NORMANDY THE BATTLE – 6 JUNE / 12 SEPTEMBER 1944

The Battle of Normandy – 6 June, 12 September 1944.

The Battle of Normandy as planned by the Allies rested on a massive and rapid landing that would destabilize the German High Command through its sheer audacity. Within a few hours, 150,000 Allied combatants would set foot on Norman soil on 6 June 1944. Facing them stood an equivalent number of German soldiers, though only one third were operational on this front. The German command had been expecting a landing in the Pas-de-Calais, at the narrowest point of the English Channel... It would take the Germans several days to accept that the Normandy landing was not a feint. The first hours of the landing would prove decisive. The challenge for the Allied coalition was to break through the German defences rapidly in order to widen the front and to resist enemy counter-offensives. The first weeks of June 1944 were marked by terrible fighting with no decisive advantage. Thereafter, powerful operations of conquest and encirclement were conducted, culminating in the annihilation of the last German troops in the Falaise Pocket. This denouement took place on 21 August near Chambois, at a place now known as the "corridor of death". The Battle of Normandy ended on 12 September 1944 with the liberation of Le Havre. 99 days after 6 June.