Hitler had long predicted that the Allies would attempt an invasion somewhere in western Europe, and had, accordingly, built a 1,700-mile line of defence from the Netherlands to the Spanish border. Known as the Atlantic Wall, it took two years to construct using slave labour, and once completed, was manned by veterans and cripples of the German army. Hitler pinpointed his prediction to Calais, the shortest distance from England.
Two years before, on 19 August 1942, the Allies launched an attack on German-occupied France, landing a force at the port of Dieppe. The attack was a disaster and easily fought off by the Germans. However, lessons were learnt – any future attack would have to avoid heavily defended ports. And so, in June 1944, the decision was made to land by beach.
In planning the invasion of Europe, Montgomery took charge of the British forces, Patton the American, with Eisenhower as supreme commander. They decided on a sixty-mile stretch of Normandy beaches despite the greater distance from England. The lack of harbour facilities was solved by building two gigantic artificial harbours, ‘Mulberry Harbours’, designed to be towed across the Channel and sunk into place on the beaches. The world’s first undersea oil pipeline was constructed, seventy miles long, from the Isle of Wight to Cherbourg. PLUTO (PipeLines Under The Ocean) would eventually pump a million gallons of oil a day into northern France. The French and Belgian Resistance were briefed and instructed. The day before D-Day, the BBC broadcast the poem ‘Chanson d’automne’ by Paul Verlaine (the nineteenth-century French poet) as the prearranged signal to the Resistance that the invasion would start the following day.
The months preparing for D-Day and the huge armada being gathered in England could hardly escape the attention of German intelligence, so the Allies went to great lengths to mislead the Germans: dummy tanks to fool air reconnaissance, fake radio messages, fake headquarters and even an actor playing Montgomery sent out to North Africa. The deception worked: far fewer Germans were stationed at the beaches because Hitler had them posted across north-west Europe. The British, under the inspiration of Percy Hobart, invented various aids to help tanks, dropped into sea several miles out, to navigate across sea and beaches. Nicknamed ‘Hobart’s Funnies’, the various tanks were designed, between them, to ‘swim’ onto the shore, clear mines, or roll stretches of canvas out to form a path across the soft sand.
On D-Day, 6 June 1944, Operation Overlord went into action. Gliders and parachutists (and dummy parachutes) landed behind the German lines, capturing the first bit of occupied territory – Pegasus Bridge. Then an armada of 7,000 ships (including 1,200 warships) carrying almost 300,000 men crossed the Channel, the Americans aiming for the beaches named as Utah and Omaha; the British for Gold, Juno and Sword. It was Omaha that saw the greatest struggle; soldiers burdened with heavy kit drowned when deposited from their landing boats in water too deep and others came under immense fire, but eventually, after several hours and through sheer weight of numbers, the beach was secured. The Germans lacked air power, with such commitment on the Eastern Front, and what little they had was soon neutralized by Allied air supremacy.
British troops landing in Normandy, D-Day, 6 June 1944
Hitler, on hearing of the invasion, believed it was a diversionary attack and it was three days before he sent reinforcements. Rommel, in command again of the German forces, had returned to Berlin for the day to celebrate his wife’s birthday. On his return, he urged a swift counter-attack, but with insufficient troops and air power, his men fell back as the Allies surged forwards. The Germans were further hampered by partisan activities for which the Germans exacted severe reprisals, obliterating entire villages and murdering their inhabitants. On 27 June, the badly damaged port of Cherbourg was recaptured and the harbour repaired, allowing for easier transportation of men and equipment into France. By the beginning of July, the western Allies had landed over a million men on the Continent.
On 20 July 1944, Hitler survived an assassination attempt in his Wolf’s Lair in East Prussia, the ‘July Bomb Plot’, perpetrated by Nazi officers who hoped to shorten the war with his removal. Hitler, although shaken, suffered only superficial injuries and those responsible were soon rounded up and executed. Rommel, although not directly involved, had previously voiced sympathy for the plan. Once his endorsement came to light, he was given the option of honourable suicide or subjecting himself to humiliation and the kangaroo court of Nazi justice, and his family deported to a concentration camp. He chose the former, and on 14 October, accompanied by two generals sent by Hitler, poisoned himself. He was, as promised, buried with full military honours, and his family pensioned off.