The Normandy landings were the landing operations on Tuesday, 6 June 1944 of the Allied invasion of Normandy in Operation Overlord during World War II. Codenamed Operation Neptune and often referred to as D-Day, it was the largest seaborne invasion in history. The operation began the liberation of German-occupied France (and later western Europe) from Nazi control, and laid the foundations of the Allied victory on the Western Front.

Planning for the operation began in 1943. In the months leading up to the invasion, the Allies conducted a substantial military deception, codenamed Operation Bodyguard, to mislead the Germans as to the date and location of the main Allied landings. The weather on D-Day was far from ideal and the operation had to be delayed 24 hours; a further postponement would have meant a delay of at least two weeks as the invasion planners had requirements for the phase of the moon, the tides, and the time of day that meant only a few days each month were deemed suitable. Adolf Hitler placed German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel in command of German forces and of developing fortifications along the Atlantic Wall in anticipation of an Allied invasion.

The amphibious landings were preceded by extensive aerial and naval bombardment and an airborne assault—the landing of 24,000 US, British, and Canadian airborne troops shortly after midnight. Allied infantry and armoured divisions began landing on the coast of France at 06:30. The target 50-mile (80 km) stretch of the Normandy coast was divided into five sectors: Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno, and Sword. Strong winds blew the landing craft east of their intended positions, particularly at Utah and Omaha. The men landed under heavy fire from gun emplacements overlooking the beaches, and the shore was mined and covered with obstacles such as wooden stakes, metal tripods, and barbed wire, making the work of the beach-clearing teams difficult and dangerous. Casualties were heaviest at Omaha, with its high cliffs. At Gold, Juno, and Sword, several fortified towns were cleared in house-to-house fighting, and two major gun emplacements at Gold were disabled using specialised tanks.

The Allies failed to achieve any of their goals on the first day. Carentan, St. Lô, and Bayeux remained in German hands, and Caen, a major objective, was not captured until 21 July. Only two of the beaches (Juno and Gold) were linked on the first day, and all five beachheads were not connected until 12 June; however, the operation gained a foothold which the Allies gradually expanded over the coming months. German casualties on D-Day have been estimated at 4,000 to 9,000 men. Allied casualties were at least 10,000, with 4,414 confirmed dead. Museums, memorials, and war cemeteries in the area now host many visitors each year.

Background

After the German Army invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin began pressing his new allies for the creation of a second front in western Europe.^[13] In late May 1942 the Soviet Union and the United States made a joint announcement that a “… full understanding was reached with regard to the urgent tasks of creating a second front in Europe in 1942.”^[14] However, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill persuaded US President Franklin D. Roosevelt to postpone the promised invasion as, even with US help, the Allies did not have adequate forces for such an activity.^[15]

Instead of an immediate return to France, the western Allies staged offensives in the Mediterranean Theatre of Operations, where British troops were already stationed. By mid-1943 the campaign in North Africa had been won. The Allies then launched the invasion of Sicily in July 1943, and subsequently invaded the Italian mainland in September the same year. By then, Soviet forces were on the offensive and had won a major victory at the Battle of Stalingrad. The decision to undertake a cross-channel invasion within the next year was taken at the Trident Conference in Washington in May 1943.^[16] Initial planning was constrained by the number of available landing craft, most of which were already committed in the Mediterranean and Pacific.^[17] At the Tehran Conference in November 1943, Roosevelt and Churchill promised Stalin that they would open the long-delayed second front in May 1944.^[18]

Meeting of the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF), 1 February 1944. Front row: Air Chief Marshal Arthur Tedder; General Dwight D. Eisenhower; General Bernard Montgomery. Back row: Lieutenant General Omar Bradley; Admiral Bertram Ramsay; Air Chief Marshal Trafford Leigh-Mallory; Lieutenant General Walter Bedell Smith.

Four sites were considered for the landings: Brittany, the Cotentin Peninsula, Normandy, and the Pas-de-Calais. As Brittany and Cotentin are peninsulas, it would have been possible for the Germans to cut off the Allied advance at a relatively narrow isthmus, so these sites were rejected.^[19] With the Pas-de-Calais being the closest point in continental Europe to Britain, the Germans considered it to be the most likely initial landing zone, so it was the most heavily fortified region.^[20] But it offered few opportunities for expansion, as the area is bounded by numerous rivers and canals,^[21] whereas landings on a broad front in Normandy would permit simultaneous threats against the port of Cherbourg, coastal ports further west in Brittany, and an overland attack towards Paris and eventually into Germany. Normandy was hence chosen as the landing site.^[22] The most serious drawback of the Normandy coast—the lack of port facilities—would be overcome through the development of artificial Mulberry harbours.^[23] A series of modified tanks, nicknamed Hobart’s Funnies, dealt with specific requirements expected for the Normandy Campaign such as mine clearing, demolishing bunkers, and mobile bridging.^[24]

The Allies planned to launch the invasion on 1 May 1944.^[21] The initial draft of the plan was accepted at the Quebec Conference in August 1943. General Dwight D. Eisenhower was appointed commander of Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF).^[25] General Bernard Montgomery was named as commander of the 21st Army Group, which comprised all land forces involved in the invasion.^[26] On 31 December 1943 Eisenhower and Montgomery first saw the plan, which proposed amphibious landings by three divisions with two more divisions in support. The two generals immediately insisted that the scale of the initial invasion be expanded to five divisions, with airborne descents by three additional divisions, to allow operations on a wider front and to speed the capture of Cherbourg.^[27] The need to acquire or produce extra landing craft for the expanded operation meant that the invasion had to be delayed to June.^[27] Eventually, thirty-nine Allied divisions would be committed to the Battle of Normandy: twenty-two US, twelve British, three Canadian, one Polish, and one French, totalling over a million troops^[28] all under overall British command.^[29]

Operations

Operation Overlord was the name assigned to the establishment of a large-scale lodgement on the Continent. The first phase, the amphibious invasion and establishment of a secure foothold, was codenamed Operation Neptune.^[23] To gain the air superiority needed to ensure a successful invasion, the Allies undertook a bombing campaign (codenamed Operation Pointblank) that targeted German aircraft production, fuel supplies, and airfields.^[23] Elaborate deceptions, codenamed Operation Bodyguard, were undertaken in the months leading up to the invasion to prevent the Germans from learning the timing and location of the invasion.^[30]

The landings were to be preceded by airborne operations near Caen on the eastern flank to secure the Orne River bridges and north of Carentan on the western flank. The Americans, assigned to land at Utah Beachand Omaha Beach, were to attempt to capture Carentan and St. Lô the first day, then cut off the Cotentin Peninsula and eventually capture the port facilities at Cherbourg. The British at Sword and Gold Beaches and Canadians at Juno Beach would protect the US flank and attempt to establish airfields near Caen on the first day. A secure lodgement would be established with all invading forces linked together, and an attempt made to hold all territory north of the Avranches–Falaise line within the first three weeks.^[31]^[32] Montgomery envisaged a ninety-day battle, lasting until all Allied forces reached the River Seine.^[33]

Deception plans

Shoulder patches were designed for units of the fictitious First United States Army Group under George Patton

Under the overall umbrella of Operation Bodyguard, the Allies conducted several subsidiary operations designed to mislead the Germans as to the date and location of the Allied landings.^[34] Operation Fortitude included Fortitude North, a misinformation campaign using fake radio traffic to lead the Germans into expecting an attack on Norway,^[35] and Fortitude South, a major deception involving the creation of a fictitious First United States Army Group under Lieutenant General George S. Patton, supposedly located in Kent and Sussex. Fortitude South was intended to deceive the Germans into believing that the main attack would take place at Calais.^[30]^[36] Genuine radio messages from 21st Army Group were first routed to Kent via landline and then broadcast, to give the Germans the impression that most of the Allied troops were stationed there.^[37] Patton was stationed in England until 6 July, thus continuing to deceive the Germans into believing a second attack would take place at Calais.^[38]

Many of the German radar stations on the French coast were destroyed in preparation for the landings.^[39] In addition, on the night before the invasion, a small group of Special Air Service (SAS) operators deployed dummy paratroopers over Le Havre and Isigny. These dummies led the Germans to believe that an additional airborne landing had occurred. On that same night, in Operation Taxable, No. 617 Squadron RAF dropped strips of “window”, metal foil that caused a radar return which was mistakenly interpreted by German radar operators as a naval convoy near Le Havre. The illusion was bolstered by a group of small vessels towing barrage balloons. A similar deception was undertaken near Boulogne-sur-Mer in the Pas de Calais area by No. 218 Squadron RAF in Operation Glimmer.^[40]^[3]

Weather

The invasion planners determined a set of conditions involving the phase of the moon, the tides, and the time of day that would be satisfactory on only a few days in each month. A full moon was desirable, as it would provide illumination for aircraft pilots and have the highest tides. The Allies wanted to schedule the landings for shortly before dawn, midway between low and high tide, with the tide coming in. This would improve the visibility of obstacles on the beach, while minimising the amount of time the men would be exposed in the open.^[41] Eisenhower had tentatively selected 5 June as the date for the assault. However, on 4 June, conditions were unsuitable for a landing: high winds and heavy seas made it impossible to launch landing craft, and low clouds would prevent aircraft from finding their targets.^[42]

Surface weather analysis map showing weather fronts on 5 June

Group Captain James Stagg of the Royal Air Force (RAF) met Eisenhower on the evening of 4 June. He and his meteorological team predicted that the weather would improve enough for the invasion to proceed on 6 June.^[43] The next available dates with the required tidal conditions (but without the desirable full moon) would be two weeks later, from 18 to 20 June. Postponement of the invasion would have required recalling men and ships already in position to cross the Channel, and would have increased the chance that the invasion plans would be detected.^[44] After much discussion with the other senior commanders, Eisenhower decided that the invasion should go ahead on the 6th.^[45] A major storm battered the Normandy coast from 19 to 22 June, which would have made the beach landings impossible.^[42]

Allied control of the Atlantic meant German meteorologists had less information than the Allies on incoming weather patterns.^[39] As the Luftwaffe meteorological centre in Paris was predicting two weeks of stormy weather, many Wehrmacht commanders left their posts to attend war games in Rennes, and men in many units were given leave.^[46] Field Marshal Erwin Rommel returned to Germany for his wife’s birthday and to meet with Hitler to try to obtain more Panzers.^[47]

