavy military spending and a mixed economy of free-market and central-planning practices. Extensive public works were undertaken, including the construction of the Autobahns. The return to prosperity gave the regime enormous popularity; the suppression of all opposition made Hitler's rule mostly unchallenged.

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Netherlands
The Netherlands (ⁱ/ˈnɛðərləndz/; Dutch: Nederland [ˈneːdə(r)lɑnt] or [ˈneɪ̯də(r)lɑnt] ( listen); West Frisian: Nederlân; Papiamento: Hulanda) is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with some islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders with Belgium, Germany and the United Kingdom. It is a parliamentary democracy organised as a unitary state. The country capital is Amsterdam and the seat of government is The Hague. The Netherlands in its entirety is often referred to as Holland, although North and South Holland are actually only two of its twelve provinces (a case of pars pro toto; see terminology of "the Netherlands").

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New Zealand
New Zealand (Māori: Aotearoa) is an island country located in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. The country geographically comprises two main landmasses ‒ that of the North and South Islands ‒ as well as numerous smaller islands. New Zealand is situated some 1,500 kilometres (900 mi) east of Australia across the Tasman Sea and roughly 1,000 kilometres (600 mi) south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga. Because of its remoteness, it was one of the last lands to be settled by humans.
During its long isolation, New Zealand developed a distinctive biodiversity of both animal and plant life. Most notable are the large number of unique bird species, many of which became extinct after the arrival of humans and introduced mammals. With a mild maritime climate, the land was mostly covered in forest. The country's varied topography and its sharp mountain peaks owe much to the tectonic uplift of land and volcanic eruptions caused by the Pacific and Indo-Australian Plates clashing beneath the earth's surface.

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Omaha Beach
Omaha Beach is the code name for one of the five sectors of the Allied invasion of German-occupied France in the Normandy landings on 6 June 1944, during World War II. The beach is located on the coast of Normandy, France, facing the English Channel, and is 5 miles (8 km) long, from east of Sainte-Honorine-des-Pertes to west of Vierville-sur-Mer on the right bank of the Douve River estuary. Landings here were necessary in order to link up the British landings to the east at Gold Beach with the American landing to the west at Utah Beach, thus providing a continuous lodgement on the Normandy coast of the Bay of the Seine. Taking Omaha was to be the responsibility of United States Army troops, with sea transport provided by the U.S. Navy and elements of the Royal Navy.
On D-Day, the untested 29th Infantry Division, joined by nine companies of U.S. Army Rangers redirected from Pointe du Hoc, were to assault the western half of the beach. The battle-hardened 1st Infantry Division was given the eastern half. The initial assault waves, consisting of tanks, infantry, and combat engineer forces, were carefully planned to reduce the coastal defenses and allow the larger ships of the follow-up waves to land.

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Operation Bluecoat
Operation Bluecoat was an attack by the British Second Army at the Battle of Normandy during the Second World War, from 30 July – 7 August 1944. The geographical objectives of the attack were to secure the key road junction of Vire and the high ground of Mont Pinçon. Strategically, the attack was made to support the American exploitation of their break-out on the western flank of the Normandy beachhead.
On 25 July, after a false start the day before, the American army broke out of the beachhead, in Operation Cobra. A week earlier, the British and Canadian forces had launched Operation Goodwood in a southerly direction, south east of Caen on the eastern flank of the Allied beachhead. This had induced the Germans to keep the bulk of their forces, particularly their armoured units, (seven out of nine) in this sector. Following the closure of Operation Goodwood Ultra revealed that the Germans were aiming to move 21st Panzerdivision out of the line in preparation to moving it to the west, or American sector of the front. The inter army boundary between the british right flank and the US First Army was being moved with British forces taking over a sector previously manned by resting American infantry against which were lightly armed German infantry, and this gave an opportunity for a new operation to keep tying down German armour. Armour of the British Second Army under Lieutenant-General Miles Dempsey was switched westwards toward Villers-Bocage adjacent to the American army. Originally, Dempsey planned to attack on 2 August, but the speed of events forced him to advance the date.

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Operation Cobra
Operation Cobra was the codename for an offensive launched by the First United States Army seven weeks after the D-Day landings, during the Normandy Campaign of World War II. American Lieutenant General Omar Bradley's intention was to take advantage of the German preoccupation with British and Canadian activity around the town of Caen, and immediately punch through the German defenses that were penning in his troops while the Germans were distracted and unbalanced. Once a corridor had been created, the First Army would then be able to advance into Brittany, rolling up the German flanks and freeing itself of the constraints imposed by operating in the Norman bocage countryside. After a slow start the offensive gathered momentum, and German resistance collapsed as scattered remnants of broken units fought to escape to the Seine. Lacking the resources to cope with the situation, the German response was ineffectual, and the entire Normandy front soon collapsed. Operation Cobra, together with concurrent offensives by the Second British and First Canadian Armies, was decisive in securing an Allied victory in the Normandy Campaign.

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Operation Deadstick
Operation Deadstick was the codename for an airborne forces operation by the British Army that took place on 6 June 1944 as part of the Normandy landings. The mission's objective was to capture intact two road bridges in Normandy across the River Orne and the Caen Canal providing the only exit eastwards for British forces from their landing on Sword Beach. Intelligence reports said both bridges were heavily defended by the Germans and wired for demolition. Once captured, the bridges had to be held against any counter-attack until the assault force was relieved by commandos and infantry advancing from the British landing zone.
The mission was vital to the success of the British airborne landings. Failure to capture the bridges intact, or to prevent their demolition by the Germans, would leave the 6th Airborne Division cut off from the rest of the Allied armies with their backs to the two waterways. If the Germans retained control over the bridges, they could be used by their armoured divisions to attack the landing beaches of Normandy.

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Operation Dynamo
The Dunkirk evacuation, commonly known as the Miracle of Dunkirk, code-named Operation Dynamo by the British, was the evacuation of Allied soldiers from the beaches and harbour of Dunkirk, France, between 27 May and the early hours of 4 June 1940, because the British, French, and Belgian troops were cut off by the German army during the Battle of Dunkirk in the Second World War. The evacuation was ordered on 26 May. In a speech to the House of Commons, Winston Churchill called the events in France "a colossal military disaster", saying that "the whole root and core and brain of the British Army" had been stranded at Dunkirk and seemed about to perish or be captured. In his We shall fight on the beaches speech on 4 June, he hailed their rescue as a "miracle of deliverance".
On the first day, only 7,011 men were evacuated, but by the ninth day, a total of 338,226 soldiers (198,229 British and 139,997 French) had been rescued by the hastily assembled fleet of 850 boats. Many of the troops were able to embark from the harbour's protective mole onto 42 British destroyers and other large ships, while others had to wade from the beaches toward the ships, waiting for hours to board, shoulder-deep in water. Others were ferried from the beaches to the larger ships, and thousands were carried back to Britain by the famous "little ships of Dunkirk", a flotilla of around 700 merchant marine boats, fishing boats, pleasure craft and Royal National Lifeboat Institution lifeboats—the smallest of which was the 18 ft (5.5 m) fishing boat Tamzine, now in the Imperial War Museum—whose civilian crews were called into service for the emergency. The "miracle of the little ships" remains a prominent folk memory in Britain.

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Operation Lüttich
Operation Lüttich was a codename given to a German counterattack during the Battle of Normandy, which took place around the American positions near Mortain from 7 August to 13 August 1944. (Lüttich is the German name for the city of Liège in Belgium, where the Germans had won a victory in the early days of August, 1914, during World War I.) The offensive is also referred to in American and British histories of the Battle of Normandy simply as the Mortain counter-offensive.
The assault was ordered by Adolf Hitler, to eliminate the gains made by the First United States Army during Operation Cobra and the subsequent weeks, and by reaching the coast in the region of Avranches at the base of the Cotentin peninsula, cut off the units of the Third United States Army which had advanced into Brittany.
The main German striking force was the XLVII Panzer Corps, with one and a half SS Panzer Divisions and two Wehrmacht Panzer Divisions. Although they made initial gains against the defending U.S. VII Corps, they were soon halted and Allied aircraft inflicted severe losses on the attacking troops, eventually destroying nearly ½ of the tanks involved in the attack. Although fighting continued around Mortain for six days, the American forces had regained the initiative within a day of the opening of the German attack.

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Operation Overlord
Operation Overlord was the code name for the Battle of Normandy, the operation that launched the invasion of German-occupied western Europe during World War II by Allied forces. The operation commenced on 6 June 1944 with the Normandy landings (Operation Neptune, commonly known as D-Day). A 12,000-plane airborne assault preceded an amphibious assault involving almost 7,000 vessels. Nearly 160,000 troops crossed the English Channel on 6 June; more than three million troops were in France by the end of August.
Allied land forces that saw combat in Normandy on D-Day itself came from Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States. Free French Forces and Poland also participated in the battle after the assault phase, and there were also minor contingents from Belgium, Greece, the Netherlands, and Norway. Other Allied nations participated in the naval and air forces.
Once the beachheads were secured, a three-week military buildup occurred on the beaches before Operation Cobra, the operation to break out from the Normandy beachhead, began. The battle for Normandy continued for more than two months, with campaigns to expand the foothold on France, and concluded with the closing of the Falaise pocket on 24 August, the Liberation of Paris on 25 August, and the German retreat across the Seine which was completed on 30 August 1944.^{[verification needed]}

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Operation Perch
Coordinates: 49°05′N 0°39′W / 49.083°N 0.65°W / 49.083; -0.65
Operation Perch was a British offensive of the Second World War which took place between 7 and 14 June 1944, during the Battle of Normandy. The operation was intended to encircle and seize the German occupied city of Caen, which was a major Allied objective in the early stages of the invasion of northwest Europe. A combination of fierce German resistance and failures at the British command level foiled the operation before its objectives were achieved.
Operation Perch was originally intended to take place immediately after the British beach landings, and was to be an advance to the southeast of Caen by XXX Corps. This depended on Caen's early liberation, but three days after the invasion the city was still in German hands so the operation was altered. Perch was expanded to include I Corps and became a pincer attack aimed at capturing Caen. Beginning the following day XXX Corps, forming the western arm of the encirclement, pushed south before becoming embroiled with strong German forces in a hotly contested battle for the town of Tilly-sur-Seulles, which would change hands several times before its liberation. I Corps's eastern thrust was launched two days later from the Orne bridgehead, secured on D-Day by British airborne forces during Operation Tonga, but made little progress in the face of determined resistance and constant counterattacks. With mounting casualties and no sign of an imminent German collapse, by 13 June the offensive east of Caen was abandoned.

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Operation Totalize
Operation Totalize (also referred to as "Operation Totalise" in some more recent British sources) was an offensive launched by Allied troops of the First Canadian Army during the later stages of the Operation Overlord, from August 8 to August 13, 1944. The intention was to break through the German defences south of Caen on the eastern flank of the Allied positions in Normandy and exploit success by driving south to capture the high ground north of the city of Falaise. The overall goal was to precipitate the collapse of the entire German front, and cut off the retreat of German forces fighting American and British armies further west. The battle is considered the inaugural operation of the First Canadian Army, which had been formally activated on July 23.
In the early hours of August 8, 1944, II Canadian Corps launched the attack using mechanized infantry. They broke through the German front lines and captured vital positions deep in the German defences. It was intended that two fresh armoured divisions would continue the attack, but some hesitancy by these two comparatively inexperienced divisions and German armoured counter-attacks slowed the offensive. Having advanced 9 miles (14 km), the Allies were halted 7 miles (11 km) north of Falaise, and forced to prepare a fresh attack.

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Operation Tractable
Operation Tractable was the final offensive conducted by Canadian and Polish Army troops as part of the Battle of Normandy. The goal of this operation was to capture the strategically important French town of Falaise, and following that, the smaller towns of Trun and Chambois. This operation was undertaken by the Polish 1st Armoured Division and the Canadian 1st Army against the Wehrmacht′s Army Group B, and it was a part of the largest encirclement on the German Western Front during the Second World War. Despite a slow start to the offensive that was marked by limited gains north of Falaise, novel tactics by Polish 1st Armoured Division—under the command of Generał brygady Stanisław Maczek during the drive for Chambois—enabled the Falaise Gap to be partially closed by 19 August 1944, trapping about 150,000 German soldiers in the Falaise Pocket.
Although the Falaise Gap had been narrowed to a distance of several hundred yards, a protracted series of fierce assaults and defenses between two battle groups of the Polish 1st Armoured Division and the II SS Panzer Corps on Mont Ormel (Hill 262) prevented the quick closing of the Falaise Gap, allowing thousands of German troops to escape from Normandy. During two days of nearly continuous fighting, Polish forces using artillery barrages and close-quarter fighting managed to hold off counterattacks by seven German divisions. On 21 August, elements of the Canadian 1st Army relieved the surviving remnants of Polish units and were able to finally seal the Falaise Pocket by linking up with the troops of the U.S. 3rd Army. This led to the surrender and capture of the remaining units of the German 7th Army which were trapped in the Falaise Pocket.

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Operation Windsor
Operation Windsor was a Canadian offensive launched as part of the Battle of Normandy during the Second World War. Taking place on 4–5 July 1944, the attack was undertaken by the Canadian 3rd Infantry Division in an attempt to capture the Norman town of Carpiquet and the adjacent airfield from German forces. The attack was originally intended to take place during the later stages of Operation Epsom, as a means of protecting the eastern flank of the main assault. It was postponed and launched the following week.
On 4 July 1944, four battalions of the Canadian 3rd Infantry Division attacked Carpiquet in conjunction with flanking attacks by armoured regiments of the Canadian 2nd Armoured Brigade. Although the Canadian 8th Infantry Brigade succeeded in capturing Carpiquet by mid-afternoon, German resistance to the south prevented the airfield from being captured—despite significant Allied armour and air support. The following day, Canadian forces defeated German counterattacks and succeeded in holding Carpiquet in preparation for British attacks on Caen as part of Operation Charnwood.

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Pas de Calais
Pas-de-Calais (French pronunciation: [pɑ d(ə) kalɛ]) is a department in northern France. Its name is the French equivalent of the Strait of Dover, which it borders.
Inhabited since prehistoric times, the Pas-de-Calais region was populated in turn by the Celtic Belgae, the Romans, the Germanic Franks and the Alemanni. During the fourth and fifth centuries, the Roman practice of coopting Germanic tribes to provide military and defense services along the route from Boulogne to Cologne created a Germanic-Romance linguistic border in the region that persisted until the eighth century.
Saxon colonization into the region from the fifth to the eighth centuries likely extended the linguistic border somewhat south and west so that by the ninth century most inhabitants north of the line between Béthune and Berck spoke a dialect of Middle Dutch, while the inhabitants to the south spoke Picard, a variety of Romance dialects.
This linguistic border is still evident today in the toponyms and patronyms of the region. Beginning in the ninth century, the linguistic border began a steady move to north and the east, and by the end of the 15th century Romance dialects had completely displaced those of Dutch.

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Pegasus Bridge
Pegasus Bridge is a bascule bridge (a type of movable bridge), built in 1934, that crossed the Caen Canal, between Caen and Ouistreham, in Normandy, France.
Also known as the Bénouville Bridge after the neighbouring village, it was, with the nearby Ranville Bridge over the river Orne, a major objective of Operation Deadstick, part of Operation Tonga in the opening minutes of the invasion of Normandy. A gliderborne unit of the British 6th Airborne Division, commanded by Major John Howard, was to land, take the bridges intact and hold them until relieved. The successful taking of the bridges played an important role in limiting the effectiveness of a German counter-attack in the days and weeks following the invasion.
In 1944 it was renamed Pegasus Bridge in honour of the operation. The name is derived from the shoulder emblem worn by the British airborne forces, which is the flying horse Pegasus.
On the night of 5 June 1944, a force of 181 men, led by Major John Howard, took off from RAF Tarrant Rushton in Dorset, southern England in six Horsa gliders to capture Pegasus Bridge, and also "Horsa Bridge", a few hundred yards to the east, over the Orne River. The force was composed of D Company (reinforced with two platoons of B company), 2nd Battalion, Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry; 20 sappers, 249 Fd Co. (Airborne); and men of the Glider Pilot Regiment. The object of this action was to prevent German armour from crossing the bridges and attacking the eastern flank of the landings at Sword Beach.

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Pointe du Hoc
Pointe du Hoc (French pronunciation: [pwɛ̃t dy ɔk]) is a clifftop location on the coast of Normandy in northern France. It lies 4 miles (6.4 km) west of Omaha Beach, and stands on 100 ft (30 m) tall cliffs overlooking the sea. It was a point of attack by the United States Army Ranger Assault Group during Operation Overlord in World War II.
On Pointe du Hoc (sometimes erroneously known as Pointe du Hoe following a typographical error by an American military cartographer) the Germans had built, as part of the Atlantic Wall, six casemates to house a battery of captured French 155mm guns. With Pointe Du Hoc situated between Utah Beach to the west and Omaha Beach to the east, these guns threatened Allied landings on both beaches, risking heavy casualties in the landing forces. Although there were several bombardments from the air and by naval guns, intelligence reports assumed that the fortifications were too strong, and would also require attack by ground forces. The U.S. 2nd Ranger Battalion was therefore given the task of destroying the strongpoint early on D-Day.

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Poland
Poland ⁱ/ˈpoʊlənd/ (Polish: Polska), officially the Republic of Poland (Polish: Rzeczpospolita Polska; Kashubian: Pòlskô Repùblika; Silesian: Polsko Republika), is a country in Central Europe, bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north. The total area of Poland is 312,679 square kilometres (120,726 sq mi), making it the 69th largest country in the world and the 9th largest in Europe. Poland has a population of over 38 million people, which makes it the 34th most populous country in the world and the sixth most populous member of the European Union, being its most populous post-communist member. Poland is a unitary state made up of 16 voivodeships. Poland is a member of the European Union, NATO, the United Nations, the World Trade Organization, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), European Economic Area, International Energy Agency, Council of Europe, Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, International Atomic Energy Agency, G6, Council of the Baltic Sea States, Visegrád Group, Weimar Triangle and Schengen Agreement.

