Operation Overlord

Operation Overlord, known as D-Day, was the largest amphibious invasion in history and brought together Allied efforts from eight nations—America, Great Britain, France, Canada, Poland, Denmark, Norway, and Greece—in a carefully planned invasion meant to help retake Europe from Nazi control. After Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party began a campaign in 1939 to take over the world beginning with Europe, Nazi Germany, along with Italy and Japan, became the Axis powers under Hitler, Benito Mussolini, and Emperor Hirohito. By 1943, Hitler had overtaken most of Europe and was pushing into Russia, while the Nazis were also leading a movement to eliminate Jewish people from Europe. The Allied powers, including the United States, Great Britain, the Soviet Union, Canada, China, and others, formed to defeat the Axis powers, liberate Western Europe, and create a peaceful post-war world under leaders Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin. After many months of planning, the invasion was launched with aerial bombardments against Axis strongholds and supply depots, paratroopers and glider units landing at night to resist attacks on the beaches, naval guns firing on the beachheads, and waves of amphibious troops assaulting the Normandy coast, changing the tide of the war. Supporting efforts included Operation Fortitude, in which the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops used rubber tanks, planes, vehicles, and empty buildings to create a fake army and mislead Nazi forces; Operation Tiger, a rehearsal at Slapton Sands in southern England in which German submarines attacked U.S. LST boats on April 28, 1944, sinking two and badly damaging another; Operation Titanic, carried out on June 5–6, 1944, in which the Royal Air Force and the Special Air Service dropped 500 straw-filled paratrooper decoys north of the Seine River to draw German troops away from the beachheads; and Operation Neptune, commanded by British Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay, which coordinated 6,900 ships from eight navies across the channel to a rendezvous point called Piccadilly Circus before they were divided for their assigned beachheads. Key figures in the Normandy invasion included General Dwight D. Eisenhower as Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force, General Bernard Law Montgomery as commander of the Allied expeditionary ground force, Lieutenant General Omar N. Bradley as commander of U.S. land forces during the invasion, and the Spanish double agent Juan Pujol Garcia, whose fake persona and 27 fictitious agents helped deceive the Nazis about the Normandy invasions.

Pennsylvania · United States