German order of battle

Nazi Germany had at its disposal fifty divisions in France and the Low Countries, with another eighteen stationed in Denmark and Norway. Fifteen divisions were in the process of formation in Germany.^[48] Combat losses throughout the war, particularly on the Eastern Front, meant that the Germans no longer had a pool of able young men from which to draw. German soldiers were now on average six years older than their Allied counterparts. Many in the Normandy area were Ostlegionen (eastern legions) – conscripts and volunteers from Russia, Mongolia, and other areas of the Soviet Union. They were provided mainly with unreliable captured equipment and lacked motorised transport.^[49]^[50] Many German units were under strength.^[51]

German Supreme commander: Adolf Hitler

Oberbefehlshaber West (Supreme Commander West; OB West): Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt

(Panzer Group West: General Leo Geyr von Schweppenburg)

Army Group B: Field Marshal Erwin Rommel
- 7th Army: Generaloberst Friedrich Dollmann
  - LXXXIV Corps under General der Artillerie Erich Marcks

Cotentin Peninsula

Allied forces attacking Utah Beach faced the following German units stationed on the Cotentin Peninsula:

709th Static Infantry Division under Generalleutnant Karl-Wilhelm von Schlieben numbered 12,320 men, many of them Ostlegionen (non-German conscripts recruited from Soviet prisoners of war, Georgians and Poles).^[52]
- 729th Grenadier Regiment^[53]
- 739th Grenadier Regiment^[53]
- 919th Grenadier Regiment^[53]

Grandcamps Sector

German troops using captured French tanks (Beutepanzer) in Normandy, 1944

Americans assaulting Omaha Beach faced the following troops:

352nd Infantry Division under Generalleutnant Dietrich Kraiss, a full-strength unit of around 12,000 brought in by Rommel on 15 March and reinforced by two additional regiments.^[54]
- 914th Grenadier Regiment^[55]
- 915th Grenadier Regiment (as reserves)^[55]
- 916th Grenadier Regiment^[55]
- 726th Infantry Regiment (from 716th Infantry Division)^[55]
- 352nd Artillery Regiment^[55]

Allied forces at Gold and Juno faced the following elements of the 352nd Infantry Division:

914th Grenadier Regiment^[56]
915th Grenadier Regiment^[56]
916th Grenadier Regiment^[56]
352nd Artillery Regiment^[56]

Forces around Caen

Allied forces attacking Gold, Juno, and Sword Beaches faced the following German units:

716th Static Infantry Division under Generalleutnant Wilhelm Richter. At 7,000 troops, the division was significantly understrength.^[57]
- 736th Infantry Regiment^[58]
- 1716th Artillery Regiment^[58]
21st Panzer Division, (south of Caen) under Generalmajor Edgar Feuchtinger included 146 tanks and 50 assault guns, plus supporting infantry and artillery.^[59]
- 100th Panzer Regiment^[56]
- 125th Panzergrenadier Regiment^[56]
- 192nd Panzergrenadier Regiment^[56]
- 155th Panzer Artillery Regiment^[56]

Atlantic Wall

Map of the Atlantic Wall, shown in yellow

Axis and occupied countries

Allies and occupied countries

Neutral countries

Alarmed by the raids on St Nazaire and Dieppe in 1942, Hitler had ordered the construction of fortifications all along the Atlantic coast, from Spain to Norway, to protect against an expected Allied invasion. He envisioned 15,000 emplacements manned by 300,000 troops, but shortages, particularly of concrete and manpower, meant that most of the strongpoints were never built.^[60] As it was expected to be the site of the invasion, the Pas de Calais was heavily defended.^[60] In the Normandy area, the best fortifications were concentrated at the port facilities at Cherbourg and Saint-Malo.^[27] Rommel was assigned to oversee the construction of further fortifications along the expected invasion front, which stretched from the Netherlands to Cherbourg,^[60]^[61] and was given command of the newly re-formed Army Group B, which included the 7th Army, the 15th Army, and the forces guarding the Netherlands. Reserves for this group included the 2nd, 21st, and 116th Panzer divisions.^[62]^[63]

Rommel believed that the Normandy coast could be a possible landing point for the invasion, so he ordered the construction of extensive defensive works along that shore. In addition to concrete gun emplacements at strategic points along the coast, he ordered wooden stakes, metal tripods, mines, and large anti-tank obstacles to be placed on the beaches to delay the approach of landing craft and impede the movement of tanks.^[64] Expecting the Allies to land at high tide so that the infantry would spend less time exposed on the beach, he ordered many of these obstacles to be placed at the high water mark.^[41] Tangles of barbed wire, booby traps, and the removal of ground cover made the approach hazardous for infantry.^[64] On Rommel’s order, the number of mines along the coast was tripled.^[27] The Allied air offensive over Germany had crippled the Luftwaffe and established air supremacy over western Europe, so Rommel knew he could not expect effective air support.^[65] The Luftwaffe could muster only 815 aircraft^[66] over Normandy in comparison to the Allies’ 9,543.^[67] Rommel arranged for booby-trapped stakes known as Rommelspargel (Rommel’s asparagus) to be installed in meadows and fields to deter airborne landings.^[27]

Armoured reserves

Rommel believed that Germany’s best chance was to stop the invasion at the shore. He requested that the mobile reserves, especially tanks, be stationed as close to the coast as possible. Rundstedt, Geyr, and other senior commanders objected. They believed that the invasion could not be stopped on the beaches. Geyr argued for a conventional doctrine: keeping the Panzer formations concentrated in a central position around Paris and Rouen and deploying them only when the main Allied beachhead had been identified. He also noted that, in the Italian Campaign, the armoured units stationed near the coast had been damaged by naval bombardment. Rommel’s opinion was that, because of Allied air supremacy, the large-scale movement of tanks would not be possible once the invasion was under way. Hitler made the final decision, which was to leave three Panzer divisions under Geyr’s command and give Rommel operational control of three more as reserves. Hitler took personal control of four divisions as strategic reserves, not to be used without his direct orders.^[68]^[69]^[70]

Allied order of battle

D-day assault routes into Normandy

Commander, SHAEF: General Dwight D. Eisenhower
Commander, 21st Army Group: General Bernard Montgomery^[71]

US zones

Commander, First Army (United States): Lieutenant General Omar Bradley^[71]

The First Army contingent totalled approximately 73,000 men, including 15,600 from the airborne divisions.^[12]

Utah Beach

VII Corps, commanded by Major General J. Lawton Collins^[72]
- 4th Infantry Division: Major General Raymond O. Barton^[72]
- 82nd Airborne Division: Major General Matthew Ridgway^[72]
- 90th Infantry Division: Brigadier General Jay W. MacKelvie^[72]
- 101st Airborne Division: Major General Maxwell D. Taylor^[72]

Omaha Beach

V Corps, commanded by Major General Leonard T. Gerow, making up 34,250 men^[73]
- 1st Infantry Division: Major General Clarence R. Huebner^[74]
- 29th Infantry Division: Major General Charles H. Gerhardt^[74]

British and Canadian zones

Royal Marine Commandos attached to 3rd Infantry Division move inland from Sword Beach, 6 June 1944

Commander, Second Army (Britain and Canada): Lieutenant General Sir Miles Dempsey^[71]

Overall, the Second Army contingent consisted of 83,115 men, 61,715 of them British.^[12] The nominally British air and naval support units included a large number of personnel from Allied nations, including several RAF squadrons manned almost exclusively by overseas air crew. For example, the Australian contribution to the operation included a regular Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) squadron, nine Article XV squadrons, and hundreds of personnel posted to RAF units and RN warships.^[75] The RAF supplied two-thirds of the aircraft involved in the invasion.^[76]

Gold Beach

XXX Corps, commanded by Lieutenant General Gerard Bucknall^[77]
- 50th (Northumbrian) Infantry Division: Major General D.A.H. Graham^[77]

Juno Beach

British I Corps, commanded by Lieutenant General John Crocker^[78]
- 3rd Canadian Division: Major General Rod Keller^[78]

Sword Beach

British I Corps, commanded by Lieutenant General John Crocker^[79]
- 3rd Infantry Division: Major General Tom Rennie^[79]
- 6th Airborne Division: Major General R.N. Gale^[79]

79th Armoured Division: Major General Percy Hobart^[80] provided specialised armoured vehicles which supported the landings on all beaches in Second Army’s sector.

Coordination with the French Resistance

Members of the French Resistanceand the US 82nd Airborne division discuss the situation during the Battle of Normandy in 1944

Through the London-based État-major des Forces Françaises de l’Intérieur (French Forces of the Interior), the British Special Operations Executive orchestrated a campaign of sabotage to be implemented by the French Resistance. The Allies developed four plans for the Resistance to execute on D-Day and the following days:

Plan Vert was a 15-day operation to sabotage the rail system.
Plan Bleu dealt with destroying electrical facilities.
Plan Tortue was a delaying operation aimed at the enemy forces that would potentially reinforce Axis forces at Normandy.
Plan Violet dealt with cutting underground telephone and teleprinter cables.^[81]

The resistance was alerted to carry out these tasks by messages personnels transmitted by the BBC’s French service from London. Several hundred of these messages, which might be snatches of poetry, quotations from literature, or random sentences, were regularly transmitted, masking the few that were actually significant. In the weeks preceding the landings, lists of messages and their meanings were distributed to resistance groups.^[82] An increase in radio activity on 5 June was correctly interpreted by German intelligence to mean that an invasion was imminent or underway. However, because of the barrage of previous false warnings and misinformation, most units ignored the warning.^[83]^[84]

A 1965 report from the Counter-insurgency Information Analysis Center details the results of the French Resistance’s sabotage efforts: “In the southeast, 52 locomotives were destroyed on 6 June and the railway line cut in more than 500 places. Normandy was isolated as of 7 June.”^[85]

Naval activity

D-Day planning map, used at Southwick House near Portsmouth

Large landing craft convoy crosses the English Channel on 6 June 1944

Naval operations for the invasion were described by historian Correlli Barnett as a “never surpassed masterpiece of planning”.^[86] In overall command was British Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay, who had served as Flag officer at Dover during the Dunkirk evacuation four years earlier. He had also been responsible for the naval planning of the invasion of North Africa in 1942, and one of the two fleets carrying troops for the invasion of Sicily the following year.^[87]

