American History: World War Two Continues with the D-Day Invasion in Normandy

15 June 2011

Some of the first assault troops to hit the Normandy, France beach on D-Day, June 6, 1944

STEVE EMBER: Welcome to THE MAKING OF A NATION -- American history in VOA Special English. I'm Steve Ember.

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On June fifth, nineteen forty-four, a huge Allied force waited for the order to invade German-occupied France. The invasion had been planned for the day before. But a storm forced a delay.

At three-thirty in the morning, the Allied commander, General Dwight Eisenhower, was meeting with his aides. The storm still blew outside the building.

General Eisenhower and the other generals were discussing whether they should attack the next day.

A weatherman entered the room. He reported that the weather would soon improve. All eyes turned toward Eisenhower. The decision was his. His face was serious. And for a long time he was silent. Finally he spoke. "Okay," he said. "We will go."

And so the largest military invasion ever known, D-Day, took place on June sixth, nineteen-forty-four.

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The German leader, Adolph Hitler, had known the invasion was coming. But he did not know where the Allied force would strike.

Most Germans expected the Allies would attack at Calais. But they were wrong. Eisenhower planned to strike along the French coast of Normandy, across the English Channel.