World War II Day by Day

Caen, Normandy, France • July 21, 1945

The capture of the historic Norman town of Caen, a city of 62,000, was a key objec­tive of Oper­a­tion Over­lord (June 6, 1944 to August 30, 1944), the start of the Allies’ liber­a­tion of German-occupied West­ern Europe. Over­lord’s plans called for the British Second Army and the Cana­dian First Army, sup­ported by British and French com­man­dos, to land at Sword Beach, the eastern­most of five Normandy beach landing sectors, and on the same date (June 6, D‑Day) or at most D+1 strike south 9 miles/­14½ km and cap­ture Caen (see map). The city was an impor­tant com­mu­ni­ca­tions hub for water (river and canal), road, and air traf­fic to all com­pass points. In con­trast to the land­scape of recessed roads, tall and densely packed hedge­rows that limited visi­bil­ity, and small wood­lands and pastures all of which char­ac­terized the hinter­lands of other inva­sion beaches, Caen’s hinter­land was open, suit­ably flat for con­struc­ting air­strips and deploying armored for­ma­tions, and con­ducive to swift offen­sive oper­a­tions to the south (Falaise plain) or toward the River Seine and Paris. Because June’s build­up of Allied troops and maté­riel on liber­ated French soil had grown to greatly out­num­ber the defenders in tanks and mobile units, a rapid mobile drive was to the Allies’ advantage.

Factors mostly beyond British and Canadian control on D‑Day and for days there­after con­spired to make the Allies’ planned cap­ture of Caen on June 6 seem overly ambi­tious. The foul weather on D‑Day brought excep­tion­ally high tides to Sword Beach, severely reducing the landing sector and causing a huge con­ges­tion of men, muni­tions, and equip­ment on the beach and at beach inland exits. Pre-invasion British recon­nais­sance had seriously under­esti­mated German strength in the Sword sector. A lucky German kill of the single on­shore for­ward observer on the after­noon of June 6 left two British war­ships un­able to direct their 15‑in/­381mm Mk I naval can­nons to sup­port the inva­ders needing back­up when they encountered a pesky German strong­point. A British squadron was enlisted to blast holes in the enemy’s defenses in­stead. Absence tanks and armored per­son­nel car­riers, which the British and Cana­dians didn’t have that day, meant that their under­strength but deter­mined infan­try bat­tal­ions were still 3 miles/­4.8 km short of reaching their D‑Day objec­tive when they were stopped by another strong­point. And even if the men could have reached Caen on the slated first or second day, three elite German pan­zer units of men and tanks were there to greet them.

The Allies concentrated on linking their five beach­heads and strength­ening their lodg­ments during June. In offen­sives that were inte­gral parts of Oper­a­tion Over­lord, British and Cana­dian forces resumed their attacks in the vicin­ity of German-occupied Caen, in Caen’s sub­urbs, and final­ly in the city it­self. Pre­ceded by an air raid the night before, which destroyed much of Caen’s his­toric Old City, Oper­a­tion Charn­wood (July 7–9, 1944) began with air, infan­try, and armored units attacking German posi­tions north of the city, clearing vil­lages in their path, and reaching Caen’s out­skirts. The oper­a­tion ended with the Anglo-Cana­dians seizing Car­piquet air­field and the city north of the River Orne, which bisected Caen. The Allies main­tained the ini­tia­tive and began Oper­a­tion Jupi­ter the next day (July 10–11, 1944). Between July 18 and 20, 1944, the British kicked off Oper­a­tion Good­wood, an air and ground offen­sive syn­chro­nized with Oper­a­tion Atlan­tic, a Cana­dian offen­sive to cap­ture Caen’s sub­urbs south of the Orne. The dual offen­sives finally secured Caen. The pos­ses­sion of the city and its sur­roundings on this date, July 21, 1944, gave the British, Cana­dian, and Amer­i­can armies a staging area for a push to cap­ture Falaise. The Battle of the Falaise Pocket (August 12–21, 1944), in which most of German Army Group B (Erwin Rom­mel’s old com­mand) was destroyed west of the Seine River, was the deci­sive engage­ment of Oper­a­tion Over­lord and opened the way to liberating Paris, the French capital, later in the month.

Capturing Caen Was a Long, Arduous, Tragic Experience for All, June 6 to July 21, 1944

Above: Caen was a city of stra­te­gic impor­tance to the German occu­piers. Situated on east-west Route N13 (not identified as such on map; today A13), Caen was the gate­way to Paris, since mid-1940 the capi­tal city of France governed by the German mili­tary and German-approved French collab­o­ra­tors. Red (for British and Cana­dian) and blue (for German) lines indi­cate front lines of opposing armed forces in the early days following D‑Day. Queen and Roger (top right corner) refer to Sword Beach sectors.