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Republic of Ireland
Ireland (/ˈaɪərlənd/ or /ˈɑrlənd/; Irish: Éire, pronounced [ˈeːɾʲə] ( listen)) is a sovereign state in Europe occupying about five-sixths of the island of Ireland. Its capital is Dublin. The population of the state was 4.59 million in 2011. It is a constitutional republic governed as a parliamentary democracy, with an elected president serving as head of state. In the 1937 constitution, the name of the state is given as simply "Ireland". The Constitution of Ireland (Article 4) and the Republic of Ireland Act 1948 provides that the "Republic of Ireland" (Irish: Poblacht na hÉireann) is "the description of the state".
Ireland is a member of the European Union, the Council of Europe, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the World Trade Organisation and the United Nations. A developed country with the seventh highest Human Development Index, Ireland is also highly ranked for press freedom, economic freedom and democracy and political freedom.
The modern Irish state was established in 1922 as the Irish Free State, a dominion within the British Empire, following the Anglo-Irish Treaty which brought an end to the Irish War of Independence. The partition of Ireland had already been provided for in previous British legislation in 1921 in response to opposition to Irish Home Rule or independence by Unionists, who formed a majority in the north-eastern part of the country. Six of the nine counties in the northern province of Ulster were established under that legislation as Northern Ireland, part of the United Kingdom, with which the Irish state shares its only land border. The state is otherwise surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, with the Celtic Sea to the south, St George's Channel to the south east, and the Irish Sea to the east.

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Soviet Union
The Soviet Union (Russian: Советский Союз, tr. Sovetsky Soyuz), officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR; Russian: Сою́з Сове́тских Социалисти́ческих Респу́блик, tr. Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik; IPA: [sɐˈjus sɐˈvʲetskʲɪx sətsɨəlʲɪˈstʲitɕɪskʲɪx rʲɪsˈpublʲɪk] ( listen); abbreviated СССР, SSSR), was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991.
The Soviet Union was a single-party state ruled by the Communist Party from its foundation until 1990. A union of 15 subnational Soviet republics, the Soviet state was structured under a highly centralized government and economy.
The Russian Revolution of 1917 caused the downfall of the Russian Empire. Following the Russian Revolution, there was a struggle for power between the Bolshevik party, led by Vladimir Lenin, and the anti-communist White movement. In December 1922, the Bolsheviks won the civil war, and the Soviet Union was formed with the merger of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, the Transcaucasian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic, the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic and the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic.

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St Nazaire Raid
The St Nazaire Raid or Operation Chariot was a successful British amphibious attack on the heavily defended Normandie dry dock at St Nazaire in German-occupied France during the Second World War. The operation was undertaken by the Royal Navy and British Commandos under the auspices of Combined Operations Headquarters on 28 March 1942. St Nazaire was targeted because the loss of its dry dock would force any large German warship in need of repairs, such as the Tirpitz, to return to home waters rather than having a safe haven available on the Atlantic coast.
The obsolete destroyer HMS Campbeltown, accompanied by 18 smaller craft, crossed the English Channel to the Atlantic coast of France and was rammed into the Normandie dock gates. The ship had been packed with delayed-action explosives, well hidden within a steel and concrete case, that detonated later that day, putting the dock out of service for the remainder of the war and up to ten years after. A force of commandos landed to destroy machinery and other structures. Heavy German gunfire sank, set ablaze or immobilised all the small craft intended to transport the commandos back to England; the commandos had to fight their way out through the town to try to escape overland. They were forced to surrender when their ammunition was expended and they were surrounded.

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Sword Beach
Sword, commonly known as Sword Beach, was the code name given to one of the five main landing areas along the Normandy coast during the initial assault phase, Operation Neptune, of Operation Overlord; the Allied invasion of German-occupied France that commenced on 6 June 1944. Stretching 8 km from Ouistreham to Saint-Aubin-sur-Mer the beach was divided into several sectors and each sector divided into beaches; thus the British 3rd Infantry Division, assigned to land on Sword, assaulted a two mile (3 km) stretch of Sword codenamed Queen Sector - Queen Red, White and Green beaches.
Sword is around 15 km from Caen, the ultimate goal of the 3rd Infantry Division. The initial landings were achieved with low casualties but the advance from the beach was met with traffic congestion, heavily defended areas behind the beachhead and was met by the only armoured counterattack of the day, mounted by the 21st Panzer Division, that halted further progress towards Caen.

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Teddington
Coordinates: 51°25′27″N 0°19′56″W / 51.4242°N 0.3321°W / 51.4242; -0.3321
Teddington is a suburban area in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames in south west London, on the north bank of the River Thames, between Hampton Wick and Twickenham. It stretches inland from the River Thames to Bushy Park. Formerly it was in the county of Middlesex, which was formerly also its postal county.
Teddington is mostly residential but is bisected by an almost continuous road of shops, offices and other facilities running from the river to Bushy Park. There are three clusters of offices on this route: on the river Teddington Studios and Haymarket Group form a media hub whilst on the edge of Bushy Park the NPL, NMO and LGC form a scientific centre. Around Teddington Station and the town centre are a number of offices in industries such as Direct Marketing and IT, and offices outside this axis include Tearfund. Several riverside businesses and houses were redeveloped in the last quarter of the 20th century as blocks of riverside flats. The area has been described in the national press as "leafy".

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United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (commonly known as the United Kingdom, the UK, or Britain) is a sovereign state located off the north-western coast of continental Europe. The country includes the island of Great Britain, the north-eastern part of the island of Ireland and many smaller islands. Northern Ireland is the only part of the UK that shares a land border with another sovereign state—the Republic of Ireland. Apart from this land border the UK is surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, the North Sea, the English Channel and the Irish Sea.
The United Kingdom is a unitary state governed under a constitutional monarchy and a parliamentary system, with its seat of government in the capital city of London. It is a country in its own right and consists of four countries: England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. There are three devolved administrations, each with varying powers, based in Belfast, Edinburgh and Cardiff, the capitals of Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. Associated with the UK, but not constitutionally part of it, are three Crown Dependencies. The United Kingdom has fourteen overseas territories. These are remnants of the British Empire which, at its height in 1922, encompassed almost a quarter of the world's land surface and was the largest empire in history. British influence can still be observed in the language, culture and legal systems of many of its former territories.

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United States
The United States of America (commonly abbreviated to the United States, the U.S., the USA, America, and the States) is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district. The country is situated mostly in central North America, where its forty-eight contiguous states and Washington, D.C., the capital district, lie between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, bordered by Canada to the north and Mexico to the south. The state of Alaska is in the northwest of the continent, with Canada to the east and Russia to the west, across the Bering Strait. The state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific. The country also possesses several territories in the Pacific and Caribbean.
At 3.79 million square miles (9.83 million km²) and with over 312 million people, the United States is the third or fourth largest country by total area, and the third largest by both land area and population. It is one of the world's most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, the product of large-scale immigration from many countries. The U.S. economy is the world's largest national economy, with an estimated 2011 GDP of $15.1 trillion (22% of nominal global GDP and over 19% of global GDP at purchasing-power parity). Per capita income is the world's sixth-highest.

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Utah Beach
Utah Beach was the code name for the right flank, or westernmost, of the Allied landing beaches during the D-Day invasion of Normandy, as part of Operation Overlord on 6 June 1944. Utah was added to the invasion plan toward the end of the planning stages, when more landing craft became available.
Utah Beach, about 3 miles (5 km) long, was the westernmost of the five landing beaches, located between the villages of Pouppeville and La Madeleine, which became the right flank anchor of the allied offensive along the left bank (western bank) of the Douve River estuary. The German sector code was W5.
Despite being substantially off course, the US 4th Infantry Division (part of VII corps) landed with relatively little resistance, in stark contrast to Omaha Beach, where the fighting was fierce.
The landing was planned in four waves. The first consisted of 20 Higgins boats or LCVPs, each carrying a 30-man assault team from the 8th Infantry Regiment. The 10 craft on the right were to land on Tare Green Beach, opposite the strong-point at les Dunes de Varreville. The 10 craft on the left were intended for Uncle Red Beach, 1,000 yards (900 m) farther south. The entire operation was timed against the touchdown of this first assault wave, which was scheduled to take place at 06:30 am. Eight LCTs (Landing Craft, Tanks), each carrying four amphibious DD Tanks, were scheduled to land at the same time or as soon thereafter as possible.

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Vienna
Vienna ( /viːˈɛnə/; German: Wien (help·info) [viːn]) is the capital and largest city of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million (2.4 million within the metropolitan area, more than 25% of Austria's population), and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre. It is the 9th-largest city by population in the European Union. Until the beginning of the 20th century it was the largest German speaking city in the world, and before the first world war and the splitting of the Austro-Hungarian empire the city had 2 million inhabitants. Vienna is host to many major international organizations, including the United Nations and OPEC. The city lies in the east of Austria and is close to the borders of the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Hungary. These regions work together in a European Centrope border region. Along with nearby Bratislava, Vienna forms a metropolitan region with 3 million inhabitants. In 2001, the city centre was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

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Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler (German: [ˈadɔlf ˈhɪtlɐ] ( listen); 20 April 1889 – 30 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party (German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP), commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945 and dictator of Nazi Germany (as Führer und Reichskanzler) from 1934 to 1945. Hitler is commonly associated with the rise of fascism in Europe, World War II, and the Holocaust.
A decorated veteran of World War I, Hitler joined the German Workers' Party, precursor of the Nazi Party, in 1919, and became leader of the NSDAP in 1921. In 1923, he attempted a coup d'état, known as the Beer Hall Putsch, in Munich. The failed coup resulted in Hitler's imprisonment, during which time he wrote his memoir, Mein Kampf (My Struggle). After his release in 1924, Hitler gained popular support by attacking the Treaty of Versailles and promoting Pan-Germanism, antisemitism, and anticommunism with charismatic oratory and Nazi propaganda. After his appointment as chancellor in 1933, he transformed the Weimar Republic into the Third Reich, a single-party dictatorship based on the totalitarian and autocratic ideology of Nazism. His aim was to establish a New Order of absolute Nazi German hegemony in continental Europe.

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Alan G Kirk
Alan Goodrich Kirk (born October 30, 1888, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; died October 15, 1963, Washington, D.C.) was an admiral in the United States Navy and an American diplomat.
He graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1909 and served in the United States Navy during World War I and World War II. During his wartime naval service, Alan Kirk became the U.S. naval attaché in London (1939 to 1941). He was Director of the Office of Naval Intelligence from March 1941 but, obstructed and opposed by Rear Admiral Richmond Turner, he was unable to develop the office into an effective centre along the lines of the British Royal Naval Operational Intelligence Centre (which he had seen whilst in London). Eventually, he requested a transfer to an Atlantic destroyer squadron.
Kirk served as an amphibious commander in the Mediterranean in 1942 and 1943 (the Allied invasion of Sicily and Italy). In addition, he was the senior U.S. naval commander during the Normandy landings of June 6, 1944 embarked on the heavy cruiser USS Augusta (CA-31), and as Commander U.S. Naval Forces, France during 1944 and 1945. He retired from the Navy as a full admiral in 1946.

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Arthur Tedder
Marshal of the Royal Air Force Arthur William Tedder, 1st Baron Tedder, GCB (11 July 1890 – 3 June 1967) was a senior British air force commander. During the First World War, he was a pilot and squadron commander in the Royal Flying Corps and he went on to serve as a senior officer in the Royal Air Force during the inter-war years. He held high command during the Second World War, and after the war he served as Chief of the Air Staff before retiring from the RAF and taking up the position of Chancellor of the University of Cambridge.
Arthur Tedder was born in Scotland at the Glenguin Distillery (now Glengoyne) north of Glasgow in 1890. He was the son of Sir Arthur John Tedder and Emily Charlotte Bryson. His father was distinguished as the Commissioner of the Board of Customs who devised the old age pension scheme. His father's occupation meant that the young Tedder saw different parts of the British Isles, spending 1895 to 1898 in Lerwick on the Shetland Isles and 1899–1901 in Elgin, in the County of Moray. In 1902 the family moved to Croydon in Surrey and Tedder attended the Whitgift School until 1909 when he went up to Cambridge University. Tedder spent his university years (1909–13) at Magdalene College, where he read history. He was awarded a lower second-class honours in June 1912.

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Bertram Ramsay
Admiral Sir Bertram Home Ramsay KCB, KBE, MVO (20 January 1883 – 2 January 1945) was a British admiral during World War II. He was an important contributor in the field of amphibious warfare.
He was born in London, into an old Scottish family (see Ramsay Baronets), and attended Colchester Royal Grammar School. In 1898, he joined the Royal Navy. Serving on HMS Britannia, he became an midshipman within a year. Following his promotion, he was transferred to HMS Crescent.
During World War I he was assigned his first command, the "M 25", a small monitor, in August 1915. For two years his ship was part of the Dover Patrol off the Belgian coast. On October 1917 he took command of another Dover Patrol vessel, the destroyer HMS Broke.
On 9 May 1918, his ship took part in the Second Ostend Raid, a follow up to the Zeebrugge Raid, and he was mentioned in despatches.
Resigning from the Navy in 1938, he was coaxed out of retirement by Winston Churchill one year later to help deal with the Axis threat.
Promoted to Vice-Admiral, he was placed in charge of the Dover area of operations on 24 August 1939. His duties included overseeing the defence against possible destroyer raids, protection of cross-Channel military traffic and the denial of the passage through the Straits of Dover to submarines.

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C.P. Stacey
Colonel Charles Perry Stacey, OC, OBE, CD, FRSC (30 July 1906 – 17 November 1989) was a Canadian historian and university professor. He was the official historian of the Canadian Army in the Second World War, and has been published extensively on matters both military and political.
Stacey was born in Toronto, Ontario. After attending the University of Toronto Schools, he received a B.A. degree in History from the University of Toronto in 1924. He received a second Bachelor's degree in History from Corpus Christi College, Oxford in 1929. In 1933, he received a Ph.D. degree from Princeton University. From 1933 to 1940, he was a member of the History department at Princeton University.
Stacey joined the Militia before the Second World War. His service as one of the Canadian Army's historians is well chronicled in his autobiography. He served in the United Kingdom for the majority of the war, collecting and collating information for future historians, as well as writing contemporary reports. Stacey's works have contributed much to the study of certain controversial operations such as the Dieppe Raid and Operation Spring. Stacey benefited from his access to the major Canadian military and political figures involved in the War, both during the conflict and afterwards, when the official histories were being finalized for publication. He attained the rank of Colonel. In total He served in the Army for 35 years (1924-1959).

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Canadian
Canadians (singular Canadian) are the people who are identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be genetic, residential, legal, historical, cultural or ethnic. For most Canadians, several (frequently all) of those types of connections exist and are the source(s) of them being considered Canadians.
Aside from the Aboriginal peoples, who according to the 2006 Canadian Census numbered 1,172,790, 3.8% of the country's total population, the majority of the population is made up of Old World immigrants and their descendants. After the initial period of French and then British colonization, different waves (or peaks) of immigration and settlement of non-aboriginal peoples took place over the course of nearly two centuries and continues today. Elements of Aboriginal, French, British and more recent immigrant customs, languages and religions have combined to form the culture of Canada and thus a Canadian identity. Canada has also been strongly influenced by that of its linguistic, geographic and economic neighbour, the United States.

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Charles de Gaulle
Charles André Joseph Marie de Gaulle (/ˈtʃɑrlz/ or /ˈʃɑrl dəˈɡɔːl/; French: [ʃaʁl də ɡol] ( listen); 22 November 1890 – 9 November 1970) was a French general and statesman who led the Free French Forces during World War II. He later founded the French Fifth Republic in 1958 and served as its first President from 1959 to 1969.
A veteran of World War I, in the 1920s and 1930s de Gaulle came to the fore as a proponent of mobile armoured divisions, which he considered would become central in modern warfare. During World War II, he earned the rank of brigadier general (retained throughout his life), leading one of the few successful armoured counter-attacks during the 1940 Battle of France in May in Montcornet, and then briefly served in the French government as France was falling. De Gaulle was the most senior French military officer to reject the June 1940 armistice to Nazi Germany right from the outset.
He escaped to Britain and gave a famous radio address, broadcast by the BBC on 18 June 1940, exhorting the French people to resist Nazi Germany and organised the Free French Forces with exiled French officers in Britain. As the war progressed de Gaulle gradually gained control of all French colonies except Indochina most of which had at first been controlled by the pro-German Vichy regime. Despite earning a reputation for being a difficult man to do business with, by the time of the Allied invasion of France in 1944 he was heading what amounted to a French government in exile, but although he insisted that France be treated as a great independent power by the other Allies, the Americans in particular remained deeply suspicious of his motives. De Gaulle became prime minister in the French Provisional Government, resigning in 1946 because of political conflicts.

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Cicero affair
Elyesa Bazna (Albanian: Iliaz Bazda, born July 28, 1904 in Pristina, Kosovo - December 21, 1970 in Munich, Germany) was a famous World War II secret agent. An Albanian from Kosovo who spied for the Germans during the Second World War, and was widely known by his code name Cicero. Principally motivated by a feeling of power, he sold information to the Germans through their attaché Ludwig Carl Moyzisch (and then through the ambassador Franz von Papen), in Ankara, Turkey in what became known as the Cicero affair. The information that he leaked is believed to have been potentially among the more damaging disclosures made by any single Second World War spy, but conflicts inside the highest echelons of the German government meant that little if any of it was actually acted upon.
Of Albanian origin, Elyesa Bazna was born to Albanian parents in Kosovo (at the time part of the Ottoman Empire) and moved to Turkey at a very young age. He served as a valet first to the Yugoslav ambassador to Turkey and then to a German counsellor who fired him for reading his mail.