The invasion fleet, which was drawn from eight different navies, comprised 6,939 vessels: 1,213 warships, 4,126 landing craft of various types, 736 ancillary craft, and 864 merchant vessels.^[12] The majority of the fleet was supplied by the UK, which provided 892 warships and 3,261 landing craft.^[76] In total there were 195,700 naval personnel involved; of these 112,824 were from the Royal Navy with another 25,000 from the Merchant Navy, 52,889 were American, and 4,998 sailors from other allied countries.^[12]^[8] The invasion fleet was split into the Western Naval Task Force (under Admiral Alan G Kirk) supporting the US sectors and the Eastern Naval Task Force (under Admiral Sir Philip Vian) in the British and Canadian sectors.^[88]^[87] Available to the fleet were five battleships, 20 cruisers, 65 destroyers, and two monitors.^[89] German ships in the area on D-Day included three torpedo boats, 29 fast attack craft, 36 R boats, and 36 minesweepers and patrol boats.^[90] The Germans also had several U-boats available, and all the approaches had been heavily mined.^[41]

Naval losses

At 05:10, four German torpedo boats reached the Eastern Task Force and launched fifteen torpedoes, sinking the Norwegian destroyer HNoMS Svenner off Sword beach but missing the British battleships HMS Warspite and Ramillies. After attacking, the German vessels turned away and fled east into a smoke screen that had been laid by the RAF to shield the fleet from the long-range battery at Le Havre.^[91] Allied losses to mines included the American destroyer USS Corry off Utah and submarine chaser USS PC-1261, a 173-foot patrol craft.^[92] In addition, many landing craft were lost.^[93]

Bombardment

Map of the invasion area showing channels cleared of mines, location of vessels engaged in bombardment, and targets on shore

Bombing of Normandy began around midnight with more than 2,200 British, Canadian, and US bombers attacking targets along the coast and further inland.^[41] The coastal bombing attack was largely ineffective at Omaha, because low cloud cover made the assigned targets difficult to see. Concerned about inflicting casualties on their own troops, many bombers delayed their attacks too long and failed to hit the beach defences.^[94] The Germans had 570 aircraft stationed in Normandy and the Low Countries on D-Day, and another 964 in Germany.^[41]

Minesweepers began clearing channels for the invasion fleet shortly after midnight and finished just after dawn without encountering the enemy.^[95] The Western Task Force included the battleships Arkansas, Nevada, and Texas, plus eight cruisers, 28 destroyers, and one monitor.^[96] The Eastern Task Force included the battleships Ramillies and Warspite and the monitor Roberts, twelve cruisers, and thirty-seven destroyers.^[5] Naval bombardment of areas behind the beach commenced at 05:45, while it was still dark, with the gunners switching to pre-assigned targets on the beach as soon as it was light enough to see, at 05:50.^[97] Since troops were scheduled to land at Utah and Omaha starting at 06:30 (an hour earlier than the British beaches), these areas received only about 40 minutes of naval bombardment before the assault troops began to land on the shore.^[98]

Airborne operations

The success of the amphibious landings depended on the establishment of a secure lodgement from which to expand the beachhead to allow the buildup of a well-supplied force capable of breaking out. The amphibious forces were especially vulnerable to strong enemy counter-attacks before the arrival of sufficient forces in the beachhead could be accomplished. To slow or eliminate the enemy’s ability to organise and launch counter-attacks during this critical period, airborne operations were used to seize key objectives such as bridges, road crossings, and terrain features, particularly on the eastern and western flanks of the landing areas. The airborne landings some distance behind the beaches were also intended to ease the egress of the amphibious forces off the beaches, and in some cases to neutralise German coastal defence batteries and more quickly expand the area of the beachhead.^[99]^[100]

The US 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions were assigned to objectives west of Utah Beach, where they hoped to capture and control the few narrow causeways through terrain that had been intentionally flooded by the Germans. Reports from Allied intelligence in mid-May of the arrival of the German 91st Infantry Division meant the intended drop zones had to be shifted eastward and to the south.^[101] The British 6th Airborne Division, on the eastern flank, was assigned to capture intact the bridges over the Caen Canal and River Orne, destroy five bridges over the Dives 6 miles (9.7 km) to the east, and destroy the Merville Gun Battery overlooking Sword Beach.^[102] Free Frenchparatroopers from the British SAS Brigade were assigned to objectives in Brittany from 5 June until August in Operations Dingson, Samwest, and Cooney.^[103]^[104]

BBC war correspondent Robert Barr described the scene as paratroopers prepared to board their aircraft:

Their faces were darkened with cocoa; sheathed knives were strapped to their ankles; tommy guns strapped to their waists; bandoliers and hand grenades, coils of rope, pick handles, spades, rubber dinghies hung around them, and a few personal oddments, like the lad who was taking a newspaper to read on the plane … There was an easy familiar touch about the way they were getting ready, as though they had done it often before. Well, yes, they had kitted up and climbed aboard often just like this – twenty, thirty, forty times some of them, but it had never been quite like this before. This was the first combat jump for every one of them.^[105]

US

Gliders are delivered to the Cotentin Peninsula by Douglas C-47 Skytrains. 6 June 1944

The US airborne landings began with the arrival of pathfinders at 00:15. Navigation was difficult because of a bank of thick cloud, and as a result only one of the five paratrooper drop zones was accurately marked with radar signals and Aldis lamps.^[106] Paratroopers of the US 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions, numbering over 13,000 men, were delivered by Douglas C-47 Skytrains of the IX Troop Carrier Command.^[107] To avoid flying over the invasion fleet, the planes arrived from the west over the Cotentin Peninsula and exited over Utah Beach.^[108]^[106]

Paratroops from 101st Airborne were dropped beginning around 01:30, tasked with controlling the causeways behind Utah Beach and destroying road and rail bridges over the Douve River.^[109] The C-47s could not fly in a tight formation because of thick cloud cover, and many paratroopers were dropped far from their intended landing zones. Many planes came in so low that they were under fire from both flak and machine gun fire. Some paratroopers were killed on impact when their parachutes did not have time to open, and others drowned in the flooded fields.^[110] Gathering together into fighting units was made difficult by a shortage of radios and by the bocage terrain, with its hedgerows, stone walls, and marshes.^[111]^[112] Some units did not arrive at their targets until afternoon, by which time several of the causeways had already been cleared by members of the 4th Infantry Division moving up from the beach.^[113]

Troops of the 82nd Airborne began arriving around 02:30, with the primary objective of capturing two bridges over the River Merderet and destroying two bridges over the Douve.^[109] On the east side of the river, 75 per cent of the paratroopers landed in or near their drop zone, and within two hours they captured the important crossroads at Sainte-Mère-Église (the first town liberated in the invasion^[114]) and began working to protect the western flank.^[115]Because of the failure of the pathfinders to accurately mark their drop zone, the two regiments dropped on the west side of the Merderet were extremely scattered, with only four per cent landing in the target area.^[115] Many landed in nearby swamps, with much loss of life.^[116] Paratroopers consolidated into small groups, usually a combination of men of various ranks from different units, and attempted to concentrate on nearby objectives.^[117] They captured but failed to hold the Merderet River bridge at La Fière, and fighting for the crossing continued for several days.^[118]

Reinforcements arrived by glider around 04:00 (Mission Chicago and Mission Detroit), and 21:00 (Mission Keokuk and Mission Elmira), bringing additional troops and heavy equipment. Like the paratroopers, many landed far from their drop zones.^[119] Even those that landed on target experienced difficulty, with heavy cargo such as Jeeps shifting during landing, crashing through the wooden fuselage, and in some cases crushing personnel on board.^[120]

After 24 hours, only 2,500 men of the 101st and 2,000 of the 82nd Airborne were under the control of their divisions, approximately a third of the force dropped. This wide dispersal had the effect of confusing the Germans and fragmenting their response.^[121] The 7th Army received notification of the parachute drops at 01:20, but Rundstedt did not initially believe that a major invasion was underway. The destruction of radar stations along the Normandy coast in the week before the invasion meant that the Germans did not detect the approaching fleet until 02:00.^[122]

British and Canadian

An abandoned Waco CG-4 glider is examined by German troops

The first Allied action of D-Day was Operation Deadstick, a glider assault at 00:16 at Pegasus Bridge over the Caen Canal and the bridge (since renamed Horsa Bridge) over the Orne, half a mile (800 metres) to the east. Both bridges were quickly captured intact, with light casualties, by members of the 5th Parachute Brigade and the 7th (Light Infantry) Parachute Battalion.^[123]^[124] The five bridges over the Dives were destroyed with minimal difficulty by the 3rd Parachute Brigade.^[125]^[126] Meanwhile, the pathfinders tasked with setting up radar beacons and lights for further paratroopers (scheduled to begin arriving at 00:50 to clear the landing zone north of Ranville) were blown off course, and had to set up the navigation aids too far east. Many paratroopers, also blown too far east, landed far from their intended drop zones; some took hours or even days to be reunited with their units.^[127]^[128] Major General Richard Gale arrived in the third wave of gliders at 03:30, along with equipment, such as antitank guns and jeeps, and more troops to help secure the area from counter-attacks, which were initially staged only by troops in the immediate vicinity of the landings.^[129] At 02:00, the commander of the German 716th Infantry Division ordered Feuchtinger to move his 21st Panzer Division into position to counter-attack. However, as the division was part of the armoured reserve, Feuchtinger was obliged to seek clearance from OKW before he could commit his formation.^[130] Feuchtinger did not receive orders until nearly 09:00, but in the meantime on his own initiative he put together a battle group (including tanks) to fight the British forces east of the Orne.^[131]

Only 160 men out of the 600 members of the 9th Battalion tasked with eliminating the enemy battery at Merville arrived at the rendezvous point. Lieutenant Colonel Terence Otway, in charge of the operation, decided to proceed regardless, as the emplacement had to be destroyed by 06:00 to prevent it firing on the invasion fleet and the troops arriving on Sword Beach. In the Battle of Merville Gun Battery, Allied forces disabled the guns with plastic explosives at a cost of 75 casualties. The emplacement was found to contain 75 mm guns rather than the expected 150 mm heavy coastal artillery. Otway’s remaining force withdrew with the assistance of a few members of the 1st Canadian Parachute Battalion.^[132]

With this action, the last of the D-Day goals of the British 6th Airborne Division was achieved.^[133] They were reinforced at 12:00 by commandos of the 1st Special Service Brigade, who landed on Sword Beach, and by the 6th Airlanding Brigade, who arrived in gliders at 21:00 in Operation Mallard.^[134]

Beach landings

Map of the beaches and first day advances

Tanks

Some of the landing craft had been modified to provide close support fire, and self-propelled amphibious Duplex-Drive tanks (DD tanks), specially designed for the Normandy landings, were to land shortly before the infantry to provide covering fire. However, few arrived in advance of the infantry, and many sank before reaching the shore, especially at Omaha.^[135]^[136]

Utah Beach

Carrying their equipment, US assault troops move onto Utah Beach. Landing craft can be seen in the background.

