Historically High - D-Day: Part 1 Operation Overlord

Episode Date: May 31, 2023

In 1944 the Axis powers of WW2 occupied nearly all of mainland Europe. With no army to fight on the ground in Europe, the Allies need a plan to take the fight to the Nazis. An operation the scale of which had never been seen and has yet to be seen since. To invade Europe would take more than soldiers putting their boots on French soil, you need tanks, vehicles, ammunition, food, medical supplies, clothes and everything else it takes to wage a war. Not to mention doing all of this and keeping it a secret. Overlord is arguably the single. most important military operation in history. Years of planning went into ensuring every detail was covered and every option explored. It turned the tide of WW2 in Europe and began the countdown to the end of the Third Reich. Support the show Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

What's up, folks? We are here with another fantastic episode of Historically High. We are starting a little bit different today. We're going to cut the chit-chat because this is a big old bitch. We're going to split it into two episodes. First episode this week is going to be... First episode this week is going to be, it's going to be kind of covering everything for Operation Overlord. But because we are coming up on the anniversary of D-Day, we're going to drop it into two episodes. So first episode dropping a week before the anniversary of D-Day is going to be essentially kind of the state of the world at this point during World War II and all the lead-up and what it actually took to pull this thing off. And then the second episode we're dropping on the day before it happened 79 years ago is actually going to be about the day of days, D-Day itself. Yeah.

So we're going to try to keep these a little bit shorter than normal episodes. Hopefully we'll keep it, you know, under two hours for each one. but you'll have some time to digest the first and then we'll jump into the second so get ready strap in we are storming the beaches of Normandy all right man

this is my this is my day of days for this like I don't know how I have I don't know how we haven't covered this I think I've just been holding this one I've been able to scratch my World War II itch a little bit through other topics and everything but this is literally

my jam inside my favorite historical event. And I'm just excited to hear you go off on this one because I know kind of the nuts and bolts of it. I didn't know a lot of the shit that's come out of it. I learned a lot more and I'm sure we'll cross over a little bit. Operation Fortitude, it was like our seventh episode. Yeah. And I had no idea that that even existed.

There's more shit inside what I've learned and I'm sure what you're going to teach me. going to be, I mean, that was just like an appetizer. And it's amazing. We're going to get to a point where we do talk about a little bit about Operation Fortitude and the role that it played. At that point, feel free to go ahead and pause the episode, go back, listen to the Fortitude so you can listen, because I'm going to, we're going to briefly cover it. Yeah, well, I mean, between episodes, just bang fortitude out too. Yeah, so you'll find out as, you know, how extensive that operation actually was. But, you know, this is one of those events, man, that those linchpin moments in history that you can point back to.

And, you know, most people are familiar with this, regardless if you have, you know, a knowledge of World War II. Saving Private Ryan, the opening scene takes place essentially with the storming of Omaha Beach, and we'll get into some more detail on that. Band of Brothers covers it from the airborne perspective about what the airborne operation was during Normandy to draw behind enemy lines. Call of Duty is made. any World War II game.

I'm not getting into that way. I'm just kind of familiarize people with it. You stormed the beaches of Normandy. That's like one of your first levels. That's how you get into Europe. Call of Duty has abused World War II in order to make money. But there's just, you know, this was a different time in and there were different people. Like the experiences and reading about these people and what they did, you know, these were kids too.

That's the craziest part about it. And they were kids that never saw a different part of the world. But before we get into the day, the actual day, let's just kind of cover what it took to actually make that all possible, to make the invasion of Western Europe to take it back from the Nazis possible. Before we even start into the plan, this is kind of one of those things where, like, when you think about military strategy now, it's sort of like we need to try to preserve the lives of the people that are performing this. Like, we don't want to see any casualties happen, like any operation or anything like that. to try to save as many people as possible. Any casualty is too many casualties. Like to the public, I don't think from a military standpoint,

they looked at that way. They know that's kind of... They know that PR-wise, though, they need to keep those casualties down. This whole plan, Operation Overlord, it was like they had accounted for a very large number of deaths. Because just the plan itself in storming the beaches, like even a perfect plan before that happens,

you're still running onto a beach that's already secured, ready to fire on you. Well, and they had experience before. even planning, Operation Overlord, they had experienced and been able to gain some knowledge about seaborne invasions. It was Operation, crap, I can't remember the name. It was the one that took place when after they had kicked the British and the Americans, kicked the Nazis out of Africa, North Africa, back up into Italy.

They took over, they stormed the beaches of Sicily, and they did it with the same type of landing craft. it was a really good way to kind of beta test how successful a seaborne landing and invasion could be. And then at this point in the world, the Nazis, you know, the Nazis still control essentially really all of mainland Europe with the exception of Switzerland, which is literally just right in the middle of like the third right controlled area. And then I want to say Sweden. There was something that Sweden did. They weren't, they were neutral in it. But you never hear, like, when they say we're the Swiss, we're neutral.

You never hear about, like, the Swedish being neutral. But they apparently weren't part of that either. I think the Swedish just kind of give a fuck about themselves, and that's really it. And maybe, I mean, because... They saw what the Swedish people look like, and they're like, we can't touch these people. Your race is already perfect. You already are the Aryan race. As far as what we're concerned, you guys are good.

And then they walked into Poland and they're like, ugh, I can't believe you guys actually have electricity. I didn't think that was real. We're taking you over. Well, the thing, too, is, you know, the actual operation or the actual landing itself took place. I mean, we're talking about pretty late in the war. This is 1944 that D-Day actually happens. Wildly late in the war for what happens.

At this point, though, since Dunkirk, the Germans have had free reign over all of Europe. The British haven't been back in force. They haven't been able to. They haven't been able to muster the strength or anything like that, the equipment to do this. They've made some little raids and everything like that. and they, you know, of course, they're flying missions over there,

and they have a spy network that they're utilizing, and they have the French resistance they're communicating with, but they have no army. Well, and they're still licking their wounds after that failure that Churchill had. What was it? Oh, no, no, that was the first one. You're talking, you're the operation that we talked about during, it'll be a future episode, but Lawrence of Arabia,

the one that tied back to the truth. That was during World War I when he was Lord of the Admiralty. Okay. So he's prime minister at this point. So the only people that the Nazis are fighting right now, the only places they're really actively engaged. So the Eastern Front against the Russians, that's currently still going on. And then also kind of in what Churchill calls the soft underbelly of Europe is where the south of France and Italy are. the allies have taken the southern half of Italy, none of France, but the, and the Italians are pretty

much out of the war at this point. But it's got to the point where if you, you know Italy looks like a penis kind of when you get up into mainland, it kind of curves out into two balls. I think they say a boot, but yeah. No, if you look at it, it looks more like a dick. It looks nothing like a boot. It looks like a dick. Okay. What I'm saying, though, is we've only made it halfway up the shaft. So essentially we're at a choke point We're due to terrain The Germans are able to go ahead And hold the ally advance off

So we have to open another front Right where if you have a slight A lilt To the side of it So we're looking for another way To essentially get into Europe And during this whole time Stalin since like 1941

Stalin is pretty much telling us Hey we're doing the fighting here Like you guys need to open a second front Western Front to try to pull some of the pressure off us so we can actually make some headway and get this thing tied up. Well, hadn't Hitler and Stalin kind of been thick for a little bit

and we're in it together a little and then Hitler attacked Russia and basically was like, hey man, we're buddies, we're buddies and then he attacked Russia. Yeah, they had a... They had a non-aggression pact that they had made and then the whole time Hitler knew he was going to double cross him.

And so as soon as he got Britain out of the way and kind of back on their island where they couldn't cause him any issues on the mainland, he turned in, that was Operation Barbarossa, and that was the invasion of the Soviet Union. And Soviet Union, then, like, the Baltic region, because that was, like, where all the fuel and stuff was coming from. So they'd claim that or gone in to claim that.

And so, I mean, Stalingrad, all this kind of stuff, it happened, all the stuff you hear about, like, all, you know, on the eastern front, that stuff had all occurred up to this point. So, but they've got it locked down. They've got mainland Europe locked down. there's not really a way to get in there. And that's where essentially the planning kind of comes in for Operation Overlord.

You have two phases of it. One is called Operation Neptune. And Neptune is the seaborne invasion part of it. Overlord is essentially the operation itself to establish a foothold in Europe. Just the all-encompassing. Yeah. And I think it ends up taking place over the course of not taking in the planning stages. From the execution, the start of the operation to the end of it, I think was about three months before they considered operational.

Operation Overlord completed. And that was really, like you say, that was, Operation Overlord was just their first step on to basically like mainland Europe. Yes. That was the way to get back to where they needed to be. Let's get there and then we'll figure out what the fuck we're going to do. Like we'll let's not make plans about what we're going to do once we get there

until we can figure out how to actually get there and establish a foothold. Yeah, which is a very smart move because you don't want to overplay the first. You don't want to save all your timeouts for the fourth quarter. You get one shot at this and if it's not successful, I'm not saying you don't get another shot. You asked me a question that if the Germans would have played different hands and things like that, was there a possibility that this invasion would have failed? Yes, but I mean, it would have taken a lot to fall into their side for this to be stopped.

