Modern Era · Europe · War

1944

D-Day: Normandy landings

June 6, 1944

At dawn, one hundred and sixty thousand American, British, Canadian, and other Allied troops stormed ashore on five Norman beaches through barbed wire, machine-gun fire, and concrete bunkers, in the largest amphibious invasion in history. By nightfall a beachhead was secured at a cost of ten thousand casualties. Eleven months later the Third Reich was rubble.