The battle for Normandy. Explore the fight that liberated Nazi-Occupied France

6^th June 1944, Allied troops from the United States, Great Britain, and Canada, invaded Nazi-occupied France with the biggest amphibious force ever, known as Operation Neptune, or D-Day. But World War II was far from over. The gained beach footholds were small, and the German battle strength intact. Operation Overlord, of which Neptune was the initial stage, aimed at liberating Northern France, and destroy the Wehrmacht (German Armed Forces) in Western Europe.

This is a continuation of the article focusing on the D-Day landings in Normandy. You can check it here

#1 The day after the Normandy landings

Although the D-Day had seen the Allies lodged in the continent, vital goals of the operation had failed to materialise. Key cities like Carentan or Caen were in German hands. Furthermore, the elite Panzer Waffen-SS divisions like the 1^st SS Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler, or the 12^th SS Hitlerjugend, were rushed to the front, although critically delayed by Hitler’s belief that the Allies still planned to disembark in Pas-de-Calais, and the railway destruction caused by the French Resistance.

Aware of the vulnerability the isolated beaches presented to determined German counter-attacks, the British 2^nd Army (including Canadian Divisions), focused to join the footholds gained during D-Day, whereas the 1^st US Army aimed at capturing Cherbourg, on the Cotentin Peninsula. It was the only deep water port, and its capture meant speeding up and increasing the supplies shipped from England.

Meanwhile the paratroopers of the 101^st Airborne captured Carentan, the key to join Utah and Omaha beachheads. Soon were welcomed to the French neighbourhood by the 17^th SS Panzergrenadier Division. The boys of the 82^nd Airborne were to hold Sainte-Mère-Église to cover the flank of the 4^th and 90^th divisions in their push towards Cherbourg. But soon resistance proved bigger than that expected by Bradley, the commander of the 1^st US Army.

#2 The Mulberry Harbours and Cherbourg

The performance of the 90^th US Division was disappointing, many of the men, having never experienced real fire, collapsed and wouldn’t response or move. Soon were replaced by the more experienced 9^th Division, who pushed towards the west coast and cut the peninsula. Full of strongholds and commanded by Hitler to resist until the end, Cotentin and Cherbourg weren’t surrendered until the 26^th June. Sabotaged by the Germans, it would take a month for the harbour in Cherbourg to be operational, and would eventually become the world’s busiest harbour until the end of the war.

Meanwhile, two portable harbours were assembled in both Omaha and Gold. However, on the 19^th of June, one of the most violent storms of the 20^th century battered the Channel, wiping out Omaha’s harbour. The Mulberry harbour at Gold resisted, and was brought to service. Had Eisenhower postponed the D-Day for two weeks, as it was considered earlier, the storm would have totally swallowed the Allied armada, and changed the course of history.

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#3 The Panzer SS divisions

Meanwhile the Brits and Canadians had to face fanatics who didn’t like opposition one bit: the brain-washed Waffen-SS troops. Those Hitler enthusiasts, unlike their regular colleagues in the Wehrmacht, gladly swallowed every lie spoken by Goebbels, the Propaganda Minister, and their equipment and training was outstanding. Nazi lies were their vice, and they truly believed the Allies intended to exterminate Germany. For them it was a fight to the end, and few allowed themselves to be captured alive.

The situation couldn’t be more different on the Allied side, where combat fatigue was sapping the ranks. Unlike the D-Day troops, reinforcements hadn’t received training under real artillery. When the first shells rained, the new incorporations cuddled and gave up to fear, and had to be kicked to action by veterans and officers. The Wehrmacht didn’t acknowledge combat fatigue as a real phenomenon, and interestingly, few captured German prisoners presented symptoms. The Landser (German veteran) was better prepared for war.

Both German commanders in France, Rundsted and Rommel, considered the 2^nd British Army to be the chief threat. Firstly, they were considered more experienced soldiers than the Yankees, and secondly, a breakthrough in the British sector would leave Paris vulnerable, and therefore, all the German armies in Normandy would be trapped. As a result, the Fifth Panzer Army (Panzer Group West) who faced the 2^nd British Army, had ten Panzer divisions (combining mechanized infantry and tanks), as opposite to two Panzer divisions in the Seventh Army, facing the Americans. It was the biggest assembly of panzer divisions since the battle of Kursk in 1943.

Outnumbered and outgunned, the Germans made the most of what resources they had. Especially effective was their 88mm Flak gun, who could take any Allied tank before the later could even place itself within its range of fire. The fight in the Eastern Front had taught the Landser a few tricks: placing anti-personnel mines in the craters (the Allied soldier would seek shelter there when under fire), attaching bobby traps to the dog-tag chains of dead soldiers, and also mining their abandoned foxholes. The Allies learnt to dig their own foxholes the hard way: ‘sweat saves blood’.

