Battle of Caen

1. Lead

Caen was supposed to fall on D-Day itself. The plan for the Allied invasion of Normandy gave the British 3rd Infantry Division the task of taking the city on 6 June 1944, the first day of the landings, and then using it as the springboard for a drive south towards Falaise. Instead, Caen became one of the longest and most bitter battles of the Normandy campaign. For two months, British and Canadian troops fought their way yard by yard through villages, hedgerows, woods and the suburbs of a ruined city, against German armoured divisions that Adolf Hitler had ordered to hold the city at all costs. Caen was not fully in Allied hands until 6 August 1944 — and by then much of the city lay in ruins, and both sides had suffered tens of thousands of casualties.

The battle matters for two reasons. First, it was the hinge of the whole Normandy campaign: while the British and Canadians pinned down almost all of the German armour around Caen, the Americans were able to break out of the western end of the beachhead, first at Saint-Lô and then in Operation Cobra at the end of July. Second, it became a lasting controversy. Critics have argued ever since that General Bernard Montgomery, the Allied ground commander, promised too much, moved too slowly, and wasted lives in frontal attacks on a city that could have been bypassed. His defenders reply that tying down the German panzers at Caen was exactly what the plan required, and that the breakout in the west was only possible because the Germans had spent their strength in the east. This article sets out what happened, what it cost, and why historians still argue about it.

2. Key Facts

Date	6 June – 6 August 1944
Location	Caen and the surrounding countryside, Calvados, Normandy, France
Result	Allied victory; Caen captured, but only after two months of fighting
Allied commanders	Gen. Bernard Montgomery (21st Army Group); Lt. Gen. Miles Dempsey (British Second Army); Lt. Gen. Guy Simonds (II Canadian Corps)
German commanders	Field Marshal Erwin Rommel (Army Group B); Gen. Leo Geyr von Schweppenburg (Panzer Group West); SS-Obergruppenführer Sepp Dietrich (I SS Panzer Corps)
Allied strength	British Second Army and First Canadian Army, growing to several corps; hundreds of tanks and overwhelming air and naval support
German strength	Elements of up to eight panzer divisions at various times, including 12th SS Panzer, Panzer Lehr and 21st Panzer Divisions
Allied losses	Estimated 40,000–50,000 casualties in the fighting for Caen (see Casualties section)
German losses	Estimated 40,000–60,000 casualties, including large numbers of tanks destroyed
Civilian losses	Estimated 2,000–3,000 civilians killed in Caen; much of the city destroyed

3. Background

Why Caen mattered

Caen was a city of about 60,000 people, the capital of the Calvados department and the largest city in the Normandy landing area. It sat astride the River Orne and the Caen Canal, about 14 kilometres inland from the landing beaches, at the junction of the roads to Bayeux, Falaise, Paris and the port of Cherbourg. Whoever held Caen controlled the flat, open ground south of the city — ideal tank country — and the road network that led into the interior of France. For the Allies, Caen was the key to the eastern flank: taking it would protect the beachhead from a German counterattack from the east, and it would open the road to Paris. For the Germans, holding Caen was equally vital: as long as they held the city, the Allies were confined to a narrow beachhead, and the German armour could be concentrated in a small area where it could block any breakout.

The Allied plan

The Allied plan, Operation Overlord, assigned the capture of Caen to the British 3rd Infantry Division, landing on Sword Beach on the morning of 6 June 1944. The division was to land, push inland, and take the city by nightfall. The plan was ambitious — some would say over-ambitious — because it assumed that the German defences would collapse quickly, that the 21st Panzer Division, the only German armoured division near the beaches, would be slow to react, and that the airborne troops dropped east of the Orne would hold the bridges and prevent German reinforcements from reaching the city. In the event, almost none of those assumptions held.

The 3rd Division was supported by the 6th Airborne Division, which had landed east of the Orne during the night, and by naval gunfire from warships off Sword Beach. The division’s commander, Major General Tom Rennie, had been told that Caen would fall on the first day, and his men were confident as they landed. But the plan allowed no margin for delay: if the division did not reach Caen by nightfall, the Germans would have time to bring up their reserves, and the city would become a fortress. That, in the end, is what happened.

