Transcript of Overlord

The History Channel original podcast. By the late fall of 1943, the Western Allies and the Soviet Union have dealt the Third Reich multiple blows. The Allies have dislodged the Germans from North Africa and Sicily and are fighting their way up the Italian boot, while the Red Army, after victories at Stalingrad and Kursk, pushes west towards Germany. The next step for the Allies is the long-anticipated invasion of Northern Europe.

This is World War II with Tom Hanks, episode 13, Overlord.

Wings over the mountains by Baghdad and the Dead Sea, 3 planes from the Supreme Headquarters of Britain, the United States, and the USSR bring to the capital of Persia the leaders of the war against Germany. This is for the 3-way conference so long expected, so often postponed.

Tehran Yalta is a hugely important conference. It's the first time the Big Three get together in person. You've got Joe Stalin, leader of the Soviet Union. You got Roosevelt, President of the USA. And you've got Prime Minister Winston Churchill, the warlord of the British Empire. This is the central organizing brain for the Allied war effort. And they're gonna establish at this conference the roadmap, the blueprint for how they're gonna defeat the Axis in the Second World War.

Since the US entry American and British military strategists have debated the best way to defeat Nazi Germany.

The British want to prosecute this war as they have prosecuted past ones: mastery of the sea, control of commerce, raids around the periphery until the enemy simply collapses.

The British advocate for campaigns in North Africa and the Mediterranean. But American military leaders, along with the Soviets, want the Allies to directly attack.

The Red Army's been carrying the burden of the land war for years. Millions, literally millions of casualties on a 1,000-mile front. And so the big concern for Stalin is, when are you going to open a second front?

So the Americans are looking at the map and saying, we can cross the Channel from Britain, hit France. Why wouldn't you just do that?

For the British, French Empire.

They could think of nothing worse. Churchill's entire generation of British politicians either fought in or commanded in the First World War and was scarred. And so the idea of gambling everything on a cross-channel invasion into France, the exact place, by the way, that so many terrible things happened in trench warfare back in the First World War— all that mattered was we don't do that again.

Winston Churchill is thinking, maybe we land in Greece and Yugoslavia, maybe we push up through Slovenia, maybe we land in Norway. Stalin says, I don't care about any of this stuff, it's nonsense. Get in some ships, cross the English Channel, land in France, and open up that proper second front against the Germans.

If you think about Allied leadership, it looks as if it's the Big Three. But what Roosevelt understands, what Stalin understands, and what Churchill, to his great anguish, is coming to understand is that there's only room for two people at the summit and that the fate of his nation was to be somewhat in eclipse.

At Tehran, the Americans and the Soviets finally get their way: a big American-dominated invasion of Western Europe, Operation Overlord.

Operation Overlord will be a massive coordinated invasion by air, land, and sea scheduled to launch in May 1944, a mere 6 months away. If it succeeds, the Western Allies and the Red Army will be able to advance on Germany from 2 fronts. But who is to command this enormous effort?

The obvious choice is George Marshall. George Marshall is the Army Chief of Staff, and he is unquestionably the most respected military man, certainly in the United States, and maybe even the world.

And so everybody assumes that he's gonna get it. What becomes clear, though, is that Roosevelt realizes that he can't have Marshall out of Washington. He needs him too much to be sort of running the entire war effort. And so, then the question is, who?

Montgomery, Churchill's Star General, is absolutely certain that there is one man perfectly suited to be Supreme Commander of the Allied effort, and that is Montgomery himself.

But with the American contribution in men and materiel about to dominate the Allied effort, it's clear that an American must be placed in command. President Roosevelt selects General Dwight Eisenhower, a protégé of George Marshall and the successful commander of the campaigns in North Africa and Sicily.

Roosevelt sees in Eisenhower the kind of political skill and savvy that's going to be necessary to keep the alliance together and to pull off what is going to be one of the most high-risk military operations in all of human history.

At the same time, Eisenhower did not have a huge CV of combat experience. He hadn't served in France during the First World War.

