101st Airborne Division

Early in the war Soviet Premier Josef Stalin, faced with grievous losses in the great encirclements of 1941, was agitating for a second front in continental Europe. The war in North Africa was not enough.

At 12:05 AM on June 6, 1944, three gliders carrying an element of the British 6th Airborne Division silently cut loose form the their tow planes and drifted towards the Pegasus Bridge, one of the few bridges that led over the Seine towards Normandy.

The Fall of Paris on August 25, 1944 ended the Normandy campaign, but the Allies were still dependent on the port of Cherbourg for supplies. This caused a reevaluation of the “broad front” strategy that Eisenhower followed, advancing everywhere, rather than Montgomery’s advocacy for narrow thrusts through weak points in the German lines.