The document provides a detailed overview of key events leading up to and including D-Day on June 6, 1944. It summarizes the situation in 1944 with the Allies advancing in Africa and Italy while Russians defeated Germans in the East. It then outlines the strategic importance of Normandy for the Allied invasion of Europe, describing planning for the air and sea bombardment and five sector landings. On June 6th, over 150,000 Allied troops launched the largest naval invasion in history on the beaches of Normandy, marking a major turning point in the war.

1. D-Day
June 6th, 1944

2. What was the situation in 1944?
 The Russians have
defeated the Germans
and are advancing in
the East
 The Allies are
victorious in Africa
and launch an assault
on mainland Italy
through Sicily

3. The Russian Front
 On August 23rd, 1939,
Stalin and Hitler signed
a “Non-Aggression
Pact” which vowed not
to interfere in each
other’s business
 On June 22nd, 1941,
Germany invaded the
Soviet Union

4. The Eastern Front
Operation “Barbarossa” –
began on June 22nd, 1941
 Early days saw the
Germans drive into the
Soviet Union almost
reaching Moscow by
October
 The German army besieged
Leningrad for two years
ending in the death of more
than one million civilians
 When the severe Russian
winter arrived the Nazi
offensive broke down and
the German attack was
halted


5. The Tide Turns
The Nazis needed supplies and
resources to continue the war so
victory in the Soviet Union was
essential
 From Sept. 14th, 1942 – Feb. 2nd,
1943 – the Germans and
Russians fought for the strategic
city of Stalingrad on the Volga
River
 Hitler and the Nazis lost the
battle – 500 000 German and
other troops were killed or
taken prisoner
 By the Autumn of 1943 the
Germany army of 2.5 million
soldiers faced an army of 5.5
million Soviet soldiers


6. Italy




From July 10th to August 17th – the Allies including the
Canadians fought and took Sicily from the German
Army – Codenamed “Operation Husky”
The Campaign of Italy was designed to take the pressure
off their Russian Allies and pull German troops out of
north-western Europe readying the area for Operation
“Overlord”
9th September, 1943 the attack began on Italy
The Canadians were forced to fight for every meter of
the mountainous terrain as the Germans refused to give
it up

7. The Italians Surrender




On the 8th of September, 1943, the
Italian Government surrenders
The Allied planners thought the Italian
Campaign would be over in a matter
of weeks.
They were wrong. Italy would
represent frustration and death for
thousands of Allied soldiers in a bitter
stagnated fight.
It would be a year before Allied troops
entered Rome, and the invasion of
France would overshadow that
victory.

8. The Battle for Italy




When Italy formally
surrendered on September
8th, the Italians separated into
two camps, pro-Allied and
pro-German factions.
On September 9, the Allies
landed Americans at Salerno
and the British landed at
Taranto
By September 26 the Allies
had built a force of 189,000
men and 30,000 vehicles.
Following the Italian
surrender, the German
Army took control of the
defence of Italy

9. Ortona





Ortona is an ancient city that
consists of narrow streets and
connected houses
Much of Ortona was reduced
to rubble, making it difficult
for the Canadians to use tanks
The Germans barricaded
themselves in houses and
mined the streets
The fighting was house-tohouse-literally – the
Canadians blasted their way
through walls to get from
building to building.
The battle continued over
Christmas Day, 1943 but three
days later the Germans
withdrew.

10. 



The Liberation of Rome
Following the fall of Ortona
the Allies ground to a halt
due to blizzards and drifting
snow at the end of December
The Allied focus then turned
to the western front where it
was considered to have the
best chance of a
breakthrough towards Rome.
It took four major offensives
between January and May
1944 before the Allies
including British, US, French,
Polish, and Canadian Corps
broke through
Rome was declared an open
city by the German army and
the Allies took possession on
June 4th.

