The 80th anniversary

Landing in Normandy, thus began the Golden 30 years of the West

The memory of 6 June 1944 retains the nostalgic sense of the start of this golden age, prelude, for western economies and societies, to 'thirty glorious' (and unrepeatable) years

6 June 2024

Macron apre cerimonia per 80 anni da D-Day: pronti a stessi sacrifici

3' min read

The landing in Normandy, Operation Overlord, which took place on 6 June 1944, is a date that everyone knows and that lives on in periodic recollections, through research, films, audiovisual products. The opening of the French continental front represented, as is well known, a mortal blow to Hitler's strategy, which until that moment had been almost totally directed towards the East. On the eastern front, in fact, was concentrated the most significant mass of men and means, about 80%, at Germany's disposal, well after the defeat of Stalingrad.

Exceptional logistical effort

The extraordinariness of the landing consisted above all in the exceptional logistical effort deployed by the Allies, and coordinated by General Eisenhower. In order to concentrate forces adequate for such a challenge, and to contain the risk of failure (the Anzio landing, in January, had shown that a badly thought-out action could fail), it had been necessary, in the previous summer and autumn, to technologically overcome the submarine warfare unleashed by the German navy in the Atlantic, and thus to allow the constant flow of convoys along the northern route.

D-day 1944: cosa sai dello sbarco in Normandia?

The American Industrial Miracle

On the other hand, the take-off of American military supplies had only been consolidated since the last quarter of 1942; since then, however, the US military-industrial complex produced extraordinary results. Suffice it to say that, between 1941 and 1944, the time needed to build an aircraft carrier went from 42 to 32 months; that of a destroyer from 14 to 6 months; that of a submarine from 14 to 7 months. 2,700 Liberty (cargo) ships were fitted out, and as many as 12,000 B-17 bombers, a third of which were lost. Time was a decisive variable.

Compared to the German chain of command, whose strategic pinnacle was represented by Hitler, that of the United States was more independent of politics, which also directed the basic choices, and a close relationship with the world of industry, for research, standardisation, and the selection of optimal and efficient models. In Germany, this would only happen with the arrival of Albert Speer at the Ministry of Armaments and War Production, between 1942 and 1944. By that time, however, the effectiveness of the Allied bombing raids, which had dumped 213,000 tons of bombs in 1943 on Axis-occupied territories, which had become over 900,000 in 1944, was really undermining the efficiency of the Reich's production apparatus, especially in its desperate search for fuel.

A success

The landing was a success, but the consolidation proved more complicated than expected. If, at the end of the first day, the landed soldiers had numbered 132,000, which by 11 June had become over 326,000, supported by 54,000 vehicles, the battle for Normandy became, in the first summer, a battle set on wearing down the German defences, which in a month and a half lost 113,000 men and 2,100 armoured vehicles. By the end of July, the Reich army had 850 tanks, compared to the Allies' 4,500. They were often better in quality, but they were few in number.

Sbarco in Normandia: il 6 giugno di 80 anni fa scattava il D-Day
Photogallery24 foto

The landing of a lifestyle

But it was not just a mighty confrontation between hyper-modern armies. The landing in Sicily in July 1943 had already offered a foretaste of what the liberation of the continent would represent: the spread of a lifestyle, of a model of relations, of a society of consumption - material and immaterial - that to the civilian populations tried by years of hardship and destruction immediately appeared seductive. The Allies' logistic chains supplied the combatant units and the territories in which they were located with food resources, materials for initial reconstruction, and medical supplies (the famous penicillin, first and foremost).

The start of a golden age

It was this dimension that won the minds and hearts of many among the liberated. The world war had been ideological, and the forces in the field had even used armies for propaganda. For this reason, too, Operation Overlord remained paradigmatic, becoming the constitutive myth of the regenerated West after the Nazi-fascist season; the climax of material and moral effort, a vague anticipation of Reconstruction and of a promise of prosperity that until then was impossible to link to any war context. The US hegemony would draw a framework, after 1945, not comparable to any of the previous 'imperial' forms. The memory of 6 June 1944 thus retains the nostalgic sense of the start of this golden age, prelude, for western economies and societies, to 'thirty glorious (and unrepeatable) years'.