Operation Overlord - The Normandy Campaign in Context

The Normandy Campaign in Context

The landings were planned to take place in May 1944, but poor weather conditions and insufficient buildup delayed the landings until June. By then, the Allies had taken Rome in the Italian Campaign, and in the Pacific War, the Americans were launching their first strikes on Japan.

The Normandy landings threatened Hitler's hold on the Belgian and northern French coasts as bases for the "V" weapons, which had started launching against the UK. As the Allies were closing in on Paris and sealing the Falaise Gap, an invasion in southern France was also launched. The linkup with the southern French forces occurred on 12 September as part of the drive to the Siegfried Line.

On the Eastern Front, the Red Army were planning their own offensive, Operation Bagration, to drive the Germans away from Soviet territory. Combined with the Allied lodgement established at Normandy, the second front in Western Europe that had been demanded by Stalin since the Tehran Conference had been established, the Axis powers were driven back from all fronts.

While the Normandy landings are popularly believed to have signaled the "beginning of the end" for Nazi Germany, it is arguable that Germany's defeat had already been rendered inevitable by its huge losses on the Eastern Front. Germany had already been in almost continuous retreat on the Eastern Front since mid 1943, and the massive German defeats at the Battle of Stalingrad and the Battle of Kursk in early and mid 1943 were arguably more decisive for the course of the war in Europe, whether measured in terms of forces committed, the number of German casualties, or the amount of German war material destroyed. The American historian Jeffrey Herf wrote that, "Whereas German deaths between 1941 and 1943 on the western front had not exceeded 3 percent of the total from all fronts, in 1944 the figure jumped to about 14 percent. Yet even in the months following D-day, about 68.5 percent of all German battlefield deaths occurred on the eastern front, as a Soviet blitzkrieg in response devastated the retreating Wehrmacht".

However, the Normandy landings were the largest seaborne invasion in history, and they did hasten the end of the war in Europe, drawing large forces away from the Eastern Front that might otherwise have slowed the Soviet advance. The opening of a second front in Europe was also a tremendous psychological blow for Germany's military, who had long feared a repetition of the two-front war of World War I. The Normandy landings also heralded the start of the "race for Europe," between the Soviet forces and the Western powers, which some historians consider to be the start of the Cold War.