The German defences

The German defences in Normandy were formidable. The Atlantic Wall, the system of fortifications along the coast, was backed by a mobile reserve of panzer divisions held inland, and by a command structure that, for all its flaws, could move troops quickly once the invasion began. The 21st Panzer Division, commanded by Generalleutnant Edgar Feuchtinger, was stationed just south of Caen, and its tanks could reach the landing beaches within hours. Behind it stood the I SS Panzer Corps, with the 12th SS Panzer Division “Hitlerjugend” and the Panzer Lehr Division — two of the strongest armoured formations in the German Army. The German commander in the west, Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt, and the commander of Army Group B, Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, disagreed about how to use these reserves — Rommel wanted them close to the coast, Rundstedt wanted them held back — but both men agreed that Caen must not fall.

The ground

The terrain around Caen also favoured the defence. North of the city, the ground was broken up by small villages, orchards and hedgerows — the bocage — which gave the defenders cover and made it hard for tanks to manoeuvre. South of the city, the ground opened out into the flat plain towards Falaise, but to reach it the Allies had to cross the Orne and the Odon rivers, and to fight through the ring of villages that the Germans had turned into strongpoints. The Germans used the ground well: they held the high ground south of Caen, at Bourguébus Ridge and Verrières Ridge, and from there they could see and shell every Allied move.

The bocage was the great equaliser of the Normandy campaign: in country cut up by hedgerows, tanks could not manoeuvre, artillery observers could not see, and every field became a small fortress. The Germans, who had been in Normandy for four years, knew the bocage well, and they used it to hold up the Allies for weeks. The rivers were equally important: the Orne and the Odon were the last obstacles before the open ground to the south, and the Germans held the high ground beyond them, from which they could see and shell every Allied move.

4. Opposing Forces

The Allied order of battle

The Allied forces committed to the battle for Caen were drawn from the British Second Army, commanded by Lieutenant General Miles Dempsey, under the overall command of General Bernard Montgomery’s 21st Army Group. The principal formations were the British I Corps, XXX Corps and VIII Corps, and the Canadian II Corps, which arrived as the battle developed. The British 3rd Infantry Division, which had landed on Sword Beach on D-Day, was the first formation to fight for the city; it was joined in the following weeks by the 51st (Highland) Division, the 43rd (Wessex) Division, the 15th (Scottish) Division, the 11th Armoured Division, the 7th Armoured Division and the Guards Armoured Division, as well as the 2nd and 3rd Canadian Infantry Divisions and the 4th Canadian Armoured Division. The Allies also had overwhelming air support from the Second Tactical Air Force and the US Ninth Air Force, and naval gunfire from warships off the coast — advantages that grew steadily as the campaign went on.

	Allies	Germany
Infantry	British 3rd, 51st, 43rd, 15th, 49th and 59th Divisions; Canadian 2nd and 3rd Divisions	346th, 711th and 716th Infantry Divisions; elements of 272nd and 277th Divisions
Armour	11th, 7th and Guards Armoured Divisions; 4th Canadian Armoured Division; independent armoured brigades	21st Panzer Division; 12th SS Panzer Division; Panzer Lehr Division; 1st and 2nd SS Panzer Divisions (later); 9th and 10th SS Panzer Divisions
Artillery	Hundreds of field guns, plus naval gunfire and heavy bomber support	Panzer artillery regiments; 88 mm guns used in the anti-tank role
Air support	Second Tactical Air Force (RAF); US Ninth Air Force; Bomber Command	Luftwaffe: very few aircraft over Normandy by July 1944
Strength in men	Several hundred thousand men passed through the Caen sector over two months	At peak, roughly 100,000–150,000 men in the Caen sector (estimate)

The German panzer divisions

The German forces at Caen were, man for man, among the best in the German Army. The 12th SS Panzer Division “Hitlerjugend” was made up of young volunteers, many of them only 17 or 18 years old, led by experienced officers and NCOs from the 1st SS Panzer Division. They were fanatical, well equipped with Panther and Panzer IV tanks, and they fought with a determination that shocked the British and Canadians. The Panzer Lehr Division was the German Army’s demonstration formation, equipped with the best tanks and the most experienced crews. The 21st Panzer Division, though weaker, knew the ground around Caen better than any other German formation. The German infantry divisions holding the line — the 716th, the 346th and others — were less strong, but they fought from prepared positions in villages and woods, and they were backed by the panzer divisions as a mobile reserve.