Utah Beach was in the area defended by two battalions of the 919th Grenadier Regiment.^[137] Members of the 8th Infantry Regiment of the 4th Infantry Division were the first to land, arriving at 06:30. Their landing craft were pushed to the south by strong currents, and they found themselves about 2,000 yards (1.8 km) from their intended landing zone. This site turned out to be better, as there was only one strongpoint nearby rather than two, and bombers of IX Bomber Command had bombed the defences from lower than their prescribed altitude, inflicting considerable damage. In addition, the strong currents had washed ashore many of the underwater obstacles. The assistant commander of the 4th Infantry Division, Brigadier General Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., the first senior officer ashore, made the decision to “start the war from right here”, and ordered further landings to be re-routed.^[138]^[139]

The initial assault battalions were quickly followed by 28 DD tanks and several waves of engineer and demolition teams to remove beach obstacles and clear the area directly behind the beach of obstacles and mines. Gaps were blown in the sea wall to allow quicker access for troops and tanks. Combat teams began to exit the beach at around 09:00, with some infantry wading through the flooded fields rather than travelling on the single road. They skirmished throughout the day with elements of the 919th Grenadier Regiment, who were armed with antitank guns and rifles. The main strongpoint in the area and another 1,300 yards (1.2 km) to the south were disabled by noon.^[140] The 4th Infantry Division did not meet all of their D-Day objectives at Utah Beach, partly because they had arrived too far to the south, but they landed 21,000 troops at the cost of only 197 casualties.^[141]^[142]

Pointe du Hoc

US Rangers scaling the wall at Pointe du Hoc

Pointe du Hoc, a prominent headland situated between Utah and Omaha, was assigned to two hundred men of 2nd Ranger Battalion, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel James Rudder. Their task was to scale the 30m (100ft) cliffs with grappling hooks, ropes, and ladders to destroy the coastal gun battery located at the top. The cliffs were defended by the German 352nd Infantry Division and French collaborators firing from above.^[143] Allied destroyers Satterlee and Talybont provided fire support. After scaling the cliffs, the Rangers discovered that the guns had already been withdrawn. They located the weapons, unguarded but ready to use, in an orchard some 550 metres (600 yd) south of the point, and disabled them with explosives.^[143]

The now-isolated Rangers fended off numerous counter-attacks from the German 914th Grenadier Regiment. The men at the point became isolated and some were captured. By dawn on D+1, Rudder had only 90 men able to fight. Relief did not arrive until D+2, when members of the 743rd Tank Battalion and others arrived.^[144]^[145] By then, Rudder’s men had run out of ammunition and were using captured German weapons. Several men were killed as a result, because the German weapons made a distinctive noise, and the men were mistaken for the enemy.^[146] By the end of the battle, the Rangers casualties were 135 dead and wounded, while German casualties were 50 killed and 40 captured. An unknown number of French collaborators were executed.^[147]^[148]

Omaha Beach

US assault troops in an LCVP landing craft approach Omaha Beach, 6 June 1944.

Omaha, the most heavily defended beach, was assigned to the 1st Infantry Division and 29th Infantry Division.^[149] They faced the 352nd Infantry Division rather than the expected single regiment.^[150] Strong currents forced many landing craft east of their intended position or caused them to be delayed.^[151] For fear of hitting the landing craft, US bombers delayed releasing their loads and, as a result, most of the beach obstacles at Omaha remained undamaged when the men came ashore.^[152] Many of the landing craft ran aground on sandbars and the men had to wade 50–100m in water up to their necks while under fire to get to the beach.^[136] In spite of the rough seas, DD tanks of two companies of the 741st Tank Battalion were dropped 5,000 yards (4,600 m) from shore; however, 27 of the 32 flooded and sank, with the loss of 33 crew.^[153] Some tanks, disabled on the beach, continued to provide covering fire until their ammunition ran out or they were swamped by the rising tide.^[154]

Casualties were around 2,000, as the men were subjected to fire from the cliffs above.^[155] Problems clearing the beach of obstructions led to the beachmaster calling a halt to further landings of vehicles at 08:30. A group of destroyers arrived around this time to provide fire support so landings could resume.^[156] Exit from the beach was possible only via five heavily defended gullies, and by late morning barely 600 men had reached the higher ground.^[157] By noon, as the artillery fire took its toll and the Germans started to run out of ammunition, the Americans were able to clear some lanes on the beaches. They also started clearing the gullies of enemy defences so that vehicles could move off the beach.^[157] The tenuous beachhead was expanded over the following days, and the D-Day objectives for Omaha were accomplished by D+3.^[158]

Gold Beach

British troops come ashore at Jig Green sector, Gold Beach

The first landings on Gold beach were set for 07:25 due to the differences in the tide between there and the US beaches.^[159] High winds made conditions difficult for the landing craft, and the amphibious DD tanks were released close to shore or directly on the beach instead of further out as planned.^[160] Three of the four guns in a large emplacement at the Longues-sur-Mer battery were disabled by direct hits from the cruisers Ajax and Argonaut at 06:20. The fourth gun resumed firing intermittently in the afternoon, and its garrison surrendered on 7 June.^[161] Aerial attacks had failed to hit the Le Hamel strongpoint, which had its embrasure facing east to provide enfilade fire along the beach and had a thick concrete wall on the seaward side.^[162] Its 75 mm gun continued to do damage until 16:00, when a modified Armoured Vehicle Royal Engineers (AVRE) tank fired a large petard charge into its rear entrance.^[163]^[164] A second casemated emplacement at La Rivière containing an 88 mm gun was neutralised by a tank at 07:30.^[165]

Meanwhile, infantry began clearing the heavily fortified houses along the shore and advanced on targets further inland.^[166] The No. 47 (Royal Marine) Commando moved toward the small port at Port-en-Bessin and captured it the following day in the Battle of Port-en-Bessin.^[167] Company Sergeant Major Stanley Hollis received the only Victoria Cross awarded on D-Day for his actions while attacking two pillboxes at the Mont Fleury high point.^[168] On the western flank, the 1st Battalion, Hampshire Regiment captured Arromanches (future site of Mulberry “B”), and contact was made on the eastern flank with the Canadian forces at Juno.^[169] Bayeux was not captured the first day due to stiff resistance from the 352nd Infantry Division.^[166] Allied casualties at Gold Beach are estimated at 1,000.^[12]

Juno Beach

Royal Canadian Naval Beach Commando “W” land on Mike Beach sector of Juno Beach, 8 July 1944

The landing at Juno was delayed because of choppy seas, and the men arrived ahead of their supporting armour, suffering many casualties while disembarking. Most of the offshore bombardment had missed the German defences.^[170] Several exits from the beach were created, but not without difficulty. At Mike Beach on the western flank, a large crater was filled using an abandoned AVRE tank and several rolls of fascine, which were then covered by a temporary bridge. The tank remained in place until 1972, when it was removed and restored by members of the Royal Engineers.^[171] The beach and nearby streets were clogged with traffic for most of the day, making it difficult to move inland.^[93]

Major German strongpoints with 75 mm guns, machine-gun nests, concrete fortifications, barbed wire, and mines were located at Courseulles-sur-Mer, St Aubin-sur-Mer, and Bernières-sur-Mer.^[172] The towns themselves also had to be cleared in house-to-house fighting.^[173] Soldiers on their way to Bény-sur-Mer, 3 miles (5 km) inland, discovered that the road was well covered by machine gun emplacements that had to be outflanked before the advance could proceed.^[174] Elements of the 9th Canadian Infantry Brigade advanced to within sight of the Carpiquet airfield late in the afternoon, but by this time their supporting armour was low on ammunition so the Canadians dug in for the night. The airfield was not captured until a month later as the area became the scene of fierce fighting.^[175] By nightfall, the contiguous Juno and Gold beachheads covered an area 12 miles (19 km) wide and 7 miles (10 km) deep.^[176] Casualties at Juno were 961 men.^[177]

Sword Beach

British troops take cover after landing on Sword Beach.

On Sword, 21 of 25 DD tanks of the first wave were successful in getting safely ashore to provide cover for the infantry, who began disembarking at 07:30.^[178] The beach was heavily mined and peppered with obstacles, making the work of the beach clearing teams difficult and dangerous.^[179] In the windy conditions, the tide came in more quickly than expected, so manoeuvring the armour was difficult. The beach quickly became congested.^[180] Brigadier Simon Fraser, 15th Lord Lovat and his 1st Special Service Brigade arrived in the second wave, piped ashore by Private Bill Millin, Lovat’s personal piper.^[181] Members of No. 4 Commando moved through Ouistreham to attack from the rear a German gun battery on the shore. A concrete observation and control tower at this emplacement had to be bypassed and was not captured until several days later.^[182] French forces under Commander Philippe Kieffer(the first French soldiers to arrive in Normandy) attacked and cleared the heavily fortified strongpoint at the casino at Riva Bella, with the aid of one of the DD tanks.^[182]

The ‘Morris’ strongpoint near Colleville-sur-Mer was captured after about an hour of fighting.^[180] The nearby ‘Hillman’ strongpoint, headquarters of the 736th Infantry Regiment, was a large complex defensive work that had come through the morning’s bombardment essentially undamaged. It was not captured until 20:15.^[183] The 2nd Battalion, King’s Shropshire Light Infantry began advancing to Caen on foot, coming within a few kilometres of the town, but had to withdraw due to lack of armour support.^[184] At 16:00, the 21st Panzer Division mounted a counter-attack between Sword and Juno and nearly succeeded in reaching the Channel. It met stiff resistance from the British 3rd Division and was soon recalled to assist in the area between Caen and Bayeux.^[185]^[186] Estimates of Allied casualties on Sword Beach are as high as 1,000.^[12]