But so many things still went wrong during D-Day. It's incredible to think how many things went wrong and the fact that they were still able to pull it off with. I wouldn't say the speediest of success, but I would say pretty quickly still. Well, yeah. So just kind of, this kind of gives you a scope of how much land is controlled essentially by Germany at this point. So they control Germany, France, the northern half of Italy, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia, Serbia, Albania, Greece, Bulgaria, and Romania. That's a lot of EAS. And then the Allies, we have North Africa, the two islands off of Italy.

I never knew what they were called. It's Sardinia, which I recognized the name. I just never knew where Sardinia was. And then Corsica. I don't know. It might be. But, and then Corsica, and I'd never heard of that before, but yeah, there's two little islands off Italy. So we have control of those.

And then the southern half of Italy. And then part of Spain, right? Spain was just neutral on them? Yeah, Spain never stepped in. Because didn't. That's why they were able to run so many of the rat lines through Spain because it wasn't occupied. by the allies. It was just neutral.

The Spanish never stepped in and took aside. I think if they would have saw the writing on the wall and it was a foregone conclusion, I think the Spanish would have started sucking up to Hitler, even more so,

because I mean, him and Franco were pretty close. Yeah, I was going to say didn't Franco have them come down and help them fight like the Spanish Civil War? Give them an opportunity to kind of help out for training.

So at this point, because Stalin's kind of like, and the United States is in the war, obviously, at this point. and has been kind of sending over and doing things in the Pacific. We've also been a part of essentially, they call it the Anglo, what is it like, the Anglo forces or something like that? It would be essentially the British and the Americans.

The white folks. Yes, the white folks. They're the ones that are basically operating in North Africa and Italy. And Churchill is like, okay, you know, if we're going to go ahead and do any invasion, or when Stalin first comes up to him, he's like, we need to do it. through North Africa and Italy. That's, you know, where the defenses are going to be weakest, the Italians. No one had any respect for the Italians fighting.

And I've never really heard anything about, like, great things. Like, you hear about, like, the fight that, like, the Nazis put up and everything. But you never hear anything about the Italians. Yeah, I think you probably... Hey, get out of our country. Like, was it more like a Scotty Pippin situation or was it more of, like, a Tony Koucaultz situation? I think it was a situation in which Mussolini was not well-like. very early on in the war by his people.

And I think he had a huge portion of the populace and even probably some of the armed forces that were like, eh, we shouldn't be in this. So you think that it was like, it wasn't... It's not the Italians that are holding off the allies in the northern part of Italy. It's the Germans. So, I mean, the Italians have pretty much

as far as like being an army and a Navy, they've pretty much been put out of the war at this point. Well, what did they think? They thought that Hitler was just to be cool with them keeping all of their stuff after like world domination if it happened i think they thought that maybe they would get everything within the mediterranean they would get some of like north africa i mean it was all going to get chopped up but japan wanted a ton of china they were all going to have this area that they lorded over i just feel like hitler double crossed everybody

ever tried to get in bed with i'm sure there would have been something like that yeah definitely he's not going to want to as soon as he creates like the ultimate global empire he's not going to have to have like two other little empires within that yeah eventually he was would have, would end up stabbing them in the back. So that ends up stalling halfway up Italy, just because of the terrain and because of the opposing forces. So that doesn't work. And they can't go in through southern France

because that's the area that's still under the Vichy regime. And although they're not openly hostile or anything like that, if they were to be seen collaborating or not fighting back against the allies when the Germans are still allowing them to exist, wiped out. They would have gotten wiped out. I don't know if they could have at this point because of what the strength the Germans was, but it wasn't, they weren't going to risk it.

No, and I'm sure that that was probably like a, the Germans knew that. The Germans knew that there could be a little bit of. It also had to do with the ability to provide, because a huge key to this is essentially air superiority and having control of the sky. So invading southern France, there weren't any places where they could have airfields that could successfully or efficiently, like, provide the mare cover. They'd have to be launching over the Mediterranean out of certain places in Italy. In the flight time, I think, is too much.

It's not like northern France and Britain where, I mean, the distance right there over the channel at the widest is, I think, like, 60 or 70 miles. Just a hop across. And at the narrowest, it's like 23 miles. Cliffs of Dover to Calais, you can see France from Britain. And that's going to come into play. Very interesting. this, yeah. You still with me?

Questions? Yeah, I just, to me, it makes total sense. Like, Germany would definitely have to keep an eye on Vichy and just around there and be like, hey, we know that you guys aren't pumped to be here. So if you do try to help America, like, A, we're going to wipe you up. But B, we're just going to watch this whole entire thing. Like, there's no collaboration that you're ever going to get with them. And I mean, they're dealing with the French resistance, too.

Did you know two to three percent of the French populace, like, participated in the French resistance? I don't know to what degree. or anything, but there was a, I mean, that's a, if you take the French population and take two to three, that's a lot of people. I can tell you this, if I was a French person that got taken over and then I got all my shit back and they're like, hey, were you a part of the French resistance? I'd look over one shoulder and over another shoulder, but yeah, it was.

100%. I'm glad you guys are back. I'm glad you guys are back. Well, of course. Viva la resistance. So in 43, there's this thing called the Triton Conference. And the Triton Conference, despite the name Triton being the three points, I don't think Stalin could get out of Russia at that time. They met in other places like Tunisia and then someplace else.

I think the three of them met. I can't remember what the name of their other conferences were. Oh, one of them was the Tehran Conference that they all met together. In Iran? Yeah, I think so. So this one is just Churchill and Roosevelt. and they determined during this time that what they're going to do is they're going to plan up, plan to build up their strength.

This took place in 43. They're like, we can't do anything until 44. We're going to start building up our strength for the invasion of France. And at this point, we're already sending stuff over to England. But, I mean, this just ramps it up for equipment and soldiers and everything. At this point, in 43, 42, as soon as, you know, Japan had put us into this war, we knew we were going to be having to train people to invade France. So that's where you get all of the training here in the states.

And then as soon as they have their orders, what, non-star training, training. Transporting people over to England, they do additional training for the invasion in England. They're not told essentially where they're invading or anything like that. They don't want information to get out. It's just, hey, we're just going to start training to be ready to do this. Well, and you just, you have to have everything there. And that's the logistics of a 1940s time. Like, you're going to be able to move a lot.

lot of stuff because you're in wartime. But just like the, I think it was the, yeah, so within five days, they had already transported, like five days after D-Day, they had already transported over 100,000 tons of just supplies over there.

So like you have to be able to build that and ramp all that shit up. It's going to take you a year to get all your rations and everything ready. Just to, yeah, just to build up all the equipment that you're need. Because here's the thing too is, I said this before during a podcast,

but I think the thing that a lot of people lack, myself included, is when someone gives you information, the scope of things. Like how many ships this involved, how many men, how much equipment, not only are you having to plan for something to where we have to first be able to get past the defenses on these beaches, try to establish a foothold in France, but then we have to be completely prepared to repulse any type of, like, here's the deal. like Germany's on the mainland. All of their stuff is already there. They can just push all of it and move all of it to a certain area. There has to be a plan to get so many men and equipment and all that kind of stuff to, first of all, get past the defenses, like I said, but then also to set up positions to hold back any counterattack while more stuff just keeps coming in and coming in and coming in. We can do the surge. We can plan for the surge in three minutes, but it's the replenishments of everything that you need to continue. need to hold and then push forward more. We have to get enough stuff here within a few days that essentially that we can counter anything that the Germans are going to try to push

us back because the only thing at our back is the ocean. We have to go forward. There's not an opportunity once we get a foot hold here to go back. Yeah, we can't just swim across the channel. It's... No, it would be done, Kirk, all over again, except, you know, worse. Not because there was less

men as part of, like, the initial landing, but then later on, a lot more, but, you know, that's exactly what they don't want. They don't want another situation where they have people cut off on in Western Europe and no way to get back, and then that they end up just getting slaughtered. It's, it's crazy to think that, like, you're from, you know, Kansas. You sign up, you train. They're like, okay, we're sending you, where am I going? What, you're going to England? Where's that? Like, during the war, you would know where places were, and then you would hear about other things.

Like, yeah, now you're going to be invading France, being like, I never thought, I was in Kansas a couple years ago, just like getting ready to farm my fields, and now you guys are telling me I'm supposed to jump in this boat, storm the beaches of a land I've never seen before under a hail of bullets, and just like, I just accept that. I mean, I think that they would have been a little bit more prepared than that, just thinking about it because during World War II, I'm sure, unless you were way, way out in the sticks, but even then the army would have had to have come find you either to be drafted or if you went in and volunteered.

Like World War II, and I could be completely wrong about this because I've never actually asked somebody who lived during the time, but that just had to be all of the news. No, no, I'm sure. There couldn't have been much else going on. There was, but what I mean by that is as like a person psychologically being like a kid, Like you're right out of high school. You're 18, 19. And the first thing that you go start to do is you start to essentially train to be in the military.

You know, you go sign up. Most people signed up. I think most people enlisted versus being drafted in that war anyway, in World War II. Oh, because you're coming right off the Great Depression. You're about to get a government salary. It's just the thought to me, that's why I say, like, I think these were different people. Oh, 100% different from today. The way that they were able to just kind of step in and do this.

