June 6th, 1944, a gray day breaks over the Channel,
revealing an awe-inspiring sight.

Never had such an armada
been seen in the history of mankind.

On board 7,000 vessels, 130,000 men crossed the stretch of sea
with air cover from 20,000 planes.

At dawn, after a hail of fire,
the men would land on the coast of France.

Twenty thousand of them
would also arrive by air.

10,500 Allied soldiers
would be lost on that day and almost as many Germans.

Eleven weeks later,
Paris would be liberated and the road to Berlin opened wide.

This film will tell from the viewpoint
of both Allies and Germans, this epic tale from its planning
in Britain launched in January 1944 until its outcome in the summer.

With the US generals: Dwight Eisenhower, Omar Bradley, British Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, and all the anonymous heroes
who took part in the landings.

Not to mention men like Sergeant Grant,
who risked their lives filming it.

They all participated
in this staggering event, which, contrary to legend,
was no victory march.

December 1st, 1943, the Tehran Conference, three heads of state
had just made a key decision.

The satisfied-looking Joseph Stalin, supreme leader of the Soviet Union
and its armies at the top of the steps.

Lower down, the concerned-looking
British Prime Minister Winston Churchill.

For two years, Stalin, Churchill,
and US President Roosevelt had been struggling to reach an agreement
on the invasion date in Western Europe.

The outcome of the war
and of the world would depend upon it.

From the moment his country entered
into the war with Germany in June 1941, the Soviet leader had been demanding
the opening of a second front in the West to relieve the pressure on his troops
alone against Hitler in the East.

Meanwhile, influenced by Churchill,
who feared attacking Germany head-on, the Anglo-Americans
had vainly hoped to weaken the Axis by passing through North Africa in order to invade
southern Europe via Italy.

However,
they were stopped short near Naples and were unable to advance
any closer to Germany.

For a long time, Roosevelt was hesitant.

He didn’t think his country was ready
enough for such a huge operation.

However, he now wanted to put an end
to the Third Reich as soon as possible and to do so in the West.

He also hoped to cooperate
with the Soviets after the victory.

Churchill could only resign himself to it.

Since the United States
had entered the war in 1941, Hitler had feared an invasion of the German-occupied
West Coast of Europe.

In 1942,
he began planning a gigantic operation: the construction of the Atlantic Wall, a continuous line of fortifications
running almost 4,000 miles, from northern Norway
to the Spanish border, despite the fact that most Germans
believed the Allies would try to land in the Calais region,
only 25 miles from the British coast.

The German authorities,
therefore, requisitioned thousands of men, free laborers, Frenchmen
in the Compulsory Work Service, refugees, Jews, and prisoners of war,
to carry out this outrageous project, which would require
13 million tons of concrete.

As 1943 drew to a close, Fortress Europe
seemed to be firmly in German hands.

On January 15th, 1944, having been handpicked by Roosevelt
to lead the landings, Ike Eisenhower arrived in London
to plan Operation Overlord.

In effect, the stage is being set for the beginning of the great
and crucial test all over the world.

I am completely confident
that the soldiers, sailors, and airmen and all the civil populations
of the United Nations will demonstrate once and for all
that an aroused democracy is the most formidable
fighting machine that can be devised.

A few days later, Eisenhower
introduced his team to the press.

As an American supreme commander,
his second needed to be British.

He, therefore, appointed as commander
of the Allied ground forces, General Montgomery, alias Monty, hero of the desert campaign
in North Africa against Rommel and much loved by his compatriots.

The military leaders had their plan,
but it had to remain top secret.

Hence, the best pose in front
of an illegible, faded map.

As always,
Monty tried to grab the limelight as he paid more attention to the cameras
than to his colleagues’ phony gesturing.

In truth, despite all this tomfoolery, the leaders had already chosen France
for the landings, but Normandy
rather than the Calais region.

Because although the Normandy beaches
were farther from Britain, they were less well-defended.

The invasion was planned for spring,
between Ouistreham and Carentan, at the foot of the Cotentin Peninsula.