And so many of his competitors are looking around going, "How'd this guy get the job?" British General Montgomery, maybe encapsulates the criticism of Eisenhower when he says, "Nice chap, no soldier." Hitler and his high command know the Western Allies are going to invade Northern Europe, but they don't know when and they don't know where.

Hitler is not surprised that an invasion is coming. He said so at the end of 1943. They'll be here next year, and we have to be ready to meet them.

In his own mind, he was willing this cross-channel invasion because he said, you know, whenever they come and wherever they come, we're going to beat them.

An amphibious landing is a very demanding operation, and so he thinks he will throw his reserves to the west and push the Allies back into the sea.

He'd then be able to win the war by turning everything he has against the Soviet Union in the east.

Under the direction With the return of Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, the Germans accelerate the construction of the Atlantic Wall, a network of bunkers, minefields, and beach obstacles stretching several thousand miles from France to Norway. Much of the work is performed by conscripted French labor.

Rommel is already a known commodity. He's beloved by the German people. He's young, he's unorthodox, he's energetic. He's a man very much to the Führer's taste. He wakes up early, he works hard all day, he gets the job done.

And choosing Rommel tells the West, "You got your work cut out for you." By January, Operation Overlord, the joint British-American plan to invade northwest Europe, has been largely mapped out. The coast of Normandy is chosen as the landing site because of its long, flat beaches. Numerous access roads, and proximity to the deepwater port of Cherbourg. When Eisenhower and his staff take control of Overlord, they look to expand the scale and scope of the entire operation.

From the very beginning, it was clear to Eisenhower that a 3-division invasion in northern France would not be adequate. The Allies used 6 divisions to invade Sicily.

Eisenhower realizes that if you've got one shot at this, you've got to cross this brutal stretch of water and land on a heavily defended coastline manned by one of the best armies in history. You need to bring overwhelming force. You go for the king, you best not miss.

But he has to somehow get the Brits to come around and agree. His act of genius is to name Montgomery commander of the ground forces in the invasion. He says, "Monty, will you do this?" Monty says, "Yes, then." And then Eisenhower says, "But I think 3 divisions is a bit small. Shouldn't it be bigger?" Oh, it should be much bigger. It's a perfect example of Eisenhower's leadership style. He gets buy-in from people and then gets whatever he wants done, done.

Overlord increases to 5 beaches and 6 divisions, which delays the operation for a month.

Eisenhower knows that in delaying Overlord, he's running a risk, and the risk is he's going to use that extra month for preparation. But of course So is his adversary. With each passing day, German defenses are going to get stronger.

Field Marshal Erwin Rommel believes the first 24 hours of the invasion will be decisive. He will say to an aide, "The fate of Germany depends on the outcome." For the Allies as well as Germany, it will be the longest day.

Rommel thinks that you have to defeat the Allied invasion when it comes at the water's edge. But the thing is, there's so many points so the Allies can invade. They've scattered fortifications everywhere. So he's like, "How do I take this incomplete Atlantic Wall and fill in the gaps?" And the way you do it is you do it with things that are relatively cheap, like tank obstacles, like mines.

Rommel's strategy is to stop the Allies on the beaches. He can then bring in his panzers where necessary.

Rommel has a lot of experience fighting the Western powers. He knows this isn't going to be easy. Every minute he prepares, he believes, is a minute closer to a German victory.

In Britain, the Allies amass resources for Operation Overlord. The United States sends soldiers, tanks, aircraft, and large amounts of supplies.

You have to coordinate this massive Allied coalition, which by now is entirely dominated by the Americans, you know, on the supply side, right? Gotta ship over all the oil, all the materiel, all the vehicles.

The scale of Operation Overlord is just enormous. You're talking about nearly 7,000 vessels involved. You're talking about tens of thousands of artillery pieces. You're talking about hundreds of thousands of men. But what that means is that Britain, for the last 2 and a half years, has just been turning into one huge, great big military camp.

To deceive the Germans, the Allies devise and execute a deception plan. Operation Fortitude is a false army operation created to trick the Germans into thinking the Allies will land at Pas-de-Calais, which is the shortest route across the English Channel.

The elements that were involved in trying to convince the Germans that the attack was coming in another place, another direction, another location, It's massive.

