Wartime Diplomacy and D-Day

Learning Objectives

  • Describe wartime diplomacy between the three Allied leaders
  • Discuss the events surrounding D-Day

Despite the fact that a Japanese attack in the Pacific was the catalyst for America’s entrance into the war, Roosevelt had been concerned about Great Britain since the beginning of the Battle of Britain. Roosevelt viewed Germany as the greater threat to freedom. Hence, he leaned towards a “Europe First” strategy, even before the United States became an active belligerent. That meant that the United States would concentrate the majority of its resources and energies in achieving a victory over Germany first and then focus on defeating Japan. Within Europe, Churchill and Roosevelt were committed to saving Britain and acted with this goal in mind, often ignoring the needs of the Soviet Union. As Roosevelt imagined an “empire-free” postwar world, in keeping with the goals of the Atlantic Charter, he could also envision the United States becoming the preeminent world power economically, politically, and militarily.

Wartime Diplomacy

Franklin Roosevelt entered World War II with an eye toward a new postwar world, one where the United States would succeed Britain as the leader of Western capitalist democracies, replacing the old British imperial system with one based on free trade and decolonization. The goals of the Atlantic Charter explicitly included self-determination, self-governance, and free trade. In 1941, although Roosevelt had yet to meet Soviet premier Joseph Stalin, he had confidence that he could forge a positive relationship with him, a confidence that Churchill believed was born of naiveté. These allied leaders, known as the Big Three, thrown together by the necessity to defeat common enemies, took steps toward working in concert despite their differences.

A photograph shows Winston Churchill and President Roosevelt seated outdoors in chairs, convening over papers, with a row of officials standing behind them.

Figure 1. Prime Minister Winston Churchill and President Roosevelt met together multiple times during the war. One such conference was located in Casablanca, Morocco, in January 1943.

Through a series of wartime conferences, Roosevelt and the other global leaders sought to come up with a strategy to both defeat the Germans and bolster relationships among allies. In January 1943, at Casablanca, Morocco, Churchill convinced Roosevelt to delay an invasion of France in favor of an invasion of Sicily. It was also at this conference that Roosevelt enunciated the doctrine of “unconditional surrender.” Roosevelt agreed to demand an unconditional surrender from Germany and Japan to assure the Soviet Union that the United States would not negotiate a separate peace, and to prepare the former belligerents for a thorough and permanent transformation after the war. Roosevelt thought that announcing this as a specific war aim would discourage any nation or leader from seeking any negotiated armistice that would hinder efforts to reform the defeated nations.

Stalin, who was not at the conference, affirmed the concept of unconditional surrender when asked to do so. However, he was dismayed over the delay in establishing a “second front” along which the Americans and British would directly engage German forces in western Europe. A western front, brought about through an invasion across the English Channel, which Stalin had been demanding since 1941, offered the best means of drawing Germany away from the east.

At a meeting in Tehran, Iran, also in November 1943, Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin met to finalize plans for a cross-channel invasion.

The Invasion of Europe

Campaigns in North Africa and Italy

Preparing to engage the Nazis in Europe, the United States landed in North Africa in 1942. The Axis campaigns in North Africa had begun when Italy declared war on England in June 1940, and British forces invaded the Italian colony of Libya. The Italians had responded with a counteroffensive that penetrated into Egypt, only to be defeated by the British again. In response, Hitler dispatched the Afrika Korps under General Erwin Rommel, and the outcome of the situation was in doubt until shortly before American forces joined the British.

Although the Allied campaign secured control of the southern Mediterranean and preserved Egypt and the Suez Canal for the British, Stalin and the Soviets were still engaging hundreds of German divisions in bitter struggles at Stalingrad and Leningrad. The invasion of North Africa did nothing to draw German troops away from the Soviet Union. An invasion of Europe by way of Italy, which is what the British and American campaign in North Africa laid the ground for, pulled a few German divisions away from their Russian targets. But while Stalin urged his allies to invade France, British and American troops pursued the defeat of Mussolini’s Italy. This choice greatly frustrated Stalin, who felt that British interests were taking precedence over the agony that the Soviet Union was enduring at the hands of the invading German army. However, Churchill saw Italy as the vulnerable underbelly of Europe and believed that Italian support for Mussolini was waning, suggesting that victory there might be relatively easy. Moreover, Churchill pointed out that if Italy were taken out of the war, then the Allies would control the Mediterranean, offering easier shipping access to both the Soviet Union and the British Far Eastern colonies.

D-Day

A photograph shows U.S. troops in a military landing craft approaching a beach. Ships are visible in the far distance.

Figure 2. U.S. troops in a military landing craft approach the beach code-named “Omaha” on June 6, 1944. More than ten thousand soldiers were killed or wounded during the D-Day assault along the coast of Normandy, France.

A direct assault on Nazi Germany’s “Fortress Europe” was still necessary for final victory. On June 6, 1944, the second front became a reality when Allied forces executed the Operation Overlord plan and stormed the beaches of northern France on D-Day. D-Day, as it became popularly known, was the largest amphibious assault in history. American general Dwight Eisenhower was uncertain enough of the attack’s chances that the night before the invasion he wrote two speeches: one for success and one for failure.

Preparing for D-Day

Several moving pieces had to be put in place before the plan could get underway. First, adequate naval support, and especially transport and landing craft, had to be secured—an especially difficult undertaking given the demands of warfare in both Europe and the far-flung Pacific, where amphibious landings on the Japanese-held islands were frequent. Second, American and British air forces had to work in complete coordination with ground forces, not only placing paratroopers and glider-borne forces on target but also preventing German efforts to move reinforcements and especially panzer divisions toward the beaches. Third, Free French forces, some owing allegiance to General Charles De Gaulle and others not, had to be alerted to the invasion and their support coordinated. Finally, an elaborate campaign of deception was established to convince the Germans that the primary Allied invasion would take place not in Normandy but at the heavily defended and more centrally located Pas de Calais, at the narrowest point of the English Channel.

