Editorial: The invasion
The first reports from the battlefront sound like an answer to the prayer that accompanied our troops, smashed by Allied bombers and by the guns of the United Nations’ navies at least sections of the vaunted German “Atlantic Wall” have crumbled, and our troops are established on beachheads along a front from Le Havre to Cherbourg, while Allied parachute and glider troops leaping beyond the “wall” are fighting in Caen, nine miles in the interior, and according to enemy reports even north of Rouen, 41 miles from the coast.
Certainly in the first phases of the invasion, Allied strategy has been brilliant. Instead of striking at the high cliffs opposite Dover, where the Germans expected the attack, and had therefore placed their heaviest fortifications, Gen. Eisenhower struck at the low-lying sandy beaches of Normandy, using methods which had produced such excellent results in Sicily, at Salerno and at Anzio. And the location of the landings also indicates the further plan, which seems aimed at putting the whole Normandy Peninsula into Allied hands as a base for a drive up the Seine Valley directly on to Paris. But the landings in Normandy are merely the first of a series which may now be expected to crash other beaches of France, both north and south, and possibly those of other countries as well.
Yet though the enemy’s “Atlantic Wall” has proved to be quite vulnerable in spots, the German Command has still mobile armies estimated at some 50 divisions in France, in which it has placed its main reliance to bring the Allied invasion to a halt. These armies will counterattack and attempt to drive the allies back into the sea. As Gen. Eisenhower said, the landing is but the opening phase and great battles lie ahead. But the enemy armies can scarcely move until they are certain where the main blow is to come from, and they cannot be quite certain while other invasions are still pending. That is the advantage of the initiative, which is now firmly in Allied hands.