Aftermath

Situation map for 24:00, 6 June 1944

The Normandy landings were the largest seaborne invasion in history, with nearly 5,000 landing and assault craft, 289 escort vessels, and 277 minesweepers participating.^[187] Nearly 160,000 troops crossed the English Channel on D-Day,^[29] with 875,000 men disembarking by the end of June.^[188] Allied casualties on the first day were at least 10,000, with 4,414 confirmed dead.^[189] The Germans lost 1,000 men.^[190] The Allied invasion plans had called for the capture of Carentan, St. Lô, Caen, and Bayeux on the first day, with all the beaches (other than Utah) linked with a front line 10 to 16 kilometres (6 to 10 mi) from the beaches; none of these objectives were achieved.^[32] The five beachheads were not connected until 12 June, by which time the Allies held a front around 97 kilometres (60 mi) long and 24 kilometres (15 mi) deep.^[191] Caen, a major objective, was still in German hands at the end of D-Day and would not be completely captured until 21 July.^[192] The Germans had ordered French civilians other than those deemed essential to the war effort to leave potential combat zones in Normandy.^[193] Civilian casualties on D-Day and D+1 are estimated at 3,000.^[194]

The Allied victory in Normandy stemmed from several factors. German preparations along the Atlantic Wall were only partially finished; shortly before D-Day Rommel reported that construction was only 18 per cent complete in some areas as resources were diverted elsewhere.^[195] The deceptions undertaken in Operation Fortitude were successful, leaving the Germans obliged to defend a huge stretch of coastline.^[196] The Allies achieved and maintained air supremacy, which meant that the Germans were unable to make observations of the preparations underway in Britain and were unable to interfere via bomber attacks.^[197] Infrastructure for transport in France was severely disrupted by Allied bombers and the French Resistance, making it difficult for the Germans to bring up reinforcements and supplies.^[198] Some of the opening bombardment was off-target or not concentrated enough to have any impact,^[152] but the specialised armour worked well except on Omaha, providing close artillery support for the troops as they disembarked onto the beaches.^[199] Indecisiveness and an overly complicated command structure on the part of the German high command were also factors in the Allied success.^[200]

War memorials and tourism

At Omaha Beach, parts of the Mulberry harbour are still visible, and a few of the beach obstacles remain. A memorial to the US National Guard sits at the location of a former German strongpoint. Pointe du Hoc is little changed from 1944, with the terrain covered with bomb craters and most of the concrete bunkers still in place. The Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial is nearby, in Colleville-sur-Mer.^[201] A museum about the Utah landings is located at Sainte-Marie-du-Mont, and there is one dedicated to the activities of the US airmen at Sainte-Mère-Église. Two German military cemeteries are located nearby.^[202]

Pegasus Bridge, a target of the British 6th Airborne, was the site of some of the earliest action of the Normandy landings. The bridge was replaced in 1994 by one similar in appearance, and the original is now housed on the grounds of a nearby museum complex.^[203]Sections of Mulberry Harbour B still sit in the sea at Arromanches, and the well-preserved Longues-sur-Mer battery is nearby.^[204] The Juno Beach Centre, opened in 2003, was funded by the Canadian federal and provincial governments, France, and Canadian veterans.^[205]

The Bény-sur-Mer Canadian War Cemetery
The La Cambe German war cemetery, near Bayeux
The Bayeux British war cemetery
The Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial, overlooking Omaha Beach

In popular culture

Books

The Longest Day by Cornelius Ryan (1959 book)
D-Day: The Battle for Normandy by Antony Beevor (2009 book)

Film and television

The Longest Day (1962 film)
Saving Private Ryan (1998 film)
Band of Brothers (2001 miniseries)

Video games

References …

Bibliography

Ambrose, Stephen (1994) [1993]. D-Day June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War II. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-0-671-67334-5.
Beevor, Antony (2009). D-Day: The Battle for Normandy. New York; Toronto: Viking. ISBN 978-0-670-02119-2.
Bickers, Richard Townshend (1994). Air War Normandy. London: Leo Cooper. ISBN 978-0-85052-412-3.
Brown, Anthony Cave (2007) [1975]. Bodyguard of Lies: The Extraordinary True Story Behind D-Day. Guilford, CT: Globe Pequot. ISBN 978-1-59921-383-5.
Churchill, Winston (1951) [1948]. Closing the Ring. The Second World War. V. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. OCLC 396150.
Corta, Henry (1952). Les bérets rouges [The Red Berets] (in French). Paris: Amicale des anciens parachutistes SAS. OCLC 8226637.
Corta, Henry (1997). Qui ose gagne [Who dares, wins] (in French). Vincennes, France: Service Historique de l’Armée de Terre. ISBN 978-2-86323-103-6.
“D-Day and the Battle of Normandy: Your Questions Answered”. Portsmouth Museum Services. Archived from the original on 21 June 2013. Retrieved 18 April 2014.
Douthit, Howard L. III (1988). The Use and Effectiveness of Sabotage as a Means of Unconventional Warfare- An Historical Perspective from World War I Through Vietnam(PDF) (M.Sc. thesis). Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio: Air Force Institute of Technology. Retrieved 8 April 2014.
Ellis, L.F.; Allen, G.R.G.; Warhurst, A.E. (2004) [1962]. Butler, J.R.M (ed.). Victory in the West, Volume I: The Battle of Normandy. History of the Second World War United Kingdom Military Series. London: Naval & Military Press. ISBN 978-1-84574-058-0.
Escott, Beryl E. (2010). The Heroines of SOE: Britain’s Secret Women in France. Stroud, Gloucestershire: History Press. ISBN 978-0-7524-5661-4.
Flint, Edward R (2009). The development of British civil affairs and its employment in the British Sector of Allied military operations during the Battle of Normandy, June to August 1944 (Ph.D. thesis). Cranfield, Bedford: Cranfield University; Cranfield Defence and Security School, Department of Applied Science, Security and Resilience, Security and Resilience Group. OCLC 757064836.
Folliard, Edward T. (12 June 1942). “Molotov’s Visit to White House, Postwar Amity Pledge Revealed”. Washington Post.
Ford, Ken; Zaloga, Steven J. (2009). Overlord: The D-Day Landings. Oxford; New York: Osprey. ISBN 978-1-84603-424-4.
Francois, Dominique (13 October 2013). Normandy: From D-Day to the Breakout: June 6-July 31, 1944. Minneapolis: Voyageur Press. ISBN 978-0-7603-4558-0.
Gilbert, Martin (1989). The Second World War: A Complete History. New York: H. Holt. ISBN 978-0-8050-1788-5.
Goldstein, Donald M.; Dillon, Katherine V.; Wenger, J. Michael (1994). D-Day: The Story and Photographs. McLean, Virginia: Brassey’s. ISBN 978-0-02-881057-7.
Holland, James (5 June 2014). “D-Day: Exploding the myths of the Normandy landings”. CNN.
Hooton, Edward (1999) [1997]. Eagle in Flames: The Fall of the Luftwaffe. London: Arms and Armour. ISBN 978-1-86019-995-0.
Horn, Bernd (2010). Men of Steel: Canadian Paratroopers in Normandy, 1944. Toronto: Dundurn Press. ISBN 978-1-55488-708-8.
Morison, Samuel Eliot (1962). History of United States Naval Operations in World War II. 11. The invasion of France and Germany, 1944–1945. Boston: Little, Brown. OCLC 757924260.
Murray, Williamson (1983). Strategy for Defeat: The Luftwaffe, 1933–45. Washington: Brassey’s. ISBN 978-1-57488-125-7.
Napier, Stephen (2015). The Armoured Campaign in Normandy June–August 1944. Stroud: The History Press. ISBN 978-0-7509-6473-9.
“Pegasus Bridge: The Bridge of the Longest Day”. Mémorial Pegasus D-Day Commemoration Committee. Retrieved 7 April 2014.
Special Operations Research Office, Counter-insurgency Information Analysis Center, United States Army (1965). A Study of Rear Area Security Measures. Washington: American University.
Staff (5 June 2014). “D-Day: In the words of the BBC journalists”. BBC News. Retrieved 10 June 2014.
Stanley, Peter (6 June 2004). “Australians and D-Day”. Anniversary talks. Australian War Memorial. Retrieved 26 April 2014.
Weigley, Russell F. (1981). Eisenhower’s Lieutenants: The Campaign of France and Germany 1944–1945. I. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press. ISBN 978-0-253-13333-5.
Weinberg, Gerhard (1995) [1993]. A World At Arms: A Global History of World War II. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-55879-2.
Whitmarsh, Andrew (2009). D-Day in Photographs. Stroud: History Press. ISBN 978-0-7524-5095-7.
Wilmot, Chester (1997) [1952]. The Struggle For Europe. Ware, Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Editions. ISBN 978-1-85326-677-5.
Yung, Christopher D. (2006). Gators of Neptune: Naval Amphibious Planning for the Normandy Invasion. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press. ISBN 978-1-59114-997-2.
Zaloga, Steven J; Johnson, Hugh (2005). D-Day Fortifications in Normandy. Oxford; New York: Osprey. ISBN 978-1-4728-0382-5.
Zaloga, Steven J. (2009). Rangers Lead the Way: Pointe-du-Hoc, D-Day 1944. Oxford: Osprey. ISBN 978-1-84603-394-0.
Zuehlke, Mark (2004). Juno Beach: Canada’s D-Day Victory: June 6, 1944. Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre. ISBN 978-1-55365-050-8.

External links

Boire, Michael (2003). “Lest We Forget: A Review of Books Marking the 60th Anniversary of D-Day”. Canadian Military Journal. 5 (2).
The Normandy Invasion at the US Army Center of Military History
Neptune Operations Plan
Naval details for Overlord at Naval-History.Net
Documents on D-Day: The Invasion of Normandy at the Eisenhower Presidential Center
Lt. General Omar Bradley FUSAG 12TH AG: June 6, 1944 D-Day Maps Omar Bradley D-Day Maps restored, preserved and Displayed at Historical Registry
Allied veterans remember D-Day
Naval History and Heritage Command (archive)
The short film Big Picture: D-Day Convoy to Normandy is available for free download at the Internet Archive
Complete Broadcast Day: D-Day (June 6, 1944) from CBS Radio News, available at the Internet Archive
CWGC: D-Day – Normandy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normandy_landings

‘5.27 and Navy went in… Savage fighting in streets’: How the Daily Mail revealed the D-Day assault, hailing it as ‘the first historic day of Europe’s liberation’

By LARA KEAY FOR MAILONLINE

PUBLISHED: 06:50 EDT, 6 June 2019 | UPDATED: 11:47 EDT, 6 June 2019

The Daily Mail was on the front line with Allied troops as they stormed Normandy’s beaches to begin the liberation of Europe 75 years ago.