And, you know, of course, there were circumstances where people had breakdowns and freakouts and couldn't move and were paralyzed by fear. But, you know, once we get into the actual what happened during that day and like the heroism and the individual efforts of people to gather men and try to accomplish missions is it's just, it's crazy. And hopefully we never have to be in a point in our society and our world where we ever have to call upon people to act like that again, hopefully. So to go ahead and actually lead the invasion at this point, they tap Dwight D. Eisenhower, familiar name. A little bit. And appoint him the Supreme Commander. And there was some thought that they probably,

they were like, why didn't they choose? Armstrong, said his name. British guy? Oh, the British guy was Bernard Montgomery. Montgomery. So Eisenhower ends up picking him because it's a joint, U.S. British operation with also Canadians and stuff like that.

He's like, well, I should probably have a Brit as my number two to essentially make sure that they have not an equal say, but essentially to make sure that they have a seat at the table to make these decisions as part of the planning. Britain's not like, what the fuck, man, we've been getting bombed over here forever. Exactly. Like, we don't want to feel like we're being cut out, especially when these are like

half the men know that are doing this are British. Was it Eisenhower that had this success in North Africa? That was Patton. Patten. Okay. So that's kind of the thing is people thought it would be Patton. And they chose Eisenhower because from a political's perspective, he was liked by more people. Patton was a little rough around the edges. Gruff didn't really care if he pissed off people. Eisenhower was presidential, I would almost say. He was. He was pre-presidential.

But they said the thing that Eisenhower could do that he could do better than anyone is he could get people from different backgrounds to come in and play ball, to protest. participate. He had a way of inspiring people to kind of put aside their differences to all work for the common good. So he was appointed. Yeah, Supreme Commander. Then General Bernard Montgomery was in charge of the land forces. So Eisenhower, whole operation, Montgomery, basically formations of the troops, where they're landing, all that kind of stuff. He was he was in charge of that once they got it going. So how they end up settling on Normandy. And, And if anyone wants to pull out their phone, look at a map, the way France is set up between the English Channel, where England is, the closest places we had kind of mentioned where the English Channel was the shortest was between the cliffs of Dover. They're the white cliffs that are pretty famous. And this city called Calais. And Calais was on the coast. I think it's 23 miles between the two. And Calais was like a port town.

So it had a deep water port. deep water ports were insanely important because you had to have a place to be able to offload equipment off of these large ships. You couldn't just roll a big ship up to the beach. It would beach itself and there was no other way to unload equipment unless you were going to ferry it back and forth. It just wasn't efficient to do that. It took too long. You were vulnerable while your ships were out unloading stuff. And so the Nazis knew that an invasion of Europe was an eventuality and that it was coming.

and because they knew logistically what would be required to essentially establish a foothold these port towns like Calais, especially Calais because it was so close to Britain, and then another town called Sherborg, which was essentially further to the west of Calais, and it was on a little, like a little 22-mile-wide peninsula called the Continent Peninsula. But it was a deep port. And it was also a deep water port. It was a pretty large city. And so that was basically turned into a fortress as well.

Well, next to the continent peninsula to essentially the east of that, that peninsula essentially caused kind of a little bay because it stuck out a little bit. And I can't remember the name of the bay, but that area when it came down into the flat bowl part of that bay, that was Normandy. That was essentially the Normandy Coast. It was the Normandy province or whatever they considered that section of Europe. And mind you, this section of Europe, these beaches that they're about to storm, like, years before the war, and probably right up to the war, these were like beach towns. Yes. These were like beach cities in France.

They are now, too. They just got retaken back over to be what the originally were. But yeah, I mean, there are a lot of, like, farming communities leading right up to the beach and a lot of towns as well. Yeah, so you have these beautiful beaches that people are, like, going out and vacationing on that just get turned in. into a war zone and all these little beach towns and everything like that, which were for like vacation, when the Germans came and took them over, they took them over strategically because they knew that they needed to be able to. You already have existing structures, even if they're just houses.

You have places to essentially maybe even disguise artillery or machine gun positions, things like that. But you need to have that front right up against England. Yes. You need to be as close to England as possible to be able to defend all that land. There were a couple operations that took place before Overlord, and they were, I think, in like, 41 or 42. One of them was this, it was called like the DEP raid, and basically it was a British raid on a German position that was like a refueling station for ships or something like that. And it went pretty poorly for the British. It wasn't executed well.

They lost a couple ships and had to end up a... end up getting the fuck out of there, but they kind of learned some stuff from it. So after this took place, and I think there was maybe another smaller raid as well that took place, Hitler was like, okay, I feel like they're kind of, you know, prodding to see what's going on. So with this invasion being imminent from Britain, we need to establish some defenses. And so he establishes what's called the Atlantic Wall. and the Atlantic Wall basically he considered what Western Europe and all of Europe to be what he called Fortress Europa, Fortress Europe. And along the Atlantic Wall that stretched all the way from, where do I have it here?

Irwin was the man that wanted to proceed on the wall, wasn't he? Well, he comes in in a second. So what happens is between 42 and 44. Hitler orders it built, and it spans from Norway to Spain. It was supposed to be not like a wall in the sense of an unbroken, like Wall of China fortification type stuff like fucking Game of Thrones wall. Basically, he wanted to establish, I want to say, over 15,000 defensive positions and wanted it banned by like 300,000 troops.

They didn't have that many troops at the time, and because essentially that was his end goal for it, but it had two years to be built. well so Norway and Scandinavian that whole area not the most hospitable for an invasion just because of the environment all the fjords and everything like that no and it's not a place where you want to roll into because it's a very easily defensed area

like you're talking about with those geographically defensible yes yeah well like you were talking about with those fjords the Germans could hide boats in any of those inlets so if you're rolling in they could have you trapped immediately. Or just have guns sitting essentially at the entrance and you would never even get in there to land. Yeah, once you're past it, you're already right on target. It was 1,670 miles of fortifications. And of course, this is an unbroken line. You have geographic features like cliff sides and stuff like that.

You don't have to build anything on that you couldn't land anyone on any way. But they're essentially building these defensive fortifications. These, they call them gun encasements. They're basically when you see pictures of like German guns. It's the big cement buildings built like around. the guns to house them. Pillboxes, which were smaller concrete bunkers for machine gun positions, just a ton of these, like, even just little single pits in the ground that had machine gun positions and everything over them. Well, part of that, too, was they were going in and they were actually, like, flooding planes and swamps and areas to try to make sure that no American or no Allied force planes

could land or they could drop supplies or anything like that. Yeah, they flooded, they opened a bunch of dikes and everything, flooded pretty much a bunch of like, because the farmers had it set up to where they had canal systems and stuff. Exactly. Exactly. So they had it set where they could do, you know, this wasn't a time when you could see those big metal sprinklers that can go out over a farm field. It was all flood irrigation. So they had the ability to flood these fields to make sure that basically the only places to be able to go through were roads. Couldn't cut a cross-country side. It was more defensible that way. But this Atlantic wall for these two years that it's being built before the invasion,

it's basically like 80 to 90% conscripted workers from occupied countries. It's pretty much like occupied slave labor to build this. Oh, yeah. Well, who, I mean, the Germans of all people have plenty of extra labor that they can use to make this shit happen if they need to. And so eventually Irwin Maramel, because he's been kicked out of Africa by patent and everything, and Hitler loves Rommel for some reason. I mean, Rommel was very successful in everything like that,

but last name's kind of sweet. It is. The Desert Fox was his nickname. That's even a decent nickname. But Hitler kind of holds him in pretty high esteem. So he assigns Erwin Rommel to essentially oversee the completion and the kind of reinforcement of the Atlantic Wall to make it stronger. They know this invasion's coming.

So cities that they think that the allies are going to want to, to get to, they basically turn them into fortresses and then just try to scatter defensive positions kind of along the entirety of that 1,670 miles. Well, correct me if I'm wrong, but Rommel was more of a proponent for the Atlantic Wall. The H-Man really thought that Calais and Sherborg were going to be the areas. He was 100% convinced that it was Calais. So, yeah, he was build the Atlantic Wall, do what you have. have to, but he's like, Calais is where they're going to hit.

Like, all you're doing is making sure, like, secondary attacks can't happen there. They're coming to Calais. Exactly. And part of the reason why he thought it was going to be CalA is because there was this thing called Operation Bodyguard, of which Operation Fortitude was a part of. Operation Fortitude, go back, listen to the episode. But basically, it's a misinformation program that is meant to provide intel and misdirection as to where the invasion is actually going to happen.

One of the coolest military programs I've never. Not only was it like radio transmissions and all that kind of stuff, but they created an entire army called the Ghost Army. And that they actually put Patton in charge of. That kind of served twofold. Well, actually one fold, I guess. Patton, they thought Patton was the one that would be the most likely candidate to lead the invasion. Of course, if they know that he's in charge of this Ghost Army, they're going to go and pay more attention to him. Well, what the Ghost Army was actually made of, as we cover in Fortitude, it was basically this huge project where they would have military barracks and camps set up and tanks and trucks, but they were all decoy inflatable built with wooden canvas.