However, Montgomery
wanted to widen the front line to Caen so as not to get stuck
in a small perimeter along the beaches.

He also wanted to extend
the front farther west to get closer
to the deep water port of Cherbourg, which the Allies would need to seize in order to ensure
the logistics of a huge army.

Secrecy was paramount
if they were to succeed.

The Germans needed to be kept totally
in the dark about the Allies’ plan.

Early in 1944, they were still unsure of where exactly
the landings would take place.

This was another reason to start spinning
the big wheels of propaganda.

[foreign language spoken audio] Eisenhower’s arrival in London
nevertheless confirmed Hitler’s fears of an invasion in the West.

In 1942, he had appointed
one of his most brilliant generals, the popular Erwin Rommel,
to the rank of field marshal.

After commanding the Afrika Korps, the so-called “Desert Fox” had thwarted
the British time and time again, so it was only natural for the Führer
to entrust this energetic soldier with reinforcing the defenses
of Fortress Europe.

By early 1944, Rommel was in France.

With the Nazi Air Force
stationed in Germany to counter Allied bombing raids, he was unable to use it in Normandy.

The theatre of war
would be the land and the beaches, which he considered badly defended.

Rommel wanted to fill in the gaps between fortified towns
with a continuous line of defense.

He also asked for the coast
to be more heavily mined.

However,
one mine is a mere drop in the ocean when you consider
that from Calais to lower Brittany, France has 750 miles of coastline.

Rommel’s new energy was little cause
for concern for Eisenhower because for months,
the British and Americans had been building artificial ports, which meant they didn’t have
to immediately capture a real port and had the flexibility
to choose their point of attack.

The Allies were not put off
by this titanic task.

These huge concrete caissons,
called “Phoenixes,” would one day
be towed off the Normandy coast, where they would be sunk
to form the first breakwaters.

As would these floating docks
where tons of material and thousands of men would be unloaded
once moored to the immense steel pontoons providing access to the beaches,
whatever the level of the tide.

A gigantic life-sized construction toy
devised in the ports of Britain.

In Britain, training exercises continued.

British and Americans
used all available means, even though, once again,
it was all for the cameras.

Synchronized swimming and pyrotechnics
were the order of the day.

Material and equipment were also tested.

Anti-mine tanks to clear the beaches,
matting to cross the sand more easily, gymkhanas on wavy artificial roads to get used to these new Jeeps
from America, not to mention
these new Churchill crocodiles flame-throwing tanks,
which would reduce to ashes anything that had been missed
during bombing raids.

The Allies had already lost several
hundred men in exercises in Britain.

Why choose such an extreme site
in the deepest Cornwall? Despite the fact
that the British Fourth Commando Brigade was a battle-hardened unit, because every type of topographical
scenario had to be envisaged.

It’s a well-known fact
that the Americans never go into battle if the balance of power
isn’t in their favor.

Hailing from Utah, Kansas, Ohio, Kentucky, how many of these young men had any idea of where Britain and France
were on the map? How many of them suspected what lay
in store on the beaches of Normandy? In February 1944, over 800,000 US servicemen
were already in Britain, with more and more set to arrive.

Straight away, a taste of home
offered by British servicewomen: The inevitable donut.

A first sign of sweetness,
but maybe more if things should heat up.

America continued
to bring across its material, such as its Sherman tanks, designed to match the fearsome Panzers
of the German Army.

While pubgoers
in small gray towns of England discovered these new P-38 bombers whose flying range
outclassed that of British planes.

It wasn’t always easy to make way
for these new arrivals who had to be housed somewhere, even if it meant
moving out entire families as tearful children looked on.

Stereotypes were strengthened
between the “poor old British bloke,” and his “spoiled cousin” from America, notably because his rations
were far superior to anything his British host had to eat.

Good relations
were nonetheless established, like here in the seaside resort
of Blackpool, where US servicemen relaxed when off duty,
much to the delight of the local girls and probably to the dismay
of their absent husbands off fighting the war.

Never in the history
of His Majesty’s realm had there been so many divorces and illegitimate children
born as during that period.

However, wartime is wartime
and long live British girls.