After a strict silence in the run-up to Operation Overlord, the newspaper was packed with details of the latest news from France which was lapped up by the voracious readers at home desperate to keep up with events.

News of the Allied invasion could finally be reported on June 7 1944, with the 5.27am arrival of the British on French shores coming too late for the June 6 edition.

During the first week of the invasion, the Daily Mail was emblazoned with emotive headlines that described ‘savage fighting’ in the streets of Caen and vivid first-hand accounts from correspondents on the front line.

After reports of ‘flying over the beaches at dawn’ came news that Bayeux had been the first French town to be liberated from the Nazis.

The paper was covered in battle pictures with graphics and maps detailing the troops’ heroic road to Paris, before the first pictures of injured British soldiers to return to Blighty were published.

Here MailOnline looks back at how the Daily Mail reported on some of the most violent battles of the Second World War from June 7 to 10 1944 and from Fleet Street to France.

Wednesday June 7, 1944: BEACHHEAD WIDER AND DEEPER

+19

The Daily Mail’s front page the day after D-Day was incredibly optimistic, with the splash declaring the ‘first historic day of Europe’s liberation has gone completely in favour of the Allies’. The page also featured stories from reporter Desmond Tighe aboard a British destroyer, and the lack of raids on Britain overnight. Not everything was dedicated to World War Two stories – the paper also revealed that more rail and bus cuts were on the way

+19

Alexander Clifford explained that the Allied’s fight will be made easier in that France’s landscape is similar to England’s in this page 2 story on June 7, while a cartoon of a soldier is captioned ‘Yes, Adolf; this is it!’

+19

Page 3 on June 7 also focused heavily on the war effort, featuring a number of photos from the front line including a group of soldiers applying warpaint. The page also detailed King George VI’s broadcast to the nation from the evening before, in which he said ‘this time the challenge is not to fight to survive but to fight to win the final victory for the good cause’

+19

Page 4 of the Daily Mail on June 7 featured a map showing the main Allied landing points and the route to Paris as troops fought to free Europe. There was also news of orders given to French soldiers by General Charles de Gaulle, alongside adverts for Johnnie Walker whisky and beef stock cubes

+19

The Daily Mail’s coverage on June 8 focused on the capture of Bayeux – the first large town to be taken by the Allies. The front page also mentioned President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s pact with the Charles de Gaulle, the leader of the Free French in exile

Page 2 featured an explanation of how injured troops were transported from the frontlines back to Blighty – including a handy diagram of the various stages from the field dressing station to the forward general hospital. The page also tells of the RAFs secret weapons being used in the ‘greatest aerial bombardment in the world’s history’ – as the ‘accuracy achieved far exceeds what would be possible relying entirely on human skill’

Page 3 detailed plans for after the war, with new factories being placed in ‘development areas’ across the country to secure ‘full employment’. The Birthday Honours list is also discussed – with Professors Alexander Fleming and H.W. Florey included for developing the ”wonder’ drug penicillin’ which ‘will save the lives of thousands of men fighting now’

The appetite for first-hand accounts from the beaches was in high demand at the Daily Mail on June 8, with ‘scores of war correspondents’ painting a complete picture of D-Day, with one report saying ‘the enemy knew nothing till the paratroops landed’. James McGlincy filed an interview with Bert Brandt, a news photographer, who spent 30 minutes on the group and hours afterwards ‘within gunshot of the scene’. Brandt said: ‘It was hotter than hell over there. I was at Anzio, but Anzio was nothing like this’

This page 3 story from June 8 describes the return of Navy boats to British ports after being used to deliver troops on D-Day

Friday June 9, 1944: ALLIES FIVE MILES BEYOND BAYEUX

June 9’s Daily Mail front page centred around the inland progress the Allied forces were making, who were now five miles beyond Bayeux. The Mail reported that bad weather conditions had delayed British operations in France by 24 hours

Page 2 of the Mail’s edition from June 9 1944 offers a moving account headlined: ‘One face I shall never forgot’. A correspondent on board HMS Belfast recalls a rescue boat pulling up alongside the vessel in a desperate bid to save an injured British soldier. He described the soldier ‘trying to smile’ as crew battled to get him on board, he later had his legs amputated and then he died. Another report tells of how the Germans’ morale was given a ‘heavy jolt’ by news of the landings

+19

Page 3 of the Mail’s June 9 edition carries pictures of the first wounded troops sent back to Britain after a reporter spoke to them at their bedsides. All five faces are smiling, one with a cigarette in his mouth. They claim the Allied invasion of Italy a year earlier was much worse than their time in France

The final page of the Mail’s June 9 edition carries a breathtaking account of a parachute drop on D-Day. In news from America, the paper reports how Francisco Franco’s Spain is described as a ‘dictatorship indebted to Hitler’

Page 3 of the edition on June 9 bore the faces of five wounded soldiers who were safely returned to Britain. From trooper George Hart, Private William Smith, leading coder Kenneth Gure, Midshipman Sebborn and Lieutenant Dick Peard (pictured left to right) there were smiles all round – and even time to smoke as a cigarette as they were photographed for the Mail

Saturday June 10, 1944: BIG BATTLE RAGING AT CARENTAN

The front page of the Daily Mail on June 10 1944 carried news of a huge battle at Carentan, which began on D-Day and lasted until June 13. Readers were told how that weekend would prove to be a critical period in the Allies’ progress as they waited for the German counter attack. There was also news of France’s General de Gaulle’s visit to see Roosevelt in Washington

Page 2 of the Mail’s June 9 1944 edition shows a map of Allied air targets from Normandy to Paris with the headline ‘We box in the enemy with bombs’. There is also a report from the Normandy commune of Bayeux, which had been liberated some 60 hours earlier. People in the area declared an unofficial holiday and put on their best clothes despite German planes still flying overhead

Page 3 of the Mail on June 10 1944 bore two contrasting images of a French village where residents were preparing to rise up and calling for their President General de Gaulle and another of an English village where German prisoners were being marched through the streets on their way to a prisoner of war camp. A smaller article told of how British soldiers were allowed to send letters and parcels to inform relatives they were about to go off and fight

Page 4 of the Mail on 10 June 1944 carried news of General Eisenhower’s message to the French. He reassured them the Allied forces would end Nazi tyranny. There was still news for racing tips for Ascot and an advert for a slimming remedy

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7109985/How-Daily-Mail-told-world-Normandy-landings-1944.html

Robert Higgs

Eric Hoffer
Eric Hoffer
	Eric Hoffer in 1967, in the Oval Office, visiting President Lyndon Baines Johnson
Born	July 25, 1898; New York City, New York, U.S.
Died	May 21, 1983 (aged 84); San Francisco, California, U.S.
Occupation	Author, longshoreman
Nationality	American
Genre	Social psychology, political science
Notable awards	Presidential Medal of Freedom, 1983

Robert Higgs
Robert Higgs
Born	1 February 1944 (age 75)
Nationality	United States
Field	Economic history, political economy, natural resource economics, health economics, military economics
School or; tradition	Austrian School
Doctoral; advisor	Edwin Mills; H. Louis Stettler
Doctoral; students	Price V. Fishback
Influences	Simon Kuznets, Douglass C. North, Ronald Coase, Joseph Schumpeter, Ludwig von Mises, F.A. Hayek, Murray Rothbard

Normandy landings
	Part of Operation Overlord, Invasion of Normandy, Western Front of World War II
	; Men of the 16th Infantry Regiment, US 1st Infantry Division wade ashore on Omaha Beach on the morning of 6 June 1944
Date	6 June 1944
Location	Normandy, France
Result	Decisive Allied victory
Territorial; changes	Five Allied beachheads established in Normandy
Belligerents
Allies British Empire; United States; New Zealand; Canada; Australia; Czechoslovakia; France; Norway; Poland;	Germany
Commanders and leaders
Dwight D. Eisenhower; Bernard Montgomery; Omar Bradley; Miles Dempsey; Trafford Leigh-Mallory; Bertram Ramsay; Arthur Tedder;	Gerd von Rundstedt; Erwin Rommel; Leo Geyr von Schweppenburg; Friedrich Dollmann; Hans von Salmuth; Wilhelm Falley †;
Units involved
First Army Omaha Beach: V Corps 1st Infantry Division; 29th Infantry Division; Utah Beach: VII Corps 4th Infantry Division; 82nd Airborne Division; 90th Infantry Division; 101st Airborne Division; Second Army Gold Beach XXX Corps 50th Infantry Division; Juno Beach I Corps 3rd Canadian Infantry Division; Sword Beach I Corps 3rd Infantry Division; 6th Airborne Division;	5th Panzer Army South of Caen 21st Panzer Division; 7th Army Omaha 352nd Infantry Division; Utah Beach 709th Static Division; Gold, Juno, and Sword 716th Static Division;
Strength
156,000 soldiers; 195,700 naval personnel	50,350+; 170 coastal artillery guns. Includes guns from 100mm to 210mm, as well as 320mm rocket launchers.
Casualties and losses
10,000+ casualties; 4,414 confirmed dead; 185 M4 Sherman tanks	4,000–9,000 casualties

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Robert Higgs (born 1 February 1944) is an American economic historian and economist combining material from Public Choice, the New institutional economics, and the Austrian school of economics; and describes himself as a libertarian anarchist^[1] in political and legal theory and public policy. His writings in economics and economic history have most often focused on the causes, means, and effects of government power and growth.

Academic career

Higgs earned a Ph.D. in Economics from the Johns Hopkins University and has held teaching positions at the University of Washington, Lafayette College, and Seattle University. He has also been a visiting scholar at Oxford University and Stanford University. He held a visiting professorship at the University of Economics, Prague in 2006,^[2] and has supervised dissertations in the Ph.D. program at Universidad Francisco Marroquín,^[3] where he is currently an honorary professor of economics and history.

