D-Day Landings- Easily Done Better?

[Millhouse]

The D-Day landings on June 6, 1944 could have easily gone way worse before being done better in hindsight. As a matter of fact, other than Omaha Beach which had the most casualties and then Juno beach, the other three beachheads were secured with very light casualties. The 101st and 82 Airborne suffered around 2500 casualties by dropping into Normandy the night before the landings, so it wasn't just the landings on the beaches where the casualties occurred. In terms of the number of troops involved, the German weaponry involved, and just the massive scale of the invasion, it was a massive success to secure all five beachheads that June 6th. However what was very questionable in hindsight was the weeks that followed in which the Allies took massive casualties moving off the beachheads fighting through terrain that was very poorly anticipated known as the Bocage.

But back to June 6th. Perhaps the main reason they secured all five beachheads with relative ease other than Omaha Beach was that Hitler believed the main assault was to occur 150 miles to the northeast of Normandy in the Calais region which is the closest point in France across the channel from England. This was in large part to the Allies staging a massive fake army across the way led by General George Patton, whom Hitler believed would lead the invasion. The allies also fed the German spy network with fake messages, radio transmissions, etc. in an elaborate scheme. So as Hitler had up in that region the bulk of his Panzer tank divisions waiting for the"real" invasion, he refused to release them for weeksl thinking that Patton was still going to invade with the main force. He was fooled and by having the final say in this, the Germans did not have their tanks in Normandy until it was too late. Patton instead was given the 3rd Army and made landfall in July in northern France which helped finally break the Germans in France and pushed them back into Germany by years end.

Credit also has to be given to the 101st and 82 Airborne for helping ease the number of the casualties as well. Even though they were scattered all over Normandy on their initial drops due to the pilots trying to avoid anti-aircraft fire, they were able to seize most of their objectives while also causing mass confusion for the German army in the general Normandy area. I won't get into specifics, but if you ever watch Band of Brothers you will get a very good depiction of this.

https://dod.defense.gov/Portals/1/features/2016/0516_dday/docs/d-day-fact-sheet-the-beaches.pdf