The Germans were on the strategic defensive in the west from the end of the Battle of Britain in September 1940 onwards. The Germans’ invasion of France in 1940 was to neutralize the threat from the west and free them to march east against the Soviet Union. However, the strategic purpose of the battle really was not achieved until the liberation of Paris on August 25, 1944, when German forces were utterly defeated and fleeing back to Germany.Īdolph Hitler’s priority was always in the East where he sought Lebensraum (“living space”) for the master German race. The battle lasted until July 24, 1944, when the lodgment was sufficiently secure that break-out operations could begin. The Allies chose this area because it exploited weaker German defenses than the Pas de Calaise afforded surprise offered wide assault beaches for landings and follow on support was isolated from German counter-attack except from the south and included the port of Cherbourg. The battle expanded west to the Cotentin Peninsula and Cherbourg, south to Avranches and southeast to Argentan. This location reflected the US view that eventually an attack across the English Channel from Britain would be necessary to place Allied armies on the shortest, most direct route to the German heartland, forcing the Germans to risk the destruction of their field forces in its defense. The battle began on the northern coast of Normandy, France, between the Orne River and the Cotentin Peninsula, on June 6, 1944-D-Day. It ensured that Germany would never be able to concentrate all her military power against the Soviet Union and thus forced the unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany. It established Allied forces in a secure lodgment from which they began the liberation of Nazi-occupied Europe and the destruction of German armed forces in the west. It began with the largest amphibious operation in history, in which more than 5,000 ships, the largest armada ever assembled, placed 130,000 Allied soldiers on a hostile shore in a single day. The 1944 battle for Normandy was the most important battle between the western Allies and German forces on the continent of Europe in World War II and the first and essential battle in “Operation OVERLORD,” the invasion of Europe that preceded the final Allied drive to Germany.
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