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Diana Churchill
Diana Spencer-Churchill (11 July 1909 – 20 October 1963) was the eldest daughter of Sir Winston Churchill and Clementine Churchill, Baroness Spencer-Churchill (née Hozier).
On 12 December 1932, she married John Milner Bailey (15 June 1900 East Grimstead - 13 February 1946 Cape Town, South Africa) (became the Bailey Baronet Sir John Milner Bailey, 2nd Bt), but the marriage was unsuccessful and they divorced in 1935. On 16 September 1935, she married the Conservative politician, Duncan Sandys (later in life The Lord Duncan-Sandys). After having three children, that marriage also ended and they were divorced in 1960.
On 11 April 1962, her name was legally changed back to Diana Churchill.
Children of Diana Churchill and Lord Duncan-Sandys:
She gained the rank of officer between 1939 and 1945 in the Women's Royal Naval Service.
Diana had suffered from several nervous breakdowns. In 1962, she began working with the Samaritans, an organisation created for suicide-prevention. Then in 1963, she committed suicide at the age of 54 by taking an overdose of barbiturates. She is buried with her parents and siblings at St Martin's Church, Bladon, near Woodstock, Oxfordshire.

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Dwight D. Eisenhower
Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower (pronounced /ˈaɪzənhaʊər/, EYE-zən-how-ər; October 14, 1890 – March 28, 1969) was the 34th President of the United States from 1953 until 1961. He had previously been a five-star general in the United States Army during World War II, and served as Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe; he had responsibility for planning and supervising the invasion of North Africa in Operation Torch in 1942–43 and the successful invasion of France and Germany in 1944–45, from the Western Front. In 1951, he became the first supreme commander of NATO.
Eisenhower was of Pennsylvania Dutch ancestry, and was reared in a large family in Kansas, by parents with a robust work ethic and religious background. As one of five sons, he was conditioned by a competitive atmosphere which instilled self-reliance. He attended and graduated from West Point, and later was married with two sons. After World War II Eisenhower served as Chief of Staff under President Harry S. Truman, then assumed the post of President at Columbia University.

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Erwin Rommel
Erwin Johannes Eugen Rommel (15 November 1891 – 14 October 1944), popularly known as the Desert Fox (Wüstenfuchs, listen (help·info)), was a German Field Marshal of World War II. He won the respect of both his own troops and the enemies he fought.
He was a highly decorated officer in World War I, and was awarded the Pour le Mérite for his exploits on the Italian front. In World War II, he further distinguished himself as the commander of the 7th Panzer Division during the 1940 invasion of France. However, it was his leadership of German and Italian forces in the North African campaign that established the legend of the Desert Fox. He is considered to have been one of the most skilled commanders of desert warfare in the conflict.^{[page needed]} He later commanded the German forces opposing the Allied cross-channel invasion in Normandy.
As one of the few generals who consistently fought the Western Allies (he was never assigned to the Eastern Front), Rommel is regarded as having been a humane and professional officer. His Afrikakorps was never accused of war crimes. Soldiers captured during his Africa campaign were reported to have been treated humanely. Furthermore, he ignored orders to kill captured commandos, Jewish soldiers and civilians in all theaters of his command.

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General Leclerc
Philippe François Marie, comte de Hauteclocque, then Leclerc de Hauteclocque, by a 1945 decree that incorporated his French Resistance alias Jacques-Philippe Leclerc to his name, (French pronunciation: [filip ləklɛʁ də otklɔk]; 22 November 1902 – 28 November 1947), was a French general during World War II. He became Marshal of France posthumously, in 1952 and is known in France simply as le maréchal Leclerc.
Philippe François Marie de Hauteclocque was born on 22 November 1902 at Belloy-Saint-Léonard in the department of Somme. He was the fifth of six children of Adrien de Hauteclocque, comte de Hauteclocque (1864–1945) and Marie-Thérèse van der Cruisse de Waziers (1870–1956). Philippe was named in honour of an ancestor killed by Croats in 1635.
Leclerc came from an old line of country nobility; his direct ancestors had served in the Fifth Crusade against Egypt, and again in the Eighth Crusade of Saint Louis against Tunisia in 1270. They had also fought at the Battle of Saint-Omer in 1340 and the Battle of Fontenoy in 1745. The family managed to survive the French Revolution. Three members of the family served in Napoleon's Grande Armée and a fourth, who suffered from weak health, in the supply train. The youngest of these had a son, who became a noted egyptologist; he, in turn, had three sons. The first and third became officers in the French Army; serving during the colonial campaigns before both were killed during World War I. The second son was Leclerc’s father; he also served in World War I, but survived the conflict and inherited the family estate in Belloy-Saint-Léonard.

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George S. Patton
George Smith Patton, Jr. (November 11, 1885 – December 21, 1945) was an officer in the United States Army best known for his leadership as a general during World War II. He also developed a reputation for eccentricity and for sometimes-controversial gruff outspokenness—such as during his profanity-laced speech to his expeditionary troops.
He was on the U.S. 1912 Olympic pentathlon team and also designed the U.S. Cavalry's last combat saber: the "Patton Saber" (the M-1913). In 1916 he led the first-ever U.S. motorized-vehicle attack during the Mexican Border Campaign. In World War I, he was the first officer assigned to the new United States Tank Corps and saw action in France.
In World War II, he commanded corps and armies in North Africa, Sicily, and the European Theater of Operations. In 1944, Patton assumed command of the U.S. Third Army, which under his leadership advanced farther, captured more enemy prisoners, and liberated more territory in less time than any other army in history. A German field marshal speaking to American reporters called Patton "your best" (general).

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Günther Blumentritt
Günther Blumentritt (10 February 1892 – 12 October 1967) was a German officer in World War I, who became a Staff Officer under the Weimar Republic and went on to serve as a general for Nazi Germany during World War II. He served throughout the war, mostly on the Western Front, and mostly as a Staff Officer, though he was eventually given his own Corps and made a General der Infanterie. Blumentritt was instrumental in planning the 1939 German invasion of Poland and the 1940 invasion of France, he participated in Operation Barbarossa, and afterward bore a large part of the responsibility for planning the defense of the Atlantic Wall and Normandy. After the war, Blumentritt gave an affidavit at the Nuremberg Trials, though he never testified in person, and then later helped in the rearmament of Germany during the Cold War and the development of the modern German army.
Born in Munich, Günther Alois Friedrich Blumentritt was the son of Günther Blumentritt (born 23 June 1859), town planner and a Privy Councilor in Munich and Lina Rückart (born 24 March 1868). In 1920, he married Mathilde Schollmeyer, and subsequently had two children with her; they remained married 47 years, until her death in 1967. Blumentritt was described as the opposite in many ways of his long-time commander Gerd von Rundstedt: Bavarian and Catholic, where von Rundstedt was Prussian and Protestant; swarthy and short where von Rundstedt was tall and pale. Blumentritt was affable, friendly, and talkative, capable of great diplomacy, and in military terms, detail oriented—all of which made him an excellent staff officer, as well as a good complement to von Rundstedt.

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Günther von Kluge
Günther Adolf Ferdinand “Hans” von Kluge (30 October 1882 – 17 August 1944) was a German military leader. He was born in Posen into a Prussian military family. Kluge rose to the rank of Field Marshal in the Wehrmacht. He was also a recipient of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves and Swords (German: Ritterkreuz des Eisernen Kreuzes mit Eichenlaub und Schwertern). The Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross and its higher grade Oak Leaves and Swords was awarded to recognise extreme battlefield bravery or successful military leadership.
During World War I, he was a staff officer and in 1916 was at the Battle of Verdun. By 1936 he was a lieutenant-general, and in 1937 took command of the Sixth Army Group.
As commander of the Sixth Army Group, which became the German Fourth Army, Kluge led the Sixth into battle in Poland in 1939. Though he opposed the initial German plan to attack westwards into France, he led the Fourth Army in its attack through the Ardennes that culminated in the fall of France. Kluge was promoted to field marshal in July 1940.

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I. C. B. Dear
I. C. B. Dear is a full-time writer specializing in maritime and military history. He formerly served in the Royal Marines.

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James Stagg
Group Captain Sir James Martin Stagg, CB, OBE, FRSE (30 June 1900 – 23 June 1975) was a British Royal Air Force meteorologist who notably persuaded General Dwight D. Eisenhower to change the date of the Allied invasion of Europe in World War II, from the 5^th of June to the 6^th of June 1944.
Stagg was born in Dalkeith, Scotland. In 1924, he became an assistant in the British Meteorological Office and was superintendent of the Kew Gardens observatory in 1939. In 1943, he was commissioned a Group Captain in the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve and appointed the chief meteorological officer for Operation Overlord. Stagg was the senior staff meteorologist working with input from three separate forecasting teams from the Royal Navy, Met Office and USAAF. The detailed history of the forecasts is subject to disagreement in the accounts published by participants, including Stagg himself.
Stagg later worked as director of services at the Meteorological Office until 1960.
For his invaluable services during the planning of D-Day, Stagg was appointed an Officer of the US Legion of Merit in 1945 and was also appointed an OBE at the same time; he was knighted in 1954 and also appointed a CB that year. He was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1951 and elected as president of the Royal Meteorological Society in 1959.

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Jeffrey Herf
Jeffrey Herf (born 1947) is a professor of history at the University of Maryland. His specialty is in 20th century European intellectual history, especially in Germany.
Herf received his PhD. from Brandeis University in 1980. Before joining the faculty at the University of Maryland, he taught at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio, where he often ate at the Burrito Buggy. He has published essays in The New Republic, Die Zeit, Partisan Review and elsewhere.
In his 1984 book, Reactionary Modernism: Technology, Culture and Politics in Weimar and the Third Reich, Herf coined the term “reactionary modernism” to describe the mixture of robust modernity and an affirmative stance toward progress combined with dreams of the past - a highly technological romanticism - which was a current in the thinking of ideologues of Weimar's "conservative revolution" and of currents in the Nazi Party and Nazi regime.
His subsequent books (see below) examine the political culture of West Germany before and during the battle over the euromissiles in the 1980s; memory and politics regarding the Holocaust in Germany; Nazi Germany's anti-Semitic propaganda; and Nazi Germany's propaganda aimed at North Africa and the Middle East.

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Johannes Blaskowitz
Johannes Albrecht Blaskowitz (10 July 1883 – 5 February 1948) was a German general during World War II. He was also a recipient of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves and Swords (German: Ritterkreuz des Eisernen Kreuzes mit Eichenlaub und Schwertern). The Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross and its higher grade Oak Leaves and Swords was awarded to recognise extreme battlefield bravery or successful military leadership.
Johannes Blaskowitz was born on July 10, 1883, in Paterswalde, Kreis Wehlau (East Prussia), now in Kaliningrad Oblast. His father was a Lutheran pastor. In 1894, Blaskowitz joined cadet school at Köslin (Koszalin) and also afterwards at Berlin Lichterfelde. In 1901, he started his military career as a Fähnrich in an East Prussian regiment in Osterode (Ostróda).
During World War I, Blaskowitz served on the Eastern and Western Front and was employed in the Generalstab. He rose to command an infantry company by 1918, and was awarded the Iron Cross for bravery.
Blaskowitz's war service secured him a place in the postwar Reichswehr during the Weimar Republic, through whose ranks he rose until 1938, when Adolf Hitler sacked virtually all the other senior generals. His attitude towards the Nazis' seizure of power (Machtergreifung) was reportedly indifferent because he believed that the armed forces should be "politically neutral".

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John Keegan
Sir John Keegan OBE FRSL (born 15 May 1934) is a British military historian, lecturer, writer and journalist. He has published many works on the nature of combat between the 14th and 21st centuries concerning land, air, maritime, and intelligence warfare, as well as the psychology of battle.
John Desmond Patrick Keegan was born in Clapham, London, to a family of Irish Catholic extraction. His father served in the First World War.
At the age of 13 Keegan contracted orthopaedic tuberculosis, which has subsequently affected his gait. The long-term effects of his tuberculosis rendered him unfit for military service, and the timing of his birth made him too young for service in World War II, as mentioned in his works as an ironic observation on his profession and interest. The illness also interrupted his education during his teenage years; however, his education included a period at King's College, Taunton, and two years at Wimbledon College, which led to entry to Balliol College, Oxford in 1953. Following graduation he worked at the American Embassy in London for three years.^{[citation needed]}

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John Lewis Gaddis
John Lewis Gaddis (born 1941 in Cotulla, Texas, U.S.) is a noted historian of the Cold War and grand strategy, who has been hailed as the "Dean of Cold War Historians" by The New York Times. He is the Robert A. Lovett Professor of Military and Naval History at Yale University. He is also the official biographer of the seminal 20th century statesman George F. Kennan, for which he won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography in 2012.
Raised in Cotulla, Texas, Gaddis attended the University of Texas at Austin,. He received his B.A. in 1963, his M.A. in 1965, and his Ph.D. in 1968, under the direction of Robert Divine. He taught briefly at Indiana University Southeast before joining Ohio University in 1969. At Ohio, he founded and directed the Contemporary History Institute and was named a distinguished professor in 1983. In the 1975-1977 academic years, Gaddis was a Visiting Professor of Strategy at the Naval War College. In the 1992-1993 academic year, he was the Harmsworth Professor of American History at Oxford University. He has held visiting positions at the Naval War College, Princeton University, and the University of Helsinki. He served as president of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations in 1992. In 1997, he moved to Yale University to become the Lovett Professor of Military and Naval History. In the 2000-2001 academic year, Gaddis was the George Eastman Professor at Oxford, the second scholar (after Robin Winks) to have the honor of being both Eastman and Harmsworth professor.

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Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (Russian: Иосиф Виссарионович Сталин; born Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili, Russian: Иосиф Виссарионович Джугашвили; 18 December 1878 – 5 March 1953) was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution in Russia in 1917 and later held the position of General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee from 1922 until his death in 1953. While the office of the General Secretary was officially elective and not initially regarded as the top position in the Soviet state, Stalin managed to use it to consolidate more and more power in his hands after the death of Vladimir Lenin in 1924 and gradually put down all opposition groups within the Communist Party. This included Leon Trotsky, a socialist theorist and the principal critic of Stalin among the early Soviet leaders, who was exiled from the Soviet Union in 1929. Whereas Trotsky was an exponent of permanent revolution, it was Stalin's concept of socialism in one country that became the primary focus of Soviet politics.

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Lesley J. McNair
General Lesley James McNair (May 25, 1883 – July 25, 1944) was an American Army officer who served during World War I and World War II. He was killed by friendly fire when a USAAF Eighth Air Force bomb landed in his foxhole near Saint-Lô during Operation Cobra as part of the Battle of Normandy.
McNair, Frank Maxwell Andrews, Simon Bolivar Buckner, Jr. and Millard Harmon, all lieutenant generals at the time of their deaths, were the highest-ranking Americans to be killed in World War II; McNair and Buckner were both promoted posthumously to general, on July 19, 1954, by Act of Congress.
He was born in Verndale, Minnesota, the son of James and Clara Manz McNair. He graduated eleventh in a class of 124 from the United States Military Academy and was commissioned a 2nd lieutenant of Artillery (1904). He then served in a series of ordnance and artillery appointments in Utah, Massachusetts, New Jersey and Washington, D.C. (1904–1909). He was promoted to 1st lieutenant (June 1905) and captain (May 1907) and was then assigned to the 4th Artillery Regiment in the west (1909–1914). While attached to the regiment he was sent to France to observe French artillery training for a period of seven months (1913) and upon return took part in Major General Frederick Funston's expedition to Vera Cruz (April 30-November 23, 1914). He then saw service under General John J. Pershing, in the Pancho Villa Expedition, and was promoted to major (May 1917).

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M. R. D. Foot
Michael Richard Daniell Foot, CBE, TD (14 December 1919 – 18 February 2012) — known as M. R. D. Foot — was a prolific British military historian and former British Army intelligence officer and special operations operative during World War II.
The son of a career soldier, Foot was educated at Winchester College and New College, Oxford, where he became involved romantically with Iris Murdoch. He joined the British Army on the outbreak of World War II and was commissioned into a Royal Engineers searchlight battalion. In 1941 searchlight units transferred to the Royal Artillery. By 1942, he was serving at Combined Operations Headquarters, but wanting to see action he joined the SAS as an intelligence officer and was parachuted into France after D-Day. He was for a time a prisoner of war, and was severely injured during one of his attempts to escape. For his service with the French Resistance he was twice mentioned in despatches and awarded the Croix de Guerre. He ended the war as a major. After the war he remained in the Territorial Army, transferring to the Intelligence Corps in 1950.

