D-Day
On 6 June 1944, just after midnight, the Allied assault upon Hitler’s ‘Fortress Europe’ began. The operation caught the German military high command unaware. Low tides and bad weather – combined with Allied deception plans – had convinced the Germans that an attack was unlikely at that time. As more than 1,000 British bombers began to pummel Normandy’s coastal defences, Rommel, commanding German defences in France, was in Germany celebrating his wife’s birthday.
The initial Allied assault was made by airborne infantry, who secured key bridges and crossroads on the flanks of the landing zone. Some of their most important and celebrated achievements included the capture of Pegasus Bridge and the town of Sainte-Mère-Eglise. Commandos also attacked key targets ahead of the main landings. One remarkable feat was the attack by US Rangers on Pointe-Du-Hoc, a headland which housed a coastal battery that threatened the landing beaches. The successful assault involved scaling a 30 metre cliff face under German fire.
Early Allied success was aided by the confused German reaction. The first confirmation of a large-scale attack did not arrive until 2:15 am; that an invasion was in progress was not confirmed until 4:15. It was only at 6 am, when Normandy’s defenders saw the horizon obscured by an unbroken line of Allied ships, that all doubt was removed. Along nearly 100 kilometres of coast, Allied warships and aircraft pounded German defences. At 6:30, US soldiers went ashore by landing craft at Utah and Omaha beaches. An hour later, the British and Canadians arrived at the beaches of Gold, Juno and Sword. Fortuitously, troops at Utah accidently landed two kilometres from their target, on a virtually unguarded beach. The landing zone was quickly secured with few losses.
On Omaha Beach, where aerial bombardment had done little to dent German defences, the Americans met fierce resistance. From cliff-top bunkers, the defenders pummelled US troops with machine gun fire and shells as soon as landing craft ramps were lowered. Those who made it ashore found it impossible to advance across 200 metres of open beach. Amphibious tanks intended to cover the infantry’s advance had sunk in the rough seas. The news from Omaha was so bad that the landings there were almost called off, but eventually small groups of American infantry worked their way around the German defences, outflanked and stormed them, allowing the beachhead to be secured. But Omaha cost the Americans more than 2,000 casualties.
When British and Canadian troops landed at 7.30, supported by tanks, the tide was high, leaving fewer metres of beach to traverse. Although mines sunk a number of boats, soldiers succeeded in silencing German machine guns within half an hour. At the day’s end, although they had not yet taken their objective of Caen, the soldiers had penetrated six kilometres inland, and their foothold in Normandy was secure. At 6pm, when Churchill addressed the House of Commons, it was to announce the astounding success of an operation which would go down in military legend.
The Bombing Offensive
In the first months of the war, British strategic bombing (aerial attacks on the enemy’s industry and infrastructure) were bound by the belief that deliberate attacks on civilians and private property were illegal and unjustifiable. By 1945, RAF Bomber Command was obliterating historic German cities overnight. It was a terrifying transformation in the nature of war, that saw industrial towns across Europe smashed to pieces and hundreds of thousands of civilians killed.
When Luftwaffe night-bombers unintentionally (and against orders) attacked London in August 1940, Churchill ordered a retaliatory raid on Berlin. This caused an enraged Hitler to order intensified bombing of targets in and around London.
Both sides thus claimed that their attacks on enemy cities were in retaliation for what had been begun by the enemy. In reality, the bombing of cities and their civilian population had been a reality of warfare since the First World War. In 1940, both sides were intent on attacking the enemy’s economic resources. These were mostly concentrated in cities, and given the inaccurate nature of bombing in World War Two (especially at night), this policy would inevitably lead to the destruction of houses and many civilian deaths.
In February 1942, RAF Bomber Command explicitly began to focus its attacks on the enemy civilian population, when it shifted from strategic bombing to the night-time area bombing of cities, designed to break enemy morale. Arthur ‘Bomber’ Harris, the new head of Bomber Command, saw civilian death (or the ‘dehousing’ of the German workforce) as entirely necessary. He felt that despatching 1,000 aircraft each night against German objectives, destroying great industrial cities in hours, would render the invasion of Europe unnecessary. He pointed to the Cologne raid of May 1942 as an example of what could be achieved: in one night, 1,046 aircraft rained more than 2,000 tons of bombs on the city, reducing 13,000 houses to rubble.
The US Army Air Force, flying raids from British bases from 1942, remained faithful to the concept of precision daylight bombing (with variable accuracy). ‘Around the Clock’ offensives began - RAF by night , USAAF by day.
Early daylight raids by the USAAF, without the protection of long-range fighter escorts, could lead to terrible losses. The Schweinfurt raid, an attack on ball-bearing factories designed to create ‘choke-points’ in German industry, led to the loss of 77 B-17 bombers, about one quarter of the attacking force. Such long-distance raids were then abandoned until 1944, when long-distance fighter escorts were available.
