Normady Invasion

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.

On June 6th, 1944, the Allies stormed five beaches of Normandy, France in one of the pivotal battles of World War II and the largest sea-borne invasion in world history. The five beaches invaded ( Sword, Juno, Gold, Omaha, and Utah Beach) were all heavily fortified by the Germans and were all extremely difficult to attack, causing the Allies many casualties. In total, the Allies gathered 2,700 ships and 186,000 soldiers for the assault on the beaches, as paratroopers dropped behind enemy lines to capture German bridges and railroad tracks. 

The Allies crossed the English Channel and arrived at

the dreaded Normandy Beaches at the break of dawn. The American, English, and Canadian troops stormed ashore on a sixty-mile front, taking the Germans by surprise. By the end of the day, the Allies had the beaches secured.If the Allies could have avoided invading Omaha Beach, they would have.

However, it had to be done. It was probably the most heavily defended and was the largest beach out of the five attacked, but it had to be seized because the gap between Utah and Omaha Beach would have been too wide to hold if Omaha wasn't captured. Unfortunately, in the invasion of Omaha Beach,

numerous flaws in planning almost certainly resulted in unnecessary loss of life (World Book W, 484-485). Although the invasion of Normandy was an incredible victory for the Allies, and was a turning point in World War II, the planning of the assault on Omaha Beach was seriously flawed. Allied generals ignored knowledge gained from previous amphibious invasions such as Gallipoli and the beach invasions in the Pacific during World War II,and therefore suffered an extremely high casualty rate. Many of these deaths could have been avoided if Allied military command had learned from history.

Omaha Beach was the perfect defensive situation for the Germans. It was a narrow enclosed battlefield leaving no possible way to flank it because the cliffs surrounding the beach were virtually perpendicular to the ground.It was an open killing field, there being no cover for the Allies until they reached the sea wall. The Germans had thoroughly prepared for the attack knowing that the Allies would probably eventually invade Europe (although they didn't know when). Every inch of the beach was covered by guns, mines and explosives. 

General Rommel (The German General in charge of defending the beaches of Normandy against the D-Day invasion), had positioned twelve strong points along the beach and throughout the seawall, each holding 88s cannons, 75s cannons, and mortars for the Allies to deal with. The Germans had also set up dozens of machine gun pillboxes, supported by a complicated trench system which wove through the steep and complicated sea wall passageways. There were also countless guns positioned at angles to have plunging fire, grazing fire, and crossing fire from all types of weapons, which made it even more difficult for the soldiers to make their way to the base of the sea wall, and then up the wall. General Rommel protected the larger weapons and strong points from Allied bombardment by building sturdy concrete walls around them. 

An example of common German soldiers duties during Omaha Beach can be seen in Franz Gockel's ( a German soldier in the 726th regiment) observation, "Dark shadows could be detected on the horizon, and we first believed them to be German patrol craft, but soon the shadows grew and became so numerous that all hope was dispelled. The detectable wake from large and small ships increased in number. More bombers approached the coastline, and at Port-en-Bessin, a few kilometers from us, the first bombs fell. More bombers approached and I stood behind my heavy machine gun with its sights trained on the sea. Once again I inspected the ammunition belt.

I attempted to concentrate on my weapon to take my mind away from the impending events. In the recesses of my gun position stood ignition switches for two flame-throwers which were aimed at the beach and the tank trench." The overwhelming strength with which Omaha Beach was defended meant that the Allies would need perfect execution in order to minimize loss of life (Ambrose, 320-321).

The Allies actually started to prepare for the invasion of Normandy as early as 1942, and carefully observed what factors they could use to their advantage and to the Nazis' disadvantage. The Allies knew that they would have to plan their attack strategies with the fewest possible flaws if they were to carry out an attack with minimal casualties. 

In planning the invasion of Omaha Beach, the Allies assumed strengths which in some cases were ultimately not strengths at all. One advantage the Allies assumed was air superiority. It was true that the Allies had a stronger Air Force with greater experience than the air force of the Germans. The Allies also knew they would have command of the sea. They would have many ships bombarding the beaches to destroy German bunkers and weapon emplacements to make it easier for the invading troops. Another obvious strength was surprise, although it was not complete suprise because the Germans were expecting the Allies to attack the Normandy Beaches at some point; they just didn't know exactly when.


A professional soldier understands that war means killing people, war means maiming people, war means families left without fathers and mothers.

A further advantage the Allies took for granted was good intelligence. They thought they had deceived the Nazis by making them think the attack would be elsewhere (along the northern-most coast of France, so the Nazis had concentrated their main forces along those beaches). In addition, the Allies believed they knew where the German defense stations and strongholds were located along Omaha Beach. A final strength the Allies assumed they had was superior leadership, command and control. 

They regarded their General Joe Collins as a general with more experience and knowledge in this type of war than General Rommel of the Germans. The Allies also calculated some of the German weaknesses prior to Omaha Beach, hoping to exploit them. One German weakness was what the Allies thought was a divided and confused control system, which meant there was disorientation in the command of the Nazis. They considered a second weakness to be over-reliance on fixed fortifications on the seawall. If these fortifications were overrun, then the Allies suspected the Germans would not have a back-up plan and would, therefore, be defeated. One more shortcoming the Allies saw in the Nazis' defense was lack of accurate intelligence and weather forecasting both of which were Allied strengths. 

A final weakness of the Germans was lack of air and naval forces capable of operating together or independently which were two key areas the Allies planned to use to their strength (Jones, 182-183).

The final hope for success was that the naval bombardment that was also planned would blow up anything that the B-17's missed, clearing the way for the soldiers (Ambrose, 322-323).The problem with these three Allied expectations was that all of them went wrong. Instead of only one low quality division defending the beaches, there were three powerful ones (Kilvert-Jones, 67); clouds caused the B-17's to arrive late and not even touch the beach fortifications with their bombs; and the rockets fired by the Navy all fell short and landed in the water (Ambrose, 323). 

An example of the utter confusion on Omaha Beach is seen in a first hand account by Ray Lance, an American soldier in the 116th regiment "My boat was the company headquarters boat and it was in with B Company--17 of us on that boat. When I got up there and dropped and I looked around in front and all around--I mean not a soul. Nobody in front. Where was everybody? Where was A Company? I didn't know until I got in above high water what happened to A Company. I turned around and saw the bodies in the water, they were bumping against one another, it was so thick. There was nobody in sight. I turned and looked, nobody in sight, nobody behind me" ( Normandy).

This is some illustration from battle in Omaha Beach

That last night at home, you think about how you could of been a better dad, a better husband, that bedtime story you should of read, or that anniversary you forgot. You don't expect your family to understand what you're doing. You just hope they understand you're doing it for them, and when you get home you hope you can pick-up right where you left off.