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Martin Blumenson
Martin Blumenson (1918–2005) was an American military historian who served as a historical officer with the U.S. Third and Seventh Armies in World War II and later became a prolific author whose works included an authoritative biography of General George S. Patton.
Born in New York City, Blumenson studied at Bucknell University and Harvard University, earning master's degrees from both by 1942. During World War II, he became a U.S. Army officer and served as a historical officer with U.S. forces in northwestern Europe during 1944-45. Postwar, Blumenson remained in France for years, married a French woman and later divided his time between France and the United States.
During the Korean War, Blumenson again served with the U.S. Army and the unit he commanded (3rd Historical Detachment) was attached to the U.S. IX Corps. After the Korean War, he worked in the Office of the Chief of Military History, contributing two works to the official U.S. Army history of World War II, Breakout and Pursuit and Salerno to Cassino. Working for the OCMH until 1967, Blumenson then worked for the Johnson administration as an adviser on civil disorders. Blumenson also taught or lectured at numerous institutions, prominent among which were the U.S. Military and Naval Academies.

wn.com/Martin_Blumenson
Martin Gilbert
Sir Martin John Gilbert, CBE, PC (born 25 October 1936) is a British historian and honorary Fellow of Merton College, University of Oxford. He is the author of over eighty books, including works on the Holocaust and Jewish history. Gilbert is a leading historian of the modern world, and is known as the official biographer of Sir Winston Churchill.
Gilbert was born in London to Peter and Miriam Gilbert. Nine months after the outbreak of the Second World War, he was evacuated to Canada as part of the British efforts to safeguard children. Vivid memories of the transatlantic crossing from Liverpool to Quebec sparked his curiosity about the war in later years. After the war he attended Highgate School, and then completed two years of National Service in the Intelligence Corps before going on to study at Magdalen College, Oxford, graduating in 1960 with a first-class BA in modern history. One of his tutors at Oxford was A.J.P. Taylor. After his graduation, Gilbert undertook postgraduate research at St Antony's College, Oxford. In 1963, he married Helen Constance Robinson, with whom he had a daughter. He had two sons with his second wife, Susan Sacher, whom he married in 1974. Since 2005, he has been married to the Holocaust historian Esther Gilbert, née Goldberg. Gilbert describes himself as a proud practising Jew and a Zionist.

wn.com/Martin_Gilbert
Percy Hobart
Major-General Sir Percy Cleghorn Stanley Hobart KBE CB DSO MC (14 June 1885 – 19 February 1957), also known as "Hobo", was a British military engineer, noted for his command of the 79th Armoured Division during World War II. He was responsible for many of the specialised armoured vehicles ("Hobart's Funnies") that took part in the invasion of Normandy and later actions.
Hobart was born in Naini Tal, India, the son of Robert T. Hobart, Indian Civil Service (ICS), and Janetta Stanley of Roughan Park, County Tyrone. His sister, Elizabeth, later married the World War II Field Marshal, Bernard Montgomery. In his youth he studied history, painting, literature and church architecture. He was educated at Temple Grove School and Clifton College, and in 1904 he graduated from the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich and was commissioned into the Corps of Royal Engineers. He was first sent to India, but during World War I he served in France and Mesopotamia (now Iraq).
He took part in the Waziristan campaign 1919–1920 when British and Indian Army forces put down unrest in local villages.

wn.com/Percy_Hobart
Philip Vian
Admiral of the Fleet Sir Philip Louis Vian, GCB, KBE, DSO & Two Bars (15 July 1894 – 27 May 1968) was a British naval officer who served in both World Wars.
Vian specialised in naval gunnery from the end of World War I, and subsequently received several appointments as gunnery officer. In the early 1930s, he was given command of a destroyer, HMS Active, and, later, various destroyer flotillas. During this phase of his career, in early 1940, he commanded a force that forcibly released captured British merchant sailors from the German supply ship Altmark in Jøssingfjord in, then neutral, Norway and, later, his flotilla took an active role in the final action of the German battleship Bismarck.
Much of Vian's wartime service was in the Mediterranean, where he commanded a cruiser squadron, defended several critical convoys and led naval support at the Allied invasions of Sicily and Italy. His wartime service was completed in command of the air component of the British Pacific Fleet, with successful actions against the Japanese in Sumatra and the western Pacific.

wn.com/Philip_Vian
Randolph Churchill
Major Randolph Frederick Edward Spencer-Churchill, MBE (28 May 1911 – 6 June 1968) was the son of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and his wife Clementine. He was a Conservative Member of Parliament (MP) for Preston from 1940 to 1945.
He was educated at Eton College and Christ Church, Oxford and became a journalist. In 1931 he shared Edward James's house in London with John Betjeman.
While attending Oxford, Churchill became embroiled in the controversy of February 1933 King and Country debate. Three weeks after the associated pacifist resolution was passed, Churchill proposed a resolution at the Oxford Union to delete the "King and Country" motion from the Union's records but this was defeated by 750 votes to 138 in a rowdy debate (one which was better attended than the original debate), where Churchill was met by a barrage of hisses and stink bombs. A bodyguard of Oxford Conservatives and police escorted Churchill back to his hotel after the debate. Sir Edward Heath records in his memoirs that Churchill was then chased around Oxford by undergraduates who intended to debag him (i.e. humiliate him by removing his trousers), and was then fined by the police for being illegally parked.

wn.com/Randolph_Churchill
Ray Barker
Ray Wehnes Barker (December 10, 1889 – June 28, 1974) was a Major General of the Allied Forces, and served in the European Theater of Operations During World War II. General Barker was a key member of the combined United States-British group, which became known as COSSAC (Chief of Staff to Supreme Allied Commander). This group planned the Battle of Normandy, codenamed "Operation Overlord", also known as D-Day, which liberated Occupied France. He served as the Deputy Chief of Staff of the European Theater from 1943–1944, and Deputy Chief of Staff for Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force.
Ray Barker was born in New York City and enlisted in the Army first serving with the 15th Cavalry from 1910 to 1913. He was commissioned as an officer in the Cavalry in 1913, later participating in the Punitive Expedition into Mexico (Pancho Villa Expedition) from 1916 to 1917. Thereafter, he transferred to the field artillery and accompanied the 13th Field Artillery to France in World War I. He served in the Marne-Vesle and Meuse-Argonne offensives.

wn.com/Ray_Barker
Stephen Ambrose
Stephen Edward Ambrose (January 10, 1936 – October 13, 2002) was an American historian and biographer of U.S. Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and Richard Nixon. He was a long time professor of history at the University of New Orleans and the author of many best selling volumes of American popular history. Beginning late in his life and continuing after his death, however, evidence and reports have continued to surface documenting long time patterns of plagiarism, falsification, and inaccuracies in many of his published writings and other work. In response to one of the early reports, Ambrose said he was not "out there stealing other people's writings."
Ambrose was born in Lovington, Illinois to Rosepha Trippe Ambrose and Stephen Hedges Ambrose. His father was a physician who served in the U.S. Navy during World War II. Ambrose was raised in Whitewater, Wisconsin, where he graduated from Whitewater High School. His family also owned a farm in Lovington, Illinois and vacation property in Marinette County, Wisconsin. He attended college at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where he was a member of Chi Psi Fraternity and played on the University of Wisconsin football team for three years.

wn.com/Stephen_Ambrose
Stephen E. Ambrose
Stephen Edward Ambrose (January 10, 1936 – October 13, 2002) was an American historian and biographer of U.S. Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and Richard Nixon. He was a long time professor of history at the University of New Orleans and the author of many best selling volumes of American popular history. Beginning late in his life and continuing after his death, however, evidence and reports have continued to surface documenting long time patterns of plagiarism, falsification, and inaccuracies in many of his published writings and other work. In response to one of the early reports, Ambrose said he was not "out there stealing other people's writings."
Ambrose was born in Lovington, Illinois to Rosepha Trippe Ambrose and Stephen Hedges Ambrose. His father was a physician who served in the U.S. Navy during World War II. Ambrose was raised in Whitewater, Wisconsin, where he graduated from Whitewater High School. His family also owned a farm in Lovington, Illinois and vacation property in Marinette County, Wisconsin. He attended college at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where he was a member of Chi Psi Fraternity and played on the University of Wisconsin football team for three years.

wn.com/Stephen_E._Ambrose
Ultra
Ultra was the designation adopted by British military intelligence in June 1941 for wartime signals intelligence obtained by breaking high-level encrypted enemy radio and teleprinter communications at the Government Code and Cypher School at Bletchley Park.Ultra eventually became the standard designation among the western Allies for all such intelligence. The name arose because the intelligence thus obtained was considered more important than that designated by the highest British security classification then used (Most Secret) and so was regarded as being Ultra secret. Several other cryptonyms had been used for such intelligence. British intelligence first designated it "Boniface"—presumably to imply that it was the result of human intelligence. The U.S. used the codename "Magic" for its decrypts from Japanese sources.
Much of the German cipher traffic was encrypted on the Enigma machine. Used properly, the German military Enigma would have been virtually unbreakable; in practice, shortcomings in operation allowed it to be broken. The term "Ultra" has often been used almost synonymously with "Enigma decrypts". However, Ultra also encompassed decrypts of the German Lorenz SZ 40/42 machines that were used by the German High Command, and the Hagelin machine and other Italian and Japanese ciphers and codes such as PURPLE and JN-25.

wn.com/Ultra
Vyacheslav Molotov
Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov (Russian: Вячесла́в Миха́йлович Мо́лотов; 9 March [O.S. 25 February] 1890 – 8 November 1986) was a Soviet politician and diplomat, an Old Bolshevik and a leading figure in the Soviet government from the 1920s, when he rose to power as a protégé of Joseph Stalin, to 1957, when he was dismissed from the Presidium (Politburo) of the Central Committee by Nikita Khrushchev. He served as Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars (Premier) from 1930 to 1941, and as Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1939 to 1949 and from 1953 to 1956. Molotov served for several years as First Deputy Premier in Joseph Stalin's cabinet. He retired in 1961 after several years of obscurity.
Molotov was the principal Soviet signatory of the Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact of 1939 (also known as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact), after Britain and France repeatedly failed to join the Soviets in an anti-Nazi alliance, was involved in post-war negotiations where he became noted for his diplomatic skills, and knew of the Katyn massacre committed by the Soviet authorities. Following the aftermath of World War II (Great Patriotic War) Molotov kept his place, until 1949, as a leading Soviet diplomat and politician. In March 1949, after losing Stalin's favour, he lost the foreign affairs ministry to Andrei Vyshinsky. Molotov's relationship with Stalin deteriorated further, with Stalin complaining about Molotov's mistakes in a speech to the 19th Party Congress. However, after Stalin's death in 1953 Molotov was staunchly opposed to Khrushchev's de-Stalinisation policy. He defended his policies and the legacy of Stalin until his death in 1986, and harshly criticized Stalin's successors, especially Nikita Khrushchev.

wn.com/Vyacheslav_Molotov
Walter Bedell Smith
Walter Bedell "Beetle" Smith (5 October 1895 – 9 August 1961) was a senior United States Army general who served as General Dwight D. Eisenhower's chief of staff at Allied Forces Headquarters during the Tunisia Campaign and the Allied invasion of Italy. Later he was Eisenhower's chief of staff at Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) from 1944 to 1945.
Smith enlisted as a private in the Indiana National Guard in 1911. During World War I he was commissioned as an officer in 1917 and wounded in the Aisne-Marne Offensive in 1918. After the war he was a staff officer and an instructor at the United States Army Infantry School. In 1941 he became Secretary of the General Staff. The next year he became Secretary to the Combined Chiefs of Staff. His duties involved participation in discussions at the highest level, and Smith often briefed President Franklin D. Roosevelt on strategic matters.
Smith became chief of staff to Eisenhower at Allied Forces Headquarters (AFHQ) in September 1942. He acquired a reputation as Eisenhower's "hatchet man" for his brusque and demanding manner. However, he was also capable of representing Eisenhower on sensitive missions requiring diplomatic skill. Smith was involved in negotiating the Armistice between Italy and Allied armed forces, which he signed on behalf of Eisenhower. In 1944 he became Chief of Staff of Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF), again under Eisenhower. He successfully negotiated food aid for the starving Dutch civilian population in the cities in the west of the country, and opened discussions for the peaceful and complete German capitulation in Holland. In May 1945 he met with the representatives of the German High Command to negotiate the surrender of the German Armed Forces.

wn.com/Walter_Bedell_Smith
Walter Model
Otto Moritz Walter Model (German pronunciation: [ˈmoːdəl]) (24 January 1891 – 21 April 1945) was a German general and later field marshal during World War II. He is noted for his defensive battles in the latter half of the war, mostly on the Eastern Front but also in the west, and for his close association with Adolf Hitler and Nazism. He has been called the Wehrmacht's best defensive tactician.
Although he was a hard-driving, aggressive panzer commander early in the war, Model became best known as a practitioner of defensive warfare. His success at the head of the 9th army in the defensive battles of 1941–1942 determined his future career path.
Model first came to Hitler's attention before World War II, but their relationship did not become especially close until 1942. His tenacious style of fighting and aggressive personality won him plaudits from Hitler, who considered him one of his best field commanders and repeatedly tasked him with retrieving desperate situations. However, their relationship had broken down by the end of the war, after Model was defeated at the Battle of the Bulge.

wn.com/Walter_Model
Wilhelm Keitel
Wilhelm Bodewin Johann Gustav Keitel (22 September 1882 – 16 October 1946) was a German field marshal (Generalfeldmarschall). As head of the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (Supreme Command of the Armed Forces) and de facto war minister under Adolf Hitler, he was one of Germany's most senior military leaders during World War II. At the Allied court at Nuremberg he was tried, sentenced to death and hanged as a war criminal.
Keitel was born in Bad Gandersheim, Duchy of Brunswick, German Empire, the son of Carl Keitel, a middle class landowner and his wife Apollonia Vissering. After completing his education in Göttingen, he embarked on a military career in 1901, becoming a Fahnenjunker (Cadet Officer), joining the 6th Lower-Saxon Field Artillery Regiment. He married Lisa Fontaine, a wealthy landowner's daughter, in 1909. Together they had six children, one of whom died in infancy. His eldest son, Karl-Heinz Keitel went on to serve as a divisional commander in the Waffen-SS. During World War I Keitel served on the Western Front with the Field Artillery Regiment No. 46. In September 1914, during the fighting in Flanders, he was severely wounded in his right forearm by a shell fragment.

wn.com/Wilhelm_Keitel
Winston Churchill
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, KG, OM, CH, TD, PC, DL, FRS, Hon. RA (30 November 1874 – 24 January 1965) was a British Conservative politician and statesman known for his leadership of the United Kingdom during the Second World War. Widely regarded as one of the greatest wartime leaders of the century, he served as Prime Minister twice (1940–45 and 1951–55). A noted statesman and orator, Churchill was also an officer in the British Army, a historian, a writer, and an artist. He is the only British prime minister to have received the Nobel Prize in Literature, and was the first person to be made an Honorary Citizen of the United States.
Churchill was born into the aristocratic family of the Dukes of Marlborough. His father, Lord Randolph Churchill, was a charismatic politician who served as Chancellor of the Exchequer; his mother, Jenny Jerome, was an American socialite. As a young army officer, he saw action in British India, the Sudan, and the Second Boer War. He gained fame as a war correspondent and wrote books about his campaigns.

wn.com/Winston_Churchill

WW II in Colour 9-13 [Overlord]

...

published: 21 Jan 2012

author: SrDocumentado

WW2: Operation Overlord 1

...

published: 03 Dec 2011

author: EvilFingers

Operation Overlord: an overview

Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno, Sword. Neptune, Mulberry, Overlord. Finally the codenames make se...

published: 21 Nov 2008

author: mtthwwbstr

Quake II Music - Operation Overlord

Operation Overlord is by Sonic Mayhem...

published: 13 Sep 2007

author: TheCanadianSoldier

D-Day invasion Operation Overlord, June 6 1944, Battle of Normandy

Original live video scenes leading up to D-Day, D-Day itself and the capture of Caen Franc...

published: 03 Mar 2010

author: MrBNaylor

Operation OverLord (D-Day)

Operation OverLord (D-Day) the Invasion of Allied Force on june, 6th 1944...

published: 31 Dec 2007

author: rojnchin

Omaha Beach "Operation Overlord" D-Day

Operation Overlord ( Invasion of Normandy ) on June 6, 1944 Allied forces landed on a 50 m...

published: 05 Mar 2012

author: Bruce Willhoit

Doku - Operation Overlord 1/2

...

published: 12 Sep 2012

author: UgurHaberAjansi

Operation Overlord 4: Race Extermination

The true motivation of the Eugenics organizations...

published: 09 Jun 2009

author: reamonnk

Medal of Honor Allied Assault - Operation Overlord 1/5

A. Omaha Beach Difficulty: Normal...

published: 21 Jul 2008

author: FreshTekNL

Operation Overlord 3: The Operatives

Pentagon media operatives are exposed....

published: 06 Jun 2009

author: reamonnk

Operation Overlord - A Tribute to the D-Day Allied Forces

Operation Overlord is a song written and performed by the New Jersey based progressive roc...

published: 30 Sep 2007

author: john61254

Operation Overlord (animation)

Animated Short based on the horrors of D-Day. Programs used: -Pivot -Flash Cs3 -Powerdirec...

published: 01 Oct 2011

author: Cavolia

Operation Overlord: Population Reduction

Billionaire Elite Want Two-Thirds Of The Dumb People Wiped Off The Planet...

published: 26 May 2009

author: reamonnk

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photo: AP / Jerome Delay

An internally displaced Congolese child heats water at the Mugunga camp outside the eastern Congolese town of Goma, Saturday Nov. 24, 2012.

DR Congo president holds talks with rebels

Al Jazeera

25 Nov 2012

Joseph Kabila, president of the Democratic Republic of Congo, has held direct talks with the leader of the M23 rebels in Uganda, hours after a regional summit called on them to end their offensive in the east of the country. Jean-Marie Runiga Lugerero, the political leader of the eastern DR Congo rebel group, said on Sunday he had an initial meeting with Kabila after the summit in the Ugandan capital, Kampala, ended on Saturday....(size: 20.0Kb)

photo: AP / Henry Griffin

File - John Kerry, 27, testifies about the war in Vietnam before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in Washington, April 22, 1971. Sen. Kerry, D-Mass., 63, became a prominent critic of the war after he came home as a decorated veteran.

Will Kerry Preserve U.S. Freedom and an Authentic Defense?