Fraternization was the order of the day, and it certainly looks as if everything
was going according to plan.

However,
there was more than jiving to win hearts.

General Eisenhower
had always respected his allies.

In March, he visited the prestigious
Military Academy of Sandhurst, where young Winston Churchill had studied and where Ike was firmly intent
on telling the young cadets what would be expected of them.

You young men have this war to win.

It is up to you, men, to give your units,
whether it is a tank crew, a platoon or it becomes a company, leadership every hour of the day,
every day of the week.

You must know
every single one of your men.

It is not enough that you are the best soldier
in that unit.

That you are the strongest, the toughest, the most durable, and the best equipped, technically.

You must be their leader,
their father and mentor.

Then you will be doing your duty, and you will be worthy
of the traditions of this great school and of your great country.

These young Brits
were all in their early 20s as Ike addressed them
with his habitual human touch, knowing that some of them
would soon lose their lives, fighting for a country
that had spent the past four years proudly resisting the Nazis.

In that same month of March,
as D-Day approached, it was Churchill’s turn
to attend a life-sized training exercise of a US paratrooper unit
in the presence of Ike himself.

British newsreel producers also decided
to go the whole hog with onboard cameras.

If it weren’t for the cigar,
you’d think this was the real thing.

The guy with the cigar
even has his own camera and a smile to boot.

A number of filmmakers would later use
the footage of this training exercise to represent the first US
paratroop landings in Normandy, never filmed in reality.

More importantly, Churchill
was now totally behind Operation Overlord, despite his initial reticence.

While the Allies were united
and grouped in Britain, Hitler was far from operations
in his Eastern HQ, close to the Soviet front, where he still continued to divide,
to rule.

In the West, he split the German command
between Marshal von Rundstedt, chief of the Western Front, and Marshal Rommel,
chief of coastal defense.

However, the two men disagreed.

Von Rundstedt wanted to keep
his armored divisions inland so they could converge on precise zones
after the Allies had landed.

Rommel believed
that British and American aviation would paralyze German troop movements.

He, therefore,
wanted to bring the armored divisions as close as possible to the coast to confront the enemy
as they were landing.

However, his wishes were rejected.

He, therefore,
focused on protecting the beaches and installing anti-tank obstacles.

They also set up
anti-landing craft barrages and chevaux-de-frise
built from old railroad tracks, making any advance almost impossible.

He even altered the terrain to impede the landings
and movements of paratroopers.

When possible, the Germans intentionally
flooded land just inside the coast.

Devon, in southwest England.

The American infantry: training for a beach landing
at the foot of a cliff where the enemy might be stationed.

The first thing to do is establish a beachhead
beneath a cliff face to set up a radio link
for those following the assault wave.

Dig in to create shelter, but to save your skin
from enemy fire, young soldier, you’ll need to show
a little more enthusiasm and wait for the right moment
to collect your equipment, and attend to the wounded.

What if on D-Day, it’s impossible
to dig in on a pebble beach? If a low tide
were to mean staying undercover, unable to reach the wounded, like on the future Omaha Beach
so similar to this one in Devon, but where the Americans
would lose 3,000 men.

The reason this beach so closely resembles
the one the GIs would land on is because the Allies
knew exactly what to expect.

For weeks,
often held by the French resistance, faced with severe repression, the Allies had access to thousands
of photos of the German defenses.

Whether protected or not, the entire Channel coast
had been studied with a fine tooth comb.

Everything had been spotted and noted.

All intel, collected and analyzed, was integrated
into the Allied plan of attack.

Still, of course, top secret.

Except perhaps for the tons of information
made available to the Germans, or rather, disinformation.

For months, the Allies had been spoon-feeding
the enemy with false information to lure them to different landing sites, notably in the Calais region.

Over in Britain, the ploy continued
with the installation of phony airfields just across from the Calais coastline, where fields of inflatable aeroplanes
sprang up.

While elsewhere in the south of England, where the majority
of troops were assembled, supplies, arms, and munitions
were kept well camouflaged.

By the month of May,
it was no longer possible to conceal the enormity
of the means being deployed.

