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D-Day

The amphibious assault by the Allies on the beaches of Normandy, France, on 6 June 1944—D-Day—was the largest military operation of World War II, perhaps the largest in all of modern warfare. Although the cost in money, materiel, and lives was high, the assault was a success, and it spelled the beginning of the end for Germany's Third Reich.

The assault, code named “Overlord” by the Allies, involved two years of planning and preparation. The basic concept was simple but bold: to defeat Germany in western Europe, where it was strongest, and thus to inflict massive damage on the Nazi war machine and open the way for a thrust into the German heartland. At the same time, a successful invasion would take pressure off the Soviets on the eastern front, allowing the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin to organize an effective counteroffensive against the German invaders there. The Allies had sufficient resources to launch only a single invasion, so Overlord involved the rolling of some large dice. The logistical nightmare aside, invasion planning was complicated by the necessity of integrating a multinational fighting force and command structure, by the problem of overcoming the intricate coastal defenses that the Nazis had constructed everywhere an invasion might be possible, and by the Nazis' certain knowledge that the Allies were coming—even if the Nazis did not know exactly when or where.

The success of the Allies and the failure of the Germans at Normandy hinged on a variety of factors. One of the most important of these—on both sides—was leadership.

The Allies

The head of the committee planning Operation Overlord, and also the commander of the invasion itself, was U.S. Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower. Because the United States was providing the largest component of the invasion force (sixty divisions, compared to the twenty provided by Britain and Canada together), U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill had agreed that a U.S. military leader must assume command. Eisenhower, as it turned out, was an inspired choice.

A graduate of West Point, Eisenhower had been unable to secure a combat command during World War I and spent the war training armored units in the United States. During the 1930s he served on the staff of Gen. Douglas MacArthur, and as war loomed in the early 1940s he was assigned to Gen. George C. Marshall, Army chief of staff. As early as March 1942 he wrote a memorandum for Marshall that urged that the primary Allied target be Germany and suggested that the surest road to victory lay through western Europe.

Eisenhower commanded “Operation Torch,” the British and U.S. assault on North Africa in November 1942. The initial assault was a success, but as Eisenhower's forces moved inland they came up against the German Afrika Corps led by the formidable Gen. Erwin Rommel. In February 1943, Rommel's forces attacked at the Kasserine Pass and inflicted a disastrous defeat on the Allied forces. However, the test of a true leader is not that he makes no mistakes, but rather that he learns from those he does make. Eisenhower was a true leader.

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