False radio traffic, the creation of false armies. They use dummy vehicles, balloons and rubber tanks and aircraft.

This is all part of the deception campaign to keep the Germans guessing until the last second.

Eisenhower hopes Fortitude will prompt the Germans to concentrate their forces near Calais.

The Germans have about 3/4 of a million men who are poised to be able to mobilize to wherever the Allies invade in Northern Europe. And so he knows that this is going to be a race. It's going to be the Allies over water and the Germans over land. And the Germans are always going to have an advantage in moving over land. And so Eisenhower needs to slow them down. The only tool that Eisenhower has at his disposal are the bombers.

Eisenhower knows from previous experience he can't pull off an amphibious invasion and keep it ashore without dominance in the air. Unless Allied air power is there for Eisenhower, this landing is never going to happen.

Starting in 1944, Allied Air Force strategy focuses on destroying the Luftwaffe so that troops can land in Normandy without fear of German air attacks. But Eisenhower also wants to hit railways and transportation hubs throughout France.

Eisenhower wants the roads destroyed, he wants the bridges destroyed, he wants the railway yards destroyed. He does not want one German unit moving 2 miles down the road without having to build another bridge. And so Eisenhower says, "Those very valuable bomber formations need to be working to my plan." Now, the Bomber Command is like, "No, we've got our own way of winning this war." Everybody wants to support the landings in Normandy, but the Allied air forces argued that the best way to do that is to continue with more heavy attacks on Germany.

This becomes a knock-down, drag-out fight. So Eisenhower, you know, basically threatens to resign if he is not given control over all the air forces. He's fighting day in and day out with the British, with the French, with his own bosses back in Washington on every little detail of the war, and everyone is throwing up nothing but obstructions. And he just doesn't have time for this anymore. Right? He is at his wit's end.

He needs overwhelming strength to guarantee success. Because you know what? You've got one of history's most effective armies— Hitler's panzers— who will be hurled at those Allied landing forces so they can chop you down in the shallows and turn the waters red with your blood.

Early spring 1944. Supreme Allied Commander Dwight Eisenhower has now been given full command of all Allied air forces.

In the end, he's got the airpower weapon he needs to attack the French transportation system. That's roads, railways, and bridges that the Germans will use to move forces to oppose the landings.

And so he wins, and we take that for granted, but it wasn't easy. You know, he had to, like, wrestle with all these powerful figures and powerful egos, not only within the US military, but the British military as well. It's another example of Eisenhower's real quality as a leader. And so for 90 days before D-Day, you've got thousands of sorties— —by P-47s and B-26 Marauders that are flying behind the German lines in the Pas-de-Calais, in Normandy, just absolutely punishing the road and rail network.

Defending multiple fronts, the resources of Hitler and his Third Reich are stretched thin.

For the Germans in 1944, their last big trump card are the tanks. Rommel's plan is to deploy them as close as possible to the beaches. The advantage is that you can bring them in much quicker as reinforcements. But this idea runs against traditional German doctrine, is totally the opposite.

The orthodox approach amongst German commanders is to group your tank divisions into a concentrated mass, let the Allies land, and then as they stumble into the French interior, hit them at a time and place of your choosing.

But Rommel says, look, realistically, we can't maneuver against them when they come inland because they have total air superiority.

The only person who can decide which option will be the better one is Hitler himself. But Hitler never wants to give too much power into one hand.

Suspecting that the Allies will land near Calais, Hitler spreads his panzers along northwestern France, but he reserves operational control for himself.

They can only be released into combat by Hitler's express order, which is probably the Achilles heel of that plan.

In the spring of 1944, there are over 2.5 million troops from multiple Allied nations crowded into southeast England.

The invasion would send ashore combat-experienced troops who had participated in landings previously, as well as troops who had never done it before.

So the way you prepare is you have exercises, you have rehearsals, just like in a play. So a series of exercises are undertaken to include something called Exercise Tiger. Exercise Tiger is going to invade a beach called Slapton Sands. And Slapton Sands is a British resort town that remarkably looks exactly like parts of the Normandy coast.

Secrecy is vital for this training mission. 3,000 British citizens are evacuated from the area.

