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Blood in the Water: The Full Story of June 6, 1944
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
On June 6, 1944, nearly 150,000 Allied troops stormed the beaches of Normandy — and nobody knew if it would work. This chapter follows the paratroopers, Rangers, and infantrymen who turned deception, chaos, and sacrifice into the beginning of the end for Nazi Germany.
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
Here's what nobody knew on the morning of June sixth, nineteen forty-four. They didn't know if it was going to work.
To understand what the Allies were attempting, you have to understand what they were attacking. Hitler's Atlantic Wall stretched roughly two thousand miles, from the Arctic Circle down through Norway, Denmark, the Low Countries, France, and all the way to the Spanish border.
Operation Fortitude was one of the most audacious deceptions ever conceived. Its goal was simple to state and almost impossible to execute.
By early June, nineteen forty-four, the invasion was loaded. Nearly a hundred and fifty thousand troops were ready to cross.
The airborne assault went in first. Thirteen thousand four hundred American paratroopers from the Eighty-Second and One Hundred and First Airborne Divisions loaded into C-47 transports on the night of June fifth.
At dawn on June sixth, the amphibious assault began across five separate beach sectors. Utah.
Between Utah and Omaha sat a fortified German position on top of a cliff, Pointe du Hoc, where large coastal guns were thought to be in position to fire on both beaches. The mission of neutralizing those guns fell to the Second Ranger Battalion.
By the end of June sixth, the Allied forces had established a lodgment on the continent of Europe. Not a secure one, not a large one, but a real one.
What D-Day established wasn't Berlin. That was still almost a year away.
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