Higgs has been a Senior Fellow in Political Economy at the Independent Institute since September 1994. He has served at Editor at Large of The Independent Review since 2013, after having been Editor from 1995 to 2013.^[2]He is also a senior fellow at the Ludwig von Mises Institute^[4] and an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute.^[5]

Writings

The Ratchet effect

Daniel McCarthy praised Higgs and summarized his ratchet effect theory in a review of Against Leviathan that appeared in The American Conservative. In the review, McCarthy remarked that

What made Crisis and Leviathan a milestone was the rigor with which it elaborated upon the logic of James Madison‘s 1794 warning against “the old trick of turning every contingency into a resource for accumulating force in government.” Other political economists had studied the growth of state power during times of war, depression, and general upheaval before, but none had done so as thoughtfully and thoroughly as Higgs. He took special care in describing the “ratchet effect” – once a crisis has passed state power usually recedes again, but it rarely returns to its original levels; thus each emergency leaves the scope of government at least a little wider than before.^[6]

Foreign policy

During the 2008 presidential election, Higgs defended then-presidential candidate Ron Paul in response to Bret Stephens‘s article from The Wall Street Journal and made the case why “war, preparation for war, and foreign military interventions have served for the most part not to protect us, as we are constantly told, but rather to sap our economic vitality and undermine our civil and economic liberties.”^[7]

Books

As author

The Transformation of the American Economy, 1865–1914 (1971)
Competition and Coercion: Blacks in the American Economy, 1865–1914 (1977)
Crisis and Leviathan: Critical Episodes in the Growth of American Government (1987)
Against Leviathan: Government Power and a Free Society (2004)
Resurgence of the Warfare State: The Crisis Since 9/11 (2005)
Depression, War and Cold War: Studies in Political Economy (2006)
Politická ekonomie strachu (“The Political Economy of Fear”) (Czech language; 2006)
Neither Liberty Nor Safety: Fear, Ideology, and the Growth of Government (2007)
Delusions of Power: New Explorations of the State, War, and Economy (2012)

As editor

Emergence of the Modern Political Economy (1985)
Arms, Politics, and the Economy: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives (1990)
Hazardous to Our Health? FDA Regulation of Health Care Products (1995)
Re-Thinking Green: Alternatives to Environmental Bureaucracy with Carl P. Close (2005)
The Challenge of Liberty: Classical Liberalism Today with Carl P. Close (2006)
Opposing the Crusader State: Alternatives to Global Interventionism with Carl P. Close (2007)

Notes

^ “What Is the Point of My Libertarian Anarchism?”LewRockwell.com.
^ Jump up to:^a ^b “Senior Fellow Robert Higgs.” Independent.org. Independent Institute. [1]
^ Cole, Julio. World Economic Growth, 1980–1999: A Growth-Regression Approach. p. 9. September 2003. “Archived copy”. Archived from the original on 2008-07-08. Retrieved 2008-07-05.
^ “Faculty and Staff.” Mises.org. Ludwig von Mises Institute
^ “Robert Higgs.” Cato.org. Cato Institute
^ McCarthy, Daniel. “Enemy of the State.” The American Conservative. 9 May 2005. [2]
^ https://www.lewrockwell.com/2008/01/robert-higgs/libertarian-foreign-policy-in-the-hobbesian-crosshairs/

External links

Independent Institute biography
Liberty and Power Group Blog.
LewRockwell.com archive
Mises.org archive
Los Angeles Chronicle
Roberts, Russ (December 15, 2008). “Higgs on the Great Depression”. EconTalk. Library of Economics and Liberty.
Appearances on C-SPAN

Eric Hoffer

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Eric Hoffer (July 25, 1898 – May 21, 1983)^[1] was an American moral and social philosopher. He was the author of ten books and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in February 1983. His first book, The True Believer (1951), was widely recognized as a classic, receiving critical acclaim from both scholars and laymen,^[2] although Hoffer believed that The Ordeal of Change (1963) was his finest work.^[3]

Early life

Hoffer was born in 1898^[4]^[5] in The Bronx, New York, to Knut and Elsa (Goebel) Hoffer.^[6] His parents were immigrants from Alsace, then part of Imperial Germany. By age five, Hoffer could already read in both English and his parents’ native German.^[7]^[8] When he was five, his mother fell down the stairs with him in her arms. He later recalled, “I lost my sight at the age of seven. Two years before, my mother and I fell down a flight of stairs. She did not recover and died in that second year after the fall. I lost my sight and, for a time, my memory.”^[9] Hoffer spoke with a pronounced German accent all his life, and spoke the language fluently. He was raised by a live-in relative or servant, a German immigrant named Martha. His eyesight inexplicably returned when he was 15. Fearing he might lose it again, he seized on the opportunity to read as much as he could. His recovery proved permanent, but Hoffer never abandoned his reading habit.

Hoffer was a young man when he also lost his father. The cabinetmaker‘s union paid for Knut Hoffer’s funeral and gave Hoffer about $300 insurance money. He took a bus to Los Angeles and spent the next 10 years on Skid Row, reading, occasionally writing, and working at odd jobs.^[10]

In 1931, he considered suicide by drinking a solution of oxalic acid, but he could not bring himself to do it.^[11] He left Skid Row and became a migrant worker, following the harvests in California. He acquired a library card where he worked, dividing his time “between the books and the brothels.” He also prospected for gold in the mountains. Snowed in for the winter, he read the Essays by Michel de Montaigne. Montaigne impressed Hoffer deeply, and Hoffer often made reference to him. He also developed a respect for America’s underclass, which he said was “lumpy with talent.”

Career

He wrote a novel, Four Years in Young Hank’s Life, and a novella, Chance and Mr. Kunze, both partly autobiographical. He also penned a long article based on his experiences in a federal work camp, “Tramps and Pioneers.” It was never published, but a truncated version appeared in Harper’s Magazine after he became well known. ^[12]

Hoffer tried to enlist in the US Army at age 40 during World War II, but he was rejected due to a hernia.^[13] Instead, he began work as a longshoreman on the docks of San Francisco in 1943. ^[14] At the same time, he began to write seriously.

Hoffer left the docks in 1964, and shortly after became an adjunct professor at the University of California, Berkeley^[15] He later retired from public life in 1970.^[16] In 1970, he endowed the Lili Fabilli and Eric Hoffer Laconic Essay Prize for students, faculty, and staff at the University of California, Berkeley.

Hoffer called himself an atheist but had sympathetic views of religion and described it as a positive force.^[17]

He died at his home in San Francisco in 1983 at the age of 84.^[18]

Working-class roots

Hoffer was influenced by his modest roots and working-class surroundings, seeing in it vast human potential. In a letter to Margaret Anderson in 1941, he wrote:

My writing is done in railroad yards while waiting for a freight, in the fields while waiting for a truck, and at noon after lunch. Towns are too distracting.

He once remarked, “my writing grows out of my life just as a branch from a tree.” When he was called an intellectual, he insisted that he simply was a longshoreman. Hoffer has been dubbed by some authors a “longshoreman philosopher.”^[8]^[19]

Personal life

Hoffer, who was an only child, never married. He fathered a child with Lili Fabilli Osborne, named Eric Osborne, who was born in 1955 and raised by Lili Osborne and her husband, Selden Osborne. ^[20] Lili Fabilli Osborne had become acquainted with Hoffer through her husband, a fellow longshoreman and acquaintance of Hoffer’s. Despite the affair and Lili Osborne later co-habitating with Hoffer, Selden Osborne and Hoffer remained on good terms. ^[21]

Hoffer referred to Eric Osborne as his son or godson. Lili Fabilli Osborne died in 2010 at the age of 93. Prior to her death, Osborne was the executor of Hoffer’s estate, and vigorously controlled the rights to his intellectual property.

In his 2012 book Eric Hoffer: The Longshoreman Philosopher, journalist Tom Bethell revealed doubts about Hoffer’s account of his early life. Although Hoffer claimed his parents were from Alsace-Lorraine, Hoffer himself spoke with a pronounced Bavarian accent.^[22] He claimed to have been born and raised in the Bronx but had no Bronx accent. His lover and executor Lili Fabilli stated that she always thought Hoffer was an immigrant. Her son, Eric Fabilli, said that Hoffer’s life may have been comparable to that of B. Traven and considered hiring a genealogist to investigate Hoffer’s early life, to which Hoffer reportedly replied, “Are you sure you want to know?” Pescadero land-owner Joe Gladstone, a family friend of the Fabilli’s who also knew Hoffer, said of Hoffer’s account of his early life: “I don’t believe a word of it.” To this day, no one ever has claimed to have known Hoffer in his youth, and no records apparently exist of his parents, nor indeed of Hoffer himself until he was about forty, when his name appeared in a census.

Books and opinions

The True Believer

Hoffer came to public attention with the 1951 publication of his first book, The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements, which consists of a preface and 125 sections, which are divided into 18 chapters. Hoffer analyzes the phenomenon of “mass movements,” a general term that he applies to revolutionary parties, nationalistic movements, and religious movements. He summarizes his thesis in §113: “A movement is pioneered by men of words, materialized by fanatics and consolidated by men of actions.”^[23]

Hoffer argues that fanatical and extremist cultural movements, whether religious, social, or national, arise when large numbers of frustrated people, believing their own individual lives to be worthless or spoiled, join a movement demanding radical change. But the real attraction for this population is an escape from the self, not a realization of individual hopes: “A mass movement attracts and holds a following not because it can satisfy the desire for self-advancement, but because it can satisfy the passion for self-renunciation.”^[24]

Hoffer consequently argues that the appeal of mass movements is interchangeable: in the Germany of the 1920s and the 1930s, for example, the Communists and National Socialists were ostensibly enemies, but sometimes enlisted each other’s members, since they competed for the same kind of marginalized, angry, frustrated people. For the “true believer,” Hoffer argues that particular beliefs are less important than escaping from the burden of the autonomous self.

Harvard historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. said of The True Believer: “This brilliant and original inquiry into the nature of mass movements is a genuine contribution to our social thought.”^[25]

Later works

Subsequent to the publication of The True Believer (1951), Eric Hoffer touched upon Asia and American interventionism in several of his essays. In “The Awakening of Asia” (1954), published in The Reporter and later his book The Ordeal of Change (1963), Hoffer discusses the reasons for unrest on the continent. In particular, he argues that the root cause of social discontent in Asia was not government corruption, “communist agitation,” or the legacy of European colonial “oppression and exploitation,” but rather that a “craving for pride” was the central problem in Asia, suggesting a problem that could not be relieved through typical American intervention.^[26]

For centuries, Hoffer notes, Asia had “submitted to one conqueror after another.” Throughout these centuries, Asia had “been misruled, looted, and bled by both foreign and native oppressors without” so much as “a peep” from the general population. Though not without negative effect, corrupt governments and the legacy of European imperialism represented nothing new under the sun. Indeed, the European colonial authorities had been “fairly beneficent” in Asia.^[26]

To be sure, Communism exerted an appeal of sorts. For the Asian “pseudo-intellectual,” it promised elite status and the phony complexities of “doctrinaire double talk.” For the ordinary Asian, it promised partnership with the seemingly emergent Soviet Union in a “tremendous, unprecedented undertaking” to build a better tomorrow.^[26]

According to Hoffer, however, Communism in Asia was dwarfed by the desire for pride. To satisfy such desire, Asians would willingly and irrationally sacrifice their economic well-being and their lives as well.^[26]

Unintentionally, the West had created this appetite, causing “revolutionary unrest” in Asia. The West had done so by eroding the traditional communal bonds that once had woven the individual to the patriarchal family, clan, tribe, “cohesive rural or urban unit,” and “religious or political body.”