And it would make it look like there was this massing of troops and equipment in certain sections. And they led them to believe that that was going to be a build up more so on the west, or I'm sorry, on the east coast of Europe, which was closer to Kelle. so it kind of kept their attention to focus there. They basically built a stage show of Army buildup to where these guys were running around. They spent their entire days

making it seem like the Army was getting bigger and bigger and then they spent their entire nights on making noise, driving around to make different like cat tracks and things like that. So when the morning came around

they're like, holy shit, there's a bunch more stuff over there. They moved a lot in that night. Like they're coming this way. And here's the thing too is during this time frame, the German, the, what is it, the Luftwaffe? Luftwaffe. Yeah, so the Luftwaffe, they've been really, like, reduced in strength.

And because the Americans have joined at this point, now all of those planes and everything like that are bolstering up the RAF and the Allies. So, I mean, they have a pretty strong dominance over Britain and then also over the English Channel and sections of, like, Western Europe. So to get like, they're doing this operation too for misdirection everything just on the chance that one of these planes gets through, they intercept a transmission and can see these massing. And I mean, the German, you know, the German Hyke command did end up finding out about this. But they bought it hook, lying and sinker and thought that these were actually troop movements. And so.

Very easily, too. Like, they put on a great show, but it seems like the Germans are like, well, this is what we think and this is what they're telling us. I mean, and it wasn't just what they were seeing. it's also what they were hearing from people that they thought they were their spies that they had within like the ally camp that were giving them information and those spies were then saying like yeah I think it's going to be Kallay and so they thought they were getting this inside info but really it was essentially part of the British operation to be like yeah tell the Germans that this is what we're going to do but it's something that you don't think is a military strategy

but holy shit is it a military strategy well when you have like one shot at this, it's so important that you, you know, you pull out all the stops. There's, there's nothing that you won't do to try to make sure that this is successful. So kind of part of the problem now is we know, you know, the Allies know, we can't hit one of these deep water ports that's completely crucial for us to, you know, be able to ship in supplies and everything. Oh, oh, sorry. Do you think part of choosing Patton to run the Ghost Army? might have played a little bit into, did that come about before Rommel

was kind of introduced as Hitler's number two? Because if Patton beat the shit out of Rommel down in North Africa, maybe Rommel would like want to focus on him more? I don't, yeah, I don't know when... You think it was a head game like that even? I don't think it was a head game. I think that because he did beat Rommel, I think that they thought that he was the Allies number one guy.

Okay. That was going to be taking the reins on any of the big operations. So, I mean, kind of, because he did beat Rommel, I think that gave him the credibility. There wasn't like an act to grind for Rommel, though. I'm sure there probably also wasn't in regards to that, too. I mean, there had to have been, right, a little bit? Yeah. You get kicked out of a country by this guy.

I mean, if you're prideful in what you're doing, you're going to have some feelings. Well, one of the things that Rommel did, too, they placed over like six million mines along the French coast. and like in fields and everything like that behind just, you know, just to go ahead and deter or to essentially hold off, you know, any invasion force. There's no, no better way to do that. Like the way that they had everything set up with those and then with like the blockades and shit that they built on the beaches. Like it's so low tech and seems so simple, but it's so fucking effective. Yeah, I mean on on any of the smaller beaches and everything that they thought that there could be. you know, of course they're looking at a beach and being like, yeah, they could land people here.

They didn't think that they would, but they're like, just in case, you know, they could lend a diversionary force or something. So the main things that they used on the beaches were they used these things called Belgian, Belgium Gates. And they were like, I'm trying to think, you ever see those things that catch trash at the dump? They're supposed to keep trash from blown everywhere. They're those giant, like, chain link windscreens. It kind of looked like that, except at the top. it was kind of angled like in a semicircle and basically they would put them

under the water lines so if any of the landing craft or boats were riding up on them it would tip them over they would also put they had floating mines out in the water too didn't they? They weren't floating but they were chained down to stay in place because if they were floating then they would just travel with the current yeah but I mean like out in the water they did they had

the water was mined around that area and kind of they planted a lot of stuff either They had to differentiate between low tide and high tide because they didn't know what an invasion was going to happen. There, just in that one point, I'm out as a military leader. I wouldn't have thought at all about that, like, where the type would be. Yeah, and it does. And that's what I'm saying.

Like, knowing how it all comes into play and then realizing that that was such a strategic move to pole, I don't think I'd have to come up with that if I had to be in charge. They also would do. It look almost like kind of a tripod with, like, a big stick, like, angling out, or not angling. out angling in toward the beach. Basically the same kind of principle as the Belgian gate. If it was a log, they would drive up on it. It would tip the boat over and swamp it.

Stab in because most of these boats were made of plywood. Yep. Or wrecked the bottom of the boat, rip the hole up and everything. But they would also put mines on these things too, to where if you hit one of them, they would then just literally put a post in the ground and set a mine on top of it.

If you went over that and the boat dropped down and hit that. And then they had, there's the things you always see like, if you're looking at like the Berlin Wall, the what do they call them the hedgehogs. It's the three pieces of metal that are the angles just and they're like, yeah. That's what I thought, when I said blockade, I just saw a bunch of those. Yeah, exactly.

Because you can't get, they rotate and if you try to drive armor up over them, they flip over and yeah, you can't get past them. So basically they have those completely and Rommel's like, let's get a shit ton of these and let's put them all over the beaches and everything to make sure that they can't. If someone's going to try to invade, they can't land any landing craft or tanks or, you know, any type of equipment. So you can't invade a deepwater port because they're all super heavily defended. And this is something I found out why a deep water port was so important. It made sense to me that you wanted to get ships in and unload stuff, but it was also a timing thing. So all equipment at this point had to come that was coming from, you know, the United States or the United States had to go to England. At that point, it had to be unloaded from those ships, waterproofed, put onto landing craft,

then sent across the English Channel to go on to like the beaches. If you had a deep water port, the ship never even had to go to England. It could go directly into onto mainland Western Europe, into France, and they could just unload all of the equipment,

soldiers. They never had to send even soldiers to England at that point. Oh, so they just weren't hitting the middleman. And so it saved that much time for stuff to get offloaded and unloaded on this.

You cut out needing landing craft and all that kind of stuff. It was extremely important to be able to, this whole game is a logistic. thing. It's all about being able to resupply. It's like a delivery from Costco. It is. How many of these battles are lost simply because they don't have the fuel, like

the Germans don't have the fuel to make in advance and how much equipment has to be left because it runs out. Like you don't get like, you got to feed all your troops. You have to be able to fuel and service all of the equipment that they're using. You have to be able to provide them with ammunition, not only for them personally, but for all of the

artillery pieces and all the tanks and all that kind of shit. There was something stupid that I heard I almost dove in on it immediately. I don't remember if it was either 1,000 gallons or 10,000 gallons. They said that it was one of those two numbers was the amount of fuel that you would need

to sustain a full-blown, like, full-going army. It was 1,000 a day, I think, or something like that. It was 1,000 gallons for the tanks that they put out, it might even 1,000, was it 1,000 an hour? I thought it was 1,000 an hour. I think, yeah. So, I mean, that tells you,

and fuel alone, that's one of the hardest things because you're burning through almost quicker than anything else. And it's the hardest to ship because it's so heavy that you're using a fucking ton of people to get it there. It's like backwoods camping. You're not getting anything once you get there. There's nothing. You have to assume there's nothing for you to use. You have to bring everything with you.

So not only are you needing to supply your soldiers, but even in the situation where the soldiers are storming the beaches and the paratroopers that are going to jump out, these guys have to carry equipment for at least three or four days on. on end, thinking that they might be relieved at that point, but not really knowing. They just have to have this stuff to be able to survive for, you know, multiple days during this invasion. There was another one that they were talking about where they said that paratroopers were jumping out of planes with like 100 pounds of shit on them. Yeah, they would have these, and we'll get into a little bit more, but they eventually developed these leg bags that they

would strap to their leg and it was basically a duffel bag that strapped your leg that was an extra like 60 pounds and you were carrying like the other 40 on yourself. Well, they introduced them like right as they were like getting ready to load up without like a lot of testing load guys up on the planes they all the stuff in there as soon as they hit like the prop blasted when they jumped out uh-huh the bags were just ripped off their legs in like almost all circumstances like almost all accounts well is that but at the same time if by some if by the grace of god you land with that and you're say a hundred and forty pound soldier 160 pound soldier your ass isn't carrying around a hundred pounds of anything anywhere for a long period of time no i mean yeah you're At that point, everything, you're ditching pretty much anything that you may think you won't need. Yeah. And just going with that. But, I mean, some guys were jumping out with fucking, like, radios and stuff. Can you imagine how much a radio with, like, batteries and shit would weigh back then?

And light, the light tubes or whatever they were, the random and all that. No, yeah, that's, I just, the thought of jumping out of those planes, the thought of jumping out of a plane now with, like, all the new shit that we have and everything. That's terrifying. These guys were doing it with a hundred pounds strapped to him. Like, what? What kind of mindset do you have to be? And be like, this is okay. I'm not going to die.