Hundreds of thousands of men
were now grouped into various camps to bring them closer
to their embarkation points and to isolate them from locals
in order to avoid leaks.

One, two! Out, back! Come on, out, back! Officers concerned about keeping up
the morale of their troops went easy on the usual
disciplinary requirements.

At this RAF squadron, for example, they decided not to clip the wings
of its pilots before they would fly off to crush the German eagle
in the heart of the Normandy countryside.

Amongst all these men,
and forever unseen, of course, were those who filmed the events, those we never see: students of the British Army Film School
and all volunteers entrusted with capturing
the preparations for posterity.

The youngest among them,
20-year-old Desmond O’Neill.

He was intent on covering D-Day.

Like his colleagues,
he had been made a sergeant, the ideal rank to stay close to the men.

“My camera was welcome,
it distracted them,” he would say later.

On May the 27th, his fellow soldiers
were introduced to a new currency, the French francs printed by the Allies, much to the anger
of General Charles de Gaulle.

He saw it as a breach
of French sovereignty, since only France should be allowed
to print or mint its money.

For the moment,
he was kept out of the loop and had little idea
of what was being planned.

“These men knew
they had a good chance of being killed,” “and that created a strange mood,” O’Neill would remark.

Another Army cameraman
was 27-year-old Sergeant Ian Grant.

Always wearing his Scottish beret, he had chosen the film corp
to escape from chores and to immortalize his brothers in arms.

On May 31st,
Grant filmed them receiving the booklet, informing them about the country
they would soon be invading.

“It was in that camp that we first
found out our target was Normandy,” he would say later.

He also filmed the few extra rations
being handed out to the men as they were readying to face the worst, for it was now a matter of days.

On June the 1st, Norman Clague, a cameraman
who sadly left us only his clapperboard, filmed the final instructions
given to his company.

He filmed from above
as if he were already taking risks.

It was so as not to reveal
where his fellow soldiers would be landing.

Even they had little idea
where in Normandy Ouistreham was.

Everything was still top secret, the reason they had been kept
in perfect isolation for the past two weeks.

From now on,
the cards had been dealt for Clague and his fellow cameramen
as they headed to the ports and the start of their great adventure.

The US Army was perfectly equipped.

With 1.

5 million men,
there were more American servicemen in the south of England
than their British counterparts were.

In early June, hundreds of thousands
of men left their camps before the locals who had gathered
to see off their new heroes.

All were heading
to their various embarkation points, 19 ports on the south coast of England.

While British troops embarked in the east,
American GIs embarked in the West.

The next time they would leave
these ships would be to land.

The Canadians under British command
and the third biggest Allied force provided 21,000 men.

The reversing of 20,000 vehicles
into the holds of the ships so they could drive onto the beaches
as quickly as possible was a remarkable task in itself.

Not to mention the thousands of tonnes
of supplies that had to be transported over those first two days.

To give every chance
of success to his invasion plan, Eisenhower had taken into account
several parameters, notably the combination of a night
with a full moon for maximum visibility, and a half tide at dawn for the landings.

In the month of June,
only the 5th, 6th, or 7th would do.

To catch the enemy by surprise,
the earlier in the day, the better.

Ike decided the landings
would take place on June the 5th.

However,
in the days leading up to the 5th, the weather worsened.

On June the 4th,
as the ships based in the north of England were heading for the Channel,
a violent storm broke.

It forced Eisenhower
to call back all the ships, which had already set sail.

Operation Overlord was under threat as any movements carried out so far
might have alerted the Germans.

Day and night, Ike and his team stayed in constant touch
with the Weather Office.

However, the news wasn’t good.

The forecast was poor
for the next fortnight.

That would spell disaster.

The men would need remotivating and the full campaign
would be shortened by two weeks.

In the ports where Eisenhower
had to delay the departure, the wait became unbearable
as landing crafts circled and circled like crocodiles in a waterhole.

On that day, June 4th, Desmond O’Neill was at work
among fellow Brits of the 3rd Division in a wind
that didn’t look like letting up.

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