Bing

As the ill-fated amphibious assault by British and Canadian commandos on the French port of Dieppe in August 1942 proved, Hitler’s West Wall was a tough nut to crack.

Of the 1,213 warships covering the landing, almost 80 percent were British or Canadian, the remainder from the United States (16 percent), the Netherlands, Norway, and France.

The price the Allies paid for their missed opportunity in September was heavy. Of the 750,000 battle casualties the Western Allies suffered in Europe, two-thirds occurred after their autumn slowdown. The collateral costs were even greater. Millions of men and women on both sides died as a result of the continued fighting—to say nothing of the ongoi

Both sides were plagued by a shortage of supplies. The Allies had an abundance of shipping but found it difficult to off-load matériel across the beaches, and the two MULBERRYs, while ingenious, could not accommodate the thousands of tons of food and ammunition that were required daily. At the end of the first week, less than 50 percent of the sche

Not until midafternoon, ten hours later, did the Führer release the panzer divisions to von Rundstedt, and by then there was no hope they could arrive at the beachhead until the following day. To add to the German misfortune, the Luftwaffe put less than a hundred fighters in the air on D-Day, and mounted only twenty-two sorties against Ramsay’s fle

Aside from weather and bad luck, faulty command decisions ensured that the landing at Omaha would be difficult.