Thesis on "Allied Invasion of Normandy During World War"

Thesis 5 pages (1456 words) Sources: 5

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Allied Invasion of Normandy During World War II

The Nazi Occupation of the European Continent:

World War II opened on September 1, 1939, with Hitler's wehrmacht invading Poland, followed shortly by Belgium and the Netherlands. By May 1940, the Nazis had conquered France and nearly won the eventual war against Britain, its last remaining adversary in Europe. Instead of attacking France's well fortified Maginot Line on the eastern coast, Hitler's armies went through Belgium and the Netherlands. By the last week of May, German forces had captured Boulogne and the coastal French city of Calais, the coast closest to Britain, trapping nearly 400,000 British and French, mainly from the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) that had hoped to strengthen French resistance to the Nazi invasion. For several days at the end of May and beginning of June 1940, the entire remaining BEF (after almost 70,000 casualties) managed to escape to Britain in thousands of vessels ranging from large naval ships to small personal watercraft piloted by private British citizens from across the narrow English Channel separating England from the French coast at Dunkirk (Ambrose, 2001). Historians still are unable to explain Hitler's hesitation at that point, and generally regard the failure to finish off or capture the remaining BEF on the French coast in May 1940 as one of the mistakes that allowed the eventual Allied victory in Europe (Bishop & McNab, 2007) that began with the return of many of those rescued BEF soldiers four years later in the Allied Invasion of Normandy on June 6, 1944. Had those forces been destroyed at Dunkirk, Hitler could have conquered Britain shortly thereafter and (at least) greatly prolonged the war with the U.S. If not won it altogether (Bishop & McNab, 2007).

Operation Overlord:

The Allied invasion of occupied France was conceived more than two years earlier in meetings between the Eisenhower and Churchill at Casablanca and the "Big Three" meeting at Tehran (Ray, 2003; Penrose, 2004). For the next two years, British and American forces trained more than 3 million combined personnel in Britain while Hitler busily constructed the Atlantic Wall across the entire French coast, consisting of hundreds of artillery pieces, cement pillboxes and artillery pieces facing the English Channel, and thousands of cement-reinforced trenches and protective bunkers for soldiers designed to protect against the Allied invasion that Hitler knew would come once the Allies were ready (Ray, 2003).

The obstacles of an amphibious landing under direct enemy fire from fortified positions located high above the beaches were almost insurmountable and required incredible collaboration, cooperation, and both tactical and technological ingenuity to overcome them (Bishop & McNab, 2007). Specifically, during the two years of preparation, the Germans had laid millions of land mines on the beaches, in conjunction with thousands of miles of barbed wire and millions of anti-ship landing devices.

Mainly, these were in the form of welded lengths of railroad tracks and other enormous jagged pieces of metal dug into the beaches so that at high tide, they would puncture the hulls of landing craft and at low tide, they would make it impossible for infantry soldiers to cross the beach before being cut down by machine gun fire, mortars, and artillery positioned high above the landing beaches (Bishop & McNab, 2007; Ray, 2003).

Allied combat engineers had to devise, test, and train specialists to blow up beach obstacles one at a time; they also invented numerous novel approaches to clearing mines that included tanks adapted with flailing chains to detonate mines as they advanced and even amphibious tanks that employed canvas skirts to provide buoyancy and dual drive transmissions that powered propellers and tank tracks interchangeably (Ray, 2003).

American Army Rangers trained to scale up the vertical cliffs overlooking the beaches under enemy fire on nothing more than rope ladders anchored by special "artillery" shells in the form of hooks fired over the cliffs and attached to long ropes. These units suffered some of the highest casualty rates with many losing more than half their troops within the first hour of battle (Commager & Miller, 2002). In England, Allied armies trained under tremendous secrecy for the largest amphibious invasion ever attempted (before or since) in the history of human warfare.

The effort was code-named "Overlord" and elaborate deception plans implemented throughout its preparation to confuse the Nazis and prevent their planning of an… READ MORE

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