11. The Move on to France
 Having the Germans
occupied in Italy
allowed the allies to
move forward with
their plan to open up
the long awaited
western front in
Europe

12. The Atlantic Wall




The Atlantic Wall was an
extensive system of coastal
fortifications built by the
Germans between 1942 and
1944
Built along the western coast of
Europe to defend against an
anticipated Anglo-American led
Allied invasion of the continent
from Great Britain.
Fritz Todt, the designer of the
Siegfried Line along the FrancoGerman border, was the chief
engineer
Thousands of forced laborers
were forced to construct these
permanent fortifications along
the Dutch, Belgian and French
coasts

13. The Atlantic Wall





Early in 1944, Field Marshal Erwin
Rommel was assigned to improve
the defenses of the Wall.
Rommel believed the existing coastal
fortifications were entirely
inadequate.
A string of reinforced concrete
pillboxes were built along the
beaches to house machine guns,
antitank guns, and light artillery.
Minefields and antitank obstacles
were planted on the beaches and
underwater obstacles and mines
were planted in the waters just off
shore to destroy incoming craft
By the time of the invasion, the
Germans had laid almost 6 million
mines in northern France.

14. The Atlantic Wall!

15. The Plan


Winston Churchill and
Franklin Roosevelt
agreed it was time to
open up a new front in
the West through the
beaches of France
The obvious choice for a
landing area was the Pas
de Calais so the Allies
decided to attack in
Normandy instead but
believed they had to
deceive the Germans they
intended to attack
elsewhere

16. Normandy It Is!


Normandy is
a peninsula
on the French
Coast
It was chosen
because the
Germans
expected the
attack to be
on the Pas de
Calais

17. The Time Has Come



On the evening of
June 5th paratroopers
dropped in to secure
bridges for the allied
advance
Heavy bombers
dropped their
payloads on what
was supposed to be
the beach defences
In the early morning
the largest armada of
ships left Britain for
the French coast

18. The Criteria
1.
2.
3.
4.
The enemy must remain
ignorant of the
proposed landing site
The enemy must be
prevented from
bringing up
reinforcements quickly
once the allies landed
Complete Allied air and
naval superiority in the
English Channel
Local defences must
largely be destroyed by
air and sea
bombardment

19. Operation “Overlord”

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
There would be five
sectors that would
be attacked:
Utah – American
Omaha – American
Gold – British
Juno – Canadian
Sword - British

20. The Attack – June 6th, 1944

21. Animated Map: Operation Overlord

22. The Canadians on D-Day



Of the nearly 150,000 Allied
troops who landed or
parachuted into the
invasion area, 14,000 were
Canadians
The Royal Canadian Navy
contributed 110 ships and
10,000 sailors in support of
the landings while the
R.C.A.F. had helped
prepare the invasion by
bombing targets inland
Canadians suffered 1074
casualties, including 359
killed.

23. The Battle for Normandy




For the first month following the
D-Day landings, a stalemate
developed during which the
Allies built up their forces
In July Canadian troops helped
capture Caen and then turned
towards Falaise where they
aimed at joining an American
advance from the south to
encircle the German forces in
Normandy.
By August 21, the Germans had
either retreated or been
destroyed between the
Canadian-British and American
pincers
The ten-week Normandy
Campaign cost the Canadians
alone more than 18,000
casualties, 5000 of them fatal.

24. The Liberation of Northwest
Europe



September 1944 the British
captured the Belgian port of
Antwerp
It was a key victory for the
allies because they
desperately required its
docking facilities to bring in
supplies.
The problem was that the
Germans occupied both banks
of the 70-kilometre long
Scheldt River estuary linking
Antwerp to the sea.
•Realizing the value of Antwerp to the Allied supply line, the 2nd
Canadian Army under the command of Lieutenant-General Guy Simonds
was assigned to the task of securing the Scheldt Estuary