Operational security is absolutely paramount. The Allies have to have tactical surprise on the morning of D-Day, so the Germans must be completely blindsided.

It's a practice run for D-Day, but from the start, things go horribly wrong because of a breakdown in communication. The Navy fires on its own men.

As if that tragedy wasn't bad enough, the next day something even worse happens In the middle of the night, the LSTs, these large ships that have personnel and tanks in them, are preparing to do their part in Exercise Tiger and circling about to do the second landing wave.

And then all of a sudden, a pack of German fast boats, or E-boats, stumbles upon these LSTs, and the Germans began firing, and tracer bullets are flying across the ships, and some of the men on board thought, wow, this is a pretty realistic exercise. And it wasn't really until the torpedoes began to explode against the sides of the LSTs that they realized this is not a realistic exercise, this is an attack.

They sink 3 LSTs, which are really precious by this point. They need everyone.

More than 700 men were killed. In Exercise Tiger. So this is a very costly loss of life.

If a, you know, well-controlled dress rehearsal goes this badly under the best of possible conditions, what's going to happen when they can't just stroll ashore on a British resort town but are being fired at by German guns?

Operation Overlord has been planned down to the closest detail. But there's one crucial element no one can anticipate: the weather.

They have a 3-day window, June 5th to June 7th. If they delay the invasion past that window, the moon is no longer going to be right for the airborne operation, the tides are no longer going to be right for the landing forces, and this delicate ballet of air, ground, and naval forces won't have the necessary weather conditions to coordinate and hit the beach with full force.

Eisenhower and his staff rely on Group Captain James Stagg and his team of meteorologists to provide the most accurate advice possible.

The weather leading up to the original D-Day is gorgeous, and it's so good that it almost feels like an moment. It's 2 days before the invasion. They're gearing up to launch on June 5th as scheduled, and James Martin Stagg comes to Eisenhower as part of the command conference and says, there's been a turn in the weather, a storm is a-brewing.

It's just frankly terrible news. 15-foot waves in the Channel, high winds, unpredictable seas, rolling fronts coming in from all directions, and it's just the last thing they can possibly deal with. Amphibious operations are a total nightmare.

And on top of that, the English Channel is a rough stretch of water. You get winds that howl up that channel, that kick up a swell that make it impossible to operate, you know, ships near the coastline.

Eisenhower had to consider what that meant, and he said, well, we'll postpone making a decision until 4 o'clock in the morning when no more. 4:00 in the morning on the 4th, Tag came in looking not happy and said, it's, it's going to be worse. We'll have to postpone until the 6th of June.

The pressure is really there now to— well, we really want to try and get this done in this window, or they've got to wait again for all the situations to coalesce. The weather and the tides and the moon. It might be a few weeks, it might be months. And the problem is you've got all these hundreds of thousands of men in camps who've been sharpened to this edge of, of ready to go in and get their jobs. Then you've got to say to them, "Actually, no.

Sorry, lads, we're going to back down again." Even the Germans think the conditions are unsuitable for an invasion.

Rommel gets his weather report on the 4th of June and it doesn't look very good. And he thinks there will be no opportunities for the Allies to land for the coming days. And so he decides to go to Germany and celebrate his wife's birthday. The problem, though, is that the Germans don't have meteorological stations in the Atlantic, in contrast to the Allies. And where does the weather in Europe mostly come from? From the Atlantic.

Late in the evening on June 4th, the Allies receive a report from a weather station in Ireland.

Captain Stagg is going to come in and go, "All right, the weather conditions look like they're going to improve such that in the afternoon on Tuesday, June 6th, you might be able to pull it off." Eisenhower polls his commanders, but the final decision is his alone. Eisenhower will ultimately reflect on this 20 years afterward, and he'll say that he felt like the loneliest man in all of England. And what must have run through that man's mind was, well, the gliders are not going to do well in winds that are this high, the paratroopers are all going to be blown off course. He had to recognize all of the things that are going to go wrong, not things that might go wrong, but definitely gonna go wrong. But at the same time, I can't come back next month, I can't come back in August. It's now or never.

