The longest day

«You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: It is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival».

This is how Winston Churchill spoke on May 10, 1940 addressing to the english parliament, in what would go down in history – to use his words again – as the darkest but also the greatest hour of the nation that had been left alone to resist to Hitler, when it seemed that the cause of the free world was lost and and the triumphant Reich would indeed have lasted a thousand years.

For a year and a half England had resisted with the only awareness of having no alternative, until the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor had realized her wildest hopes. The United States had entered the war, and from that moment it was no longer just about resisting, but beginning to regain freedom for Europe and for the whole world.

The last Allied soldier had been thrown overboard at Dunkirk on June 3, 1940, the day the Battle of France ended and the Battle of Britain began. In 1942, an attempted premature landing at Dieppe in Normandy ended in a disaster, with several American, British and Canadian soldiers captured by the Germans.

By 1944, the tide of World War II had turned. The Third Reich had been reduced to the defensive, Italy had been forced to surrender, Hitler’s armies surrendered in Africa and Russia too. Stalin had long been asking for a second front in the west. It was time for the Allies to return to the European continent.

The only problem was getting around that complex defense system which under the name of Atlantic Wall had been entrusted to the expert hands of Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, the greatest of the German generals, capable of driving any Allied landing attempt back into the sea if organized in the wrong way.

One of the most well-known photos of Robert Capa

In January 1944 Allied Commander-in-Chief Dwight Eisenhower launched Operation Overlord, which would go down in history as the Normandy Landing. The plan was very sophisticated: to General Patton – till then the hero of the allied advance in Africa and southern Italy – was given the task of simulating a fictitious attack in the Pas de Calais, the narrowest point of the Channel, in the North Sea.

Hitler was supposed to fall into the trap and concentrate his defenses there, deguarding Normandy which was actually the real objective, against which another American general, Omar Bradley, would have hurled the real invasion force. To make work one of the most massive and incredible counterinformation actions in history, thousands of cardboard planes and tanks were prepared, concentrated in the Calais area. Nazi spies were hooked and reported to Germany that the invasion would take place from that side. Rommel sensed the trap, but did not have the authority to contradict the Fuhrer, who decided to leave Normandy almost undefended.

Overlord was set for early June, in a couple of specially identified weather windows for the landing to take place in the best climatic conditions. The weather, however, around the first window scheduled between 5 and 6 June, was struggling to adapt himself to what the meteorologists wished.

On the other hand, postponing the attack would have meant moving everything to the end of June, causing the war plans to be set in late summer, too great a risk for an army that would have to attack German territory when the season was no longer propitious.

The one that preceded the Longest Day, was commander Eisenhower’s longest night. The D-Day, according to an Anglo-Saxon military terminology that has gone down in history thanks to the cinema, literally means The Day. Eisenhower finally resolved his doubts and took the chance.

At midnight the first Allied soldiers destined to set foot in France after four years of German occupation were parachuted. The British 6th Airborne Division was dropped in the Caen area, the 82nd and 101st Americans were parachuted in the area of ​​Sainte-Mere-Eglise, with the task to create two bridgeheads that were to hold until the arrival of the landing troops.

American War Cemetery in Colleville-sur-mer on the promontory above Omaha Beach, the greatest in Europe

Overlord‘s front was divided into 5 sectors, 3 Anglo-Canadian and two American. Juno, Sword and Gold were the beaches assigned to British Commonwealth troops, and they were taken quite easily. It was a different matter at the code-named beaches Utah and Omaha. At 6.30 in the morning the American G.I.s (*) found waiting for them more resistance than they had expected. Rommel had obeyed Hitler, but still in his own way, leaving behind the most consistent defense as possible.

The first half hour was deadly and many American boys reddened the water with their blood. It took nearly the entire day of June 6 to establish the landing heads. That evening at last the special edition of the London Times was finally able to announce: We win beach heads.

The Normandy landings had been successful, the largest invasion force in history having managed to land in France. 7,000 vessels carrying 4,000 landing craft, 130 warships, about 12,000 aircraft, over two million men were hurled against the Atlantic Wall on June 6, 1944. Allied losses were around 10,000 men, German losses were slightly lower, but much heavier in relation to the number of soldiers deployed.

The French resistance, le Maquis, had been alerted in time by Radio London with the verses of the famous Chanson d’automne by Paul Verlaine: «the long sobs of autumn violins wound my heart with monotonous languor». The partisans promptly rendered 40% of the French railway network unusable, thus contributing decisively to the failure of the German counter-attack.

Paris was liberated on August 25 by Charles De Gaulle’s Free French troops. Berlin fell on May 1, 1945. Eleven months of war without quarter, since the moment the Allies landed in France. That June 6, about eighty years ago, the world began to look like the one we would be born into, starting from those blood-red beaches of Normandy.

(*) acronym of Government Issue, meaning “property of the United States Government”, but it seems that it originally referred to the galvanized iron used by the logistics services of the US Armed Forces.