On June 6, 1944, Allied forces crossed the English Channel and attacked the German-held beaches of Normandy in France. Known popularly as D-day, the invasion of Normandy opened the second front in the World War II European theater and helped produce the surrender of Nazi Germany within a year. (The “first” front was the eastern front, where Soviet and German forces had fought since mid-1941.) In addition to its military importance, the question of a second front was a significant factor in the strained relations among the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union in the wartime Grand Alliance.
Soon after the American entry into the war in December 1941, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin demanded a second front to draw German troops away from the eastern front and relieve pressure on the Red Army and on the Soviet Union. (Ultimately, the Soviet Union lost at least 20 million people during World War II.) The United States supported the idea of opening a second front as soon as possible, and in April 1942, General George C. Marshall, the U. S. Army chief of staff, and Harry L. Hopkins, a close adviser of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, arrived in London to seek British agreement for an attack across the English Channel into France. Their proposal, which won apparent acceptance by Winston Churchill, involved three stages, code-named Bolero, Roundup, and Sledgehammer. Operation Bolero would consist of an initial buildup of men and munitions in Britain that would culminate in Operation Roundup, a substantial cross-Channel invasion. Operation Sledgehammer would be a smaller landing to seize a bridgehead in the Cherbourg Peninsula.
Churchill had reservations about this strategy because he feared a repeat of the heavy British losses that had occurred in land battles on the western front in World War I. When Soviet foreign minister Molotov traveled to London and to Washington, D. C., to get an agreement on a second front in May 1942, he was tersely informed in London that Britain was not prepared for such an extensive operation. In Washington, the United States told Molotov that a second front would be initiated in 1942, though Lend-Lease Act materials for the Soviets would have to be decreased as a result of the military buildup. After Molotov’s visits, Churchill met with FDR to discourage a second front in 1942. Churchill preferred a peripheral strategy, which called for a North African campaign instead. Although U. S. military advisers opposed this approach, Churchill was able to convince FDR to agree to the campaign, on the basis that the United States was still not fully prepared to mount a successful cross-Channel attack in 1942.
The Casablanca Conference of January 1943 brought together U. S. and British delegations to revitalize the talks on a second front. Stalin refused to leave the Soviet Union during the pivotal Battle of Stalingrad for this conference. After initial U. S. reluctance to postpone a cross-Channel invasion again, the British and Americans decided that they would not immediately undertake an invasion into France after the North African campaign ended. Instead, they would forge ahead into the Mediterranean for an invasion of Sicily in the spring of 1943. At the Trident Conference in Washington in May 1943, Churchill and Roosevelt concluded that the second front would have to be delayed until 1944 because the buildup of Operation Bolero was proceeding slowly. Roosevelt was able to extract a British commitment to a cross-Channel invasion, now called Operation Overlord, for May 1, 1944.
The Teheran Conference (November 28 to December 1, 1943) provided an opportunity for the Grand Alliance to devise a strategy to end World War II as well as to make preliminary plans for the postwar period. Roosevelt feared that unless a second front were opened in the near future, much of postwar Europe would be controlled by the Soviet Union, while Stalin continued to complain about the American and British delay. Distrust in the Grand Alliance and in Soviet-American relations over these and other issues foreshadowed the cold war. When Stalin agreed to enter the Pacific war against Japan after Germany was defeated, Roosevelt set the date of May 1, 1944, for opening the second front, and Churchill could offer no other effective alternative to further postponing it. The Allies then devised a military strategy that involved a joint British and American invasion of France coupled with a simultaneous Soviet offensive against the Germans from the east that would force the Germans to spread out their forces on two fronts.
The projected date of Overlord was changed and postponed until June 5, to ensure more equipment and weapons for the landing force. A storm on June 5 delayed the invasion for another day. Early on June 6, under the leadership of General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the crossChannel invasion began. The successful opening of a second front signaled that war was nearing its finale in the European theater. The pincer movement by Allied forces from the east and west forced Germany to surrender in May 1945.
Further reading: Robert Dallek, Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 1932-1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979); Warren F. Kimball, Forged in War: Roosevelt, Churchill, and the Second World War (New York: William Morrow, 1997).
—Michael T. Walsh
World History