Without the security and spiritual meaning produced by such bonds, Asians had been liberated from tradition only to find themselves now atomized, isolated, exposed, and abandoned, “left orphaned and empty in a cold world.”^[26]

Certainly, Europe had undergone a similar destruction of tradition, but it had occurred centuries earlier at the end of the medieval period and produced better results thanks to different circumstances.

For the Asians of the 1950s, the circumstances differed markedly. Most were illiterate and impoverished, living in a world that included no expansive physical or intellectual vistas. Dangerously, the “articulate minority” of the Asian population inevitably disconnected themselves from the ordinary people, thereby failing to acquire “a sense of usefulness and of worth” that came by “taking part in the world’s work.” As a result, they were “condemned to the life of chattering posturing pseudo-intellectuals” and coveted “the illusion of weight and importance.”^[26]

Most significantly, Hoffer asserts that the disruptive awakening of Asia came about as a result of an unbearable sense of weakness. Indeed, Hoffer discusses the problem of weakness, asserting that while “power corrupts the few… weakness corrupts the many.”^[26]

Hoffer notes that ” the resentment of the weak does not spring from any injustice done them but from the sense of their inadequacy and impotence.” In short, the weak “hate not wickedness” but themselves for being weak. Consequently, self-loathing produces explosive effects that cannot be mitigated through social engineering schemes, such as programs of wealth redistribution. In fact, American “generosity” is counterproductive, perceived in Asia simply as an example of Western “oppression.”^[26]

In the wake of the Korean War, Hoffer does not recommend exporting at gunpoint either American political institutions or mass democracy. In fact, Hoffer advances the possibility that winning over the multitudes of Asia may not even be desirable. If on the other hand, necessity truly dictates that for “survival” the United States must persuade the “weak” of Asia to “our side,” Hoffer suggests the wisest course of action would be to master “the art or technique of sharing hope, pride, and as a last resort, hatred with others.”^[26]

During the Vietnam War, despite his objections to the antiwar movement and acceptance of the notion that the war was somehow necessary to prevent a third world war, Hoffer remained skeptical concerning American interventionism, specifically the intelligence with which the war was being conducted in Southeast Asia. After the United States became involved in the war, Hoffer wished to avoid defeat in Vietnam because of his fear that such a defeat would transform American society for ill, opening the door to those who would preach a stab-in-the-back myth and allow for the rise of an American version of Hitler.^[27]

In The Temper of Our Time (1967), Hoffer implies that the United States as a rule should avoid interventions in the first place: “the better part of statesmanship might be to know clearly and precisely what not to do, and leave action to the improvisation of chance.” In fact, Hoffer indicates that “it might be wise to wait for enemies to defeat themselves,” as they might fall upon each other with the United States out of the picture.^[28] The view was somewhat borne out with the Cambodian-Vietnamese War and Chinese-Vietnamese War of the late 1970s.

In May 1968, about a year after the Six-Day War, he wrote an article for the Los Angeles Times titled “Israel’s Peculiar Position:”

The Jews are a peculiar people: things permitted to other nations are forbidden to the Jews. Other nations drive out thousands, even millions of people and there is no refugee problem. Russia did it, Poland and Czechoslovakia did it. Turkey threw out a million Greeks and Algeria a million Frenchman. Indonesia threw out heaven knows how many Chinese and no one says a word about refugees. But in the case of Israel, the displaced Arabs have become eternal refugees. Everyone insists that Israel must take back every single one.^[29]

Hoffer asks why “everyone expects the Jews to be the only real Christians in this world” and why Israel should sue for peace after its victory.^[29]

Hoffer believed that rapid change is not necessarily a positive thing for a society and that too rapid change can cause a regression in maturity for those who were brought up in a different society. He noted that in America in the 1960s, many young adults were still living in extended adolescence. Seeking to explain the attraction of the New Left protest movements, he characterized them as the result of widespread affluence, which “is robbing a modern society of whatever it has left of puberty rites to routinize the attainment of manhood.” He saw the puberty rites as essential for self-esteem and noted that mass movements and juvenile mindsets tend to go together, to the point that anyone, no matter what age, who joins a mass movement immediately begins to exhibit juvenile behavior.

Hoffer further noted that working-class Americans rarely joined protest movements and subcultures since they had entry into meaningful labor as an effective rite of passage out of adolescence while both the very poor who lived on welfare and the affluent were, in his words, “prevented from having a share in the world’s work, and of proving their manhood by doing a man’s work and getting a man’s pay” and thus remained in a state of extended adolescence. Lacking in necessary self-esteem, they were prone to joining mass movements as a form of compensation. Hoffer suggested that the need for meaningful work as a rite of passage into adulthood could be fulfilled with a two-year civilian national service program (like programs during the Great Depression such as the Civilian Conservation Corps): “The routinization of the passage from boyhood to manhood would contribute to the solution of many of our pressing problems. I cannot think of any other undertaking that would dovetail so many of our present difficulties into opportunities for growth.”

Hoffer appeared on public television in 1964 and then in two one-hour conversations on CBS with Eric Sevareid in the late 1960s.

Papers

Hoffer’s papers, including 131 of the notebooks he carried in his pockets, were acquired in 2000 by the Hoover Institution Archives. The papers fill 75 feet (23 m) of shelf space. Because Hoffer cultivated an aphoristic style, the unpublished notebooks (dated from 1949 to 1977) contain very significant work. Although available for scholarly study since at least 2003, little of their contents has been published. A selection of fifty aphorisms, focusing on the development of unrealized human talents through the creative process, appeared in the July 2005 issue of Harper’s Magazine.^[30]

Published works

1951 The True Believer: Thoughts On The Nature of Mass Movements ISBN 0-06-050591-5

1955 The Passionate State of Mind, and Other Aphorisms ISBN 1-933435-09-7

1963 The Ordeal of Change ISBN 1-933435-10-0

1967 The Temper of Our Time

1968 Nature and The City

1969 Working and Thinking on the Waterfront: A Journal, June 1958 to May 1959

1971 First Things, Last Things

1973 Reflections on the Human Condition ISBN 1-933435-14-3

1976 In Our Time

1979 Before the Sabbath

1982 Between the Devil and the Dragon: The Best Essays and Aphorisms of Eric Hoffer ISBN 0-06-014984-1

1983 Truth Imagined ISBN 1-933435-01-1

Interviews

“Conversations with Eric Hoffer,” twelve-part interview by James Day of KQED, San Franscisco, 1963.
“Eric Hoffer: The Passionate State of Mind” with Eric Sevareid, CBS, September 19, 1967 (re-broadcast on November 14, due to popular demand).
“The Savage Heart: A Conversation with Eric Hoffer,” with Eric Sevareid, CBS, January 28, 1969.

Awards and recognition

1971, May – Honorary Doctorate; Stonehill College
1971, June – Honorary Doctorate; Michigan Technological University
1978 – Bust of Eric Hoffer by sculptor Jonathan Hirschfeld; commissioned by Charles Kittrell and placed in Bartlesville, Oklahoma.
1983, February 13 – Presidential Medal of Freedom awarded by Ronald Reagan.
1985, September 17 – Skygate unveiling in San Francisco; dedication speech by Eric Sevareid.

Eric Hoffer Award

On the 1st January, 2001, the Eric Hoffer Award for books and prose was launched internationally in his honor.^[31] In 2005, the Eric Hoffer Estate granted its permission for the award, and Christopher Klim became the award’s Chairperson.

Reception

Australian foreign minister Julie Bishop extensively referred to Hoffer’s book The True Believer when in a 2015 speech she closely compared the psychological underpinnings of ISIS with that of Nazism.^[32]

References …

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Hoffer

Eric Hoffer – Tyranny of the Intellectuals

The Pronk Pops Show Podcasts Portfolio

[1] “What Is the Point of My Libertarian Anarchism?”LewRockwell.com.

[independent-2] Jump up to:^a ^b “Senior Fellow Robert Higgs.” Independent.org. Independent Institute. [1]

[3] Cole, Julio. World Economic Growth, 1980–1999: A Growth-Regression Approach. p. 9. September 2003. “Archived copy”. Archived from the original on 2008-07-08. Retrieved 2008-07-05.

[4] “Faculty and Staff.” Mises.org. Ludwig von Mises Institute

[5] “Robert Higgs.” Cato.org. Cato Institute

[McCarthy-6] McCarthy, Daniel. “Enemy of the State.” The American Conservative. 9 May 2005. [2]

[7] ttps://www.lewrockwell.com/2008/01/robert-higgs/libertarian-foreign-policy-in-the-hobbesian-crosshairs/

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hide v t e Austrian School economists
Influences	Frédéric Bastiat Jean-Baptiste Say School of Salamanca
Founders	Eugen Böhm von Bawerk Friedrich Hayek Carl Menger Ludwig von Mises Friedrich von Wieser
Other contributors	Walter Block Peter Boettke Thomas DiLorenzo Frank Fetter Roger Garrison Gottfried Haberler Henry Hazlitt Robert Higgs Hans-Hermann Hoppe Steven Horwitz Jesús Huerta de Soto Israel Kirzner Ludwig Lachmann Fritz Machlup Robert Murphy Larry Reed Murray Rothbard Joseph Salerno Gerhard Tintner
See also	List of Austrian School economists

Eric Hoffer
Eric Hoffer in 1967, in the Oval Office, visiting President Lyndon Baines Johnson
Born	July 25, 1898 New York City, New York, U.S.
Died	May 21, 1983 (aged 84) San Francisco, California, U.S.
Occupation	Author, longshoreman
Nationality	American
Genre	Social psychology, political science
Notable awards	Presidential Medal of Freedom, 1983

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