WorldNews.com

26 Nov 2012

And to attempt to justify the loss of one American life in Vietnam, Cambodia or Laos by linking such loss to the preservation of freedom..is to us the height of criminal hypocrisy..." ... At the same time, and unlike external and covert armed operations of past empires that proved profitable, the Pentagon has become extremely expensive and wasteful. ... via American conglomerates. ... In just one operation, Operation Rolling Thunder, the U.S....(size: 6.4Kb)

photo: AP / Polash Khan

Bangladeshis and firefighters battle a fire at a garment factory in the Savar neighborhood in Dhaka, Bangladesh, late Saturday, Nov. 24, 2012.

Bangladesh clothes factory fire kills 'at least 120'

BBC News

25 Nov 2012

The death toll from a fire in a clothes factory in Bangladesh has leapt to at least 120, officials say. The fire broke out late on Saturday in the nine-floor Tazreen Fashion factory in the Ashulia district on the outskirts of the capital Dhaka . ... ....(size: 1.5Kb)

photo: AP

Thousands of Turks demonstrate to condemn terrorism and Kurdish rebels in Ankara, Turkey, Sunday, Sept. 2, 2012. Mostly nationalist Turks shouted: "We don't want The PKK (Kurdistan Workers Party) at the parliament."

Turkey confronts a resurgent Kurdish threat

The Independent

26 Nov 2012

This town of 19,000 nestled in an idyllic mountain pass of impossibly green pastures and golden autumn trees is on the front lines of Turkey's rapidly escalating guerrilla war. In a struggle for autonomy as well as independent language and education rights, the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) has waged a low-grade conflict in Turkey for decades. ... 4 just as a Turkish army tank rolled by. ... "The violence is getting worse....(size: 8.8Kb)

photo: AP / Ahmed Gomaa

Egyptian protesters clash with security forces, not pictured, near Tahrir Square in Cairo, Egypt, Sunday, Nov. 25, 2012.

Egypt crisis: Mohammed Mursi to meet top judges

BBC News

26 Nov 2012

Egyptian President Mohammed Mursi is due to meet meet senior judges to try and ease a crisis over the extent of his powers. A decree giving him sweeping new powers was announced on Thursday, sparking violent nationwide protests and leading to a 9% drop in Egypt's stock market. Mr Mursi said on Sunday the decree was temporary and not intended to concentrate power in his hands. ... ....(size: 2.8Kb)

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Global race to crack WW2 pigeon English

The Daily Telegraph Australia

24 Nov 2012

A DEAD pigeon found rotting in a chimney in England has sparked a worldwide race to crack a code that had been strapped to its leg since World War II . ... It is suspected the bird was destined for the top secret Bletchley Park, which is just 80 miles from where the dead bird was found or for the secret Reigate HQ just eight miles away where the Operation Overlord D-Day Landings were planned. XO is though to be code for Bomber Command. ... ....(size: 2.4Kb)

Count Jacques le Bel de Penguilly: Aristocrat and one of the last members of the ...

The Independent

19 Nov 2012

After intense commando training, including parachuting and hand-to-hand combat instructed by the legendary Major Eric Sykes (of the famous double-edged Fairbairn-Sykes commando dagger), Le Bel was “married” to the Americans Singlaub and Denneau as Jedburgh Team James in the run-up to Operation Overlord, the invasion of Normandy....(size: 7.6Kb)

Montgomery's note to British forces on eve of D-Day found in old book

Newstrack India

10 Nov 2012

The stirring words were delivered to tens of thousands of British troops on the eve of the Normandy landings in 1944 . ... The printed sheet is signed B.L. Montgomery, General, C-in-C, 21 Army Group and dated 5 June 1944 - the day before the start of Operation Overlord - the Allied invasion of occupied Northern Europe....(size: 2.8Kb)

Let's be grateful to Petraeus and remember him for his outstanding service

Fox News

10 Nov 2012

June 23, 2011: In this file photo, then-CIA Director-desigate Gen. ... A man who, in World War II, made the gutsy decision to “go” on June 6, 1944 to conduct Operation OVERLORD, the invasion of Nazi held France . ... Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer (ret.) is a former senior intelligence officer and the New York Times bestselling author of Operation "DARK HEART: Spycraft an Special Operations on the Frontlines of Afghanistan – And The Path to Victory."...(size: 5.8Kb)

Talvivaara Mining Company Interim Report for January-September 2012 (Talvivaara Mining Company plc)

noodls

08 Nov 2012

As no new ore was stacked during September, work in progress increased less in Q3 2012 than during normal operations. ... Production expansion - Operation Overlord Conceptual studies relating to production expansion beyond 50,000tpa of nickel continued during the quarter, with a particular emphasis on permitting and the on-going Environmental Impact Assessment....(size: 114.2Kb)

Soldier from 101st Airborne Division killed in Afghanistan

The Examiner

21 Oct 2012

Army modular light infantry division trained for air assault operations. During World War II, it was renowned for its role in Operation Overlord—the D-Day landings starting 6 June 1944, in Normandy, France—, Operation Market Garden, the liberation of the Netherlands and action during the Battle of the Bulge around the city of Bastogne, Belgium....(size: 7.6Kb)

D-Day veteran recalls horrifying memories of war

The Examiner

06 Oct 2012

Related topics VeteransD-DayJune 61944 Advertisement On the morning of June 6, 1944, Pfc. William R. ... Utah Beach was the code name for the right flank, or westernmost, of the Allied landing beaches during the D-Day invasion of Normandy, as part of Operation Overlord on 6 June 1944. ... The German called this sector code W5. “The hardest thing was on D-Day, coming in to the beach. ... MOS: 11B1P ......(size: 7.0Kb)

Letters: Leveson verdict on the morality of the press

The Independent

19 Sep 2012

especially in the West. He is right. ... I was wondering if Great Britain has ever organised so large and so successful an operation as it did in London this summer. Would it be totally inappropriate to compare it to Operation Overlord, with elements of Dunkirk? I am thinking of the secrecy involved, the volunteering. the infrastructure, the international co-operation and the relief that the whole thing was pulled off. ... Now, Palestinians. ... ....(size: 16.1Kb)

An Olympics of military genius

Belfast Telegraph

12 Sep 2012

Would it be totally inappropriate to compare it to Operation Overlord? ......(size: 0.4Kb)

>Where to Find Your Favorite Actors From 2012′s Cancelled Shows

Wired News

08 Sep 2012

Here are a few places you can see the actors you enjoyed from shows cancelled this year: Niall Matter, who played Zane on Eureka, will be starring as Evan Cross in Primeval: New World . ... Those missing Sean Bean on Missing can see him in two 2013 films: The 4th Reich (a horror movie involving Operation Overlord, the scientists of the Nazi regime, and their zombies) and as Zeus in Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters. ... Follow on Twitter. ... . ... ....(size: 7.2Kb)

Washington Post Bestsellers Aug. 26- Sept. 1

The Washington Post

25 Aug 2012

NONFICTION HARDCOVER 1.STRENGTHS FINDER 2.0: ... ONLINE TEST FROM GALLUP'S “NOW, DISCOVER YOUR STRENGTHS” Loading... ... By Tom Rath [90] 2. THE FIVE DYSFUNCTIONS OF TEAM: A LEADERSHIP FABLE (Jossey-Bass, $24.95). By Patrick M. Lencioni. [1] 3. ... By Bradford Smart [1] 4. ... By Edward Klein. ... [9] 5. ... By Ben Macintyre [3] 6. ... [1] 7. ... D-Day’s Operation Overlord and the Manhattan Project are at risk....(size: 3.9Kb)

>Weekend TV in Review: Comings (Boss, Strike Back) and Goings (Political Animals)

Seattle Post

17 Aug 2012

Will Tom Mason (Noah Wyle, rarely better) be allowed to put what I call "Operation Overlord" into motion and take down the spindly creature who's bedeviled him since last season's cliffhanger? Let's just say this climax isn't skimping on action, with some nifty and scary twists setting up what promises to be another nail-biting season next summer....(size: 11.1Kb)

Talvivaara Mining Company Interim Report for January-June 2012

noodls

16 Aug 2012

The operating loss for Q2 2012 was EUR (10.9) million (Q2 2011: EUR (1.2) million). ... Production expansion - Operation Overlord Conceptual studies relating to production expansion beyond 50,000tpa of nickel continued during the quarter, with a particular emphasis on permitting and the ongoing Environmental Impact Assessment....(size: 130.2Kb)

timeline:
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Operation Overlord

Part of World War II

Tank landing ships unloading supplies on Omaha Beach, building up for the breakout from Normandy.

Date	6 June – 25 August 1944
Location	Normandy, France
Result	Decisive Allied victory

Belligerents

Western Allies

United States
United Kingdom
Canada
Free French Forces
Poland
Czechoslovakia
Australia
New Zealand
Netherlands
Free Belgian Forces
Greece
Luxembourg^{[nb 1]}

Germany

Commanders and leaders

Dwight Eisenhower
(Supreme Allied Commander)

Arthur Tedder (Deputy Supreme Allied Commander)

Bernard Montgomery (Ground Forces Commander in Chief)

Trafford Leigh-Mallory (Air Commander in Chief)

Bertram Ramsay (Naval Commander in Chief)

Gerd von Rundstedt (Oberbefehlshaber West)

Erwin Rommel (Heeresgruppe B)

Strength

1,452,000 (by 25 July)^{[nb 2]}
2,052,299 (by 21 August, in northern France alone)^{[nb 3]}

380,000 (by 23 July)^{[nb 4]} – 1,000,000+^{[nb 5]}
2,200^[4] – ~2,300 tanks and assault guns^[5]

Casualties and losses

226,386 casualties^{[nb 6]}

^{[nb 7]}
4,101 planes^[7]
~4,000 tanks^{[nb 8]}

209,875^{[nb 9]} – 450,000 casualties^{[nb 10]}

2,127 planes^[9]
~2,200 tanks and assault guns^{[nb 11]}

13,632–19,890 French civilians killed or injured^[10]

Operation Overlord
(Invasion of Normandy)

Operation Overlord

Prelude

Initial airborne assault

British sector

American sector

Normandy landings

American sector

Anglo-Canadian sector

Gambit

Initial ground campaign

American Sector

Anglo-Canadian Sector

Breakout

Air and sea operations

Supporting operations

Other

Cemeteries

v t e West European Campaign (1944–1945)

Overlord Dragoon Paris to the Rhine Market Garden Aachen Hürtgen Forest Scheldt Queen Bulge Blackcock Colmar Pocket Reichswald Invasion of Germany End of World War II in Europe

Western Front

Prelude

1939

1940

Luxembourg
The Netherlands
Belgium
France
- Sedan
- Arras
- Lille
- Calais
- Saumur
- Paula
- Dunkirk
- Dunkirk evacuation
- Italian Invasion of France
Britain
Sea Lion

1942–1943

1944–1945

Strategic Campaigns

Operation Overlord^[11] was the code name for the Battle of Normandy, the operation that launched the invasion of German-occupied western Europe during World War II by Allied forces. The operation commenced on 6 June 1944 with the Normandy landings (Operation Neptune, commonly known as D-Day). A 12,000-plane airborne assault preceded an amphibious assault involving almost 7,000 vessels. Nearly 160,000 troops crossed the English Channel on 6 June; more than three million troops were in France by the end of August.^[12]

Allied land forces that saw combat in Normandy on D-Day itself came from Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States. Free French Forces and Poland also participated in the battle after the assault phase, and there were also minor contingents from Belgium, Greece, the Netherlands, and Norway.^[13] Other Allied nations participated in the naval and air forces.

Once the beachheads were secured, a three-week military buildup occurred on the beaches before Operation Cobra, the operation to break out from the Normandy beachhead, began. The battle for Normandy continued for more than two months, with campaigns to expand the foothold on France, and concluded with the closing of the Falaise pocket on 24 August, the Liberation of Paris on 25 August, and the German retreat across the Seine which was completed on 30 August 1944.^[14]^{[verification needed]}

Preparations for D-Day [link]

“	In the East, the vastness of space will… permit a loss of territory… without suffering a mortal blow to Germany’s chance for survival. Not so in the West! If the enemy here succeeds… consequences of staggering proportions will follow within a short time.^[15]	”
—-Adolf Hitler, 'Directive 51'

In June 1940, German dictator Adolf Hitler had triumphed in what he called "the most famous victory in history" – the fall of France.^[16] The British, although besieged, had been spared from annihilation when Operation Dynamo evacuated 300,000 troops from Dunkirk. The British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, in one of his famous speeches, vowed to invade France and liberate it from Nazi Germany ( Quotations related to God Protect France at Wikiquote).

In a joint statement with the Soviet premier Communist Party General Secretary Joseph Stalin and American President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Churchill announced in 1942 a "full understanding" concerning the urgent task of creating a second front in Europe. Churchill unofficially informed the Soviets in a memorandum handed to Soviet Minister of Foreign Affairs Vyacheslav Molotov that the resources necessary for an invasion were lacking in 1942.^[17] However, the announcement had some effect as it caused Hitler to order preparations for an Allied descent on Europe.^[15]

The British, under Churchill, wished to avoid the costly frontal assaults of World War I - Churchill's previous experience of opening a second front via an invasion had been the disastrous campaign in Gallipoli, Turkey. Churchill and the British staff favoured a course of allowing the insurgency work of the Special Operations Executive to come to widespread fruition, while making a main Allied thrust from the Mediterranean Sea to Vienna and into Germany from the south, concentrating on the weaker Axis ally, Italy. Such an approach was also believed to offer the advantage of creating a barrier to limit the Soviet advance into Europe. However, the U.S. government believed from the onset that the optimum approach was the shortest route to Germany emanating from the strongest Allied power base: Great Britain. They were adamant in their view and made it clear that it was the only option they would support in the long term. Two preliminary proposals were drawn up: Operation Sledgehammer, for an invasion in 1942, and Operation Roundup, for a larger attack in 1943, which was adopted and became Operation Overlord, although it was delayed until 1944.^[18]

“	This operation will be the primary United States and British ground and air effort against the Axis of Europe. Following the establishment of strong Allied forces in France, operations designed to strike at the heart of Germany and to destroy her military forces will be undertaken. We have approved the outline plan for Operation Overlord.	”
—-Report by Allied Combined Chiefs of Staff, Quebec Conference, August 1943

The planning process was started in earnest after the Casablanca and Tehran Conferences^[19] with the appointment of British Lieutenant-General Frederick E. Morgan^[20] as Chief of Staff to the Supreme Allied Commander (Designate), a title shortened to COSSAC, with the American Major General Ray Barker as his deputy. The COSSAC staff's initial plans were constrained by the numbers of landing craft available, which were reduced by commitments in the Mediterranean and Pacific.^[21] In part because of lessons learned by Allied troops in the raid on Dieppe of 19 August 1942, the Allies decided not to assault a French seaport directly in their first landings.^[22] The short operating range of British fighters, including the Spitfire and Typhoon, from UK airfields greatly limited the number of potential landing sites, as comprehensive air support depended upon having planes overhead for as long as possible.^[19] Geography reduced the choices further to two sites: the Pas de Calais and the Normandy coast.^[23]

US Army M4 Sherman tanks loaded in a LCT, ready for the invasion of France, c. late May or early June 1944.

Normandy presented serious logistical problems, not the least of which was that the only viable port in the area, Cherbourg, was heavily defended. Many among the higher echelons of command argued that the Pas de Calais would make a more suitable landing area on these grounds alone. Although the Pas de Calais was the shortest distance to the European mainland from Britain,^[24] it was the most heavily fortified and defended landing site. It was also considered that it offered few opportunities for expansion as the area was bounded by numerous rivers and canals,^[25] whereas landings on a broad front in Normandy would permit simultaneous threats against the port of Cherbourg, coastal ports further west in Brittany, and an overland attack towards Paris and towards the border with Germany. Normandy was a less-defended coast and an unexpected but strategic jumping-off point, with the potential to confuse and scatter the German defending forces.^[23] Normandy was hence chosen as the landing site.^[26]

The COSSAC staff planned to launch the invasion on 1 May 1944.^[25] The initial draft of the COSSAC plan was accepted at the Quebec Conference in August 1943, but no supreme commander was appointed for several months. General Dwight D. Eisenhower was appointed commander of Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) in November 1943.^[27] SHAEF was based in Camp Griffiss, Bushy Park, Teddington, south-west London, and had over 1200 military personnel. General Bernard Montgomery was named as commander of the 21st Army Group, to which all of the invasion ground forces belonged, and was also given charge of developing the invasion plan.^[28] Both Eisenhower and Montgomery first saw the COSSAC plan on 31 December 1943 at Marrakech in Morocco, in a conference with Winston Churchill. They insisted immediately that the scale of the initial invasion be expanded, to prevent the invaders being restricted to a narrow beachhead, with insufficient room to land follow-up formations and vulnerable to German counter-attacks.^[29] The need to acquire or produce extra landing craft for this expanded operation meant that the invasion had to be delayed to June.

