D-Day
Trouble in June, 6th, 1944
(Decisions Day)
Short introduction
• Good morning class,
the topic for today is the “Fight in the
Normandy in World War II”
• We would like to introduce you what
happened back in June, 6th 1944 at
the north west coast in France
Impressions Normandy
But it wasn´t that friendly all the time…
Just imagine, we would stand close to a
place called Normandy, early in the morning,
June 6th 1944….
A crazy German warlord tried to
fight his own war against the rest
of the world.
The Americans were not able to
handle this anymore, so they
decided to support the other
parties, technically and mentally,
after what happened to the
Americans on an island called
Hawaii, in a city name Pearl
Harbour.
The Americans and the Brits
were looking for a spot, were
they can land, somewhere in
Europe.
In a race against time they made
their decision, and they figured,
the best place to land would be a
part of the Northwest coast in
France name Normandy, right
here, were we standing now ….!
A memorial….
A smart man name Dwight D.
Eisenhower and other 80
Generals, met in Scotland, had
a couple of beers, and after
that, they came to the
conclusion, we need to open a
can of asswippen, because that
little German man is not
treating the rest of the world
right and needs to be stopped!
So far so good!
Let me allow to say, that Mr.
Hitler wasn’t dumb either!
They already knew, or at
least pretended, that
something will happened,
sooner or later, the question
was just, where and when?!
!
So they build plenty of heavy armoured
bunkers, full heavy weapons and a lot
of firepower, along the coast, which
was a really hard obstacle, for the
allied troops to take.
It was definitely a rough and hard day
for the allied troops, we going to talk
about that later, in detailed historic
records, which I have downloaded
from the web. Like one of these….
Armoured howitzer site…
• On this pic, you can see,
•
one of the „Führers
Wunderwaffen“.
He build heavy armoured
gun sites along the coast.
It needed a lot of concret
and it although took live
of many people, which
suffered in german
concentration camps…
The German’s were not prepared
enough, a lot of lucky
coincidences for the allied
forces, due to weather reasons,
the Germans ignored their own
weather forecast, due to the
fact, that most of the German air
force staff and some of the
officers went on holidays.
to me,
it’ll be a
bad day
for the
German
Wehrmacht
and his
Prelude to Operation
„Overlord“
During the first six months of 1944,
the United States and Great Britain
concentrated land, naval, and air
forces in England to prepare for
Operation Overlord, the assault on
Hitler's "Fortress Europe."
They just had to figure out
where and , of course when
to land, in this undiscovered
land…
So, they decided to
land at this particular
place….
They called it:
- OHAMA
BEACH –
- NORMANDY -
The German‘s
In 1944 the logistic issues
on the west boarderline
was not fine; some
military good‘s were
going the east. In may
1944 the commander in
chief army group west
Fieldmarshal von
Rundstedt had have
• Fieldmarshal von Rundstedt
• 48 infantry units
• 10 tank units
• 1379 tanks
• 1.873.000 soldiers
• The proplem in spring 1944 was
that only 39 of 1000 cannons
could fight against Sea targets.
They had no powerfull Navy nor
they had a powerfull Air force
and no tank or troop reserves.
The troops were made of
soldiers with bad constitution or
by younger soldiers who had
not trained enough.
Only a few days 2 go…
Before the invasion, the air and
sea components played major
roles. The 12,000 planes of the
Allied air forces swept the
Luftwaffe from the skies,
photographed enemy defenses,
dropped supplies to the resistance,
bombed railways, attacked
Germany's industries and isolated
the battlefield.
• At the same time the
allied air force were
bombing all the
transporting routes so
that the Atlantic-wall
was cut off from the
rest of German
Wehrmacht
That was the big plan……
The Allies' naval component
was similarly active during the
buildup. The navies escorted
convoys, patrolled and
protected the English Channel,
reconnoitered beaches and
beach defenses, conducted
amphibious rehearsals and
organized and loaded a mighty
flotilla to land the assault
forces in France.
Here ist comes…
Meanwhile, the nine army
divisions (three airborne and
six infantry) from the United
States, Britain and Canada
trained and rehearsed their
roles in the carefully
choreographed operation.
• On June 6th 1944
the german
comanding officers
were not in the field.
Fieldmarshal Erwin
Rommel stayed at
home to celebrate
his wifes birthday.
Fleetadmiral Dönitz
stayed in vacation,
an the German High
Command had a
look on the
Battlefield of Italy.
Fieldmarshal Rommel
• Fieldmarshal von Rundstedt stays
with his Staff near Paris to train an
assault by enemy paratroops
behind the west wall. After the
landing of the allied paratroops in
the night of June 6th in the
Normandy, the German command
did not know what happened they
thought that it was a part of the
training.
• The information about the
landing paratroops where so
different that they couldn’t
belive it. On the one hand they
where talking about hard fights
on the other hand, the were
talking about little plastik
dummys which looked like
British paratroops.
Rock´n Roll….
• In the morning at 6:30 German
Soldiers saw the fleet in front of
the Normandy they saw the
biggest Fleet they had seen in
theire life before. 6500 ships and
boats where coming closer to the
beach to drop of the allied troops
to landing in the Normandy.
• Fieldmarshal Rommel came
emidiadly to the battlefield his staff
ordered the tank reserve which
was stationed close to Paris, but
fieldmarshal Keitel Commander in
chief German Highcommand didn’t
let them go. And WWI private first
class Hitler comander in chief of
the Wehrmacht was sleeping and it
was not allowed to wake him up.
• If we do not succeed in our mission to
close the seas to the Allies, or in the
first 48 hours, to throw them back, their
invasion will be successful ...
•
In the absence of strategic reserves
and due to the total inadequacy of our
navy and of our air force we will have
lost the war.
• Fieldmarshal Erwin Rommel
• Commander in chief German Army
Group B
Point of no return…
• Rangers climbed cliffs,
engineers destroyed
beach obstacles,
quartermasters
stockpiled supplies and
infantrymen waded
through the English surf
as each honed the skills
necessary for the
invasion's success.
D-Day memories…
After all what happend, we
should keep in mind, that a
war is never something that
need to be done, not even
as a „last option“.
A wise man said:…..
„
I don´t kow which and what kind
of weapons we use against
eachother in World War III,
……
but what I do know, in World
War IV we going to fight with
clubs, rocks and woodpieces.
„
Albert Einstein
In loving memory to
the unknown soldier…
Casualties
• Omaha:
• Juno:
• Sword:
• Utha:
• Gold:
USA 4000
CAN 50%
Brit. 700
Brit.197
No digits
Germany 700
No digits
No digits
No digits
No digits
• In 24 hours
Peace