Not only jumping out with that, but the whole invention of paratroopers and like jumping out of a plane behind in the lines is still such a new concept that you're like, this is already fucking sketchy enough that I had this big thing of silk over me that's supposed to like deploy and bring me to the ground. But now you want me to just keep strapping on weight? Like at what point is this more, even more unsafe? Well, and more to hear of these people were different point.

probably not a lot of these people had been on an airplane even in their lives. No, there was almost no, the advent of commercial aviation was little to nothing. Yeah, I don't know where it would be. God, yeah, that would be insane. I did hear one thing why people chose to be. One of the reasons why guys would select be the paratroopers is you would make like an extra $50 a month. This is going to sound dark. But my whole thought process behind being a paratrooper is if I'm going to die out there,

I would rather smash into the ground and have it over with and be on the battlefield getting shot. Well, you're also getting shot out in the air. So you have to kind of... But like, if I'm going to die, I'd rather have it be instant than like have some German come over and off me or anything. I feel like I'm in more control, even floating down in the air of my own fate rather than just like charging out of a boat onto a beach. Well, not to mention, we'll get into it probably in the second episode. but the people that were on the ground, you can't have a dummy,

they send a bunch of fucking dummies out of these planes, which is so cool. Yeah. Like, just so brilliant to think of, like, we're going to waste a parachute, but it's going to be another chance that this looks like an actual human that they'll try to shoot at.

Oh, yeah. There's a little, like, caveat to those dummies that I don't know if you read about. Was it when they hit the ground? No. The fact that they didn't have any legs or anything, it looked like a sack of flower. They were only two feet tall.

Yeah, that's what I mean. But because of the distance. and the silhouette and everything like that. And then when they did hit the ground, they had like fireworks strapped to them. So they would make like, like, poppits almost or like black cats to where it would sound like gunfire. So it would attract attention.

So they would assume that that bag of flour that they just threw out there was firing a weapon. So Churchill doesn't like the whole plan about invading Europe. He still thinks that they should pour resources and try to push through somehow in either South France or through Italy. He ends up getting overruled essentially because I think, as far as like equipment stuff goes, the United States is providing the bulk of it and we're thinking Western Europe is probably,

or going through Normandy is going to be the best bet. So the Normandy coast that's selected, this was something also that I hadn't, I guess, looked into too much, is how wide it was. So the entire invasion front, it's 50 miles wide. That doesn't seem that big. Okay, it doesn't, but if you're thinking about that, I always had it envisioned my head when I thought about this is, you know, you have the beaches that are divided up. So within this 50, stretch, there's five designated landing zones. Those five designated landing zones are then almost subdivided up, but the way that they divide them initially through the five landing zones,

you have going from west, nearest to Sherborg and the continent peninsula, going east. You have Utah Beach, Utah Beach, American Plan, Omaha, American. I mean, not American Plan, American troops. American troops. Yeah, American troops. Plan for Americans. Exactly. Omaha, U.S. again. Then Gold Beach, which was British. After that was Juneau, which was Canadian.

And then somewhere... Some were... Yeah, exactly. And then on the far east of the invasion area was Sword Beach. And that was again British. I like how they didn't even give the Canadians their own beach. Like, we know that Canadians are such nice people. Like, you need some Brits over there.

I think it was also a numbers game, too. Yeah, could be. But... Yeah. there, I don't know, you know, you were also needed probably like a connection to British Command and everything as well. So Utah Beach wasn't, they initially were going to try to do this plan the month before. So instead of June 6th of 44, they were going to try to do it in May, Utah Beach wasn't added at this point. I think during part of the planning when they noticed

and they were looking at Sherborg and that continent peninsula only being 22 miles wide, they basically added Utah because it was kind of on the side. of the peninsula. It was separated by a river between it and Omaha called like the Dove River and it was a pretty big gap. But I think they did that and created that front on Utah to try to take that because then they knew that they could cut off that peninsula and then take Sherborg a little bit easier. And that ended up being the plan is after the forces on Utah landed, they had them then cut off the peninsula to where Germans couldn't receive reinforcements and then slowly just work their way toward Sherborg. Well, that was the whole plan with Dede was they had the

these five landing zones, which I have a question. I don't know if you're going to know the answer to. But they had these five landing zones. And then once they hit, they took their areas. And then there would be meetup points where they would basically collect as like, these are our link up points. Yeah. So we're going to have our areas that we go through and attack and clear out.

But then we're going to meet back up. And then the next plan is to go after X city. Yeah. So try to kind of put, kind of try to envision this. So it's the 1940s. So this isn't like road systems, and especially in this area, there's not a lot of main roads, a lot of his like farm country. It's just a bunch of like squared farm fields with like the hedgerows and everything like that. And then not a lot of connectivity between them.

So you have these separate beaches and they're separated by miles. And part of my thought process was when I was looking this. And I think to yours is I thought there was an opportunity essentially that like you could be redirected from one. beach to another. It wasn't like that. No, you had to go pretty far inland, couldn't you? Yes. So you had to be able to establish essentially, and that was part of the whole point of the paratrooper drop. So Operation Neptune was essentially the seaborn invasion to those sectors on the beach. Within each sector of the beach, you would then have little subdivided sector. So at Omaha, there was like Dog 1 or like Dog White, and they were broken up by

color and then certain regiments or divisions or you know the companies were assigned essentially to assault these specific sectors or anything and you would have to then like you were saying you would have to then penetrate inland for at least a mile or a couple miles to the point where then you could link up with the other forces coming in because some of these were separated like these beachheads were separated by like canals flooded fields um in the case of utah on Omaha separated essentially by an entire river. Oh, yeah, that's right. So part of the plan also is, yeah, you have to worry about getting through that initial

Atlantic wall, but then what's going to end up being behind it? How long is it going to take us to get past the Atlantic wall and how much time is that going to give once the Germans know what we're up to to basically bring up all their forces to cut us off and pin us close to the ocean? So the airborne element of it, basically it on the British side over by like Sword and Juno, that was going to be the British Airborne's area. And then the continent peninsula, I'm not sure behind Omaha, but I know behind Utah Beach, that was going to be where the 82nd, 1001st airborne were going to drop. So they would drop like 10, 15, you know, somewhere between like 5 to 10 miles behind enemy lines and would have, specific areas that they would have to capture strategic crossroads towns, bridges to be able to get

across canals and rivers because if they control the bridges, they could stop any type of German counterattack from getting across those waterways. And if necessary, you have to be able to blow those bridges to cut off access from the Germans being able to essentially attack. Yeah, for lack of a better term, they're trying to circumcise off the beach in order to, once they take a over all that. Airborne's going to bomb everything off. They're going to cut off that head so we can start building up. And then when it comes time to either hold them at those spots or take them over, we're built up. So not only were groups of these guys supposed to essentially establish like positions to hold off counterattack, they also had missions behind enemy lines because not just on

the beach, but for miles back behind it, the Germans had artillery positions. And you would, not even to the point where these artillery positions could see the ocean. and they would have spotters essentially that were there on the beaches, or like, you know, looking over the beaches within these bunkers, calling down artillery strikes on these beaches. Everything was pre-sighted. So one thing Rommel made sure they did is any area on the beach could be covered by essentially a machine gun or another gun. You could catch them on a crossfire. There were no safe places on this beach. It's all been pre-sighted.

It's also been cited in by all these artillery pieces that were potentially, you know, hundreds of yards, if not, you know, half a mile or a mile back from the beach. And part of the reason they knew all this is kind of leading up to Fortitude in the two months before the invasion, starting in April, they did over 3,200 recon flights. And they would take these planes and they would strip all of the ammo out of them, lighten them up to where they were fastest shit, put cameras on them and do low area reconnaissance over the entire French coastline. They couldn't just do Normandy. because you would notice if all these planes are flying over Normandy. You have to spread it out. You have to take pictures of shit. You know you're not going to invade that may come in handy later.

So, yep, to fool the Germans, they did this over the entire coast of northern France. They would send these missions out just for willing. They would do the same thing with the pre-bombardment missions for the planes that were trying to take out like radar centers and stuff like that. They would have to bomb all the entire coast just to hide where they were going just to soften up this one target. So through all of these pictures, they also, the BBC, put out a call for anyone that had been vacationing in France. This was fucking nuts. Put out a call for anyone that had pictures of the coast of France. And they think they ended up having something like 10,000.

It was more than that. Way more than that. Submissions of all of these. And they were able to use a portion of them to establish essentially like positions on beaches, possible places where they would put like armaments and everything. So a lot of that information, that's why they were able to plan out and be like, okay, this is where some of this artillery is going to be because of these recon flights and also because they knew strategic positions, high ground things like that.

Well, and it's when you try to bring the public into it, again, these places were beach towns. So there were pictures taken all over everywhere. So not as to say like, hey, there's going to be like military installations in these travel pictures, but we're going to know the ins and the outs. We're going to know the bays, the creeks. I'm sure each one of these pictures had like a specific place that was written down. They were also talking to, they had communication with the French resistance. And so people that were from this area that were within the French resistance were telling them, here's where this town is, here's where this bridge is, here's this position, here's this.

They also had people in the French resistance that were reporting to them troop movements and troop strengths from the Germans. So they were getting all this information to know essentially where the weak points and the strong points were when they were planning for this invasion. So there's so many things being taken to account, which is also why it takes so long to essentially build up into plan. Yeah. Again, we said a year like it was a super long time. There's not a fucking chance.

