The eyes of the world are upon you.

The hopes and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you.

In company with our brave allies and brothers in arms on other fronts,

you will bring about the destruction of the German war machine,

the elimination of Nazi tyranny over the oppressed

peoples of Europe, and security for ourselves in a free world.

Order of the Day for the Allied Expeditionary Force, June 6, 1944.

Welcome to the history of the 20th century. The 20th century. I'm a minute The Episode 433, The Longest Day, Part 2 The Allied Amphibious Landings at Normandy consisted of two parts.

First were the western beaches, where units of the U.S. First Army were to land.

The First Army was commanded by Lieutenant General Omar Bradley, and consisted of about 73,000 soldiers.

The eastern beaches were the objectives of the British Second Army, commanded by Lieutenant General

Sir Miles Dempsey. It consisted of around 83,000 soldiers, and in both cases I'm including the

airborne units that landed overnight, and which I told you about last time.

Today, I want to talk about these landings, the main amphibious landings of the

Normandy invasion. We will look at the American assault on Utah Beach today, and next week,

the British invasions and the American assault on Omaha Beach, the bloodiest of the landings.

But before we do any of those things, a word about

nomenclature, because you know I love to talk about nomenclature. You've heard me speak

repeatedly of Operation Overlord. That term is sometimes used as a synonym for the Normandy invasion, although it was, in fact, an umbrella term for the first 90 days of the campaign, from the initial landings through to the end of August, by which time it was projected that Allied forces would have reached the River Sen and Paris.

The specific name for the initial invasion plan was Operation Neptune.

No one ever uses that name in our time.

The most common everyday name for the Normandy invasion is simply D-Day.

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