World War II in 1944: The History of the War’s Penultimate Year

With Allied forces firmly established in Italy, the British and Americans began to plot a much more massive invasion to liberate Western Europe from the Nazis. In December 1943, President Roosevelt appointed General Dwight Eisenhower Supreme Allied Commander for the upcoming invasion, with General Montgomery as the top British commander coordinating with Eisenhower.

During the first half of 1944, the Americans and British began a massive buildup of men and resources in England, while the military leaders devised an enormous and complex amphibious invasion of Western Europe. Though the Allies used misinformation to try deceiving the Germans, the sensible place for an invasion was just across the narrow English Channel. The Germans had built coastal fortifications throughout France to protect against just such an invasion, requiring the Allies to use an elaborate battle plan that would include naval and air bombardment, paratroopers, and even inflatable tanks that would be able to fire on fortifications from the coastline, all while landing nearly 150,000 men across nearly 70 miles of French beaches. The Allies would then use their beachhead to create an artificial dock, eventually planning to land nearly 1 million men in France.

From the very beginning of June 6, 1944, events were not going as the Allies had planned. Though the weather was good enough to carry out the amphibious invasion, low cloud-cover caused the Allies’ planes to mostly miss German fortifications on their bombing runs. Furthermore, the plan called for tens of thousands of paratroopers to land directly behind German lines, but bad visibility caused many of them to be dropped out of place. And basically none of the operations on the integral Omaha Beach went according to plan. Allied leaders would have likely been astounded to hear that victory in Europe would be achieved in 11 months.

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