Transcript D-day - Chatt

D-Day
June 6th, 1944
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What was the situation in 1944?
• The Russians have
defeated the Germans
and are advancing in
the East
• The Allies are victorious
in Africa and launch an
assault on mainland
Italy through Sicily
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The Russian Front
• On August 23rd, 1939, Stalin
and Hitler signed a “NonAggression Pact” which vowed
not to interfere in each other’s
business
• On June 22nd, 1941, Germany
invaded the Soviet Union
• Having purged his military of
many of its best officers, Stalin
and the Soviets were not
ready for war
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The Eastern Front
• Operation “Barbarossa” – began
on June 22nd, 1941
• The early days saw the Germans
drive into the Soviet Union
almost reaching Moscow by
October
• The German army besieged
Leningrad for what was to
become a two year struggle
ending in the death of more than
one million civilians
• When the severe Russian winter
arrived the Nazi offensive broke
down and the German attack was
halted
4
The Tide Turns
• The Nazis needed supplies and
resources to continue the war so
victory in the Soviet Union was
essential
• From Sept. 14th, 1942 – Feb. 2nd, 1943
– the Germans and Russians fought
for the strategic city of Stalingrad on
the Volga River
• Hitler and the Nazis lost the battle –
500 000 German and other troops
were killed or taken prisoner
• By the Autumn of 1943 the Germany
army of 2.5 million soldiers faced an
army of 5.5 million Soviet soldiers
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Italy
• From July 10th to August 17th – the Allies including the
Canadians fought and took Sicily from the German Army –
Codenamed “Operation Husky”
• The Campaign of Italy was designed to take the pressure off
their Russian Allies and pull German troops out of northwestern Europe readying the area for Operation “Overlord”
• 9th September, 1943 the attack began on Italy
• The Canadians were forced to fight for every metre of the
mountainous terrain as the Germans refused to give it up
• Italian Campaign Animated Map
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The Italians Surrender
• On the 8th of September, 1943,
the Italian Government
surrenders
• The Allied planners thought the
Italian Campaign would be over
in a matter of weeks.
• They were wrong. Italy would
represent frustration and death
for thousands of Allied soldiers
in a bitter stagnated fight.
• It would be a year before Allied
troops entered Rome, and the
Invasion of France would
overshadow that victory.
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The Battle for Italy
• When Italy formally surrendered
on September 8th, the Italians
separated into two camps, proAllied and pro-German factions.
• On September 9, the Allies
landed Americans at Salerno and
the British landed at Taranto, and
with the Canadians at Reggio di
Calabria
• By September 26 the Allies had
built a force of 189,000 men and
30,000 vehicles.
• Following the Italian surrender,
the German Army took control of
the defence of Germany
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Ortona
• Ortona is an ancient city that
consists of narrow streets and
connected houses
• Much of Ortona was reduced to
rubble, making it difficult for the
Canadians to use tanks
• The Germans barricaded
themselves in houses and mined
the streets – the Canadians
innovated “mouse-holing…”
• The fighting was house-to-houseliterally – the Canadians would
use tanks to blast their way
through walls to get from building
to building.
• The battle continued over
Christmas Day, 1943 but three
days later the Germans withdrew.
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The Liberation of Rome
• Following the fall of Ortona the
Allies ground to a halt due to
blizzards and drifting snow at the
end of December
• The Allied focus then turned to
the western front where it was
considered to have the best
chance of a breakthrough
towards Rome.
• It took four major offensives
between January and May 1944
before the Allies including British,
US, French, Polish, and Canadian
Corps broke through
• Rome was declared an open city
by the German army and the
Allies took possession on June 4th.
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The Move on to France
• Having the Germans
occupied in Italy
allowed the allies to
move forward with
their plan to open up
the long awaited
western front in Europe
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The Plan
• Winston Churchill and
Franklin Roosevelt agreed it
was time to open up a new
front in the West through
the beaches of France
• The obvious choice for a
landing area was the Pas de
Calais so the Allies decided
to attack in Normandy
instead but believed they
had to deceive the Germans
they intended to attack
elsewhere
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Normandy It Is!
• Normandy
is a
peninsula
on the
French
Coast
• It was
chosen
because
the
Germans
expected
the attack
to be on
the Pas de
Calais
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The Criteria
1. The enemy must remain
ignorant of the proposed
landing site
2. The enemy must be
prevented from bringing
up reinforcements quickly
once the allies landed
3. Complete Allied air and
naval superiority in the
English Channel
4. Local defences must
largely be destroyed by air
and sea bombardment
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Operation “Overlord”
•
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
There would be five
sectors that would be
attacked:
Utah – American
Omaha – American
Gold – British
Juno – Canadian
Sword - British
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The Attack – June 6th, 1944
• Operation Overlord Simulation
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The Atlantic Wall
• The Atlantic Wall was an extensive
system of coastal fortifications built
by the Germans between 1942 and
1944
• Built along the western coast of
Europe to defend against an
anticipated Anglo-American led
Allied invasion of the continent
from Great Britain.
• Fritz Todt, the designer of the
Siegfried Line along the FrancoGerman border, was the chief
engineer
• Thousands of forced laborers were
used to construct these permanent
fortifications along the Dutch,
Belgian and French coasts
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The Atlantic Wall
• Early in 1944, Field Marshal Erwin
Rommel was assigned to improve the
defenses of the Wall.
• Rommel believed the existing coastal
fortifications were entirely inadequate.
• A string of reinforced concrete pillboxes
were built along the beaches to house
machine guns, antitank guns, and light
artillery.
• Minefields and antitank obstacles were
planted on the beaches and underwater
obstacles and mines were planted in the
waters just off shore to destroy
incoming craft
• By the time of the invasion, the
Germans had laid almost 6 million
mines in northern France.
