The Forge of Victory: The Forge of Victory

JUNE 6, 1944 was a dour, windswept day on the English Channel—and the decisive moment of World War II was hard at hand. The Combined Chiefs of Staff of the U.S. and Britain had issued a directive to Supreme Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower: “You will enter the Continent of Europe and . . . undertake operations aimed at the heart of Germany and the destruction of her armed forces.” Eisenhower looked at the lowering sky and made his fateful decision to go ahead. Now to the captive peoples of Western Europe came his voice of hope: “The hour of your liberation is approaching!” This, 15 years ago this week, was DDay. The results of that day’s work are known wherever man draws breath. Almost forgotten is how precariously the power and the glory hung in the balance.

To undertake history’s greatest amphibious invasion, the Allied powers had assembled 150,000 men, 1,500 tanks, 5,000 ships and 9,000 planes. The German enemy was reeling: his cities had been bombed, he had lost North Africa and been thrown back to the seven hills of Rome. Wounded he was—but still deadly dangerous, with 60 divisions, including his crack Panzers, to defend Western Europe. Adolf Hitler correctly divined Normandy as the probable Allied Schwerpunkt, concentrated his armored reserves behind seven infantry divisions in the target area and, closer to Germany, maintained strength in the Pas de Calais area (see map). Hitler’s most mobile general, Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, well knew that Allied air superiority (5,000 fighters on the channel front to a mere 119 for the battered Luftwaffe) would rule out any battle of maneuver. Rommel strengthened the coast defenses and prepared to fight it out on that line. Said he: “The war will be won or lost on the beaches. The first 24 hours will be decisive.”

The Allies therefore faced a momentous strategic equation. Once the beachhead into Europe was established, they could land 100 divisions and pound on to Germany with almost 2-1 superiority. But on D-Day itself the Allies would have to land nine divisions to fight ten German divisions in bristling, fixed positions—and the Allied spearheads would be even more heavily outnumbered. “We shall have to send the soldiers into this party seeing red,” said the Allied ground forces commander, Bernard Law Montgomery. “Nothing must stop them. Nothing.”

Nothing did stop them—in places. In the battle’s first hours, between 0015 and 0900, the Allies won three quick successes. On the left flank the British 6th Airborne Division achieved complete tactical surprise, wiped out German positions east of the Orne River. On the right flank the U.S. 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions, although badly scattered in the airdrop, outfought three German divisions, suffering 2,500 casualties. Shielded by this U.S. airborne success, the U.S. 4th Infantry Division swept ashore soon after the first light on Utah Beach, swamped the defenses at a cost of only 197 casualties. It was D-Day’s first major breakthrough.

INCH BY INCH

But it was on the four beaches between the Orne and the Vire that the man-toman battle was fought in most savage fury. On Sword, Juno and Gold beaches, British and Canadian troops hurled in an astonishing force of “specialized armor” —mine-clearing tanks, pillbox-blasting tanks, ditch-filling tanks, flamethrowing tanks—but the German 716th Infantry Division, in fortified seaside hotels and summer villas, fought back viciously, inflicting 4,000 casualties.

Onto the U.S. forces’ Omaha Beach, a concave sweep of sand 300 yards deep beneath fortified bluffs, the U.S. ist and 29th Divisions sent in a spearhead of 1,450 men. They ran head on into most of the German 352nd Division—undamaged by the inaccurate air bombardment—and were soon shelled, mortared, mined, machine-gunned. But even as the German commander at Omaha announced victory and began diverting his reserves against the British, U.S. Colonel George A. Taylor ordered an advance: “Now let’s get the hell out of here!” Inch by inch, behind accurate naval gunfire, backed up by waves of reinforcement, the U.S. infantrymen pushed back the German defenders.

MILE BY MILE

All day and night the Allies poured reinforcements onto the hard-won strips of Europe—36,250 in the Utah sector, 34,250 at Omaha, 83,115 on the British-Canadian beaches and airborne area. The German infantry began to crumble. Still desperately fighting, the British punched out gains of six miles, the Canadians eight. The U.S. 1st and 29th Divisions battled into fortified villages behind Omaha, dug in. In the Utah sector the seaborne forces linked up with the airborne, pressed inland. The battle neared its moment of truth—the expected counterattack of Rommel’s blazing Panzers. But that moment never came.

What happened was a breakdown in the German command. Rommel, believing the weather too foul for an invasion, was away in Germany on DDay. The 21st Panzer Division, instead of counterattacking, was fed into a piecemeal defense of Caen. The 12th SS Panzer and the Panzer Lehr Divisions were held in the rear from 0400 to 1600 by command from Hitler himself. Smothered by Allied air attack, they did not get into action until D-plus-one, D-plus-two and D-plus-three.

THE BREACKTHROUGH

By that time, the battle was won. Along a 30-mile front, the forces of freedom had secured their beachhead on Hitler’s Festung Europa. The price was dear: 10,724 casualties, including 2,132 dead.

There was deadly fighting yet to come and stirring history yet to be made. Montgomery drew the German armored strength onto the Second British Army and First Canadian Army at Caen, while the First U.S. Army broke out at St.-LÓ. Hitler and Rommel held back the German 15th Army near Calais, waiting for a second invasion that never came. George Patton, with his ivory-handled pistols, led the Third U.S. Army from Avranches to Le Mans to Orleans to Verdun to Metz in the most spectacular armored advance of the war. There was the unforgettable moment when Paris was liberated. But those moments essentially had been made possible by the U.S., British and Canadian troops who, on that single day 15 years ago, stormed the beaches named Sword, Juno, Gold, Utah and Omaha.