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#4 The battle for Caen

Delayed by the capture of strongholds protecting the north of Caen, British and Canadians had to dig out, and wait for armoured reinforcements, while the Germans did the same. The 51^st Highland Division and the 7^th Armoured Division, failed later in their pincer movement around Caen, Operation Perch, repulsed by the 21^st Panzer division.

Subsequent operations, Epsom, Windsor, and Charnwood, brought the 2^nd British Army to capture the north of Caen. The strategic Carpiquet airfield, west of the city, was captured by the 3^rd Canadian Division in an epic clash against the 12^th SS Panzer Division Hitlerjugend. Both would show little mercy, and few prisoners were captured. South Caen would only be captured on 18^th July, during operation Charnwood.

The exasperating slow advance, combined with Montgomery and Dempsey’s (commanders of the 21^st British Army Group and 2^nd British Army respectively) cautious attitude, revealed a British war-weariness, having developed an extreme aversion to risk taking when opportunities presented. Officers were disdainful to adopt the effective German tank-infantry-aircraft doctrines, unlike their American colleagues. However, their commitment to press against Caen forced Hitler to keep his best armoured formations to pin them, allowing the 1^st US Army to steal the show.

#5 The Normandy hedgerows. The bocage

Meanwhile, the Americans aimed at Saint-Lô, or Stilo, as they called it. Bradley, commander of the 1^st US Army, considered Stilo the start point of the secret operation that would overwhelm German positions in Normandy. But an enemy as equally fearful as the Waffen-SS blocked their way: a hedgerow. Yes, the bocage, the typical hedgerow of Normandy.

Bordering every road, path and field, the Bocage was described as a claustrophobic labyrinth of leafy green tunnels. Not even the Sherman tanks could smash them, and platoons of Germans awaited on the exits of the hedgerow to ambush the G.I.s (US soldiers) with Panzerfausts and 88mm Flak guns. Unaccustomed to such war, the new reinforcements collapsed in less than 48 hours in the front due to combat stress. Under fire, their basic instinct to run overwhelmed them, and frantic retreats took place, only stopped by energetic NCOs and veterans.

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The sly Landser took advantage of it. Terrified and inexperienced US infantry jumped flat on their bellies, when even under light fire, instead of charging forward, which was safer. And on the ground were easily picked by German artillery and snipers. Still, the 29^th, the 35^th and the 30^th US divisions, pushed bravely and captured Saint-Lô by the 19^th of July, at the cost of 40.000 casualties, and a wrecked city.

#6 General Patton. The poster boy in Normandy

George S. Patton disembarked in Omaha by mid-July, still officialy in command of a ghost army made of empty tents and dummy aircraft, above Pas-de-Calais, to pin down potential German reinforcements. However, Eisenhower had promised Patton the 3^rd US Army, and a chance to roll down his tanks in a jolly, wild, ride across France.

I’m proud to be here to fight beside you. Now let’s cut the guts out of those Krauts and get the hell on to Berlin. And when we get to Berlin, I am going to personally shoot that paper-hanging son of a bitch, just like I would a snake.

Patton in Omaha after disembarking

The soldiers loved it, cheering and whooping the ‘Old Blood and Guts’ general. He was revered in the Wehrmacht as the best Allied general, and his motto was speed, speed and speed. Often unforgiving and refusing excuses (he slapped two soldiers suffering combat fatigue), Patton cared for his men and provided them with the best supplies. He was amongst the first commanders to mix, and promote Afro-Americans in his combat teams. In Normandy he eagerly awaited his command, surveying the front-line amidst whistling German bullets. To the astonishment of G.I.s around, he wouldn’t duck, and when told to do so, he replied:  ‘Mind your Goddam business, soldier!’

On 25^th July, Bradley launched Operation Cobra, aiming to capture Avranches, and then break through Brittany. After a clumsy initial bombing upon their own ranks, Operation Cobra, spearheaded by the 2^nd, 3^rd, and 4^th Armoured Divisions, and supported by the 1^st, 22^nd, and 30^th Infantry Divisions, quickly cut through the German Seventh Army. The offensive gained momentum, and the German retreat snowballed. The Sherman tank crews barely paused, cooking and using their basin-shaped helmets as portable loos. The infantry rode on top of these Shermans too, only dismounting when encountering resistance.