The COSSAC plan proposed a landing from the sea by three divisions, with two brigades landed by air. Following Eisenhower's and Montgomery's revision of the plan, this was expanded to landings by five divisions and airborne descents by three divisions. In total, 39 divisions would be committed to the Battle of Normandy: 12 British, three Canadian and one Polish division under overall British command, and 22 American divisions and one Free French division^[30]^{[nb 12]}, totalling over a million troops.^[33]

Men of 22nd Independent Parachute Company, 6th Airborne Division being briefed for the invasion, 4–5 June 1944

Detail planning [link]

In preparation, the BBC appealed for holiday pictures and snaps of France for an exhibition. Those of the Normandy beaches were singled out to create detailed geological maps of the area. What was already known of the make-up was that the targeted beaches were underpinned in places by ancient woodland, which had created peat bogs not far below the surface of the beaches. Tests on similar beaches in Norfolk in 1943 proved them unsuitable for taking the weight of heavy tanks and transport, so detailed maps of the area were required. In December 1943, Operation Postage Able used an X-craft to collect suitable data for all of the beaches. Where the areas of peat could not be avoided, they were to be covered with rolls of matting deployed from spools nicknamed "bobbins" (or more prosaically, "bog rolls") mounted on modified tanks.^[34]

On 7 April and 15 May, Montgomery presented his strategy for the invasion at St Paul's School.^[35] He envisaged a ninety day battle, ending when all the forces reached the Seine,^[36] pivoting on an Allied-held Caen,^{[nb 13]} with British and Canadian armies forming a shoulder and the U.S. armies wheeling to the right

The objective for the first 40 days was to create a lodgement that would include the cities of Caen and Cherbourg (especially Cherbourg, for its deep-water port). Subsequently, there would be a breakout from the lodgement to liberate Brittany and its Atlantic ports, and to advance to a line roughly 125 miles (190 km) to the southwest of Paris, from Le Havre through Le Mans to Tours, so that after ninety days the Allies would control a zone bounded by the rivers Loire in the south and Seine in the northeast.

Technology [link]

This section requires expansion.

Main articles: Mulberry harbor and Operation Pluto

The Allies developed new technologies for Overlord. The "mulberry", a mobile, prefabricated concrete harbor, allowed the Allies to supply their beachhead without capturing one of the heavily defended Channel ports, as did the Pipe-Line Under The Ocean (PLUTO).^[38] Major-General Percy Hobart, an unconventional military engineer, assembled a force of modified Sherman and Churchill tanks known as Hobart's Funnies, which were used at Normandy.

Deception [link]

Training with live ammunition in the UK.

Main articles: Operation Fortitude and Operation Bodyguard

In the months leading up to the invasion, the Allies conducted a deception operation, Operation Bodyguard, designed to persuade the Germans that areas other than northern France would be threatened as well (such as the Balkans and the south of France). Then, in the weeks leading up to the invasion, in order to persuade the Germans that the main invasion would really take place at the Pas de Calais and to lead them to expect an invasion of Norway, the Allies prepared a massive deception plan, called Operation Fortitude. Operation Fortitude North would lead the Axis to expect an attack on Norway; the much more vital Operation Fortitude South was designed to lead the Germans to expect the main invasion at the Pas de Calais and to hold back forces to guard against this threat rather than rushing them to Normandy.^[39]

An entirely fictitious First U.S. Army Group ("FUSAG"), supposedly located in southeastern Britain under the command of General Lesley J. McNair and Lieutenant General George S. Patton, Jr., was created in German minds by the use of double agents and fake radio traffic. The Germans had an extensive network of agents operating in the UK, all of whom had been "turned" by the Allies as part of the Double Cross System and were sending back messages "confirming" the existence and location of FUSAG and the Pas de Calais as the likely main attack point.^[39] Dummy tanks (some inflatable), trucks and landing craft, as well as troop camp facades (constructed from scaffolding and canvas) were placed in ports on the eastern and southeastern coasts of Britain and the Luftwaffe was allowed to photograph them. During this period, most of the Allied naval bombardment was focused on Pas de Calais instead of Normandy. The Allied Forces even went as far as to broadcast static over Axis radio frequencies and convinced Germany to expend efforts to try to decode white noise, further leading Germany away from the Normandy invasion.

In aid of Operation Fortitude North, Operation Skye was mounted from Scotland using radio traffic, designed to convince German traffic analysts that an invasion would also be mounted into Norway. Against this phantom threat, German units that could have been moved into France were kept in Norway.

Operation Cover (2–5 June) Eighth Air Force Missions 384, 388, 389 & 392 bombed transportation and airfield targets in Northern France and "coastal defenses, mainly located in the Pas de Calais coastal area, to deceive the enemy as to the sector to be invaded".^[40]

The last part of the deception occurred on the night before the invasion: a small group of SAS operators deployed dummy paratroopers over Le Havre and Isigny. These dummies led the Germans to believe that an additional airborne assault had occurred; this diverted reinforcing troops and kept the true situation unclear. On that same night, two RAF squadrons (No. 617 Squadron and No. 218 Squadron) in Operation Taxable and Operation Glimmer created an illusion of a massive naval convoy sailing for the Cap d'Antifer (15 miles north of Le Havre). This was achieved by the precision dropping of "Window", strips of metal foil. The foil caused a radar return mistakenly interpreted by German radar operators as a fleet of small craft towing barrage balloons.^[41]

Rehearsals and security [link]

Allied forces rehearsed their roles for D-Day months before the invasion. On 28 April 1944, in south Devon on the British coast, 946 American soldiers and sailors were killed when German torpedo boats surprised one of these landing exercises, Exercise Tiger.^[42]

The effectiveness of the deception operations was increased by a news blackout from Britain. Travel to and from the Republic of Ireland was banned, and movements within several miles of the coasts restricted.^[43] The German embassies and consulates in neutral countries were flooded with all sorts of misleading information, in the well-founded hope that any genuine information on the landings would be ignored with all the confusing chaff.

There were several leaks prior to or on D-Day. Through the Cicero affair, the Germans obtained documents containing references to Overlord, but these documents lacked all detail.^[44] Another such leak was Gen. Charles de Gaulle's radio message after D-Day. He, unlike all the other leaders, stated that this invasion was the real invasion.^{[nb 14]} This had the potential to ruin the Allied deceptions Fortitude North and Fortitude South. For example, Eisenhower referred to the landings as the initial invasion. Nevertheless, the Germans did not believe de Gaulle and waited too long to move in extra units against the Allies.

Allied invasion plan [link]

Further information: Normandy landings

D-day assault routes into Normandy.

The British were to take an airborne assault on the River Orne. The British objective was to secure the Orne River bridges; first to prevent German armor from using them to cross the river and disrupt the landings; second to hold them against destruction by the retreating Germans so that they could be used by Allied armor and logistics as the invasion moved inland. The British amphibious assault units would attack through Sword and Gold Beaches. The United States had an airborne division and land units, which were to take Omaha Beach, the Pointe du Hoc and Utah Beach. The Canadians would team up with British units to attack Sword Beach. The British and Canadians had separate beaches Gold Beach and Juno Beach, respectively.

The Invasion Fleet was drawn from eight navies made up of warships and submarines, split into the Western Naval Task Force (Rear-Admiral Alan G Kirk) and the Eastern Naval Task Force (Rear-Admiral Sir Philip Vian). The fleet was overall led by Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay.

Codenames [link]

The Allies assigned codenames to the various operations involved in the invasion. Overlord was the name assigned to the establishment of a large-scale lodgement on the Continent. The first phase, the establishment of a secure foothold, was codenamed Neptune.^[46] It began on D-Day (6 June 1944) and ended on 30 June 1944. By this time, the Allies had established a firm foothold in Normandy. Operation Overlord also began on D-Day, and continued until Allied forces crossed the river Seine on 19 August 1944.

German preparations and defenses [link]

Atlantic Wall [link]

A map of the Atlantic Wall.

Bunker overlooking Omaha Beach.

Troops of the Indische Legion guarding the Atlantic Wall in France in March 1944.

Main article: Atlantic Wall

Through most of 1942 and 1943, the Germans had rightly regarded the possibility of a successful Allied invasion in the west as remote. Preparations to counter an invasion were limited to the construction, by the Organisation Todt, of impressive fortifications covering the major ports. The number of military forces at the disposal of Nazi Germany reached its peak during 1944 with 59 divisions stationed in France, Belgium and the Netherlands.^[47]

In late 1943, the obvious Allied buildup in Britain prompted the German Commander-in-Chief in the west, Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt, to request reinforcements. In addition to fresh units, von Rundstedt also received a new subordinate, Field Marshal Erwin Rommel. Rommel originally intended only to make a tour of inspection of the Atlantic Wall. After reporting to Hitler, Rommel requested command of the defenders of northern France, Belgium and the Netherlands. These were organised as Army Group B in February 1944. (The German forces in southern France were designated as Army Group G, under General Johannes Blaskowitz).

Rommel had recognized that for all their propaganda value, the Atlantic Wall fortifications covered only the ports themselves. The beaches between were barely defended, and the Allies could land there and capture the ports from inland. He revitalised the defenders, who laboured to improve the defences of the entire coastline. Steel obstacles were laid at the high-water mark on the beaches, concrete bunkers and pillboxes constructed, and low-lying areas flooded. Given the Allied air supremacy (12,000 Allied aircraft against 300 Luftwaffe fighters^[48]), booby-trapped stakes known as Rommelspargel (Rommel's asparagus) were set up on likely landing grounds to deter airborne landings.

These works were not fully completed, especially in the vital Normandy sector, partly because Allied bombing of the French railway system interfered with the movement of the necessary materials, and also because the Germans were convinced by the Allied deception measures and their own preconceptions that the landings would take place in the Pas de Calais, and so they concentrated their efforts there.

The Germans had nevertheless extensively fortified the foreshore area as part of their Atlantic Wall defences (including tank top turrets and extensive barbed wire), believing that any forthcoming landings would be timed for high tide (this caused the landings to be timed for low tide). The sector which was attacked was guarded by four divisions, of which the 352nd and 91st were of high quality. The other defending troops included Germans who were not considered fit for active duty on the Eastern Front (usually for medical reasons) and various other nationalities such as conscripted Poles and former Soviet prisoners-of-war who had agreed to fight for the Germans rather than endure the harsh conditions of German POW camps. These "Ost" units were provided with German leadership to manage them.

Mobile reserves [link]

Rommel's defensive measures were also frustrated by a dispute over armoured doctrine. In addition to his two army groups, von Rundstedt also commanded the headquarters of Panzer Group West under General Leo Geyr von Schweppenburg (usually referred to as von Geyr) to administer the mobile formations in reserve. Von Geyr and Rommel disagreed over the deployment and use of the vital Panzer divisions.

Rommel proposed that the armoured formations be deployed close to the coast, to counter-attack while the invaders were vulnerable. Von Geyr argued that they should instead be concentrated in a central position around Paris and deployed en masse against the main Allied beachhead when this had been identified. When the matter was brought before Hitler, he imposed an unworkable compromise solution. Rommel was given only three tank divisions, only one of which was stationed close enough to the Normandy beaches to intervene on the first day. The other mechanized divisions capable of intervening in Normandy were retained under the direct control of the German Armed Forces HQ (OKW) and were scattered across France, Belgium and the Netherlands.

Weather forecast [link]

The opportunity for launching an invasion was limited to only a few days in each month as a full moon was required, for light for the aircraft pilots and for the spring tide. Eisenhower had tentatively selected 5 June as the date for the assault. However, on 4 June, conditions were clearly unsuitable for a landing; high winds and heavy seas made it impossible to launch landing craft, and low clouds would prevent aircraft finding their targets. The Germans meanwhile took comfort from the existing poor conditions and believed an invasion would not be possible for several days. Some troops stood down, and many senior officers were absent. Rommel, for example, took leave to attend his wife's birthday.

Since April, the Captain class frigate HMS Grindall had been transmitting weather reports from the mid-Atlantic every three hours. From these reports, Group Captain James Stagg RAF, Eisenhower's chief meteorologist, predicted a slight improvement in the weather for 6 June. Grindall's reports indicated a ridge of high pressure behind a deep depression. Stagg forecast that the ridge would move eastward to reach the south-west approaches to the Channel late on 5 June, bringing a short improvement in the weather.

At a vital meeting late on 5 June, Eisenhower and his senior commanders discussed the situation. General Montgomery and Major General Walter Bedell Smith, Eisenhower's chief of staff, were eager to launch the invasion. Admiral Bertram Ramsay also was prepared to commit his ships, while Air Chief Marshal Trafford Leigh-Mallory was concerned that the conditions would be unfavourable for Allied aircraft to operate. After much discussion, Eisenhower decided to launch the invasion that night.^[49]

Had Eisenhower postponed the invasion, the only option was to go two weeks later but this would have encountered the 'worst channel storm in 40 years' as Churchill later described it, which lasted four days between 19 and 22 June.

The invasion [link]

Main article: Invasion of Normandy

“	You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you. In company with our brave Allies and brothers-in-arms on other Fronts, you will bring about the destruction of the German war machine, the elimination of Nazi tyranny over the oppressed peoples of Europe, and security for ourselves in a free world.	”
—Eisenhower, Letter to Allied Forces^[50]

British Pathfinders synchronising their watches in front of an Armstrong Whitworth Albemarle.

To eliminate the Germans' ability to organize and launch counterattacks during the amphibious assault phase, airborne operations were used to seize key objectives, such as bridges, road crossings and terrain features, particularly on the eastern and western flanks of the landing areas. The airborne landings some distance behind the beaches were also intended to ease the egress of the amphibious forces off the beaches and in some cases to neutralize German coastal defense batteries and more quickly expand the area of the beachhead. Dropping behind enemy lines hours before the beach landings, the U.S. 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions were assigned to objectives west of Utah Beach. The British 6th Airborne Division was assigned to similar objectives on the eastern flank.^[51] 530 Free French paratroopers from the British Special Air Service Brigade, were assigned to objectives in Brittany from 5 June to August.^[52]^[53] (Operation Dingson, Operation Samwest, Operation Cooney).

The beaches [link]

HMS Lawford , one of several Captain class frigates converted to act as a headquarters ship for the Normandy landings, note the extended superstructure (to accommodate the Staff Officers) and additional smaller mainmast to support the extra aerials. On 8 June 1944, whilst operating off Juno Beach, she was hit by enemy fire during an air attack and sunk.

Main articles: Gold Beach, Sword Beach, Omaha Beach, Juno Beach, Pointe du Hoc, and Utah Beach

On Sword Beach, the regular British infantry came ashore with light casualties. They had advanced about 8 kilometres (5.0 mi) by the end of the day but failed to make some of the deliberately ambitious targets set by Montgomery. In particular, Caen, a major objective, was still in German hands by the end of D-Day and would remain so until Operation Charnwood on 9 July.

The Canadian forces that landed on Juno Beach faced machine-gun nests, pillboxes, other concrete fortifications and a seawall twice the height of the one at Omaha Beach. Juno was the second most heavily defended beach on D-Day, next to Omaha.^[54] Despite the obstacles, the Canadians were off the beach within hours and advancing inland with minimal casualties.^[55] The Canadians were the only units to reach their D-Day objectives, although most units fell back a few kilometres to stronger defensive positions.

At Gold Beach, the casualties were also quite heavy, because the Germans had strongly fortified a village on the beach. However, the 50th (Northumbrian) Infantry Division overcame these difficulties and advanced almost to the outskirts of Bayeux by the end of the day. The link with commando units securing the Port-en-Bessin gave the Allies a base to deploy their PLUTO pipeline, as an alternative to the experimental 'Tombola', a conventional tanker ship-to-shore storage system.

Senior officers aboard the USS Augusta during the Normandy Invasion. Second from the left is Lieutenant General Omar Bradley.

The Americans who landed on Omaha beach faced the veteran German 352nd Infantry Division, one of the best trained on the beaches. Omaha was the most heavily fortified beach and the majority of landings missed their assigned sectors. Commanders considered abandoning the beachhead but small units of infantry, often forming ad hoc groups, eventually infiltrated the coastal defenses. Further landings were able to exploit the penetrations and by the end of day two footholds had been established. The tenuous beachhead was expanded over the following days and the D-Day objectives were accomplished by D+3.

At Pointe du Hoc, the task for the 2nd Ranger battalion commanded by Lt. Colonel James Rudder, was to scale the 30 metres (98 ft) cliffs under enemy fire and grenades with ropes and ladders and then destroy the guns there. The beach fortifications were vital targets since a single artillery forward observer based there could have directed fire on the U.S. beaches. The Rangers were eventually successful and captured the fortifications. They then had to fight for 2 days to hold the location, losing more than 60 percent of their men.

Casualties on Utah Beach, the westernmost landing zone, were the lightest of any beach, with 197 out of the roughly 23,000 troops that landed. Although the 4th Infantry Division troops that landed on the beach found themselves too far to the southeast, they landed on a lightly defended sector that had relatively little German opposition and the 4th Infantry Division was able to press inland by early afternoon, linking up with the 101st Airborne Division.

American troops in an LCVP landing craft approach Omaha Beach 6 June 1944.

The build-up of Omaha Beach: reinforcements of men and equipment moving inland

Once the beachhead was established, the Mulberry Harbours were made operational around 9 June. One was constructed at Arromanches by British forces, the other at Omaha Beach by American forces. Severe storms on 19 June interrupted the landing of supplies and destroyed the Omaha harbour. The Arromanches harbour was able to supply around 9,000 tons of materiel daily until the end of August 1944, by which time the port of Cherbourg had been secured by the Allies.

Despite this, the German 21st Panzer division mounted a counterattack, between Sword and Juno beaches and succeeded in nearly reaching the channel. Stiff resistance by anti-tank gunners and fear of being cut off caused them to withdraw before the end of 6 June. According to some reports, the sighting of a wave of airborne troops flying over them was instrumental in the decision to retreat.

The Allied invasion plans had called for the capture of Carentan, St. Lô, Caen and Bayeux on the first day, with all the beaches linked except Utah and Sword (the last linked with paratroopers) and a front line 10 to 16 kilometres (6.2 to 9.9 mi) from the beaches; none of these had been achieved. Casualties had not been as heavy as some had feared (around 10,000 compared to the 20,000 Churchill had estimated) and the bridgeheads had withstood the expected counterattacks.