It was a long time. It was being planned from before a year before this. But just to like for the buildup and everything like that. To pick a spot. It's so fast. Yeah. And I mean, they knew it had to happen. And meanwhile, it's not like we'd.

just paused the fighting during this. We're just, like, we're trying to walk and chew gum at the same time. We're holding them off and having skirmishes in other places while trying to enact this whole thing. Well, and here's the thing. And we're fucking fighting Japan. Yeah. And here's the thing, too, is like, you know, German High Command Rommel, they,

they also had paratroopers. Like, Germany also had paratroopers. They used them during the invasion of France. I think they used them during some of the Russian campaigns. But they knew, essentially, that part of the invasion, would also include an airborne element to it. So, like, in all these, like, open fields, they would put up these, like, sharpened wooden sticks,

and they called them romespragus, but it was, like, that was the German, it was Rommels asparagus. And they also, the Germans had to use gliders, I think, like in Greece and Italy and everything. I had no idea about these things. Gliders are, these gliders are fucking awesome. Like, some of the operations, I have one in here,

that it'll fucking blow your mind. Huh. So they would then, fill these fields essentially with the same type of like stakes except they would put like mines on them to take out these gliders if they were trying to land so i mean they were they were as prepared as they could be at the time but they something came out to say that like the atlantic wall in those areas was only like 18 percent or something like that 18 percent he said something to like two like two weeks before the invasion he said i'm i'm pretty confident that you know our defenses are

sufficient to be able to hold off an invasion if i have two more we I'll change that to supremely confident or something like that. Bro, not if you're at 18%. Yeah. Two more weeks might get you to 20%. Mm-hmm. So, I mean, as far as like the planning, the misleading, everything like that, you know, they've done as much as they can. They start building up, you know, once they realize what the, what it's going to take, the timeframes to get everyone mobilized.

they kind of have to get a date in mind. Well, one thing that's really going to be dependent on is going to be the weather. And you would think... You getting into my guy, Stag? You getting into my guy Stag? So Stag was the British dude, right? Yep, the RAF.

Okay. RA.F guy. So, yeah, so he was the one in charge of the weather operations. And there were some guys, essentially, too, from the United States that were, like, Eisenhower's guys, that were like their meteorologists and everything. So basically to do this, you need not completely calm seeds,

but you need calmer seas. One of the reasons for that is, yeah, you have, like, larger ships bringing guys in. But once you got them to a certain point out on the English Channel, you had to them put them on the transport, like the landing craft boats. These things were, like, flat-bottomed, like you said, made out a plywood and everything. And these, even with the conditions that they actually launched the operation, they still lost some of these things. Because they got swamped, they got flipped over. A flat-bottomed boat is not stable, especially in the ocean. And the reason they had to be flat-bottomed

is because it reduces the draft to the boat. That's how much it sits in the water. They had to get it, and I think these boats end up having like three feet of drafts so they could get almost all the way up to the beach before that front would lower down. But you have to be able to get these guys to the beach, so you need at least somewhat, you know, calm or seas. You also had to have a time when it was high tide.

And they wanted it, they didn't want it at total high tide because it would disguise all of the obstacles in the water and they couldn't avoid them or go around them. Yeah, you're going in blind. But they needed it to, but the advantage of high tide is you're getting your guys that much closer to the defenses. They don't have to cross, you know, this entire piece of land without any cover. Again, the drawback from that is maybe you don't even get your guys to that point

because you can't see any of the obstacles. So they had to wait for a time when they could predict that it would be like the tide was actually midway, but it was going in. so we would carry the boats in more, but you could still see some of the obstacles. So that had to come into play for the date. It had to be a night with a full moon for the airborne drops to be able to have the airborne,

be able to see what they're doing once they go on the ground. And so there were like every month there would be like, or every like two or three weeks, there would be these three day stretches that would like fall into line or something on this. They would have all, if not most of the qualifications. So initially they were going to plan it, like I said earlier for May,

but then they wanted to add Utah Beach on there in that section of it, so they delayed it for another month. And initially it was supposed to take place on the night, or the early, early, early morning of June 5th. So like midnight, 1 o'clock in the morning. And at that point, this is when James Staggs steps up, and he says, listen, there's too much fog, there's too much cloud cover,

seas are too rough at this point. I don't recommend going through this. I think it's going to be, it's going to cause too many issues. You know, this is already going to be difficult enough to pull off. We don't need this kind of weather getting in our way. And the American dudes were basically telling Eisenhower, no, no, no, we got to do this now. If we don't do this now, the next date that we can do this. If we get delayed, it's going to be two or three weeks from now.

We've already got every, you know, all this buildup done. And someone's going to find out about it. And it's going to ruin this, you know, ruin the surprise of this operation. in like typical American fashion when the guy said it the guy that's over there in the Royal Air Force that has flown in this weather and done everything else that's my fucking point exactly like this guy literally lives here and studies this specifically like the channel weather and everything

like thankfully like Eisenhower is smart enough he's like I'm gonna listen to the local dude that probably knows what he's doing here I know how Americans work because they not only said that that fifth would be good But then they're like, oh yeah, no, the storm's hitting on the sixth. So we're going to be like right in the middle of that. So the question is at this point now, you've got the date picked out and everything. How do you, how do you time this thing?

Because it's not like you can just like send in a few things at a time or anything and be like, okay, you're loaded up. You go ahead and take off. Everything has to be ready to go at once. And so on, I want to say they have to start, you know, because they're having to load all of these. craft with equipment, tanks, jeeps, all the guys that they're going to have to load, they end up bringing over somewhere in the neighborhood of between like 100 and, I think they transported 132,000 troops by sea during the initial invasion.

Some of these guys had to be loaded up and sit on the boat for a week. Well, I just, you would have to load these guys up on a boat, put the boat off, you know, off the, or like out of the harbor. and anchor it to bring in another boat to load up more equipment and more guys. So some of these guys were sitting there on the boat for a week just waiting for this to happen. Well, and I'm assuming too, you probably have to, the landing vessels that they took over to Normandy,

they couldn't have driven those the entire one over. No, no, you couldn't know. They were called Higgins boats. And they were loaded onto another boat. They had to get loaded. Exactly. And then once they got to the, stopping point, the invasion point,

it was 10 miles out that they loaded these guys onto these boats and they still had to go through 10 miles of the channel to get there. It was that, that to me, like, just think about that. Like, you're 10 miles out, they load you, you're already like, have you seen like some of the pictures of the boats? Like, where the guys are standing. Yeah.

They're almost like not quite eyeline with the water if they were to look over them, but their heads are barely above it. And this is, I think, what I said to you the other night, I completely undersold the thought of how bad being seasick out there would be. And that little boat just getting thrashed around? Well, not only that, but you get seasick on this 10-mile ride or wherever you are on this landing vessel. You could be as sick as you've ever been in your entire life. And as soon as that front gate stops, I'm sure even before that, you start hearing bullets whizz by you.

So you have to pull yourself out of being sick and feeling like you're going to die already. Not only that, dude. Not only that, when you got close enough to the beach, you probably heard mortars dropping in the water trying to machine gun fire. The entire time you're going in, though, that 10-mile stretch, the Navy is just letting loose behind you trying to bombard this. So you're just hearing naval fire and just these shells whizzing over your head. Just constantly. So there's literally you getting tossed around by the ocean. Guys bumped into you.

guys probably getting sick and thrown up. You got this shit going on over your head, and you know that you're just sitting there. Hoping, firstly, that you make it to the beach because guess what? You're packed down with your however many pounds of equipment, and if your boat starts going down. You're not wearing a light fest.

No. And the other thing, too, is they said that at certain points that there were guys on these landing craft that were bailing water out of the landing craft with their helmets. You use whatever you have. Oh, yeah. I mean, if you're trying to keep that thing fucking afloat,

I'm sure you do. So the buildup to this, they're loading all these guys onto ships. There were 20 different points around Britain that these ships were being loaded up and being sent off from. Because they couldn't have them concentrated in one spot. They would kind of, they would show their hand. So the 20 departure points all over Britain would meet up at this place. They called Piccadilly Circus off the Isle of Wight. And the Isle of White is kind of like a northern point.

It's almost if you're looking at Normandy and you draw a straight line up to Britain. It's an island off the coast of Britain. really close to it. So Piccadilly Circus was basically the meetup point for all these ships. There were over, or nearly 5,000 landing in assault craft on this. They didn't have a huge number of like naval, like naval warfare vessels. I think total they had like five battleships, a couple cruisers and then like a bunch of destroyers.

So they didn't have a ton of like naval support. One of the naval guys was like we should have had a lot more. naval support to bombard the coast. But it still is the largest gathering, essentially the largest collection of vessels for like an invasion or gathering ever. By a wide margin in human history. There were a couple that took place essentially in, I think in the Pacific during a couple invasions that kind of scratched getting a little close, but not to the point where you even

get close to surpassing it. When you have three countries working together to do this, so you have a lot of manpower. And just, like you were talking about needing more military or needing more naval presence and everything like that, you couldn't do it. Because you had to provide the illusion that you could be anywhere, you could be in Calais, you could be in Sherborg. I think part of it too is because you also had some of your Navy down in the Mediterranean. and you also had ships, you know, a majority of the United States ships were over in the Pacific. Yeah, everybody had engagements.

Yeah, exactly. So, I mean, and one of the other things, too, I mean, we touched on the French resistance a little bit. So leading up to June 6th, the French resistance kind of went into overdrive and did a ton of, like, sabotaging phone lines, communication, railways, pretty much anything they could do to cut off communication. and cut off ways to get to Normandy by like German reinforcements.

