“It was an open question,” says Stephen E. The D-day assault was important for an additional reason. The Anglo-American offensive overran Germany’s industrial heartland and, for freedom, the war in Europe was won. The Allied assault succeeded, and France was liberated. “The destruction of the enemy’s landing,” he told his commanders in Europe, “is the sole decisive factor in the whole conduct of the war.” British Prime Minister Winston Churchill called it “the most difficult operation ever to take place.” It would be the pivotal battle of the war, and Hitler knew it. It was the most powerful armada ever assembled, and it conducted the greatest amphibious assault in human history. The Allied invaders, bearing the arms, the hopes and the prayers of freedom, were carried across the English Channel by more than 5,300 vessels and nearly 11,000 aircraft. France, along with much of the rest of Europe, had fallen under Adolf Hitler’s shadow during the darkest months of World War II. Most of them landed under fire on five beaches along the Normandy coast. During the next 24 hours, 175,000 soldiers, drawn mostly from the United States, Britain, Canada and France, along with 50,000 battle vehicles of all kinds, invaded Nazi-occupied France. Murphy, a pathfinder with the 82nd Airborne, and scores like him set up radar beacons and signal lights to guide hundreds of C-47s carrying thousands of paratroopers into the fields of Normandy. If there was someone under the tree, whoever it was did not shoot, did not make a sound. He put his other hand to his lips to signal silence.
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