Fernando Alcoforado*
Day D (June 6, 1944), also known as Operation Overlord, took place on the day that marked the beginning of the liberation of France from the domination of the Nazis in World War II. D-Day was extremely important in creating a Western war front that accentuated the wear and tear of Germans already fighting in Italy and the Eastern Front against the Soviet Union. Hitler already expected an attack on Normandy to happen. However, he did not know where and when this would happen. He placed his trust in the so-called Atlantic Wall, a defensive line that stretched across the Atlantic coast. The landing of the Allied soldiers in Normandy began on the night of June 5, 1944, with parachutists jumping in different positions. The action of the parachutists was considered disorganized, since many of them were killed by the Germans, while others drowned in marshes.
The great merit of this mission was to have created a great confusion among the Nazis. The personnel deployed on D-Day was about 150,000 men, transported on 5,300 vessels, as well as 1,200 tanks and 12,000 aircraft as support. Also used were parachutists, who jumped in different positions of Normandy to confuse the enemy defenses and to conquer important bridges to guarantee the Allied advance. Allied troops consisted mainly of US, British and Canadian soldiers and aimed to conquer five beaches located near the city of Caen in France. The beaches where the landings were made were named Omaha, Utah, Juno, Gold and Sword. The operation is considered the largest sea invasion of history and has begun the liberation of the territories occupied by the Germans in northwestern Europe.
It should be noted that the end of World War II in Europe was expected since February 1943, when the Soviet Army defeated the Wehrmacht (German Army) in one of the greatest military confrontations in history, known as the Battle of Stalingrad. World War II was at that time leading to the consolidation of the defeat of Nazism because the German armies were being crushed by the Red Army on the Eastern front. As much as the Nazi resistance was remarkable, the strength and size of the Soviet armies were very large and little by little forced the Germans to retreat more and more. The loss of strength of Germany’s army was already evident with the expulsion of the Germans from North Africa and with the Allied landings in Italy. Germany was under pressure in the east from the Soviet Union to the south of the British and the Americans in Italy. As a consequence of the German weakening in the Eastern front, there was the defeat in the battle of Stalingrado in Russia that was decisive because it finished definitively with the German pretensions to win the war.
It can be said that the real D-day in World War II came with the end of the Battle of Stalingrad in Russia, in which the German army worked hard to conquer this important city in the southern Soviet Union. The battle of Stalingrad lasted about six months, from the end of July 1942 until February 2, 1943, being the bloodiest battle of World War II with 1.5 million dead, including military and civilian population. The true D-Day in the history of World War II is February 2, 1943 when the Nazi army was crushed in the Soviet Union and began the overthrow of Nazi Germany and not June 6, 1944 when the Western Front was formed with invasion of Allies in Normandy. The Battle of Stalingrad had four main phases: the first, defensive phase by the Soviets, until November 19, 1942; the second, with the Soviet offensive to the north and south of Stalingrad, which led to the siege of the German forces in the city; and the third, with the attempt of the Germans to succor their unsuccessful troops at Stalingrad and the crushing of the besieged German units (February 2, 1943).
With the failure in Stalingrad and the decline in military supplies, Germany has considerably lost its strength. The Battle of Stalingrad changed the course of World War II and put the Germans in a defensive position. The German army surrendered on February 2, 1943, with about 91,000 soldiers, all of them in precarious situations. Prisoners were taken, including 22 generals. Of these 91,000, 11,000 German soldiers refused to be taken prisoners in Soviet concentration camps and decided to fight to the death. These groups fought until March of 1943 with two thousands of them being killed and the rest made prisoners. Of the 91,000 German prisoners at the Battle of Stalingrad, only 5,000 prisoners returned to their homes after the war. It was not until 1955 that the last remaining German soldiers from Stalingrad were repatriated. The end of the war in Europe occurred after the Battle of Berlin, the last chapter of the Soviet offensive against the German forces. The battle began in April 1945, with the onslaught of Soviet troops in the Nazi-occupied countries, who then moved to Berlin to exterminate Nazi-fascist tyranny. On April 30, 1945, in the final stretch of the war, the Nazi leader Adolf Hitler committed suicide. Shortly afterwards, Berlin gave in, with its surrender that happened on May 8, 1945.
References:
HOBSBAWM, E. J. Era dos extremos: o breve século XX: 1914 – 1991. 2. ed. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras.
WERTH, Alexander. Stalingrado: 1942 o início do fim da Alemanha nazista. Editora contexto, 2015.
* Fernando Alcoforado, 79, awarded the medal of Engineering Merit of the CONFEA / CREA System, member of the Bahia Academy of Education, engineer and doctor in Territorial Planning and Regional Development by the University of Barcelona, university professor and consultant in the areas of strategic planning, business planning, regional planning and planning of energy systems, is the author of 14 books addressing issues such as Globalization and Development, Brazilian Economy, Global Warming and Climate Change, The Factors that Condition Economic and Social Development, Energy in the world and The Great Scientific, Economic, and Social Revolutions that Changed the World.
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