Cherbourg [link]

Main articles: Battle of Cherbourg and Bombardment of Cherbourg

In the western part of the lodgement, U.S. troops were to occupy the Cotentin Peninsula, especially Cherbourg, which would provide the Allies with a deep water harbour. The country behind Utah and Omaha beaches was characterised by bocage; ancient banks and hedgerows, up to 3 metres (9.8 ft) thick, spread 100 to 200 metres (330 to 660 ft) apart, both seemingly being impervious to tanks, gunfire and vision, thus making ideal defensive positions. The U.S. infantry made slow progress and suffered many casualties as they pressed towards Cherbourg. The airborne troops were called on several times to restart an advance. The far side of the peninsula was reached on 18 June. Hitler prevented German forces from retreating to the strong Atlantic Wall fortifications in Cherbourg and after initially offering stiff resistance, the Cherbourg commander, Lieutenant General von Schlieben, capitulated on 26 June.^[56] Before surrendering he had most of the facilities destroyed, making the harbour inoperable until the middle of August, by which time the combat front had moved so far east that it was less helpful.^[57]

Caen [link]

Main article: Battle for Caen

Map showing operations close to Caen.

Whilst the Americans headed for Cherbourg, a unit of troops led by the British moved towards the city of Caen. Believing Caen to be the "crucible" of the battle, Montgomery made it the target of a series of attritional attacks. The first was Operation Perch, which attempted to push south from Bayeux to Villers-Bocage where the armour could then head towards the Orne and envelop Caen but was halted at the Battle of Villers-Bocage. After a delay owing to the difficulty of supply because of storms from 17 June until 23 June, a German counterattack (which was known through Ultra intelligence) was forestalled by Operation Epsom. Caen was severely bombed and then occupied north of the River Orne in Operation Charnwood from 7 July until 9 July. An offensive in the Caen area followed with all three British armoured divisions, codenamed Operation Goodwood from 18 July until 21 July that captured the high ground south of Caen while the remainder of the city was captured by Canadian forces during Operation Atlantic. A further operation, Operation Spring, from 25 July until 28 July, by the Canadians secured limited gains south of the city at a high cost.

Breakout from the beachhead [link]

Main article: Operation Cobra

An important element of Montgomery's strategy was to cause the Germans to commit their reserves to the eastern part of the theater to allow an easier breakout from the west. By the end of Goodwood, the Germans had committed the last of their reserve divisions; there were six and a half Panzer divisions facing the British and Canadian forces compared to one and a half facing the United States armies. Operation Cobra was launched on 25 July by the U.S. First Army and was extremely successful with the advance guard of VIII Corps entering Coutances at the western end of the Cotentin Peninsula on 28 July, after a penetration through the German lines.

Map showing the breakout from the Normandy beachhead.

On 1 August, VIII Corps became part of Lieutenant General George S. Patton's newly-arrived U.S. Third Army. On 4 August, Montgomery altered the invasion plan by detaching only a corps to occupy Brittany and hem the German troops there into enclaves around the ports, while the rest of the Third Army continued east. The U.S. First Army turned the German front at its western end. Because of the concentration of German forces south of Caen, Montgomery moved the British armor west and launched Operation Bluecoat from 30 July until 7 August to add to the pressure from the United States armies. This drew the German forces to the west, allowing the launch of Operation Totalize south from Caen on 7 August.

Falaise pocket [link]

Main article: Falaise pocket

By the beginning of August, more German reserves became available with the realisation that no landings were going to take place near Calais. The German forces were being encircled and the German High Command wanted these reserves to help an orderly retreat to the Seine. However, they were overruled by Hitler who demanded an attack at Mortain at the western end of the pocket on 7 August. The attack was repelled by the Allies, who again had advance warning from Ultra. The original Allied plan was for a wide encirclement as far as the Loire valley but Bradley realized that many of the German forces in Normandy were not capable of maneuver by this stage and he obtained Montgomery's agreement by telephone on 8 August for a "short hook" further north to encircle German forces. This was left to Patton to effect, moving nearly unopposed through Normandy via Le Mans and then back north again towards Alençon. The Germans were left in a pocket with its jaws near Chambois. Fierce German defense and the diversion of some American troops for a thrust by Patton towards the Seine at Mantes prevented the jaws closing until 21 August, trapping 50,000 German troops. Whether this could have been achieved earlier with more prisoners taken has been a matter of some controversy. Patton's thrust prevented the Germans from establishing the Seine as a defensive line and the Canadian First and British Second Armies both advanced there, bringing the war in Normandy in their sector to a close ahead of the schedule set by Montgomery.

The liberation of Paris followed shortly afterwards. The French Resistance in Paris rose against the Germans on 19 August and the French 2nd Armoured Division under General Philippe Leclerc, along with the U.S. 4th Infantry Division pressing forward from Normandy, received the surrender of the German forces there and liberated Paris on 25 August.

American troops on board a LCT, ready to ride across the English Channel to France. 12 June 1944.

Withdrawal to the Seine [link]

Operations continued in the British and Canadian sector until the end of the month. On 25 August, the 2nd U.S. Armored Division fought its way into Elbeuf, making contact with both British and Canadian armoured divisions there.^[58] The 2nd Canadian Infantry Division advanced into the Foret de la Londe, (where German troops had inflicted great loss on French troops in the siege of Paris in 1870—1871) on the morning of 27 August. The area was strongly held and the 4th and 6th Canadian brigades sustained heavy casualties over the course of three days as the Germans fought a delaying action in terrain well-suited to the defense. The Germans pulled back on the 29th, withdrawing over the Seine on the 30th.^[58]

On the afternoon of the 30th the 3rd Canadian Infantry Division crossed the Seine near Elbeuf and entered Rouen to a jubilant welcome.^[59]

Campaign close [link]

French civilians placing flowers on the body of a dead American soldier, 1944

The campaign in Normandy is considered by historians to end either at midnight on 24 July 1944 (the start of Operation Cobra on the American front), 25 August 1944 (the liberation of Paris), or 30 August 1944, the date the last German unit retreated across the River Seine.^[60] The original Overlord plan anticipated a ninety-day campaign in Normandy with the ultimate goal of reaching the Seine; this goal was met early. American forces were fighting in Brittany as anticipated by General Montgomery during the latter weeks of the campaign, and their historians consider the Normandy campaign to have ended with the massive breakout of Operation Cobra.^{[nb 15]}

The U.S. official history describes the fighting beginning on 25 July as the "Northern France" campaign, and includes the fighting to close the Falaise Gap, which the British/Canadians/Poles consider to be part of the Battle of Normandy. Volume II of the Official History of the Canadian Army in the Second World War by C.P. Stacey, published in 1955, as well as the Canadian Army's official Historical Summary of the Second World War, published in 1948, define the Battle of Normandy as lasting from 6 June 1944 to 1 September 1944.^{[nb 16]} The definition of the Battle of Normandy is also evident in another publication by the Army's Historical Section entitled Canada's Battle in Normandy.^{[citation needed]}

SHAEF and the governments were very nervous of stagnation, and there were reports of Eisenhower requesting Montgomery's replacement in July.^{[citation needed]} The lack of forward progress is often attributed to the nature of the terrain in which much of the post-landing fighting in the U.S. and parts of the British sectors took place, the bocage (small farm fields separated by high earth banks covered in dense shrubbery, well suited for defence), as well as the usual difficulties of opposed landings. However, as at the battle of El Alamein, Montgomery kept to his original attritional strategy, reaching the objectives within his original ninety day target.

U.S. 3rd Infantry Division landing at Cavalaire-sur-Mer. An invasion of southern France in the late summer of 1944.

Victory in Normandy was followed by a pursuit to the French border in short order, and Germany was forced once again to reinforce the Western Front with manpower and resources from the Soviet and Italian fronts.

By September, Allied forces of seven field armies (two of which came through southern France in Operation Dragoon) were approaching the German frontier. Allied material weight told heavily in Normandy, as did intelligence and deception plans. The general Allied concept of the battle was sound, drawing on the strengths of both Britain and the United States. German dispositions and leadership were often faulty, despite a creditable showing on the ground by many German units. In larger context the Normandy landings helped the Soviets on the Eastern front, who were facing the bulk of the German forces and, to a certain extent, contributed to the shortening of the conflict there.

Allied logistics, intelligence, morale and air power [link]

Victory in Normandy stemmed from several factors. The Allies ensured material superiority at the critical point (concentration of force) and logistical innovations like the PLUTO pipelines and Mulberry harbours enhanced the flow of troops, equipment, and essentials such as fuel and ammunition. Movement of cargo over the open beaches exceeded Allied planners' expectations, even after the destruction of the U.S. Mulberry in the channel storm in mid-June. By the end of July 1944, one million American, British, Canadian, French, and Polish troops, hundreds of thousands of vehicles, and adequate supplies in most categories were ashore in Normandy. Although there was a shortage of artillery ammunition, at no time were the Allies critically short of any necessity. This was a remarkable achievement considering they did not hold a port until Cherbourg fell. By the time of the breakout the Allies also enjoyed a considerable superiority in numbers of troops (approximately 3.5:1) and armored vehicles (approximately 4:1) which helped overcome the natural advantages the terrain gave to the German defenders.

Allied intelligence and counterintelligence efforts were successful beyond expectations. The Operation Fortitude deception plan before the invasion kept German attention focused on the Pas-de-Calais, and indeed high-quality German forces were kept in this area, away from Normandy, until July. Prior to the invasion, few German reconnaissance flights took place over Britain, and those that did saw only the dummy staging areas. Ultra decrypts of German communications had been helpful as well, exposing German dispositions and revealing their plans such as the Mortain counterattack.

German leadership [link]

German commanders at all levels failed to react to the assault phase in a timely manner. Communication problems exacerbated the difficulties caused by Allied air and naval firepower. Local commanders also seemed unequal to the task of fighting an aggressive defence on the beach, as Rommel envisioned. The German High Command remained fixated on the Calais area, and von Rundstedt was not permitted to commit the armored reserve. When it was finally released late in the day, success was immeasurably more difficult, and even the 21st Panzer Division, which was able to counterattack earlier, was stymied by strong opposition that had been allowed to build at the beaches. Overall, despite considerable Allied material superiority, the Germans kept the Allies bottled up in a small bridgehead for nearly two months, aided immeasurably by terrain factors.

German infantrymen in Normandy, 1944

The German commander of the unit at Normandy was also unable to organize his unit properly as the scattered paratrooper landings created reports of landings all over the area which became the product of much confusion, and some units tried to engage non-existent American units.

Although there were several well-known disputes among the Allied commanders, their tactics and strategy were essentially determined by agreement between the main commanders. By contrast, the German leaders were bullied and their decisions interfered with by Hitler, controlling the battle from a distance with little knowledge of local conditions. Field Marshals von Rundstedt and Rommel repeatedly asked Hitler for more discretion but were refused. Von Rundstedt was removed from his command on 29 June after he bluntly told Field Marshal Keitel, the Chief of Staff at OKW (Hitler's Armed Forces HQ), to "Make peace, you idiots!" Rommel was severely injured by Allied aircraft on 16 July. Field Marshal von Kluge, who took over the posts held by both von Rundstedt and Rommel, was compromised by his association with some of the military plotters against Hitler, and he would not disobey or argue with Hitler for fear of arrest. As a result, the German armies in Normandy were placed in deadly peril by Hitler's insistence on counterattack rather than retreat after the American breakthrough. Kluge was relieved of command on 15 August and took his own life shortly afterwards. The more independent Field Marshal Walter Model took over when the Germans in Normandy were already in the midst of defeat.

The German commanders also suffered in the quality of the available troops – 60,000 of the 850,000 men under von Rundstedt's command were prisoners of war captured on the Eastern Front.^[64] These Ost units had volunteered to fight against Stalin, but when instead used to defend France against the Western Allies, ended up being unreliable. Many surrendered or deserted at the first available opportunity.

Casualties [link]

Allies [link]

The cost of the Normandy campaign had been high for both sides. From D-Day to 21 August, the Allies had landed 2,052,299 men in northern France^[7] There were around 209,672 Allied casualties from 6 June to the end of August, around 10% of the forces landed in France. The casualties breaks down to 36,976 killed, 153,475 wounded and 19,221 missing. Split between the Army-Groups; the Anglo-Canadian Army-Group suffered 16,138 killed, 58,594 wounded and 9,093 missing for a total of 83,825 casualties. The American Army-Group suffered 20,838 killed, 94,881 wounded and 10,128 missing for a total of 125,847 casualties. To these casualties it should be added that 4,101 aircraft were lost and 16,714 airmen were killed or missing in direct connection to Operation Overlord. Thus total Allied casualties rises to 226,386 men.^[7]

American assault troops, injured while storming Omaha Beach, 6 June 1944

US troops pass along the shore edge in the path of armoured vehicles, others in the background are digging in - 6 June 1944.

Canadian chaplain conducting a funeral service in the Normandy bridgehead, 16 July 1944.

81 Free French SAS (Special Air Service) were killed and another 195 wounded from 6 June to the beginning of August in Brittany.^[65]^[66] For Allied tank losses there are no direct number. Estimations are that around 4,000 tanks were destroyed, of which 2,000 were fighting in American units.^[8]

Germany [link]

The German casualties remain unclear.^[8] The German forces in France reported losses of 158,930 men between D-Day and 14 August – the night before the start of Operation Dragoon in Southern France.^[67] Just in the following battle of the Falaise pocket, a minimum of another 50,000 men were lost in Normandy, of which approximately 10,000 were killed and 40,000 captured.^[8] Figures over total casualties stretches from a calculation based on German reports of approximately 210,000 men^[8] to estimates between 393,689^[68] and 450,000 men. The majority of the German casualties in Normandy consisted of POWs. Allied forces captured at least 200,000 men during the campaigns in France.^[67]

There are neither exact figures over German tank losses in Normandy. The German forces reported 481 tanks destroyed between D-day and 31 July,^[67] but of the approximate 2,300 tanks and assault guns committed to the battle in Normandy, only around 100 to 120 were brought back across the Seine.^{[nb 17]}

Civilians and French heritage [link]

During the course of the liberation of Normandy between 13,632 and 19,890 French civilians were killed.^[10] Information held at Caen university concludes that 13,632 civilians were killed, includes the deaths of 7,557 within the Calvados department.^[69] Other French sources calculate that the death rate was only 15,000.^[70] However, the civilian casualty toll is actually much higher due to the greater number of people who were wounded:^[71] for example by D+7 French casualty estimates had reached 22,499.^[72] In addition to those who died during the campaign between 11,000 and 19,000 Normans are estimated to have been killed during pre-invasion bombing; the higher figure however are disputed.^[10] Following the end of the campaign mines and unexploded ordnance continued to inflict casualties upon the Norman population.^[73]

Many cities and towns in Normandy had been totally devastated by the fighting and bombings. In particular by the end of the Battle of Caen there remained only 8,000 livable quarters for a population of over 60,000.^[74] Out of Caen’s 210 strong Jewish community, on liberation, only one person had survived the occupation. By the end of the campaign 125,000 inhabitants of the Calvados department had been listed as war victims, including 76,000 who had lost everything including their homes.^[75]

Prior to the invasion SHAEF issued instructions (later the basis for the 1954 Hague Convention Protocol I) emphasizing the need to limit the destruction to French heritage sites, including looting and sacrilege. These sites were named in Official Civil Affairs Lists of Monuments, were not to be used by troops unless given express permission from the upper echelons of their chain of command, were defined as "structures or object of historic artistic, scientific, or literary value, or any part or fragment thereof". Eisenhower issued personal instructions that "all measures consistent with military necessity, to avoid damage to all structures, objects, or document of cultural, artistic, archaeological or historical value; and to assist, wherever practicable, in securing them from deterioration consequent upon the process of war".^[76] It was established that the German occupation forces had completed similar lists however on the seizure of these documents it was determined that they "would not have served to preserve many monuments during an operation" and that they were primarily concerned with ensuring the billets were kept in good order.^[77] By 19 June British Second Army reported that no apparent damage had been caused to monuments in their area, however as the campaign proceeded so did the levels of damage; by mid-July across Normandy three monuments had been destroyed, 16 damaged and seven seriously. By early August a survey of 69 monuments found seven destroyed, 12 badly damaged, nine damaged, six slightly and the remaining were intact. Other surveys found similar levels of destruction; for example, by the end of the campaign, of 18 Caen’s listed churches five had been destroyed and four seriously damaged while 66 other monuments within the city had been destroyed. In 18 communes, in the Calvados department, monuments had been destroyed and in other locations damaged. A particular example is the Château d'Harcourt, that was destroyed, which contained family records dating back to William the Conqueror. However more optimistically the Bayeux Tapestry was located in safe condition at the Château de Sourches in Mid-July and the destroyed roof of the Saint-Sepulcre, in Caen, was temporary repaired by French civilians and Royal Engineers to prevent further degradation of the historical and government records that had been exposed to the elements.^[78] Efforts were also made to comb the ruins and debris for artifacts before the rubble was removed.^[77]

During the Spring of 1944 French civilians had amassed plenty of evidence of newly arriving German troops looting civilian property;^[77] an issue that increased during the battle with all sides, including French civilians, taking part. Well known examples include British forces, generally lines of communication troops and not the infantry, looting Caen’s Musée des antiquaires and Bayeux’s Château d'Andrieu.^[77]

The Normandy campaign in context [link]

Canadian soldiers with a Nazi German flag which they captured during the Battle of Normandy

The landings were planned to take place in May 1944, but poor weather conditions and insufficient buildup delayed the landings until June. By then, the Allies had taken Rome in the Italian Campaign, and in the Pacific War, the Americans were launching their first strikes on Japan.

