Why were the Normandy Landings such a remarkable achievement for the Allies?

The sources have been carefully selected from the Churchill Archive to explore the question of why the Normandy Landings and Operation Overlord were such a remarkable achievement. As a collection of 6 sources they can be used to build up a picture of different reasons. Teachers could ask students to work through the entire collection. However – particularly with younger students – pairs or small groups could examine one source each and then report back to the whole class.

Teachers may decide to limit the range of tasks they want students to tackle within each source; for example, only tackling the Surface level questions or simply testing just one of the inferences in the ‘Deeper level’ section. It should be stressed here that most students are very adept at the Surface Level type of question and the majority – particularly at KS3 – would benefit from more work which challenges them to work at the Deeper Level.

With this in mind, once students have reviewed the full collection, they might then be challenged with tasks which extend their thinking and understanding. For example …

Activity 1: Why were the Normandy Landings such a remarkable achievement for the Allies?

The activity is based on the premise that students will use the sources as a collection. They may find it useful to record their findings on a table such as this as they work through the sources (or once all pairs/ groups have reported back).

Possible reason why Operation Overlord was such a remarkable achievement	Source(s) which support this judgement	Extracts from the source(s) which can be used as evidence to support this argument.
The enemy defences were strong
The timing and conditions had to be just right
Enough resources, weapons and equipment had to be gathered
It involved complicated and difficult planning
They had to deceive the enemy
There were so many obstacles to overcome
There were so many obstacles to overcome
The operation risked alienating friendly countries

Activity 2: What kind of picture do we get about Operation Overlord from these sources?

Students can sometimes fall into the trap of assuming that documents represent ‘the whole’ of the story rather than being part of the puzzle which historians have to piece together. Conversely, they can also be trapped into dismissing sources as completely ‘useless’ if they believe they are ‘biased’.

Instead of being led to think in terms of ‘How useful are these sources?’, students could be encouraged to think along the lines of ‘How are these sources useful?’ and ‘What else would I like to know that these sources don’t reveal?’

Students could consider how far this collection helps us with the following questions, and where else we might need to look to find answers to other questions:

On a scale of 1 – 5 (where 1 is useless and 5 is extremely useful), how useful is this collection of sources for helping us to understand the following?

1. Why did it take so long to plan and carry out Operation Overlord?
2. How united were the Allies united about the plans for Operation Overlord?
3. What was it like to experience D-Day as an ordinary soldier or sailor?
4. What different kinds of people were involved in the planning and execution of Operation Overlord?
5. How risky was Operation Overlord?

Students could also come up with their own questions.

Finally, sources 2, 3 and 4 were all produced some time after D-Day. Students should be encouraged to consider what impact this might have on their perspective, beyond a simplistic assertion that this makes them ‘unreliable’ as they were ‘written after the time’. For example, in Source 3, Churchill was writing his history from a personal point of view and much of it reads as a memoir. He was still a politician whilst writing it and it’s possible that the book tries to promote his own role and successes. Given that he knew by this point that Overlord turned out to be successful, what bearing might this have on how he presents the risks and challenges faced by Britain on D-Day?

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