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The Atlantic Wall!
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The Time Has Come
• On the evening of June
5th paratroopers
dropped in to secure
bridges for the allied
advance
• Heavy bombers
dropped their
payloads on what was
supposed to be the
beach defences
• In the early morning
the largest armada of
ships left Britain for
the French coast
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The Canadians on D-Day
• Of the nearly 150,000 Allied
troops who landed or
parachuted into the invasion
area, 14,000 were Canadians
• The Royal Canadian Navy
contributed 110 ships and
10,000 sailors in support of
the landings while the R.C.A.F.
had helped prepare the
invasion by bombing targets
inland
• Canadians suffered 1074
casualties, including 359 killed.
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The Battle for Normandy
• For the first month following the DDay landings, a stalemate
developed during which the Allies
built up their forces
• In July Canadian troops helped
capture Caen and then turned
towards Falaise where they aimed
at joining an American advance
from the south to encircle the
German forces in Normandy.
• By August 21, the Germans had
either retreated or been destroyed
between the Canadian-British and
American pincers
• The ten-week Normandy Campaign
cost the Canadians alone more than
18,000 casualties, 5000 of them
fatal.
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The Liberation of Northwest Europe
• September 1944 the British
captured the Belgian port of
Antwerp
• It was a key victory for the allies
because they desperately
required its docking facilities to
bring in supplies.
• The problem was that the
Germans occupied both banks of
the 70-kilometre long Scheldt
River estuary linking Antwerp to
the sea.
•Realizing the value of Antwerp to the Allied supply line, the 2nd
Canadian Army under the command of Lieutenant-General Guy Simonds
was assigned to the task of securing the Scheldt Estuary
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Liberating The Scheldt Estuary
•
•
•
The Battle of the Scheldt, was a series of military operations which took place in
northern Belgium and southwestern Netherlands from October 2 to November 8,
1944
By September, 1944, it had become urgent for the Allies to clear both banks of the
Scheldt Estuary in order to open the port of Antwerp to Allied shipping, thus easing
logistical burdens in their supply lines stretching hundreds of miles from Normandy.
The British captured Antwerp on September 4th, 1944 but the Germans still controlled
the Scheldt Estuary making the port useless
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The Scheldt Con’t
• After five weeks of difficult
fighting, the First Canadian
Army with support from other
countries was successful in
securing the Scheldt Estuary
• It took numerous amphibious
assaults, crossing of canals, and
fighting over open ground.
• Both land and water were
mined, and the Germans
defended their retreating line
with artillery and snipers.
• The Allies finally cleared the
port areas on November 8, but
at a cost of 12,873 Allied
casualties (killed, wounded, or
missing), half of them
Canadians.
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The Battle of the Bulge
• The Ardennes Offensive known
to the general public as the Battle
of the Bulge, started on
December 16, 1944
• Three powerful German armies
plunged into the semimountainous, heavily forested
Ardennes region of eastern
Belgium and northern
Luxembourg.
• Their goal was to reach the sea,
trap four allied armies, and impel
a negotiated peace on the
Western front.
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The Battle of the Bulge
• Thinking the Ardennes was the
least likely spot for a German
offensive the line was thin with
American manpower
concentrated north and south of
the Ardennes.
• Even though the German
Offensive achieved total
surprise, the American troops
did not give ground without a
fight
• Within three days the
Americans, assisted by the
arrival of powerful
reinforcements insured that the
Germans would not achieve
their goal.
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Battle of the Bulge Outcome
• The German losses in the battle
were critical
• The last of the German reserves
were now gone
• The Luftwaffe had been broken
• The German Army in the West
was being pushed back.
• Most importantly, the Eastern
Front was now ripe for the
taking and the German Army
was unable to halt the Soviets
• German forces were sent reeling
on two fronts and never
recovered.
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The Final Days
• In April 1945, the battle is
coming to a close.
• On the 30th April, Hitler
commits suicide together
with his mistress Eva Braun
hours after they were
married.
• Hitler gave strict orders for
his body to be burned, so
that his enemies wouldn't
do what they had done to
Mussolini, who was publicly
displayed hanging upside
down.
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The Soviets Arrive – Berlin Falls
• By 2 May, the Reichstag, the
old German parliament falls
and Berlin surrenders to
Marshall Zukhov, who
receives the honour of
being the conqueror of
Berlin.
• The battle for Berlin cost
the Soviets over 70,000
dead. Many of them died
because of the haste with
which the campaign was
conducted.
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VE-Day
• The major Allied ground
offensive from the west against
German territory began on 8
February 1945
• In April, Canadian troops
liberated most of the
Netherlands
• The Germans formally
surrendered on 8 May 1945,
known as Victory-in-Europe, or
‘V-E’ Day
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Hiroshima and Nagasaki
• Following FDR’s death, Harry
Truman becomes President of the
United States
• Truman decided to use the bomb
on Japan because he believed
that it was the only way to get
the Japanese to surrender and
save American lives
• On August 6th, 1945 a lone B-29
Superfortress called the Enola
Gay by its crew took off and
headed for Hiroshima
Video
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Fat Man and Little Boy
• At 8:15am the atomic bomb
nicknamed “Little Boy” was
dropped on Hiroshima
• Within seconds two thirds of
the city was flattened and
thousands were dead
• On August 11, a bomb called
“Fat Man” was dropped on
Nagasaki at 11:02 am
• At noon, August 15th, 1945 –
Emperor Hirohito spoke
directly to his people to tell
them Japan had surrendered
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Why Did the Allies Win?
•
•
•
•
•
•
Complete material superiority – weapons etc.
More soldiers
Better Strategy
Technology
Morale
Material and financial Wealth
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