The Battle of Normandy

The Battle of Normandy

The Battle of Normandy was key to Allied success in France. After the landings on the Normandy beaches on June 6th 1944, the Allies faced the major issue of moving off the beaches and into the heartland of Normandy and from Normandy to Paris. With D-Day, the Allies had the element of surprise but once the landings had occurred, this had been lost. The Germans now knew for sure where the Allies would make their push inland and it was not to be in the Pays de Calais. The deception before D-Day had worked extremely well but post June 6th, German army commanders knew where to concentrate their forces. Normandy was fraught with difficulties for the Allies. The Americans moved west along the coast to free Brittany while the British, Canadians and Polish forces had the job of moving inland and this required the capture of Caen, a major city in Normandy. If the fighting at Omaha Beach had been hard, it was only a taster of what the Allies could expect inland. Victory in Normandy only culminated with the near destruction of a German army at Falaise. However, that only occurred after numerous operations had been carried out to free Normandy and Brittany from German control – Operations Spring, Tractable, Charnwood, Goodwood, Totalise and Atlantic were attempts to capture Caen and push inland towards Falaise. Operation Cobra led by the Americans was an operation to liberate Brittany.

With the exception of Omaha Beach, Allied landings at Sword, Gold, Utah and Juno had been relatively casualty free. Precise planning and the use of the so-called ‘Funnies’ to swiftly get off the beaches had greatly helped this. However, further inland, the Allies faced a major obstacle that was to greatly assist the Germans and hinder t...

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...cess to a seemingly endless supply of fuel and equipment. While the Mulberry Harbour had not lasted long, it had served its purpose. With the beaches secured, with the port of Cherbourg captured and with effective control of the English Channel, supplying the Allied forces in Normandy was not a huge issue. The Germans were not in the same position. Regardless of this, fighting in Normandy was fierce and progress inland was slow. German resistance was invariably strong. German resistance culminated in mid-August 1944 when the Allies trapped 150,000 German soldiers in and around the town of Falaise. Thousands of Germans did escape via the Falaise Gap (Falaise Pocket) before it was closed. But many thousands were captured along with their equipment. The loss of such a large force was a disaster for the Germans and one the German Army in France did not recover from.