And he's sitting there listening to the wind howling around, and he says, okay, let's go.

Operation Overlord, D-Day, is the largest and the largest amphibious invasion in history, and it's being attempted by a coalition of many nations, some of which have lived under the Nazi yoke for years. The whole world awaits the outcome.

As the invasion got closer, Eisenhower got more tense. He's smoking 4 packs of cigarettes a day. He's barely sleeping. He has nothing left to do but wait.

To hear whether or not he made the right call in the middle of the night, sleep deprived. But the most important thing though, I think he does in that period is he goes out and personally visits the 101st Airborne.

The 101st Airborne, along with the 82nd Airborne and the British 6th Division, will be the first to land behind enemy lines. The job of the airborne is to seize the causeways and cover the flanks of the landing troops. They will be the first soldiers to fight the Germans in Normandy.

Eisenhower, with no fanfare, just walks among all these young men, all of whom are no older, really, than his own son. And he makes a point of looking each one of them in the eye as he shakes their hand. He gets an estimate that about 50% of the paratroopers are gonna be killed. And so as he's shaking hands, every other soldier is someone who he has every reason to believe he has sent to their death. The most important thing he could do in that moment was just be there for them. And he spends all night doing that, goes up to the roof nearby watches the whole thing take off. That's how he begins D-Day.

Under a full moon, paratroopers including the 101st Airborne start dropping behind enemy lines. Before dawn, landing crafts are lowered into the water and troops start to board. At sunrise, a fleet of warships launch a naval barrage.

Ultimately, the ground troops are going to land on 5 beaches. 2 American beaches, Omaha and Utah. A Canadian beach, Juno. And then Gold and Sword, the British beaches. They're then going to try and link up those different beaches and then push inland to take on and destroy the might of the German Army. Army in France.

The morning of June 6th, the weather patterns are still chopping about and the wind is still blowing. It's not an ideal situation to start plowing these boats towards the coast there.

Right from the jump, the weather's a huge issue. I mean, there's a 6-foot swell on D-Day.

The waves are swamping over the sides. You're standing in freezing cold water. You're there with 30 other guys. If one vomits You all vomit. Sea spray is lashing into your face there. You can't see, your eyes are stinging. The longer that goes on, the more you're thinking to yourself, what is gonna happen when that ramp goes down?

Omaha is the largest of the beaches, a strip of the Normandy coast 6 miles wide.

It's different from all the other beaches in that it's almost like an amphitheater. You know, you've got these high bluffs overlooking the beach, almost like an extended bowl. You'd be coming in, gray skies, smoke, noise, ramp would drop, and then there's this just absolute massive fire.

85 machine guns laying down 100,000 rounds a minute. People start getting shot and killed. You see dead people floating in the water. You're soaking wet. You don't run up the beach, you stagger up the beach. Guys are trying to clear obstacles. You're trying to move ahead. Your senses are overwhelmed with all the things going around you.

That first wave is getting mown down in, in, in great numbers. It's roughly 85% killed and/or wounded in the assault waves on Omaha.

Eisenhower is receiving only intermittent reports, except, of course, that on Omaha Beach it's not going as planned. While he tried to project a confident demeanor, you know that inside him he's just roiling with concern. Failure is another Dunkirk.

Failure is the loss of all your equipment. Failure is your troops being marched off into captivity. If everything goes wrong, it means a longer war.

The day before the landings, General Eisenhower, knowing the risks and understanding the responsibility, penned a brief note: My decision to attack was based upon the best information available. The troops did all that bravery and devotion to duty could do. If any blame or fault is attached to the attempt, it is mine alone. On the morning of the Normandy invasion, the first wave of American troops at Utah Beach land almost a mile south of their target, but quickly regroup and manage to take the beach and push inland. The British landings at Gold and Sword beaches go better than expected. But at Juno Beach, the first wave of Canadian troops meets tough German resistance. And at Omaha Beach, rough seas and intense German fire wreak havoc on the first American troops. But more men are on their way.

The German defenders on the Atlantic Wall, they look out that morning and they're stunned by what they see. I mean, they see the biggest fleet ever gathered for an invasion. The Germans all talk about how they were so dumb to think that the Allies would densely packed. It looked like you could just walk from ship to ship.

