The Allies knew that Hitler had been busy fortifying the French coast to protect against invasion, turning it into the so-called “Fortress Europe”. Thus planning began in earnest for D-Day and what would come to be known as Operation Overlord, the invasion of Europe and the push to defeat the Nazi regime once and for all. By the time the three world leaders met in Tehran in 1943, the Allied leaders were finally ready to commit to launching the invasion of Western Europe by June 1944. The Allies had initially promised Stalin that the invasion would come in 1942, then in the spring of 1943. He was also worried that the United States and England would reach a separate peace with Germany, leaving Hitler’s forces to commit all their forces to demolish the Soviet war machine. Stalin was gravely concerned that his Soviet Union could not defeat Germany without the Allies opening up a second front to split Germany’s attention.

The First United States Army Group (FUSAG) existed only on paper but played one of the most crucial roles in the entire D-Day campaign.Īlmost immediately after the United States entered World War 2 against Germany, Josef Stalin began demanding that Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill commit Allied troops to invade Europe. It would have been a much worse toll, however, without a massive plan of deception and the efforts of the greatest fake army ever assembled.

It came at a dreadful cost in men and machines, with over 10,000 Allied soldiers killed or wounded just on the first day of the invasion of Normandy, June 6th, 1944. He Allied invasion of Europe was the largest assault by sea in the history of warfare.

Battle with fake tank WWII