The 12th SS Division, in particular, fought with a ferocity that shocked its enemies: its young soldiers, many of them teenagers, refused to surrender, and they fought on even when their positions were surrounded. The division’s commander, SS-Brigadeführer Fritz Witt, was killed by naval gunfire on 14 June, and his successor, Kurt Meyer, was one of the youngest divisional commanders in the German Army. The division’s conduct was also marked by war crimes: its men murdered Canadian prisoners at the Abbaye d’Ardenne, a crime for which Meyer was later tried and convicted.

A battle of attrition

The balance of forces shifted steadily in the Allies’ favour, but slowly. The Allies could replace their losses and bring in fresh divisions; the Germans could not. Every German tank destroyed was hard to replace, every experienced crew lost was gone for good. By the end of July, the German panzer divisions at Caen were shadows of what they had been in June — the 12th SS, for example, had lost most of its tanks and many of its best officers — but they were still holding the line, and they would hold it until the Allies finally broke through south of the city in August.

The Allies, too, paid a heavy price for the attrition: the British infantry divisions that fought at Caen suffered some of the highest casualty rates of the war, and several battalions lost more than half their men in the fighting for the villages and ridges around the city. But the Allies could replace their losses, and the Germans could not, and that, in the end, was the difference between the two sides, and the reason why the battle, for all its cost, ended in an Allied victory.

5. The Battle

D-Day and the failure to take Caen, 6–7 June

The 3rd Infantry Division landed on Sword Beach at 07:25 on 6 June 1944, the last of the five beaches to be assaulted, and pushed inland more quickly than any other division that day. By mid-afternoon its leading battalions had reached the outskirts of Caen, only a few kilometres from the city centre, and for a time it looked as if the plan might work. But the advance had outrun its support: the tanks were still coming ashore, the artillery was not yet in position, and the division’s flank was exposed. At about 16:00 the 21st Panzer Division counterattacked, driving a wedge between the British 3rd Division and the airborne troops east of the Orne, and reaching the coast at Lion-sur-Mer. The counterattack was beaten back by naval gunfire and by anti-tank guns, but it stopped the British advance cold. Caen was not taken on D-Day, and it would not be taken for another two months.

The next day, 7 June, the British tried again. The 3rd Division and the 51st (Highland) Division attacked towards the city, but they ran into the 12th SS Panzer Division, which had arrived from the south-east during the night and taken up positions around the villages north of Caen. The fighting at Lebisey Wood and at the village of Cambes was fierce, and the British made little progress. The Germans, for their part, launched a counterattack on the evening of 7 June, which was also beaten back. Both sides were now digging in, and the battle for Caen was settling into a long, grinding struggle.

Perch and Epsom: the battles for the Odon

Montgomery’s next attempt to take Caen was Operation Perch, launched on 7 June. The plan was for XXX Corps, under Lieutenant General Gerard Bucknall, to swing around the west of Caen, through Tilly-sur-Seulles and Villers-Bocage, and then to drive east and take the city from the south. The operation began well: the 50th (Northumbrian) Division took Bayeux, and the 7th Armoured Division advanced towards Villers-Bocage. But the advance ran into the Panzer Lehr Division, and on 13 June, at Villers-Bocage, a small German force under SS-Obersturmführer Michael Wittmann, with a handful of Tiger tanks, ambushed the leading British column and destroyed more than twenty tanks and armoured vehicles in a few minutes. The shock of the ambush, and the arrival of the 2nd Panzer Division, brought the British advance to a halt. XXX Corps pulled back, and Operation Perch was abandoned. The fighting around Tilly-sur-Seulles, a small village that changed hands several times, went on for two weeks and cost both sides heavily. Tilly itself was destroyed, and the British 50th Division suffered about 6,000 casualties in the fighting for the village and the surrounding woods.

The next major operation was Epsom, launched on 26 June. VIII Corps, under Lieutenant General Richard O’Connor, attacked across the River Odon, west of Caen, with the aim of crossing the river, taking the high ground at Hill 112, and then driving east to take Caen from the south. The attack was supported by a massive artillery bombardment — more than 700 guns — and by the 11th Armoured Division and the 15th (Scottish) Division. The infantry crossed the Odon on 27 June, and the 11th Armoured Division reached the high ground, but the Germans reacted quickly: the 1st SS Panzer Division and the 2nd SS Panzer Division were thrown into the battle, and the fighting for Hill 112 became one of the bloodiest of the campaign. Hill 112 changed hands several times, and by the time Epsom ended on 30 June, the British had gained a small bridgehead across the Odon but had not broken through. The operation had cost the British about 4,000 casualties, and the Germans about the same — but it had drawn six panzer divisions to the Caen sector, which was, in Montgomery’s view, exactly the point.