The Normandy landings threatened Hitler's hold on the Belgian and northern French coasts as bases for the "V" weapons, which had started launching against the UK. As the Allies were closing in on Paris and sealing the Falaise Gap, an invasion in southern France was also launched. The linkup with the southern French forces occurred on 12 September as part of the drive to the Siegfried Line.^[79]

On the Eastern Front, the Red Army were planning their own offensive, Operation Bagration, to drive the Germans away from Soviet territory. Combined with the Allied lodgement established at Normandy, the second front in Western Europe that had been demanded by Stalin since the Tehran Conference had been established, the Axis powers were driven back from all fronts.^[80]

While the Normandy landings are popularly believed to have signaled the "beginning of the end" for Nazi Germany, it is arguable that Germany's defeat had already been rendered inevitable by its huge losses on the Eastern Front. Germany had already been in almost continuous retreat on the Eastern Front since mid 1943, and the massive German defeats at the Battle of Stalingrad and the Battle of Kursk in early and mid 1943 were arguably more decisive for the course of the war in Europe, whether measured in terms of forces committed, the number of German casualties, or the amount of German war material destroyed. The American historian Jeffrey Herf wrote that, "Whereas German deaths between 1941 and 1943 on the western front had not exceeded 3 percent of the total from all fronts, in 1944 the figure jumped to about 14 percent. Yet even in the months following D-day, about 68.5 percent of all German battlefield deaths occurred on the eastern front, as a Soviet blitzkrieg in response devastated the retreating Wehrmacht".^[81]

However, the Normandy landings were the largest seaborne invasion in history, and they did hasten the end of the war in Europe, drawing large forces away from the Eastern Front that might otherwise have slowed the Soviet advance. The opening of a second front in Europe was also a tremendous psychological blow for Germany's military, who had long feared a repetition of the two-front war of World War I. The Normandy landings also heralded the start of the "race for Europe," between the Soviet forces and the Western powers, which some historians consider to be the start of the Cold War.^[82]

Impact of Normandy [link]

War memorials and tourism [link]

The Bény-sur-Mer Canadian War Cemetery.

The beaches of Normandy are still known by their invasion codenames today. Streets near the beaches are still named after the units that fought there, and occasional markers commemorate notable incidents. At significant points, such as Pointe du Hoc and Pegasus Bridge, there are plaques, memorials or small museums. The Mulberry harbour still sits in the sea at Arromanches. In Sainte-Mère-Église, a dummy paratrooper hangs from the church spire.

Notes [link]

Footnotes

^ Luxembourgian soldiers were incorporated in the "Commando Kieffer" of the Free French Forces.^[1] Other Luxembourgian soldiers were incorporated into the Free Belgian Forces, the "Brigade Piron".
^ "On 25 July there were 812,000 US soldiers and 640,000 British in Normandy".^[2]
^ "By 21 August, the Allies had landed 2,052,299 men in Normandy". ^[3]^{[verification needed]}
^ "When Operation Cobra was launched, the Germans had brought to Normandy about 410,000 men in divisions and non-divisional combat units. If this is multiplied by 1.19 we arrive at approximately 490,000 soldiers. However, until 23 July, casualties amounted to 116,863, while only 10,078 replacements had arrived"^[2].
^ Shulman states that the Wehrmacht committed well over 1 million men to the Normandy Campaign.^[4]
^ This is the total number of casualties suffered by the Allied forces up to the end of August. The Allied forces suffered 36,976 killed, 153,475 wounded and 19,221 missing. Split between the Army Groups: the Anglo-Canadian Army Group suffered 16,138 killed, 58,594 wounded and 9,093 missing for a total of 83,825 casualties. The American Army Group suffered 20,838 killed, 94,881 wounded and 10,128 missing for a total of 125,847 casualties.^[6]
^ To these numbers should also be added the losses of the allied airforces operating. The allied airforces made 480,317 sorties in direct connection to the operation with the loss of 4,101 planes and the lives of 16,696 crewmen.^[7]
^ Approximately 4000 Allied tanks was destroyed, of which 2000 were fighting in American units.^[8]
^ Tamelander states that the German army committed 600,000 men to Normandy and 230,000 to Southern France during the period between 1 June and 31 July. Of these forces stationed in France, 288,875 men were lost, a figure that breaks down to 23,019 dead, 67,240 wounded, and 198,616 missing. Tamelander notes that the number of missing corresponds to the number of men reported captured by the Allied forces during the fighting in France and as these figures also include losses from the fighting in Southern France as well as from the following retreat, he suggests roughly 79,000 men should be deducted from this total to give an accurate figure for the Normandy campaign. Total German losses for Normandy thus reach 210,000 men and Tamelander points out that this figure corresponds to the reported losses that previous to Operation Dragoon were 158,930, which together with the losses inflicted by the Falaise pocket reach approximately 210,000 men.^[9]
^ Shulman claims 240,000 men of the German army had been killed or wounded during the Normandy campaign and a further 210,000 had been taken prisoner.^[4] Wilmot supports the figure of 210,000 prisoners being taken during the "10 week campaign".^[5]
^ Wilmot quotes Günther Blumentritt, von Rundstedt's Chief-of-Staff, who states that around 2,300 tanks and assault guns had been committed to the battle in Normandy and "only 100 to 120 were brought back across the Seine."^[5]
^ The British 79th Armoured Division never operated as a single formation^[31] thus has been excluded from the total. In addition a combind total of 16 (three from the 79th Armoured Division) British, Belgian, Canadian and Dutch independent brigades were committed to the operation along with four battalions of the Special Air Service.^[32]
^ "The allied D-Day objective-the vital communications centre at Caen"^[37]
^ "We are told that an immense assault force has begun to leave the shores of Old England to aid us."^[45]
^ Montgomery wrote of his intent to tie down German armoured forces near Caen in a policy directive on 30 June 1944: "My broad policy, once we had secured a firm lodgement area, has always been to draw the main enemy forces in to the battle on our eastern flank, and to fight them there, so that our affairs on the western flank could proceed the easier."^[61]
^ Both publications are available online from the Directorate of History and Heritage, a department of the Department of National Defence, as free downloads^[62]^[63])
^ Wilmot quotes Günther Blumentritt, von Rundstedt's Chief-of-Staff, who states that around 2,300 tanks and assault guns had been committed to the battle in Normandy and "only 100 to 120 could be brought back across the Seine."^[5]

Citations

^ Raths 2008, pp. 357,358.
^ ^a ^b Zetterling 2000, p. 32.
^ Zetterling 2000, p. 341.
^ ^a ^b ^c Shulman, p. 192
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d Wilmot, p. 434
^ Ellis, Allen & Warhurst 2004, p. 493.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d Tamelander & Zetterling 2003, p. 341.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e Tamelander & Zetterling 2003, p. 342.
^ ^a ^b Tamelander & Zetterling 2003, pp. 342–343.
^ ^a ^b ^c Flint 2009, pp. 336–337.
^ Churchill 1951, p. 642.
^ Dear & Foot 2005, pp. 627–630.
^ Williams 1988, p. ^{[page needed]}.
^ Stacey 1957, p. 295.
^ ^a ^b Ambrose 1995, p. ^{[page needed]}
^ Dear & Foot 2005, p. 322.
^ Bauer, Eddy (1981) (in Swedish). Spelet vid konferensbordet. Bokorama. p. 44. ISBN 91-7024-017-5.
^ Churchill, Winston (1948). The Second World War book 5, Closing the Ring. Chapter 16, paragraph 1.
^ ^a ^b Gilbert 1989, p. 397, 478.
^ Dear & Foot 2005, p. 211.
^ Wilmot, pp. 134–135, p.171
^ The World At War, episode 17, Morning. 1974. Event occurs at 2:29-3:09.
^ ^a ^b Ambrose 1995, Chapter 4 Paragraph 4
^ Williams 2000, The Atlantic Wall.
^ ^a ^b Wilmot, p.170
^ Ambrose 1995, chapter 4 paragraph 10.
^ Gilbert 1989, p. 491.
^ Hamilton 2004.
^ Wilmot, p.174
^ Ellis, Allen & Warhurst 2004, pp. 521–533.
^ Buckley 2006, p. 13.
^ Ellis, Allen & Warhurst 2004, pp. 521–523, 524.
^ Weinberg 1995, p. 684.
^ Wilmot, p.195
^ "St. Pauls School biographies of famous pupils". pp. paragraph 4. http://www.stpaulsschool.org.uk/page.aspx?id=8366#Montgomery. Retrieved 2007-11-03.
^ Weinberg 1995, p. 698.
^ Gilbert 1989, p. 538.
^ Sulzberger, C.L. “World War 2” American Heritage Press, New York 1970 pg 279
^ ^a ^b Weinberg 1995, p. 680.
^ "8th Air Force 1944 Chronicles: June". http://www.airwarweb.net/usaaf/8af_1944-06.php. Retrieved 2007-05-25.
^ Bickers 1994, pp. 19–21.
^ Small, Ken, and Mark Rogerson. The Forgotten Dead - Why 946 American Servicemen Died Off The Coast Of Devon In 1944 - And The Man Who Discovered Their True Story. London: Bloomsbury. 1988. ISBN 0-7475-0309-5
^ Dear & Foot 2005, p. 667.
^ Keegan 1990, p. 279.
^ "Text of De Gaulle's message on D-Day" (Press release). SHAEF. 1944-06-06. http://worldatwar.net/article/overlord/. Retrieved 2007-10-09.
^ D Day Museum
^ Wilmot 1952, p. ^{[page needed]}.
^ Keegan 1997, p. 309.
^ Wilmot 1952, pp. 224–226.
^ DefenseLink News Article: The Passing of the Torch
^ Ambrose 1994, p. ^{[page needed]}.
^ Corta 1952, p. 159.
^ Corta 1997, pp. 65-78.
^ Stacey 1960, p. ^{[page needed]}.
^ Martin 1994, p. 16.
^ Video: Cherbourg, Gateway to Victory, 1944/07/02 (1944). Universal Newsreel. 1944. http://www.archive.org/details/1944-07-02_Cherbourg_Gateway_to_Victory. Retrieved February 22, 2012.
^ Weigley 1981, p. 157.
^ ^a ^b Stacey 1957, p. 286.
^ Stacey 1948, p. 219.
^ Stacey 1948, p. 295.
^ Stacey 1948, p. 195.
^ Stacey 1948, p. ^{[page needed]}.
^ Stacey 1960, p. ^{[page needed]}.
^ Keegan 1982, p. 61.
^ Corta 1952, p. many pages.
^ Corta 1997, p. many pages.
^ ^a ^b ^c Tamelander & Zetterling 2003, p. 343.
^ Lecouturier, Y (2000), De stranden van de landing, Editions Ouest-France, p. 109. ISBN 978-2-7373-2686-8
^ Flint 2009, pp. 336, 370.
^ Flint 2009, p. 336.
^ Beevor 2009, p. 519.
^ Flint 2009, p. 267.
^ Flint 2009, p. 305.
^ Beevor 2009, p. 520.
^ Flint 2009, p. 337.
^ Flint 2009, p. 350.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d Flint 2009, p. 354.
^ Flint 2009, p. 352–353.
^ Keegan 1989, pp. 362–363.
^ Gilbert 1989, p. 531, 540, 544.
^ Herf 2006, p. 252.
^ Gaddis 1990, p. 149.

References [link]

Ambrose, Stephen E. (1994). D-Day (First ed.). New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0-684-80137-X.
Ambrose, Stephen (1995). D-Day June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War II. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-0-671-67334-5.
Beevor, Antony (2009) (First ed.). London: Viking an imprint of Penguin Books. pp. 519, 520. ISBN 978-0-670-88703-3.
Bickers, Richard (1994). Air War Normandy. Pen And Sword Books. pp. 19–21. ISBN 0-85052-412-1.
Buckley, John (2006) [2004]. British Armour in the Normandy Campaign 1944. Taylor & Francis. p. 13. ISBN 0-415-40773-7.
Churchill, Winston (1940). "Dieu Protege (sic) la France". London: The Churchill Society. http://www.churchill-society-london.org.uk/LaFrance.html. Retrieved 3 November 2007.
Churchill, Winston Spencer (1951). The Second World War: Closing the Ring. Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston. p. 642.
(French) Corta, Henry (1952). Les bérets rouges (Red Berets). Paris: Amicale des anciens parachutistes SAS.
Henry Corta (1921–1998) was a Free French SAS lieutenant veteran.
(French) Corta, Henry (1997). Qui ose gagne (Who dares wins). Service Historique de l'Armée de Terre, Vincennes, France. ISBN 978-2-86323-103-6.
Dear, I.C.B.; Foot, M.R.D., eds. (2005) [1995]. "The Oxford Companion to World War II". The Oxford Companion to World War II. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-280666-6.
Ellis, L.F.; Allen, G.R.G. & Warhurst, A.E. (2004) [1st. pub. HMSO 1962]. Butler, J.R.M. ed. Victory in the West, Volume I: The Battle of Normandy. History of the Second World War United Kingdom Military Series. Naval & Military Press Ltd. ISBN 1-84574-058-0.
Flint, Edwards R (2009). The development of British civil affairs and its employment in the British Sector of Allied military operations during the Battle of Normandy, June to August 1944. Cranfield, Bedford: Cranfield University; Cranfield Defence and Security School, Department of Applied Science, Security and Resilience, Security and Resilience Group. ISBN ????.
Gaddis, John Lewis (1990). Russia, the Soviet Union, and the United States An Interpretive History. p. 149. ISBN ????.
Gilbert, Martin (1989). Second World War. New York: H. Holt. pp. 397, 478, 491, 520, 531, 538, 540, 544. ISBN 978-0-8050-1788-5.
Hamilton, Nigel (2004). "Montgomery, Bernard Law [Monty], first Viscount Montgomery of Alamein (1887–1976)". Montgomery, Bernard Law [Monty], first Viscount Montgomery of Alamein (1887–1976). Oxford University Press. DOI:10.1093/ref:odnb/31460. (Subscription required)
Herf, Jeffrey (2006). The Jewish enemy: Nazi propaganda during World War II and the Holocaust. Harvard University Press. p. 252. ISBN 0-674-02175-4.
Keegan, John (1982). Six Armies in Normandy. Penguin Books. p. 61. ISBN 0 14 00 5293.
Keegan, John (1989). The Second World War. London: Pimlico. pp. 362–363, 467. ISBN 978-0-7126-7348-8.
Keegan, John (1990). The Second World War. ^{[publisher needed]}. p. 279. ISBN 0-14-011341-X.
Keegan, John (1997). The Second World War. London: Pimlico. p. 309. ISBN 978-0-7126-7348-8.
Martin, Charles Cromwell (1994). Battle Diary. Toronto: Dundurn Press. p. 16. ISBN 1-55002-213-X.
Raths, Aloyse (2008). Unheilvolle Jahre für Luxemburg - Années néfastes pour le Grand-Duché. ^{[publisher needed]} . pp. 357, 358. ISBN ????.
Stacey, C.P. (1948). The Canadian Army 1939–45: A Historical Summary. p. 195. http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/UN/Canada/CA/OpSumm/index.html.
Stacey, C.P. (1957). The Victory Campaign. Official History of the Canadian Army in the Second World War. II. p. 295. ^{[verification needed]}
Stacey, C.P. (1960). The Victory Campaign, The Operations in North-West Europe 1944–1945. Official History of the Canadian Army in the Second World War. III. http://www.canadiansoldiers.com/mediawiki-1.5.5/index.php?title=Official_History_of_the_Canadian_Army_in_the_Second_World_War.
Tamelander, M.; Zetterling, Niklas (2003). Avgörandes Ögonblick: Invasionen i Normandie. Norstedts Förlag. pp. 341–343. ISBN 91-7486-235-9.
Weinberg, Gerhard (1995). A world at arms - A global history of World War II. Cambridge University Press. pp. 684, 680, 698.
Weigley, Russell F. (1981). Eisenhower's Lieutenants: The Campaign of France and Germany 1944-1945. I. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press. p. 157. ISBN ????.
Williams, Brian (2000). "The Atlantic Wall". Military history online. http://www.militaryhistoryonline.com/wwii/dday/prelude.aspx. Retrieved December 2011.
Williams, Jeffery (1988). The Long Left Flank. London: Cooper. ISBN 978-0-85052-880-0.
Wilmot, Chester (1952). The Struggle for Europe. Hertfordshire, UK: Wordsworth Editions. pp. 224–226. ISBN 1-85326-677-9.
Wilmot, Chester (1997). The Struggle For Europe. Wordsworth Editions. (Written in part by Christopher Daniel McDevitt.)
Zetterling, Niklas (2000). Normandy 1944: German Military Organisation, Combat Power and Organizational Effectiveness. J.J. Fedorowicz Publishing Inc.. ISBN 0-921991-56-8.

External links [link]

Booknotes interview with Stephen Ambrose on D-Day: June 6, 1944, June 5, 1994.

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Contents

Preparations for D-Day [link]

Detail planning [link]

Technology [link]

Deception [link]

Rehearsals and security [link]

Allied invasion plan [link]

Codenames [link]

German preparations and defenses [link]

Atlantic Wall [link]

Mobile reserves [link]

Weather forecast [link]

The invasion [link]

The beaches [link]

Cherbourg [link]

Caen [link]

Breakout from the beachhead [link]

Falaise pocket [link]

Withdrawal to the Seine [link]

Campaign close [link]

Allied logistics, intelligence, morale and air power [link]

German leadership [link]

Casualties [link]

Allies [link]

Germany [link]

Civilians and French heritage [link]

The Normandy campaign in context [link]

Impact of Normandy [link]

War memorials and tourism [link]

Notes [link]

References [link]

Further reading [link]

External links [link]

http://wn.com/Operation_Overlord

Related pages:

http://fr.wn.com/Opération Overlord

http://de.wn.com/Operation Overlord

http://it.wn.com/Battaglia di Normandia

http://pl.wn.com/Operacja Overlord