For the average German soldier on D-Day, the experience is something totally new. This naval bombardment, it really shakes up the psyche of the German soldiers.

There are two crucial German command failures. One is that But Rommel isn't there. He's back in Germany celebrating his wife's birthday. When he hears that the landing has happened, he says something along the lines of, "How could I have been so stupid?" Even more important is Hitler.

The morning of the invasion, June 6th, 1944, Adolf Hitler is asleep. But nobody will dare wake him up, even though word has come in about this invasion starting.

So in the crucial 5 or 6 or 7 hours when the Germans might have landed some quick blow against the Allies, those panzer divisions in the central reserve that can only be released into combat by Hitler's express order are pretty much without a commander.

As a consequence, the Germans' reactions on D-Day end up a big mess.

By midday, the troops at Gold, Sword, Juno, and Utah have started to push inland, and momentum finally shifts at Omaha Beach. The sheer scale of the invasion helps turn the tide, but it also comes down to individual acts of bravery. At Pointe du Hoc, US Army Rangers scale the cliffs 100-foot cliffs under fire. At Utah Beach, Brigadier General Teddy Roosevelt Jr., the son of former President Theodore Roosevelt, leads a division that lands south of the target.

They came ashore and he suddenly realized that they were in completely the wrong bit, and he said, "To hell with it.

The war starts here." Roosevelt's son, Captain Quinton Roosevelt Jr., Edward Roosevelt II is in the first landing wave at Omaha. They're the only father-son duo who will land on the beaches that day. Corporal Waverly Woodson, a medic with the 320th Barrage Balloon Battalion, is wounded before he even hits the beach.

But he will treat almost 200 members of the US Army, Navy, and British Navy as they come ashore on Omaha Beach, all the while under intense mortar and machine gun fire.

By the end of the day on June 6th, the Allies have secured all 5 beaches and have pushed inland. In the coming days, they will link up with the airborne forces to create a continuous connected front along the coast.

It was Eisenhower who meshed all of those different nationalities. He brought them together, and Eisenhower deserves a lot of credit.

He's accountable, he's responsible. That's what leaders do in good times and bad.

Right man for the job. Eisenhower understands probably better than anyone now the real hard fighting on the continent of Europe is about to begin. And at the same time, there's a ray of hope. Allied victory is increasingly going to become possible. The US theory of how you can wage war has now been proven correct. You can have a multinational alliance pull off the most complex military operation the world had ever seen.

It's not just the infantry, it's all the airmen that set the conditions. It's all the Coast Guardsmen and the sailors that drove the ships It's all the people who manufactured all the stuff back in Detroit. It's a global effort to make D-Day work.

My fellow Americans, in this poignant hour, I ask you to join with me in prayer. Almighty God, our sons, pride of our nation, This day have set upon a mighty endeavor, a struggle to preserve our republic, our religion, and our civilization, and to set free a suffering humanity.

President Roosevelt says in his D-Day prayer, our forces will be thrown back, their road will be long and hard.

But we shall return again time and again. And we know that by thy grace and by the righteousness of our cause, our sons will triumph.

On D-Day, the 101st Airborne, just hours after being addressed by General Eisenhower, parachuted into occupied France. Despite being scattered across enemy territory, these men cleared the path for American forces to emerge off Utah Beach and begin the advance on Germany. A second front is firmly established on the continent of Europe. In the Pacific War, the boundaries are enormous, ranging through Asia and into numerous remote islands across the ocean. Attacking this new front will require the most advanced aircraft ever built.

World War II with Tom Hanks is produced by A&E Factual Studios, Newtopia Limited, Playtone Productions, and Backpocket Studios, in association with Motion Entertainment, for the History Channel. This episode was narrated by Tom Hanks and mixed by John John Lloyd. Additional voicing provided by me, Jeremy Reagan. From the History Channel, our executive producers are Eli Lehrer and Liv Fidler. For Playtone, executive producers are Tom Hanks and Gary Getzman. For Back Pocket Studios, our executive producer is Ben Dickstein.