Patton was given a foretaste of command with the 6^th and 4^th Armoured Divisions. Immediately he spurred them to Avranches, which fell on 30^th July. Kluge, who replaced Rundstedt as commander-in-chief of the Wehrmacht in France (OB), was furious. On the 1^st of August, the 3^rd US Army was activated and Patton was put in charge. He kept penetrating into Brittany, avoiding the strongholds and running almost unopposed. The Americans had refined their infantry-air communication, and radioed their targets to the P-47s overflying them. In addition to, cases of combat fatigue were now virtually non-existent. Like Patton said: “People like to play on a winning team.”

#7 The Falaise pocket

With the Red Army unleashing Operation Bagration on the Eastern Front, Kluge knew reinforcements wouldn’t come. He was suspected of having participated on the 20^th of July Plot to assassinate Hitler, and he committed suicide to avoid the shame of betrayal. He was replaced by Model. But Kluge was right, France was lost. Now rolling south-eastwards, Patton aimed to trap the Seventh and Fifth Panzer armies between his army, and the British and Canadian advancing from Caen-Falaise.

Over 50.000 Germans were trapped and captured, 350 tanks lost, and thousands of vehicles abandoned because of lack of fuel. But even under constant strafing and Allied bombing, SS Panzergrenadiers managed to break a two miles wide gap through Canadian and Polish units, holding a tiny corridor to escape. Montgomery, commander of the 21^st British Army Group was blamed for refusing Americans to go in his sector to reinforce the badly beaten Canadians, thus as many as 100.000 Germans escaped because of Montgomery’s vanity.

#8 The road to Paris

Impatient in their armoured vehicles, the Frenchmen of the 2^nd Division Blindée (2ème DB) awaited, commanded by Philip Leclerc, and supplied and dressed by Patton’s 3^rd US Army. Their members had been battle-hardened in early campaigns in North Africa, and now had been promised by Allied commanders, the honour of liberating Paris.

Owing loyalty to Charles de Gaulle, head of the French government in exile, the 2ème DB received the long-awaited orders on the 23^rd August. Immediately, they marched in columns, riding on Staghound armoured cars, Stuart light tanks, half-tracks, Shermans and jeeps. Three days earlier, the French Resistance (FFI) had begun an uprising in Paris, spurred by the general German collapse, and another Allied invasion in Southern France, Operation Dragoon.

Led by the communist militant Colonel Rol-Tanguy, barricades were raised in the streets, and the poorly armed partisans gave a good fight to the German garrison commanded by Dietrich von Choltitz. Hitler ordered him to blow up Paris, and turn it into a Stalingrad for the Allies. But for once, Hitler’s stupid and violent ideas were disobeyed.

On the night of the 24^th, the vanguard of the 2ème DB arrived in Paris centre, hindered by a crowd of exalted Parisians, kissing, dancing, and eventually dispersed by German snipers fire. The 2ème DB was spearheaded by ‘La Nueve’, a Spanish company formed of Spanish exiled republicans and commanded by the French Raymond Dronne, who took the capitulation of Paris by Choltitz, on 25^th August, 1944.

Simoultaneously, the 4^th US Army entered Paris and helped clearing the last pockets of resistance. The FFI, eager of revenge after four years of reprisals, shot some of the unarmed prisoners, and everyone accused of ‘horizontal collaboration’ or befriending the Vichy authorities, were executed without trial, with women publicly shaved and mocked.

#9 The casualties in Normandy

The liberation of Paris forced the overstretched Allied supply system to divert resources to feed the city, bringing the swift advance to a halt, and giving time to the Germans to reorganize and solidify lines in northeastern France. De Gaulle took credit for France’s and Paris liberation, overlooking the fact that the 2ème DB would never have reached France without American help or the sacrifice of the Allied soldiers.

The liberation of Paris costed the lives of 2,873 citizens and seventy-one men of the 2ème DB, plus 225 wounded. Since the Allied landings on 6^th June, the Wehrmacht had suffered 240,000 casualties, plus 200,000 prisoners captured by the Allies. British, Canadian and Poles, suffered 83,405 casualties, and the Americans another 125,847.  But France paid a huge cost too. Over 70.000 civilians were killed by Allied operations and air-raids during the war, exceeding the 40.000 caused by German bombs in Great Britain. Half of them were Normans. Normandy’s martyrdom saved the rest of France from bitter fight, and accelerated the downfall of the Nazi Reich.

Dedicated to all the civilians, servicemen and servicewomen of all countries, who died in WW2. Because the best homage we can give them, is to remember their sacrifice and never repeat the past mistakes. WE REMEMBER