German 352nd Infantry Division
▶ Explore on the mapThe 352nd Infantry Division held the high ground above Omaha Beach on D-Day, one of the two German formations defending the American sector, and it is remembered chiefly for what happened on the beach below it. The division had been pulled into the area after the Normandy landings and had been given hours rather than days to prepare. On the sixth of June 1944 its officers commanded an exposed shore from observation posts cut into the bluffs, and American troops climbing the steep slopes were shot down in the surf or blown apart by the few obstacles they managed to bring ashore. The result was the heaviest loss of life of any Allied landing on that day. Unable to break the assault, the division withdrew overnight into the bocage, where it spent the rest of the campaign holding ground between the American and British beachheads and absorbing the bulk of the American losses in Normandy. It was withdrawn to the Channel coast in August and fought again in the closing weeks of the battle. Its positions in this entry are schematic and denote headquarters areas, not precise front lines.
Sources
- Wikimedia Commons — Charnwood (SVG, by EyeSerene)
- Wikimedia Commons — Operations Greenwood and Pomegranate, Normandy, July 1944 (EN.svg)
- Wikimedia Commons — Operation Tractable (SVG, by EyeSerene)
- Wikipedia — Falaise pocket (CC BY-SA 4.0)
- Wikipedia — Normandy landings (CC BY-SA 3.0)
- Wikipedia — Operation Overlord (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Related
Reuse this data: open dataset (GeoJSON / CSV, CC BY 4.0)