The French connection in this is so weird. Because right then and there, I mean, we had to have been talking to them somehow. We had to have gotten spies in for them to sort of know the plan. We were able to communicate with Garbo. Yeah. In France and everything. That would be a letter.

But I'm sure we had people. There were, and it's not like missions weren't taking place during the lead up to. overlord. There were a ton, like maybe 30 missions where allied engineers would take mini subs and then

literally like swim to the beaches where they were going to invade, taking sand samples and trying to do like scouting and everything because they needed to make sure that the sand would be able to support the tanks. It's like a geological James Bond. Exactly. And they were trying to go ahead and get a lay of like

where they were putting out defenses, what it would take to clear the defenses for paths for the tanks to get through and everything. So, I mean, they were doing scouting missions. These guys were literally like, just like you're talking about James Bond, dressed in black, like, S-A-S-type shit, where they were, like, crawling onto these beaches to try to do these, like, spy and scouting reports. I do have to take a few real quick, and then I just want to get into, essentially, what the Germans are doing leading up to this.

And we've got to talk about the specialty weapons, too. And we'll talk about the specialty weapons. So fucking funny. All right, well, we take a break from, class and take care of some business. You can also take care of some business. If you don't follow us on Instagram or Twitter already, our Instagram handle is historically high pod.

That's historically high POD. And our Twitter is historically high. That's historically H.I. All right. And back to our show. All right. Back in it. Yeah, the, we'll talk about the specialty ones first,

because then that kind of goes along the side of like what the allies are planning. And then we'll kind of move into what the status and we're, where the Germans are standing at this point, right pre-invasion. We pulled out some shit, and I don't know, I mean, I wouldn't call these exactly like super technological advances. It seems like we just slapped a lot of things together that we're going to be like necessary items and what we were doing. I like thinking about it like that even more. Yeah. The ingenuity to be like, hey, what are we running into and what do we need?

and then just having this guy, Major General Percy Hobart, he's one of those people that he looks at something and sees something that nobody else sees. Yeah, he's redneck art to like, to the max.

So Hobart, he is kind of the inspiration for what will become known as Hobart's funnies. And Hobart's funnies are basically a line of tanks. They're just, they're tank alterations. Yeah.

And so he would take like the Sherman or the Churchill tanks and basically make them available to do like all these other jobs. Like if you've ever seen images or ever heard essentially about the DD tanks, they were tanks. I don't understand the concept behind this. So maybe you can help walk me through this. Okay, a tank is just one of the most insanely heavy things that you would think of, right? If you're going to think of something that cannot float and should not be put in water, would a tank be high on that? List. Rock one, take two. Okay. It's basically just a tank.

Rock is just has, doesn't have gap in it and can't fire a shell. It's made of a different mineral. Yes. This guy developed a tank that had propellers on the back and then had a giant canvas sleeve that extended off the top like a turtleneck and the thing would float. Well, would float and floated are two different things. well some of them okay here's the thing though they worked the situations in which they didn't work were not the fault of the tank itself I'll explain this yeah no no I know where you're getting at the fact that they were launched too far out and that kind of yes but still to call something the Donald

duck and to develop it and what were the numbers it was a direct it was like direct drive it wasn't they called it the Donald DDA but it's like direct drive because it had the two propellers out the back but how many of them actually made it to battlefield? If you're talking about the ones that the British brought in, like on a percentage basis, like 80%, and if you're talking about on the American side, it's literally like 15 or 20%. I thought they said it was on Omaha that it was, they only got like six out of the 30 that

they got like, no, like 47 out of the 62 or something like that sunk on Omaha. That's what I mean. Yes. There was a ton of them that sunk. There were a lot of them that made into the battle. It's not because of the tanks. I mean, okay, first of all, a tank doesn't float. So already you're playing with fucking physics.

You're tickling, you're tugging the tiger's tail. But you also, the reason that they sunk is because they floated, but it's not like a fucking ocean-going craft. And the British that had much more, and when we get into the actual events of D-Day, when we throw some numbers at you, it'll make sense. the British would launch these things at like 3,000 yards away from the beach. The Americans are launching these things at 6,000. A ways further out. And you're like, well, that's only double,

so they should only lose twice as many as they shouldn't lose. No, like the farther you get out, the fucking rougher and choppier and bigger the waves get. So even an extra 100 or 200 yards is going to make a huge deal. But yeah, he designed to sew the amphibious tanks, designed tanks that essentially had this giant cylinder on the front with a bunch of chains. There was a flail. It would just drive along and it would just hit all of the mines

and detonate all the mines to clear a path. And to, I'm sure, a lot of the things blow up, like the hedgehogs and get those out of the way. Get those out of the way or, like, it just chew up barbed wire enforcements and stuff like that. Where we can send men up. They also had almost like cowcatchers on some of them too where they could get next to one of the hedgehogs

and, like, knock them over to the side. if they made it to the beach. Yeah, they just all that kind of shit. They had it, what was it? They called it the Churchill, the A-V-R-E. Like the armored vehicle, something. Yeah. And they took the gun barrel off

and they put like a bigger cannon barrel on it. It was like a snub nose. Yeah. And so it turned it into like a fucking snub-nows that launched like a 40-pound mortar shell. But all it was was to hit those embankments that they had built up and just blow them apart. Try to get, try to launch and get an arc of fire. fire to where they could land behind some defenses. Well, and they're just using them to blow defenses that they know are going to be like impassable.

Like if there's a, not a crow's nest, but if they have like a little pillbox out there that they're firing from, they're just made to like hit those and just obliterate it. Yeah. Not like blow it up, just like fuck it up completely. Or if anything, create a big ass crater that then your troops can use for cover on the beach. If you're firing something 40 pounds that high in the air, it's going to hit the ground and do some damage. Yeah. So we're kind of the Germans are at this point. Oh, no.

Sorry. We forgot about, like, the most important thing that was created during this time, the Mulberry Harbors. There you go. I talked so much about the damn ports, and I had it in my notes and I skipped over it. Okay, one of the other reasons they were able to use Normandy, and one of the reasons that they thought, the Germans thought that they couldn't use Normandy was essentially the lack of a port. So if there's no port there, what do you do, Adam?

You got to bring the port there. Yeah, you bring the port with you. The British developed this thing. They were called Mulberry Harbors. And until I looked into this, really, really looked into this, I didn't realize the scope and the size. Think of a, first of all, what you have to design to make a harbor. If you notice most harbors, like, have a breakwater. It basically slows down the waves and makes it to where it's calm and you're not having to deal with choppy seas.

So when they first got to Normandy, and they were able to storm the beaches, they started sinking some of like the junk ships to create a breakwater to make that water calmer, to be able to send, you can get troops in easier and everything. Build yourself a little coral reef almost at all boats. Part of the Mulberry system was they also brought in these things that were also meant to break the water.

They were these gigantic, it looked like concrete structures. They just looked like concrete blocks, but they were enormous. Looking at it, probably 80, 60 to 80 feet high, maybe 100, 120 feet long, huge just concrete boxes. And they would bring them over and tow them on barges. They started making a breakwater out of those that brought over temper or they brought over portable like pylons that they could sink into the. And then essentially all of these floating platforms.

Like, think of like a dock at a lake. It floats, it moves and everything. now size that out by like a hundred thousand yeah i just it's it's stretched out like looking at it from the beach the way it stretches out it looks like it straight it had to stretch out far enough to where the ships coming into and load this wouldn't drag on the bottom and so we're massive ships yes we're talking about like thousands of yards out from the beach and they basically constructed these two artificial harbors one of them they did at omaha the other i want to say was at gold or Juno and during a storm pretty early on after the invasion, the one on Omaha gets damaged

and can't be used anymore and they have to just use the gold one. But again, man, this is creation. You're basically making it to where you're able to not have to have a port. You're just constructing one portable piecemeal and you bring it over and have it constructed in like a matter of like a couple days. and you're doing the one thing that they said wasn't going to be what you'd need or you were doing the one thing that they said you were going to need

in these specific cities. Which is why they didn't suspect you of landing in this spot. You've created their biggest need to defend so they have no idea where it's coming. And it's, here's the thing is it's a very logical thought for them to have that they couldn't land

and be able to, not so much, much land there, but you couldn't resupply your troops enough to hold off the enemy, or land enough troops there to establish a presence. I just, the whole thought of the way that that was all built and able to be made, like it's... You can still go and see pieces on one of the beaches of it. Well, and I think that's what they said was it was made to hold up for like 17 months or something like that before needed repair, and it's still there today. Well, I mean, not sticking out.

There's just like chunks floating sticking out of the beach and everything, but you're Yeah, the simple fact that it's still there is pretty crazy. I'm just nuts. So where the Germans are at this point is they got their own weather people, and they're looking out for an invasion at this point. I mean, they're not ready, and they don't know where it's going to be at and everything, but they know it's coming. Is this their cope when they say that the people that they enslaved control the weather?

