 American Soldiers had little trouble getting along with locals  Frequently gave chewing gum/Hershey bars to British children who were not use to such luxuries  8 villages entirely evacuated by 9/20/43, after which civilians were barred from re-entry  Area A – North of Portsmouth  43 mile parking area for Tanks  17 barbed wired encircled camps

 Code named – Operation Overlord  Enormous invasion force had been gathering in England for 2 years  3 million soldiers  greatest array of naval vessels/armaments ever assembled in 1 place  Germans expected the invasion to be at the narrowest part of English Channel  Invasion came along 60 miles of the Cotentin Peninsula on the coast of Normandy

 Y-Day – June 1 st  Everything had to be ready to go  No corrections could be made  Only waiting for Supreme Commander Dwight Eisenhower’s word to go  First Attempt: June 4, 1944  Wind and high seas make conditions poor

Soldiers in mess line in one of the marshaling camps in southern England

Note the barbed wire in the foreground.

 Needed to rid the area of Nazi defenses  VERY Early June 6, 1944  Airplanes, battleships bombarded the Nazi defenses  Paratroopers dropped behind German lines night before to seize critical roads and bridges for the push inland

A paratrooper boards an airplane that will drop him over the coast of Normandy for the Allied Invasion of Europe, D- Day, June 6, Soldiers of the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions parachuted behind enemy lines during the night, while fellow Soldiers assaulted Normandy beaches at dawn

 5 major beaches in Normandy  Utah and Omaha – US  Gold and Sword – British  Juno – Canadian  5,300 ships and 11,000 planes had crossed the English Channel and landed on the beaches of Normandy  156,000 troops crossed English Channel

 Planning for Operation Overlord took more than two years of planning.  Allied forces decided to strike between the Cotentin Peninsula and the Orne River.  The attack would stretch 50 miles on the beach.  The U.S would take Utah and Omaha beaches. The British would take Sword and Juno beaches. The Canadians would take Gold beach.

 The Atlantic Wall was an extensive system of coastal fortifications built by the Germans between 1942 and 1944  Built along the western coast of Europe to defend against an anticipated Anglo-American led Allied invasion of the continent from Great Britain.  Fritz Todt, the designer of the Siegfried Line along the Franco-German border, was the chief engineer  Thousands of forced laborers were forced to construct these permanent fortifications along the Dutch, Belgian and French coasts

 Early in 1944, Field Marshal Erwin Rommel was assigned to improve the defenses of the Wall.  Rommel believed the existing coastal fortifications were entirely inadequate.  A string of reinforced concrete pillboxes were built along the beaches to house machine guns, antitank guns, and light artillery.  Minefields and antitank obstacles were planted on the beaches and underwater obstacles and mines were planted in the waters just off shore to destroy incoming craft  By the time of the invasion, the Germans had laid almost 6 million mines in northern France.

"You have no idea how miserable the Germans made that beach... we could see rows upon rows of jagged obstructions lining the beach... When our ramp went down and the soldiers started to charge ashore, the [Germans]... let loose with streams of hot lead which pinged all around us. Why they didn't kill everyone in our boat, I will never know.“ -A Coast Guard coxswain describes his first trip to Omaha Beach.

 The first wave landed on the beach at 6:30am.  Enemy resistance was strong bunkers that looked down from cliffs 170 ft high.  Most tanks that launched for the beach failed by either sinking or being blown up by a mine.  Of the few tanks that did make it ashore they provided good cover for boat just arriving.

 Allied losses had been high:  U.S. AIRBORNE- 2,499  U.S. / UTAH- 197  U.S. / OMAHA- 2,000  U.K. / GOLD- 413  CAN. / JUNO- 1,204  U.K. / SWORD- 630  U.K. AIRBORNE- 1,500  TOTAL-9,000 casualties  Allied forces went on to liberate Paris August 25, 1944  Force most of German troops out of Belgium and France by September

 The Ardennes Offensive known to the general public as the Battle of the Bulge, started on December 16, 1944  Three powerful German armies plunged into the semi-mountainous, heavily forested Ardennes region of eastern Belgium and northern Luxembourg.  Their goal was to reach the sea, trap four allied armies, and impel a negotiated peace on the Western front.

 Thinking the Ardennes was the least likely spot for a German offensive the line was thin with American manpower concentrated north and south of the Ardennes.  Even though the German Offensive achieved total surprise, the American troops did not give ground without a fight  Within three days the Americans, assisted by the arrival of powerful reinforcements insured that the Germans would not achieve their goal.

 The German losses in the battle were critical  The last of the German reserves were now gone  The Luftwaffe had been broken  The German Army in the West was being pushed back.  Most importantly, the Eastern Front was now ripe for the taking and the German Army was unable to halt the Soviets  German forces were sent reeling on two fronts and never recovered.

 In April 1945, the battle is coming to a close.  On the 30th April, Hitler commits suicide together with his mistress Eva Braun hours after they were married.  Hitler gave strict orders for his body to be burned, so that his enemies wouldn't do what they had done to Mussolini, who was publicly displayed hanging upside down.

 By 2 May, the Reichstag, the old German parliament falls and Berlin surrenders to Marshall Zukhov, who receives the honour of being the conqueror of Berlin.  The battle for Berlin cost the Soviets over 70,000 dead. Many of them died because of the haste with which the campaign was conducted.

 The major Allied ground offensive from the west against German territory began on 8 February 1945  In April, Canadian troops liberated most of the Netherlands  The Germans formally surrendered on 8 May 1945, known as Victory-in- Europe, or ‘V-E’ Day