25. Liberating The Scheldt Estuary



The Battle of the Scheldt, was a series of military operations which took place
in northern Belgium and southwestern Netherlands from October 2 to
November 8, 1944
By September, 1944, it had become urgent for the Allies to clear both banks of
the Scheldt Estuary in order to open the port of Antwerp to Allied shipping,
thus easing logistical burdens in their supply lines stretching hundreds of
miles from Normandy.
The British captured Antwerp on September 4th, 1944 but the Germans still
controlled the Scheldt Estuary making the port useless

26. The Scheldt Con’t




After five weeks of difficult
fighting, the First Canadian
Army with support from
other countries was
successful in securing the
Scheldt Estuary
It took numerous
amphibious assaults,
crossing of canals, and
fighting over open ground.
Both land and water were
mined, and the Germans
defended their retreating line
with artillery and snipers.
The Allies finally cleared the
port areas on November 8,
but at a cost of 12,873 Allied
casualties (killed, wounded,
or missing), half of them
Canadians.

27. The Battle of the Bulge



The Ardennes Offensive
known to the general public as
the Battle of the Bulge, started
on December 16, 1944
Three powerful German
armies plunged into the semimountainous, heavily forested
Ardennes region of eastern
Belgium and northern
Luxembourg.
Their goal was to reach the
sea, trap four allied armies,
and impel a negotiated peace
on the Western front.

29. The Battle of the Bulge



Thinking the Ardennes was
the least likely spot for a
German offensive the line
was thin with American
manpower concentrated
north and south of the
Ardennes.
Even though the German
Offensive achieved total
surprise, the American troops
did not give ground without
a fight
Within three days the
Americans, assisted by the
arrival of powerful
reinforcements insured that
the Germans would not
achieve their goal.

30. Battle of the Bulge Outcome






The German losses in the
battle were critical
The last of the German
reserves were now gone
The Luftwaffe had been
broken
The German Army in the
West was being pushed back.
Most importantly, the Eastern
Front was now ripe for the
taking and the German Army
was unable to halt the Soviets
German forces were sent
reeling on two fronts and
never recovered.

31. The Final Days



In April 1945, the battle is
coming to a close.
On the 30th April, Hitler
commits suicide together
with his mistress Eva
Braun hours after they
were married.
Hitler gave strict orders
for his body to be burned,
so that his enemies
wouldn't do what they
had done to Mussolini,
who was publicly
displayed hanging upside
down.

32. The Soviets Arrive – Berlin Falls


By 2 May, the Reichstag,
the old German
parliament falls and
Berlin surrenders to
Marshall Zukhov, who
receives the honour of
being the conqueror of
Berlin.
The battle for Berlin cost
the Soviets over 70,000
dead. Many of them died
because of the haste with
which the campaign was
conducted.

33. VE-Day



The major Allied ground
offensive from the west
against German territory
began on 8 February 1945
In April, Canadian troops
liberated most of the
Netherlands
The Germans formally
surrendered on 8 May 1945,
known as Victory-in-Europe,
or ‘V-E’ Day

34. Hiroshima and Nagasaki



Following FDR’s death,
Harry Truman becomes
President of the United
States
Truman decided to use
the bomb on Japan
because he believed that
it was the only way to get
the Japanese to surrender
and save American lives
On August 6th, 1945 a lone
B-29 Superfortress called
the Enola Gay by its crew
took off and headed for
Hiroshima

35. Fat Man and Little Boy




At 8:15am the atomic bomb
nicknamed “Little Boy” was
dropped on Hiroshima
Within seconds two thirds
of the city was flattened and
thousands were dead
On August 11, a bomb
called “Fat Man” was
dropped on Nagasaki at
11:02 am
At noon, August 15th, 1945 –
Emperor Hirohito spoke
directly to his people to tell
them Japan had
surrendered

36. Why Did the Allies Win?
 Complete material superiority – weapons
etc.
 More soldiers
 Better Strategy
 Technology
 Morale
 Material and financial Wealth