1944: D-Day

D-Day is an abbreviation for “Decision Day” and refers to the day when the military liberation of Europe from the German Reich began in France. Backing this was the anti-Hitler coalition plan, which was to relieve the Red Army on the Eastern front by building a second front in the West. The goal was to overwhelm the forces of the German Reich. A joint offensive by US, British, Canadian, French, Polish and Norwegian troops was promised to Josef Stalin in 1944. The Allied planners opted for the beaches of French Normandy, where the strongest-ever landing force to be used in a war was to be deployed. Due to a deceptive maneuver, the German Wehrmacht, which had covered the French coast with a fortification belt (Atlantic Wall), expected an attack in the area of Calais. The so-called D-Day, which was postponed several times due to bad weather, finally took place on June 6, 1944. In “Operation Overlord”, the western Allies deployed more than 6,000 ships, 11,000 aircrafts and over 150,000 soldiers. There was heavy fighting on the landing beaches, especially on the so-called “Omaha Beach”. It was only at the end of July 1944, following the Battle of Avranches, that the invasion had finally succeeded. On August 25, 1944, Paris could be liberated. The price of invasion was high: more than 20,000 people died on June 6, 1944 alone. Today, it is not only the ruins of the Atlantic Wall and the military relics on the beaches of Normandy that give evidence to these battles, but the region is also crisscrossed by a series of military cemeteries.