Left: Lunar landscape of Caen after repeated Allied bombing and artil­lery shelling. Seventy-three per­cent of the city sus­tained destruc­tion. Only 1,000 out of 15,000 buildings in the city remained intact. Great Britain’s Royal Air Force and the U.S. Eighth Air Force opened D‑Day with a mid­night bombing of Normandy’s coastal bat­teries and the his­toric city of Caen, which lay a few miles/­kilo­meters south of the British assault area. Even before D‑Day, the Norman city of 62,000 French citi­zens and a 300‑man German gar­ri­son had been the tar­get of the West­ern Allies’ wrath. After day­light on D‑Day, with thick cloud cover, the RAF and USAAF returned to bomb Caen’s rail­road sta­tion. A bomb run the after­noon of June 6 by Eighth Air Force heavy bombers turned the ancient city of Caen—much of which was still wooden struc­tures—into an inferno. In retal­i­ation for the bombing, the German gar­ri­son took 80 French Resis­tance pri­soners out of their cells and shot them dead.

Right: In the aftermath of the intense bombing of Caen late on the night of July 7 through 9, 1944, a British soldier (center rear) carries a small girl through the dev­as­tation of the northern half of Caen, July 10, 1944. British Gen. Ber­nard Law Mont­gom­ery, the off­icer com­manding all ground forces during Oper­a­tion Over­lord, fore­saw the cap­ture of Caen by night­fall of June 6 as part of D‑Day’s opening shock and sur­prise. At his final great dress rehearsal for Overlord on May 15, Monty went out on a tree limb to proph­e­size the pos­si­bil­ity of reaching Falaise, 31 miles/­50 km inland on D‑Day. Inex­cus­ably, Mont­gomery days later sup­pressed the latest British intel­li­gence of a heavy SS armored pre­sence around Caen lest that infor­ma­tion dampen the morale of British sol­diers or require revised plans for cap­turing the city. The British Second Army thus walked into a buzz saw as their columns struck out on foot for Caen with­out ade­quate anti­tank wea­pons. To Gen. Dwight D. Eisen­hower, Supreme Com­mander of the Allied Expe­di­tion­ary Force, it was incom­pre­hen­sible that it took the British and Cana­dians 6 weeks to finish off the enemy in Caen.

Left: During Operation Charnwood (July 7–9, 1944) Anglo-Cana­dian troops pick their way through the remains of the northern portion of Caen, July 9, 1944. German defenders used the rubble of homes as fortified fighting posi­tions to block the sub­se­quent attack by Allied sol­diers. As Oper­a­tion Charn­wood pro­gressed, fighting became intense, and units engaged in bitter house-to-house battles in the suburbs of Caen. Most infan­try bat­tal­ions sus­tained losses of 25 per­cent. The bombings from July 7–9 were regarded as a signif­i­cant success due in no small part to the amount of phy­si­cal damage it caused and the psycho­log­ical effect it had on both Allied and German fighting men. The Allied bom­bard­ment did not destroy any signif­i­cant enemy forces or strong­points. The only reported imped­i­ment caused by the rubble was against the Allied forces forward advance­ment, espe­cially tanks. The Deputy Mayor of Caen, on meeting the first British offi­cer to enter the city on July 9, “informed the good major that there were virtually no buildings at all left standing in the city.”

Right: In the aftermath of Charnwood’s heavy bomber air raids, some of the first Allied troops to enter the city pose with local inhab­i­tants out­side their wrecked shops. Civil­ians often wel­comed the sol­diers with empty glasses and bottles filled with wine among other gifts.

Left: A 6-pounder antitank gun of the 1st Bat­tal­ion, King’s Own Scottish Borderers, part of the 9th Bri­gade of the 3rd British Infantry Div­ision, along with two Sher­man tanks near the Church of Saint‑Pierre, July 10, 1944. A single tower of the heavily damaged church is visible in the background.

Right: A pair of residents watch a Canadian army bull­dozer (right center) clear away some of the never-ending ruins of destroyed resi­dences, rue de Bayeux, Caen. In the back­ground, the twin towers of the Abbaye aux Hommes remain intact, July 10, 1944. While it may be impos­si­ble to know the exact num­ber of Caen’s resi­dents who perished, the most accur­ate assess­ment is 1,741 died, mostly on June 6–7 during the air raids in sup­port of the Normandy landings. (Other sources suggest about 3,000 may have died.) Many more thou­sands were wounded over the weeks-long struggle to secure the city, and one of Europe’s most his­toric cities was left in ruins. Before the war Caen boasted a civil­ian popu­lace of 62,000; after the war only 18,000 to 20,000 remained in the mar­tyred city. As late as 1954 over 8,000 resi­dents of Caen still shel­tered in sub-par tem­po­rary housing. The bitter cam­paign to drive out the invaders and liber­ate the city for the Allies’ oper­a­tional advan­tage came at a high cost for the Allies (30,000 Anglo-Canadian fatalities alone) and the tens of thou­sands of French civilians who were maimed or died there.

Battle to Liberate Caen, June to July 1944 (Skip first 40 seconds)