Appropriate alternative text for this image can be found in the image caption.

Figure 3. General Dwight D. Eisenhower gave his order of the day, “Full victory – nothing else!” to paratroopers before the first assault in the Allies’ 1944 invasion of Europe.

General Dwight D. Eisenhower

Coordinating these factors, many under the control of disparate personalities who had different ideas about how the invasion should take place, took months. The Allied Supreme Commander General Dwight D. Eisenhower, working with British General Bernard Law Montgomery (in command of the invading ground forces) and British commanders of the supporting naval and air forces, finally thought he had his pieces assembled at the beginning of June, but there was one final decision to be made. Because of the tides and other factors, the Allies could land at the beaches of Normandy only on certain dates, but weather reports suggested unsettled weather in early June. In a tense meeting at his headquarters in Bletchley Park, England, Eisenhower elected to gamble on a break in the weather and said “Go” for the invasion on June 6, 1944.

At this critical moment, Eisenhower’s leadership abilities came to the fore. Rather than remaining at headquarters, he made a point of visiting, encouraging, and even joking with the troops assembled to carry out the invasion. He dispatched a message to them declaring, “You are about to embark upon a great crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. . . . I have full confidence in your devotion to duty and skill in battle. We will accept nothing less than full Victory. Good luck! And let us all beseech the blessing of Almighty God upon this great and noble undertaking.” But the general also penned a draft dispatch to be sent in case the invasion failed, taking full responsibility upon himself

Operation Overlord

American and British airborne troops carried out the first phase of the invasion by landing around the coastal villages behind German beach defenses on the night of June 5–6. Although badly scattered and forced to work in small, poorly armed groups, they succeeded in their primary mission of seizing—and, where necessary, destroying—important bridges and crossroads to hold back enemy reinforcements. U.S. Army Rangers carried out a heroic and costly assault against German cliffside emplacements at Pointe du Hoc overlooking Omaha Beach, only to discover that the enemy had already dismantled their heavy guns.

The primary invasion took place on five Normandy beaches, codenamed (from west to east) Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno, and Sword. British and Canadian troops landed at the latter three beaches against weaker-than-expected enemy opposition and quickly seized their immediate objectives. At Utah, thanks in part to airborne support inland, the U.S. 4th Division landed successfully and laid the groundwork for the capture of the Cotentin Peninsula and the all-important port of Cherbourg. Omaha was the most heavily defended and proved to be the most difficult beach to take. American infantrymen suffered more causalties there than all the other beaches combined, but over the course of three days, managed to finally secure their objectives.

A map of Normandy with arrows showing the paths of the 5 invasions.

Figure 4. The D-Day invasion took place on five Normandy beaches, codenamed (from west to east) Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno, and Sword. The landing at Omaha Beach by U.S. troops proved the most difficult.

Beginning at 6:30 a.m., some twenty-four thousand British, Canadian, and American troops waded ashore along a fifty-mile stretch of the Normandy coast. Well over a million troops would follow their lead. German forces on the hills and cliffs above shot at them, and once they reached the beach, they encountered barbed wire and land mines. More than ten thousand Allied soldiers were wounded or killed during the assault. Following the establishment of beachheads at Normandy, it took months of difficult fighting before Paris was liberated on August 20, 1944. The invasion did succeed in diverting German forces from the eastern front to the western front, relieving some of the pressure on Stalin’s troops. By that time, however, Russian forces had already defeated the German army at Stalingrad, an event that many consider the turning point of the war in Europe, and begun to push the Germans out of the Soviet Union.

Turning the Tide

Back in Italy, the “soft underbelly” turned out to be much tougher than Churchill had imagined. Italy’s narrow, mountainous terrain gave the defending Axis the advantage. Movement up the peninsula was slow, and in some places, conditions returned to the trenchlike warfare of World War I. Americans attempted to land troops behind them at Anzio on the western coast of Italy, but, surrounded, they suffered heavy casualties. Still, the Allies pushed up the peninsula, Mussolini’s government revolted, and a new Italian government quickly made peace.

Nazi Germany was not ready to surrender, however. On December 16, in a surprise move, the Germans threw nearly a quarter-million men at the Western Allies in an attempt to divide their armies and encircle major elements of the American forces. The struggle, known as the Battle of the Bulge, raged until the end of January and pushed the front line well to the west in the border region between Belgium and Luxembourg. Some ninety thousand Americans were killed, wounded, or lost in action. Nevertheless, the Germans were turned back, and Hitler’s forces were so spent that they could never again mount offensive operations.

watch it

Listen to General Eisenhower’s address giving the order to undertake Operation Overlord beginning on June 6, 1944, the Allied invasion of France that would help defeat the Nazi regime and end World War II.

You can view the transcript for “D-Day Invasion orders” here (opens in new window).

Try It

Review Question

What did Roosevelt mean to achieve with his demand for Germany and Japan’s unconditional surrender?

Glossary

Big Three: the nickname given to the leaders of the three major Allied nations: Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt, and Joseph Stalin

Battle of the Bulge: the final massive German attack along the Western Front, fought in the border region between Belgium and Luxembourg, that marked the end of the German army’s ability to carry out offensive maneuvers

D-Day: June 6, 1944, the date of the invasion of Normandy, France, by British, Canadian, and American forces, which opened a second front in Europe

Unconditional surrender:  the doctrine Roosevelt pursued that demanded an unconditional surrender from Germany and Japan to assure the Soviet Union that the United States would not negotiate a separate peace.