Charnwood and Goodwood: the July battles

Charnwood and the bombing of Caen

On the evening of 7 July, more than 450 heavy bombers of RAF Bomber Command dropped about 2,500 tons of bombs on the northern part of Caen, in the first use of heavy bombers in direct support of ground troops in Normandy. The bombing destroyed much of the city centre and killed an estimated 300–400 French civilians in a single night, but it did not destroy the German defences, which were mostly outside the bombed area. The next morning, 8 July, Operation Charnwood began: three infantry divisions — the 3rd British, the 51st (Highland) and the 3rd Canadian — attacked the city from the north, supported by tanks and artillery. The fighting was house to house, and the Germans, mainly the 12th SS Panzer Division and the 16th Luftwaffe Field Division, fought for every street. By the evening of 9 July, the British and Canadians held the northern half of Caen, up to the River Orne. The southern half, across the river, was still in German hands. The city itself was a ruin: about 75 per cent of its buildings had been destroyed or badly damaged, and an estimated 2,000–3,000 civilians had been killed since 6 June, most of them by Allied bombing and shelling. The fall of northern Caen was a limited success, and it was bought at a heavy price.

Goodwood and the armoured battle

The largest operation of the battle was Goodwood, launched on 18 July. Three armoured divisions — the 11th, the 7th and the Guards — attacked east of Caen, across the Orne, with the aim of breaking through the German lines and reaching Falaise. The attack was preceded by a bombardment by more than 1,000 heavy bombers, the largest air bombardment in support of ground troops yet seen. The tanks advanced several kilometres on the first day, but they ran into a deep belt of German anti-tank guns, including 88 mm guns, on Bourguébus Ridge, and they were stopped. In three days of fighting, the British lost about 400 tanks — though most of them were recovered and repaired — and about 5,500 casualties, while the Germans lost about 100 tanks and an estimated 6,000 casualties. Goodwood did not break through, and it has been criticised ever since as a costly failure. But it did pin down the German armour: at the height of Goodwood, six of the nine German panzer divisions in Normandy were facing the British east of Caen.

At the same time, the Canadians launched Operation Atlantic, south of Caen, and then Operation Spring, on 25 July, an attack on Verrières Ridge that cost the Canadians about 1,500 casualties in a single day, including the near-destruction of the Black Watch regiment, which lost about 300 men. The ridge was not taken. The fighting in July was the bloodiest of the battle for Caen, and it left both sides exhausted.

The final capture, 6 August

By the end of July, the Americans had broken out in the west in Operation Cobra, and the German front in Normandy was beginning to collapse. The Germans at Caen, who had held the city for two months, were now in danger of being encircled. On 6 August 1944, the last German troops withdrew from the southern half of Caen, and the city was finally in Allied hands — two months after it was supposed to fall on D-Day. The battle was over, but the war in Normandy was not: the fighting now moved south, towards Falaise, where the German Seventh Army would be encircled and largely destroyed in the Falaise Pocket. The capture of the southern half of the city was carried out by the British I Corps and the Canadians, who crossed the Orne under fire and cleared the remaining German positions street by street, while the Germans, short of men, fuel and ammunition, pulled back to the south to fight again at Falaise.

6. Turning Point

Goodwood and the fixing of the German armour

There was no single moment when the Battle of Caen turned. The battle was won — if it can be said to have been won at all — by attrition, by the slow wearing down of the German panzer divisions until they could no longer hold the line. But if one operation deserves to be called the turning point, it is Operation Goodwood, from 18 to 20 July. Goodwood did not achieve its stated aim of breaking through to Falaise, and it cost the British about 400 tanks. But it fixed the German armour in place east of Caen at the very moment when the Americans were preparing Operation Cobra in the west. When Cobra was launched on 25 July, the Germans had almost no armoured reserves left to send against it, because their tanks were still facing the British at Caen. The American breakout, and the collapse of the German front in Normandy that followed, were made possible by the sacrifice of the British and Canadian divisions at Caen. That, at least, is the argument of Montgomery’s defenders, and it is a strong one: the Germans themselves, after the war, said that they had been forced to commit their armour to Caen, and that they had paid for it in the west.

