Not soon after the United States entered World War II and became a core member of the western Alliance, Washington began to consider ways to invade Nazi-occupied Europe, “Fortress Europa.” The pressure was especially high on the Franklin D Roosevelt administration to launch the invasion before the end of 1942.

But two years would pass before an invasion could be launched, with the delay in time being directly commensurate with the scale of the challenge.

Initially, the US military had few troops available to invade the continent. Only in mid-1942 was US Army Chief of Staff, General George C Marshal, able to initiate a buildup of US forces in Britain for the return to Europe. The buildup, codenamed Operation “Bolero” had the twin objective of allowing Marshal to assemble troops in England to justify Washington’s “Germany First” policy while simultaneously silencing the US Navy, which sought greater resources, troops and equipment for the Pacific Theater of Operations (PTO).

However, the British, especially Prime Minister Winston Churchill, were apprehensive about a cross-channel invasion in 1942 or even 1943 – a prospect made all the more uneasy by the disastrous Dieppe raid of August 1942.

The Dieppe action was an amphibious operation by commandos that was to be a testbed case for a cross-channel assault and prove to the Russians and Josef Stalin that the western alliance was serious about eventually launching a second front in Europe. (Carlo d’Este, Decision in Normandy, Chapter 2, Section 13, Para 29). Unfortunately, the landing in northwestern France, led to most of the Allied landing forces being killed or captured.

That failure strained the Anglo-American alliance as the Americans were then forced to contribute troops and resources to what they considered as “sideshow operations” in the Mediterranean Theater that were so dear to Churchill’s heart. American involvement in the Mediterranean was also driven by the US army’s comparative combat inexperience in 1942 (when compared to Great Britain), which meant that the United States had to follow England’s lead, and so the US found itself engaged in various landings and campaigns — in Algeria, in Tunisia, in Sicily and finally in mainland Italy.

US resentment was growing, fueled by suspicion that Americans were fighting and dying in campaigns for the benefit of Britain which planned to re-establish its Mediterranean empire after the war. From the British perspective, the Mediterranean campaign was to remind the world that England was not yet out of the war and capable of hitting back at the Third Reich.

Continue reading “Normandy 1, Prelude to Battle” →