June 6, 1944, has gone down in U.S. history as a day of triumph and heroism.
Seventy-eight years ago, the Allies invaded the Normandy coast to begin the liberation of France. American, British and Canadian forces secured five beach heads. The first wave of U.S. troops at Omaha Beach faced the most ferocious German resistance, an attack immortalized in the movie “Saving Private Ryan.”
But so much went wrong for the Allies that day. The paratrooper drops were scattered all over the invasion zone. Some of the airborne troops fell right onto German positions. The pre-invasion naval and air bombardment entirely missed the German bunkers on Omaha Beach. And the Americans’ “floating tanks” sank, drowning their crews.
The Germans had problems of their own. The Allied deception campaign had the Wehrmacht convinced the invasion would come in the Pas-de-Calais, which was the nearest region across the English Channel from England.
Hitler rejected Gen. Erwin Rommel’s request to keep the elite panzer formations close to the coast where they could be deployed immediately to repel an invasion. Had Rommel gotten his way, the result at Omaha could have been different.
In this episode of History As It Happens, military historian Cathal Nolan discusses the reasons why the Allies prevailed despite all the chaos and confusion that morning. Mr. Nolan, the director of the International History Institute at Boston University, also contends that decisive battles are a mirage, especially in modern warfare.
The scattering of the U.S. paratroopers had a benefit, Mr. Nolan said.
“The Germans didn’t know what the hell their objective was. The unintended consequence was that the Germans also remained scattered, so they were not as concentrated as they might have been when the main infantry landings came at Omaha and Utah,” Mr. Nolan said.
Listen to the full interview here or wherever you find your podcasts.
