At the Teheran conference, the Allies agreed to launch a fullscale
offensive against Germany from across the English
Channel. It was called the Overlord Plan and placed under
General Eisenhower's command. Seventy-five thousand ships
transported 4 million men, mostly from America, but also from
Canada, and 280 million tons of arms and material to Britain,
where they joined forces with the British army. Normandy was
chosen as the landing point. On 6 June 1944, despite a howling
storm, 4,300 transport ships, preceded by 300 minesweepers
and escorted by 500 warships discharged five divisions at five
separate points. Three other divisions were dropped by parachute.
The 'Atlantic Wall' could not withstand the assault. The
Germans had been misinformed about where the landing would
occur, and no longer had enough submarines to obstruct it. They
lost time by concentrating their troops in order to contain the
Allied forces, while the Allies won complete mastery of the air.
The major German forces were pinned down by the British near
Caen. The Americans meanwhile occupied the Cotentin peninsula
and thrust southwards, reaching Avranches on 1 August.
As reinforcements poured into an artificial harbour at Arromanches
the Allied troops north of the Loire veered eastwards
towards the Seine. On 15 August a second landing was made in
Provence. Churchill tried unsuccessfully to cancel it and divert
the force to Italy where a stalemate had been reached. A French
army commanded by Delattre de Tassigny took part in the Provence
landing and occupied Marseilles and Toulon. The Germans
fled northwards from the pincer; and the Allies chased
them as far as Lorraine.
The French Forces of the Interior emerged from hiding. They
scouted for the landing forces, harassed the German retreat, and
liberated cities in the van of the Allied advance. At Paris tlie\
rallied a popular uprising which was then successfully carried
through by the Second Armoured Division under General
Leclerc. A provisional government under General de Gaulle was
formed at Paris and assembled the leaders of the Resistance and
set up a new administration, prosecuted collaborators and silenced
revolutionary outbursts, mostly in the southwest. It carried
out a certain number of plans which had been laid by in the
resistance movement or in Algiers, most notably the fusion ofthe
140,000 French Forces of the Interior with the French First
Army.
The British and the Americans again failed to see eye to eye
about stragety. Montgomery wanted to lead the main bulk of the
Allied forces in a concerted thrust across the northern plain into
the centre of Germany. Eisenhower preferred to advance the
whole front uniformly, leaving the line of the final assault to be
determined according to what conditions they encountered. The
question was settled by the failure ofa huge parachute operation
at Arnhem in September 1944. The Allies confined their operation
to clearing the mouth of the River Scheldt and freeing the
port of Antwerp. Troops were advanced as far as the banks of the
Meuse and the Siegfried Line, while Lorraine was liberated.
Leclerc took Strasbourg and Delattre reached the Rhine near
Mulhouse, but the Germans retained control of the Colmar
pocket in central Alsace.
World History