Afterward, maybe they said this. After the weather forecast didn't turn out to be. accurate. It was wrong so then they blame them for it. That's exactly what happened man. So the guys that are in charge of predicting essentially if an invasion can happen on the German side are like it's supposed to be

shit weather for two weeks. So this can't happen for the next two weeks. Everyone is like so we got two weeks? Cool. So Rommel ends up taken off for Berlin to go buy his wife some shoes and see her for her birthday. He's also there to

ask Hitler for more reinforced Didn't he go up to like mustache's like vacation home or some shit like that? Well, his vacation home where Hitler was at this point when D-Day happens is he's in Birchus Garden at the Bergdorf. That's what I think that that's where they were. Is that where he had to go from? I think Romel was there because I think they were there the night before because from what I heard and I think I saw it in a a documentary was that night Rommel had gone to bed early and the H-man,

like had to drug himself. And so he was basically like passed out in a stupor when the actual D-Day took off at midnight. And they didn't wake him up because they didn't want him to be furious. Like they thought that they could handle it until he woke up. Rommel wasn't there. Oh, he wasn't. He was somewhere. He was in Germany closer to Berlin, I think.

He's still way, way, way, way, way too far to do anything. Yeah, but just the fact that like they didn't even wake Hitler up when this started. Well, apparently they said Hitler couldn't sleep. sleep till like three o'clock and then he had his doctor give him something to knock him out. And so I don't know if they were scared to, to, here's playing into that as well. The whole like we're scared to wake up Hitler thing. So yeah, because he was a methodic. No shit.

But prior to this, when Rommel first kind of took over the Atlantic Wall, there were, he was asking for more tanks because Rommel, there was two different kind of philosophies for how things should essentially be defended. because Rommel came from essentially like an armored background and everything like that working with tanks. He was like, I want these as close to the coast as possible because I need to be able to move these things into position to counterattack as quickly as possible. And a bunch of other people in German high command were like, no, you can't have those there. It'll be too close to the beach. It could get destroyed by like naval artillery and all that kind of stuff if they find out where our units are.

So we want to go and hold those quite a ways back. But then we can keep them all concentrated so we can move. a large portion of them to a specific spot for a counterattack. He's like, that's not going to work. He's like, the whole point of this is if we don't stop them at the beaches, if they get a foothold, it's not going to matter if you move up the armor or anything. So they end up going to Hitler and Romel kind of makes his case and Hitler's like, okay, I'll give you, he's like, I'll give you two armored divisions that you can go

ahead and have authority over. I'm going to give three to the guy that was in charge of like the Western European theater. His name was like Rumssted or something like that. And Rumsstead was like, okay, I'm going to go ahead and keep those kind of like just north of Paris. Do you know how far Paris is from the Normandy beaches? Pretty far.

It's like 150 miles. That's not far at all. No, but 100. To stop a surprise attack? Oh. Do you know how long it would take you to get? tanks, 150 miles? Yeah, I guess I was thinking more air

air support, but... Oh, they didn't have that big guy. At the point when D-Day was going to happen, they only had about... The Luftwaffe only had about 700 planes in France, and the Allies during the operation, I think,

had somewhere in the neighborhood... It was either 5,000... It was between 5 and 7,000. So it was a... substantial amount more. Yeah, that's why they had complete air superiority over it. And the Germans had pulled back a ton of aircraft to cover actual, like, German towns

because we were doing bombing raids over, like, places in the Rhineland for, like, military targets. So that's where they were kind of keeping the remaining portion of the Luftwaffe centered. Yeah, we had to keep them on their toes. And then a ton of, like, the senior leadership for, like, Normandy and the French coast for all that defense, because they thought they had two weeks off, they took off to go watch like war games in Marines. I don't know why you're still doing war games during a fucking active war.

I don't know why you're taking time off during an active war. They had two weeks. But how do you know? The weather guy said it. They control the weather, man. They haven't invaded up to this point. Why would they do it in this two week period, right? I just, I feel like if you're at war, though,

like you can't just take a vacation. Like, the Americans weren't doing that. They didn't have a vacation they could take. Well, we also didn't have Europe at that point. Yeah. And we were trying to be sneaky, sneaky about it. So out of those 10 divisions of tanks, two went to Rommel, three went to that Rumstead guy, Hitler's like, I'm going to keep four of them.

No one can do anything with these four tank divisions without my express permission. So he wouldn't even be able to react to this situation because they would have to tell Hitler, get a message to him. he would then have to approve it get a message back before i mean the timing of that it's it's stupid yeah well i'm saying there was a lot of things working for us so when i was talking about is are there things that could have happened that prevented this from being success i'm not saying it just would have been like him giving rommel 10 divisions of tanks and being like yeah put them wherever you want i think that could have really put a damper on the invasion and made it take a lot longer but i mean a size of from that and them knowing where the invasion was going to happen more specifically,

other than those two things, I don't think that it had a chance to actually prevent it from happening eventually. Because it took a week to get off those beaches or anything like that or... Yeah, dude, it's so weird to think about this in like a Confederate war type idea. Because it really was. I mean, this whole thing involved what, it was the first day. was 156,000 soldiers dropped by the Allied forces. And there were like 50,000 Nazis that were there. I mean, the sheer numbers alone is just like the Civil War.

Like the Union mostly won the Civil War because they could just keep losing men. And resources. Yeah. That's the exact same thing here. It just, it seems so similar in that respect. That good old union strategy. Yeah. Well, here's the other thing, too.

the soldiers in France. So basically soldiers in France, on the eastern front, if they took over areas, because some of the areas that Russia had taken over were anti-communist. So a lot of, some of those areas actually jumped over

and some of those people started fighting for the Germans. The choice was either also a POW camp or fighting against what you thought, you know, fighting against communism for some of those people. They also constricted some people in lieu of prisoner of war camps

so like, you can go die in this camp. camp or you can fight for us. They didn't leave them there to fight though. What they would do is they sent those people over to the Western Front because then they would be fighting essentially not their own countrymen. And they couldn't just escape and run back to their people. They would then take more able body and more like efficient troops that were already in France, move them over to the Eastern Front to try to be more effective.

So out of those, you know, if they had 50,000 people along, and that's not just at Normandy, That's along essentially the entire defense along that French coast area. The 50 miles that you were talking about. It was, yeah, I think it might have been kind of around that whole. It wasn't just one beach specifically. But a lot of them were either conscripts that were working, that were soldiers from like other countries. Yeah.

Either wounded people. Some of the like units and companies that they would, that were like really degraded and needed to get off the line on the east, basically they were using France as kind of a recuperation and a recovery to regain like company strength. So they were using that as like a resting area. So that was also who was comprising a lot of those soldiers too. They had a couple like experienced units like some of the commanders were experienced. But it wasn't like top flight.

But overall the quality of troops was was definitely not their best. Which again, this is all just falling into like this is the place that at some point you know is going to be invaded. So the guys that, you know, were more of the top, like, Nazi troops and everything, those were the ones that were centered around, like, those fortresses, like Sherborg and Kaleigh and things like that. The big ticket, I think. Yes, that's where they would have the top troops. So, I mean, at this point, we are up to the time of the invasion. I mean, the board is, like Gandalf says, the board is set.

The pieces are moving. Events are about to be set in motion that cannot be undone. But, I mean, once we get into actually talking about, you know, D-Day next week, it's going to be stuff that all takes place within about a day, maybe a few days after. But, I mean, this is all of the lead up, everything that had to fall into place, all of the secrecy that had to be maintained, all of the misdirection and lies that they had to sell, essentially, the Nazis about this. It's incredible, man.

like the the amount of equipment and manpower and all that kind of stuff and the preparation just just insane it's staggering well and it is a day but you know that day every hour was an entire day for every person that was out there they called the longest day yeah i just i don't see how you could keep focus for as long as you were to make all that shit happen like your body has already been tossed around. You either got tossed out of an airplane and by the grace of Allah you lived or you were driven in over this terrible choppy water that more than likely made you sick to your stomach. Yeah.

It's dark. Your feet have, your whole body has probably been soaked for a 24 hour period at this point. Be it water, blood, sweat. Like you're trying to ration whatever you have to be. Like you're not sitting there eating the Snickers on the beach. Your ass is going all. the time. Yeah, you have a mission. The beach is just like, it's not like, you're starting the beach and it's like, good job, guys. Not over. No, like, your job then is to push as far inland as you can,

so all the next guys coming up on the beach have a place to go. It's just, and that's the thing, when you're dropping off the sheer numbers that they did on these, relatively what sounds like huge areas, but they just, for the amount of people, they weren't big swaths of land. No. There wasn't, it wasn't a big spread out fight. There was, once you got inland further, there was, but right on the beach. hope you would get inland and then be able to spread out to establish a bigger area. Yeah, just crazy. So I'll say this before we're in the episode.

So the day before this happened, Churchill wasn't feeling very good about this. He said he didn't feel good about the plan kind of from the get-go. Churchill was anti-overlord. Yeah. He rarely thought that he had something else going or something. And I don't blame him because his fear was essentially that they would lose so many guys doing this. And that's why he pushed essentially because he thought the easier way to go about it, although it would have taken longer, was to go essentially through Italy and the south of France.

But at this point, you know, they thought they had a good idea. They thought they had a solid plan. And so next week we'll find out how that goes for him. Yeah, I'm excited. All right, guys. Well, tune in next week to find out about the exciting conclusion of D-Day. Peace. All right, ladies and gentlemen, thanks for joining us for another episode.

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