World War I: Was D-Day Critical?

The american and allied troops got to normandy beach at 2 o’clock in the morning. At 3 o’clock in the morning the fighting started. The allies had aerial bombardment as backup. It was so bad that their was 209 thousand allies and 216 thousand germans that died on D-Day when the invasion was over.

Before the invasions started, six-thousand vessels and eleven-thousand planes were heading to Normandy. When the invasions began, the invaders used planes and warships to distract the Germans. That´s when the planes dropped the troops behind the defenses to block roads so the Germans couldn't call for help. The troops kept fighting on all the beaches and eventually held victory on each of the beaches. Over a hundred fifty-thousand troops survived the attacks and there were about four-thousand to nine-thousand deaths for German soldiers. As previously stated, the hardest part of the invasion was taking control of Omaha beach. According to the CBBC Newsround, “The heaviest fighting was on Omaha beach. Overall the allies suffered about 10,000 casualties (dead or wounded) on D-Day itself”(CBBC 4). Additionally, the beaches had their fair share of fighting, but none of them compared to the fighting on Omaha beach. Many of the troops were outsmarted by the Germans on Omaha which led to them losing ten-thousand people. To conclude, many of the events on D-day were very crucial and impactful on the

“D-Day”, happened June 6, 1944. More than 160,000 troops fought that day and around 13,000 air crafts and 5,000 ships were there. Around 9,000 allied soldiers died that day.

“D-Day”, is considered one of the most significant battles of World War ll. D-Day is also known as the “Battle of Normandy”, or, “Operation Overlord”. The Battle of Normandy began in June 1944, and ended around August 1944. By the end of the war around August 1944, all of France had been cleared of Nazi forces. D-Day is considered a huge factor with the end of World War II and the Nazi Party due them having to push out of France and back into their initial land of Germany. Later on as the Nazi Party was pushed back into Germany, more allied forces collaborated to officially wipe out the Nazi Party in Germany. D-Day was initialized as it was approved by General Dwight D. Eisenhower. After the approval of the general, troops landed on the French coasts to neutralize the Nazi Party and to recover the land.

Other than causing the liberation of France and the establishment of a new battlefront, the invasion also relieved the Soviet Union’s pressure. Before the Invasion, Germany had over two million troops fighting against the Red Army in the Eastern Front, and many of Soviet’s cities were captured. The Russians fought desperately to protect their cities. However, after the invasion, with the launch of a new major battlefront in the West, Hitler had to transport many of his forces to the West in order to defend his own country. Without as many troops to fight against, the Soviet army was able to push through Czechoslovakia, Poland and eventually penetrate into Germany; the Soviet Union’s progress greatly sped up the endof the war. (Naval History and Heritage- D-Day, the Normandy Invasion, 6 - 25 June 1944)

Britain and France desperately awaited the moment when the US would fully join in the fighting in Europe during World War II, and D-Day brought that full fledged involvement. If not for the efforts of the United States of America, its cooperation and planning with its allies, the invasion would not have been successful. It was successful, however, due to previous planning, the level of supplies and men from the US combined with the European allies, as well as the divided German forces. D-Day was the beginning of liberation of Western Europe from Nazi control. Hitler had known that in order for the Allies to be successful, there would have to be an invasion of mainland Europe - which his forces controlled most of - and that it would come from northwestern Europe, with Great Britain being the jumping off point. But if he was expecting the attack, why was he not better prepared? The planning that had gone into the invasion at the beaches of Normandy on the coast of France had been thorough and extensive, with a large part of that planning being the intentional disinformation about the location of the invasion, thus fooling the Nazi leader. These factors explain why Operation Overlord was successful, and thus became the turning point in the world war.

started to receive casualties within 3 to 4 days because so many people were being severely wounded they started to come in to fast and weren't able to put every soldier in a room. They started to have to put them in the hallways because the hospitals would get to packed. So people died either by being killed or not getting attention fast enough from doctors. Unfortunately there were many U.S. casualties. Some lives were lost on omaha beach and some on the other beaches but totaled up to around 200,000 U.S. deaths. There was a total of around 517,000 deaths (including Germans, Canadians, Britians, And

The shores were heavily “fortified” according to historians.Over 425,000 German and Allied troops were killed, wounded or went missing during the invasion. That includes over 209,000 killed from the Allied troops, with almost 37,000 deaths in the ground forces and about 16,714 people in the Air Force were killed.

troops in the invasion of Normandy. Under his direction, the 100,000 troops were the main

After a month of pure hell for the Allied Forces, victory would finally prevail. The total casualty rate of The Battle of The Bulge for the Allied Forces was 90,000 troops. The Germans suffered 100,000 casualties. The main cause of such high numbers is due to the initial force of numbers. The Allied troops started with only 80,000 compared to the Germans 200,000(Battle of The Bulge, http://www.historynet.com/battle-of-the-bulge).

More than 9,000 allied troops were

Casualties on D-Day itself were lighter than allied commanders had feared. It is estimated that about 4,400 allied troops, airmen or

The first troops deployed into battle were paratroopers. Over thirteen thousand U.S. paratroopers were dropped by an armada of C-47s behind German lines before dawn. Their mission was to seize bridges, disrupt communications, and prevent German soldiers from reinforcing the Normandy beaches as the Allied assault hit the coastline (Alberecht). Heavy cloud coverage made for difficult navigation and forced many of the paratroopers to jump “blind”. This resulted in them being scattered over a 100-square mile radius. Thirty-five percent of these soldiers landed at their designated drop point, while many others died when they landed in fields flooded by the Germans. Despite all of this, the remaining troops were able to secure their intended positions (Dry).

For a long time, when anyone thought of a war movie, they immediately thought of Darryl F. Zanuck’s, The Longest Day. Cornelius Ryan, who was the author of the book by the same name, and happened to be a D-day veteran himself, wrote the movie. The book meticulously recreates the events preceding and during the invasion. It is filled with detailed descriptions of multiple occurrences during the invasion. It explains everything from mass attacks on beaches and towns to humorous anecdotes. The book wasn’t exactly a story involving characters, and neither was the film. The Longest Day is more a story of tragedy, glory, and courage surrounding one very important day. And even though mainly American and

12000 aircraft supported the land invasion force, the plan was to divide the German forces, to ease the landing on the beaches. The paratroops were suppose to be dropped off in a small aria between the city, which was occupied by Germans, and the swamp aria, which was purposely flooded by the Germans, and flank them. The movie did an amazing job in reproducing this event. Due to the bad weather the man got scattered all over the place, people fell into wells, landed in trees, fell through the roofs, and many had drowned in the swamp. One part of the movie shows an English solder landing in a courtyard full of German solders. He was immediately apprehended and taken to German