Codenamed Operation Overlord, the battle began on June 6, 1944, also known as D-Day, when some 156,000 American, British and Canadian forces landed on five beaches along a 50-mile stretch of the heavily fortified coast of France's Normandy region.
Normandy Invasion, also called Operation Overlord or D-Day, during World War II, the Allied invasion of western Europe, which was launched on June 6, 1944 (the most celebrated D-Day of the war), with the simultaneous landing of U.S., British, and Canadian forces on five separate beachheads in Normandy, France.
The Allied invasion of Nazi-occupied France on 6 June 1944 – the start of the campaign to liberate north-western Europe – was a massive operation to land almost 133,000 soldiers in heavily defended territory.
The ruse worked as Hitler sent one of his fighting divisions to Scandinavia just weeks before D-Day. The most logical place in Europe for the D-Day invasion was France's Pas de Calais region, 150 miles northeast of Normandy and the closest point to Great Britain across the English Channel.
