D-Day: 6 June 1944 Posted on: 6 June 2014 In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies Troops approach ‘Omaha’ beach on D-Day (US National Archives)
Churchill to Stalin at the Teheran Conference, November 1943
Seventy years ago today, 130,000 American, British and Canadian troops began the largest seaborne assault ever attempted: Operation NEPTUNE, the assault phase of OVERLORD, overall codename for the Allied invasion of occupied north-western Europe. After months of detailed planning, involving much discussion, a certain amount of friction between Allied military and civilian authorities, and considerable anxiety about everything from German intentions to security arrangements and the weather, the day had finally come. There had been a false start on 4 June, when bad weather forced ships already embarked to turn back; that night the Supreme Allied Commander, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, was told that if the invasion did not start next day, the weather would cause another 2 weeks’ delay. At dawn on 5 June he gave the order to go ahead, officers on ships opened their sealed orders at 7am, and they set sail. Though the idea had long been discussed, and Marshal Josef Stalin had been pressing for a ‘Second Front’ in Europe ever since the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, competing military strategies and tough campaigns in Southern Europe, North Africa, the Middle and Far East delayed a final decision until the Teheran Conference in November 1943. this was the first time when the ‘Big Three’—Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt—had met in person. Plans were to be made for an Allied landing in Normandy by the end of May 1944 (OVERLORD), plus an attack in the South of France (ANVIL). Crucial to the success of OVERLORD, which after much hard fighting led to the final defeat of German forces on the European mainland, were a number of intelligence-based operations mounted by Britain and her Allies. Some of these are well known: others have been given less attention. But it is these operations that provide the context to D-Day. Deception operations Hitler and his military advisers were expecting an Allied offensive in Europe in 1944. Directive No. 51 of 3 November 1943 stated that ‘Everything indicates that the enemy will launch an offensive against the Western Front of Europe, at the latest in the spring, perhaps even earlier’, and that Hitler had decided to reinforce Western defences, ‘particularly those places from which the long-range bombardment of England will begin’.
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