The heavy bombers

The second turning point was the arrival of the heavy bombers. The bombing of Caen on 7 July, and the great bombardment before Goodwood, showed that the Allies could bring overwhelming firepower to bear on any point of the front. The bombing did not, by itself, win battles — at Caen, as at Omaha Beach, the bombs often missed the German defences and destroyed French cities instead — but it made it impossible for the Germans to move in daylight, and it wore down their artillery and their supply lines. By the end of July, the German divisions at Caen were short of fuel, short of ammunition, and short of men, and they could no longer counterattack effectively.

The bombing also had a political cost: the French, who had welcomed the Allies as liberators, were horrified by the destruction of their cities, and the bombing of Caen became a source of tension between the Allies and the French government. The Allies argued that the bombing was a military necessity, and that it saved Allied lives, but the argument did not convince everyone, and the debate about the bombing of Caen continues in France to this day.

7. Casualties and Losses

The military cost

The casualty figures for the Battle of Caen are estimates, and sources differ. The fighting lasted two months and involved dozens of divisions on both sides, and the records are incomplete. The figures below should be read as informed estimates, not exact counts.

The British and Canadian losses were heaviest in the infantry battalions that attacked the villages and ridges around the city, and in the armoured regiments that fought at Goodwood, where the British lost about 400 tanks in three days, though most of them were recovered and repaired. The German losses were heaviest in the panzer divisions, which were ground down by artillery and air attacks, and in the infantry divisions that held the line in the villages, where they were shelled day and night for weeks on end.

	Allies	Germany
Killed	Estimated 10,000–15,000 (British and Canadian)	Estimated 15,000–20,000
Wounded and missing	Estimated 30,000–35,000	Estimated 25,000–40,000
Total	Estimated 40,000–50,000	Estimated 40,000–60,000
Tanks	About 400 tanks lost in Goodwood alone (most recovered and repaired); hundreds more in other operations	Estimated 400–500 tanks destroyed or damaged beyond repair

The figures in the table above are the best available estimates, and they should be read with that in mind: the fighting lasted two months, the records are incomplete, and the two sides counted their losses differently. What is certain is that the battle was one of the bloodiest of the Normandy campaign, and that both sides suffered heavily for a city that was, in the end, a ruin.

The civilian cost

The civilian cost was also heavy. An estimated 2,000–3,000 civilians were killed in Caen during the battle, most of them by Allied bombing and shelling, and many thousands more were made homeless. The city was about 75 per cent destroyed. The French civilian dead are sometimes forgotten in accounts of the battle, but they were a large part of its cost, and the bombing of Caen remains controversial in France to this day. The Allies argued that the bombing was necessary to support the ground troops; the French, then and now, have asked whether the destruction of their city was the price that had to be paid. Many of the dead were killed in the bombing of 7 July and in the shelling that preceded the ground attacks, and their names are recorded on the memorials in the city, which remember them alongside the soldiers who died to liberate Caen.

8. Map and Geography

The city and the rivers

Caen lies in the Calvados department of Normandy, about 14 kilometres inland from the Channel coast, at the point where the River Orne and the Caen Canal meet. The city is built on both banks of the Orne, with the older quarters on the north bank and the newer suburbs, including the railway station and the industrial districts, on the south bank. To the north, the ground rises gently towards the coast, broken by villages — Cambes, Lebisey, Epron, Bretteville-sur-Odon — and by woods and orchards. To the south, the ground opens into the plain that runs to Falaise, about 30 kilometres away, and beyond that to Paris. The plain is flat, open and ideal for tanks, and it was the prize that both sides were fighting for.

The city itself was a fortress: its stone buildings, its churches and its factories were turned into strongpoints, and its streets became killing grounds. The Germans held the southern half of the city, across the Orne, for a month after the northern half fell, and they used the river as a moat, blowing up the bridges and shelling anyone who tried to cross it.

