"Hitler slept through D-Day", plus four other facts about the Normandy Landings you might not know...
Historian and broadcaster Taylor Downing shares five surprising facts about the biggest amphibious landing in military history
Planning for D-Day started earlier than you might imagine
At the Casablanca Conference in January 1943, Churchill and Roosevelt made the decision to set up a unit to start planning for an invasion of northern Europe. Major-General Sir Frederick Morgan was put in charge. Bright, able to consider unorthodox ideas, Morgan also had experience of working with Americans on the invasion of North Africa, Operation Torch.
Initially, he had only a team of five to start planning for the biggest amphibious operation in history. But this rapidly expanded and General Ray Barker joined to represent the US in this combined operation. They were given offices in a corner of Norfolk Square in London’s West End, which were soon packed with British and American planners.
They had to decide ‘where’ and ‘how’ an invasion would take place – the ‘when’ had been agreed at Casablanca, spring 1944. They studied thousands of postcards sent in of coastal scenes from Bergen in Norway to Bordeaux in south-west France. A team of photo-interpreters was sent from RAF Medmenham to study a growing mass of aerial photos, not just to pinpoint German defences but to assess the steepness of beaches and the shoreline’s ability to support armoured vehicles. Many areas were quickly ruled out – Norway was too rugged; the dunes on the Danish and Dutch beaches were too difficult to cross; and south-west France was beyond fighter cover. The choice soon came down to two possible landing zones: the Pas-de-Calais and Normandy.
Hundreds of thousands of enslaved people built Hitler's defensive Atlantic Wall
The Germans knew an Anglo-American invasion would eventually come, but they did not know where or when.
Building defensive fortifications along the French Channel coast began in 1942. It was a vast building operation to construct major defences from Norway to south-west France. Much of the construction work was carried out by the Todt Organisation, created to build the German Autobahn in the 1930s. It was led at this time by Albert Speer, Hitler’s armaments minister, and consisted of skilled and well-paid engineers, supported by teams of volunteers backed by hundreds of thousands of enslaved labourers who worked under appalling conditions.
About two million workers laboured on the Atlantic Wall. Some 15,000 strong points were planned, ranging from deep bunkers to huge gun batteries. Approximately 17 million cubic metres of concrete and 1.2 million tons of steel went into its construction.
When Hitler appointed Field Marshall Rommel to oversee the defence of France and the Low Countries in late 1943, he inspected the wall but was not impressed.
Rommel ordered the laying of 5 million mines along stretches of coast where landings might take place, supported by thousands of beach defences and inland barriers to prevent gliders from landing. Nazi propaganda claimed the Atlantic Wall was impregnable. But it was breached in just a few hours on the morning of D-Day.
A phantom army group was created to fool the Germans
In discussing plans for D-Day, Churchill told Stalin "In wartime, truth is so precious it should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies". From the beginning, the planners came up with a variety of schemes to deceive the Germans as to where and when the invasion would come. But when Monty’s deception planner, Lieutenant-Colonel David Strangeways, arrived in January 1944, he upset the applecart and insisted on an ambitious rethink.
The decision was made to invent an entire army group in south-east England called the First US Army Group, which would appear to prepare for an invasion across the shortest stretch of Channel, at the Pas-de-Calais. Some real units were supposedly allocated to it, but many pretend divisions were added to its order of battle.
Radio operators started sending out the radio traffic a vast emerging army would generate. Dummy tanks, landing craft and an entire phoney fuel depot were placed in the south-east and a few German reconnaissance aircraft were allowed to photograph the troops and equipment that appeared to be gathering.
As a final coup de theatre, a high-profile commander, General George S Patton, was put in command. A natural showman, Patton toured his ‘facilities’ and was photographed showing VIPs around. German Intelligence was soon convinced that a vast army of nearly a quarter of a million men were assembling in south-east England, training to invade along the Pas-de-Calais.
The first paratrooper to jump into occupied France landed in a greenhouse
Private Robert Murphy of the 505th Parachute Regiment of the 82nd Airborne Division was the very first of the Pathfinders to jump into occupied France, at about 11.30pm on the night of 5 June.
He and his team had to set up a Eureka radar beacon to direct the main force to its Drop Zone, which was to be centred on St Mere Eglise. Murphy landed in a greenhouse in what turned out to be the garden of the 60-year-old village school mistress. She went to her back door to see what all the commotion was about and was terrified to see a figure with a blackened face in a uniform she had never seen before clambering out of the shattered greenhouse.
Murphy looked at her, paused, put a finger to his lips in a gesture of ‘silence’ and disappeared into the night. About 90 minutes later, the main drop took place and a fierce battle ensued around the church. The elite paratroopers soon overwhelmed the defenders and St Mere Eglise was the first French village to be liberated in the early hours of D-Day.
Hitler slept through D-Day
In the run-up to D-Day, Field Marshal Erwin Rommel and General Geyr von Schweppenburg, commander of armoured forces, argued bitterly about who should control the panzer reserves. Rommel wanted them stationed near the likely landing beaches, arguing that the first 24 hours would be critical in throwing the Allies back into the sea. Schweppenburg wanted them well inland, so he could move in after the Allies had landed and defeat them. The bizarre resolution was that Hitler took control of the panzer reserve and only the Führer could give the order for them to deploy.
On the morning of D-Day, Hitler, in his mountain retreat at Berchtesgaden, slept until 11am – his aides did not want to wake him as he had been up until 3am. He still did not give orders to deploy the panzers but instead went to a reception in Salzburg for the newly installed Hungarian prime minister. Also, fooled by the Allied deception operation, he thought the Normandy invasion might be a feint and the real invasion was still to come in the Pas-de-Calais. Finally, at 4pm he gave the order to move two panzer reserve divisions. By this time it was too late for them to get to Normandy and have any influence on the outcome of the ‘Longest Day’: 155,000 men and their equipment were safely ashore.
Taylor Downing is an author, historian and broadcaster. His latest book, The Army that Never Was: D-Day and the Great Deception, is on sale now, published by Icon Books. Taylor is also leading our HistoryExtra Academy course on D-Day and the Normandy Campaign. Visit the course page to find out more
HistoryExtra Academy video lecture: Deceiving the Nazis – watching time 14 mins
The road to D-Day: getting ready for action – reading time 6 mins
D-Day: why the training was deadlier than the assault – reading time 11 mins
The Allies’ big idea: the largest air battle of the Second World War – reading time 9 mins