In May 1943, RAF Bomber Command was able to pull off one stunning piece of precision bombing, in the famous Dambusters raids against dams in the Ruhr Valley, in the German industrial heartland. Although the economic impact of the raid was negligible, it was a skilful and courageous operation that had a great impact on public morale.
Meanwhile, area bombing continued. In June 1943, in Operation Gomorrah, British and American bombers attacked Hamburg day and night for an entire week; half the city was levelled, and 40,000 were killed. In January 1944, the RAF pummelled Berlin. On 11 December, Frankfurt, Hanau and Giesson were levelled by 1,600 American planes. In January 1945, the USAAF dropped almost 40,000 tons of bombs on Berlin, Cologne and Hamm, while the RAF hit Bochum, Munich and Stuttgart.
By the war’s last months, virtually every important German industrial town had been destroyed. Yet the bombing continued. Churchill, convinced that destroying East German communication centres would aid the Red Army’s advance on Berlin, authorised the bombing of Dresden. On 13-14 February 1945, around 30,000 civilians were killed in attacks by the RAF and the USAAF.
The effectiveness of the bombing campaign is still debated. There was terrible destruction of the German economy, although output still rose during the war as the economy was geared more and more towards wartime needs. Public support in Germany for the Nazi regime, and civilian morale, was not obviously affected. The bombing campaign did force Germany to devote huge resources to the defence of the homeland, and the German air force suffered significant losses at the hands of Allied fighter escorts. The US Eighth Air Force and RAF Bomber Command paid a high price. Six in ten British bomber aircrew were killed, one of the highest casualty rates of any service in the war.
Disintegration
By the end of 1944, the writing was on the wall for Germany. The Normandy landings had penetrated ‘Fortress Europe’, and the Third Reich now faced an unwinnable war on two fronts. Nevertheless, a bold attempt by the Western Allies to cross the Rhine in September 1944, codenamed Operation Market Garden, was defeated with heavy casualties inflicted on Allied airborne forces, particularly around Arnhem.
On 16 December, a cornered Germany launched the Ardennes Offensive, a desperate attempt to split Allied forces in the West, and capture Antwerp, the main Allied supply port. The ‘Battle of the Bulge’, as it became known, saw early German success thanks to the element of surprise. But inevitably the Allies’ massive advantage in men and materiel turned the tide. The offensive was a desperate gamble, which cost the Germans irreplaceable men and weaponry. Germany’s dwindling reserves led to the mass mobilisation of all capable men between sixteen and 60 by the end of 1944. The oldest and youngest joined the Volksturm (home guard).
On 12 January 1945, the USSR launched the Vistula Offensive into Poland, driving the Germans from Warsaw and Silesia. East Prussia was encircled and overrun. Meanwhile, on 4 February, Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill met at Yalta to discuss the post-war plans, agreeing on the post-war division of Germany. In February and March, in the face of the Red Army’s relentless advance, the German population in its path fled west. In mid March, Hitler ordered the destruction of all military, industrial, communication, transport and supply installations. On 12 April 1945, he ordered all German cities to be defended to the last.
On 16 April, the Soviets launched a massive offensive from the Oder River, beginning the Battle for Berlin. Berlin was soon surrounded, and from 20 April came under Soviet artillery fire. Berlin’s defenders were comprised of depleted Wehrmact and Waffen SS divisions and many Volksturm and Hitler Youth members. Diehard fascists from countries including Holland and France, organised into SS units, also fought alongside the defenders. On 30 April, following intense fighting, the Soviet flag was hoisted over the Reichstag. Hitler, who had pledged to stay in Berlin ‘until the last day’, committed suicide in his bunker. Berlin’s defenders surrendered on 2 May.
The Western Allies, who linked up with Soviet forces on the Elbe in late April, had also been advancing into the Reich. In March, US forces had captured an intact bridge over the Rhine at Remagen. On 26 March, British troops crossed the Rhine at Wessel. In the centre, Allied armies surrounded the Ruhr region (Germany’s industrial heartland), taking huge numbers of prisoners. In the south, the US Third Army advanced from Maguncia towards line of demarcation previously agreed with the Soviets. While the left flank of the Seventh Army invaded Salzburg, the right flank advanced to Bremmer, uniting with US troops arriving from Italy on 4 May.
Soviet troops continued towards Prague, provoking a Czech uprising against German occupation on 5 May. Two days later, General Jodl and Admiral von Friedeburg surrendered unconditionally at Eisenhower’s headquarters in Reims. On the following day, 8 May, the Allied leaders announced Victory in Europe.
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