D-Day and the Battle of Normandy [antikvár]

BELOW: American forces ready for France. The equipment stockpiled in south and southwest England was real, while dummy tanks and trucks in the south-east helped to create the illusion of plans to invade the Pas de Calais. (IWM) Preparations for Invasion Soon after the almost miraculous evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force from Dunkirk in 1940, leaving France and Northern Europe in German hands, Winston Churchill set up the Combined Operations Staff to undertake the preparation for the invasion of Europe. This was to be, four years later, an undertaking without precedent for complexity and co-ordination in the history of warfare, and essential in defeating Hitler. On the mainland of Europe, Hitler was turning his attention to ensuring the defence of the territory he had seized and in March 1942 recalled Field Marshal von Rundstedt from retirement to take command. The failure of the Allies' practical experiment in landing on the enemy coast, the raid on Dieppe the following August, reassured the Germans, wrongly, that massive coastal defences were the answer to invasion. They pressed ahead with the building of the Atlantic Wall, a series of mighty concrete batteries and beach obstacles that was intended to stretch from the Low Countries to Brittany. The sacrifices made by the Canadian forces at Dieppe - fewer than a third of them returned to England - were not in vain, for vital lessons were learned by the Allies. The ability to ship supplies - food, munitions, equipment and reinforcements - to the invaders was crucial, but frontal attack on a suitable port lilie Dieppe was clearly suicide. From this grew the determination to 'take the port with us' - to build artificial harbours, and to by-pass fixed defensive installations. The selection of the invasion site was fundamental to success, and the Pas de Calais was obviously attractive, with a narrow sea crossing, direct access to the heartland of Germany and close to airfields in England. Here the Germans created the most formidable defences, and here the Allies' Operation FORTITUDE deceived the Germans into thinking a huge army stood ready in south-east England and kept half the German forces awaiting the 'real' invasion for weeks after D-Day TOP RIGHT: From the Overlord Embroidery in the D-Day Museum, Portsmouth, King George VI with, left to right, General Eisenhower, Commander-in-Chief 21st Army Group General Sir Bernard L. Montgomery, Chief of the Imperial General Staff Field Marshal Sir Alan Brooke and Prime Minister Winston S. Churchill. The scene recalls three visits to Normandy: Churchill and Brooke's on 12 June, Eisenhower's on 15 June and the King's on 16 June. (D-Day Museum)