Why the ground favoured the defence

The rivers were the key to the battle. The Orne, which flows through the city, and the Odon, which joins the Orne west of Caen, were the obstacles that the Allies had to cross to reach the open ground to the south. The Germans held the high ground south of the rivers — Hill 112, Bourguébus Ridge and Verrières Ridge — and from those heights they could observe and shell every Allied move. The villages around Caen — Tilly-sur-Seulles, Villers-Bocage, Fontenay-le-Pesnel, Cheux, Carpiquet — were turned into fortresses, each with its own garrison, its own anti-tank guns, and its own field of fire. The bocage, the hedgerow country of small fields bounded by thick earth banks, covered the ground north and west of the city and made it hard for tanks to manoeuvre and easy for infantry to hide. The geography of Caen explains why the battle lasted two months: the ground favoured the defence at every step, and the Allies had to fight for every village, every wood and every ridge before they could reach the open plain.

9. Outcome and Legacy of the Battle of Caen

The capture and the breakout

The capture of Caen on 6 August 1944 ended the longest battle of the Normandy campaign, but it did not end the controversy. The city was in ruins, its people scattered, and the Allied armies were still fighting their way south. Within days, the Canadians launched Operation Totalize, and the Americans and British closed the Falaise Pocket, destroying the German Seventh Army. Caen had served its purpose: it had held the German armour in the east while the Americans broke out in the west. But the price had been high, and the question of whether the price was necessary has been argued ever since.

The capture of the city was not the end of the fighting in Normandy: the Canadians launched Operation Totalize a day later, on 7 August, and the Americans and British closed the Falaise Pocket, destroying the German Seventh Army. Caen had served its purpose, but the price had been high, and the question of whether the price was necessary has been argued ever since, by historians and by the men who fought there.

The Montgomery controversy

The case against Montgomery

Montgomery’s critics, then and now, argue that he promised to take Caen on D-Day and failed, and that he then launched a series of costly frontal attacks — Epsom, Charnwood and Goodwood — that gained little ground at great cost. They point to the casualties: tens of thousands of British and Canadian soldiers killed and wounded in two months of fighting for a single city, and thousands of French civilians killed by Allied bombing. They argue that Montgomery should have bypassed Caen, or broken out sooner, and that his caution wasted lives and time. The bombing of the city on 7 July, which killed hundreds of civilians and did not destroy the German defences, is often cited as the clearest example of his failure: a plan that destroyed a French city without achieving its military aim.

The critics also point to the human cost: the British and Canadian infantry who fought at Caen suffered some of the highest casualty rates of the war, and many of the men who died were young conscripts, fighting their first battle. The critics argue that a better general would have found a way to win without paying so high a price, and that Montgomery, for all his careful planning, did not.

The case for Montgomery

Montgomery’s defenders reply that he never promised a rapid breakout, and that his plan was always to draw the German armour onto the British front and wear it down, so that the Americans could break out in the west. They point out that the operations at Caen did exactly that: by the end of July, six of the nine German panzer divisions in Normandy were facing the British east of Caen, and the Americans, when they launched Operation Cobra on 25 July, met almost no armoured resistance. The defenders also argue that the alternatives were worse: bypassing Caen would have left a German stronghold on the flank of the beachhead, and a premature breakout would have risked a German counterattack that could have destroyed the invasion. The truth, as with most military controversies, lies somewhere in between: Montgomery’s plan worked, but it worked slowly and at a high cost, and the cost fell heavily on the British and Canadian infantry who fought the battle.

10. Commanders

Allied commanders

General Bernard Montgomery (Allies). Commander of the 21st Army Group and of all Allied ground forces in Normandy until September 1944. Montgomery planned the invasion and directed the battle for Caen. He has been praised for his careful planning and criticised for his caution and for the cost of the operations at Caen. He later commanded the Allied advance into Germany and accepted the German surrender in the north-west in May 1945.

Lieutenant General Miles Dempsey (Allies). Commander of the British Second Army, which fought the battle for Caen. Dempsey was a quiet, professional soldier who planned and executed the operations — Perch, Epsom, Charnwood and Goodwood — under Montgomery’s direction. He later commanded the Second Army in the advance through Belgium and Holland and into Germany.

Lieutenant General Guy Simonds (Allies). Commander of the II Canadian Corps, which arrived in Normandy in July 1944 and fought the battles for Verrières Ridge and, later, for Falaise. Simonds was one of the most innovative Allied commanders, and his use of armoured personnel carriers in Operation Totalize was a notable tactical development.

German commanders

Field Marshal Erwin Rommel (Germany). Commander of Army Group B, responsible for the defence of Normandy. Rommel had commanded the Afrika Korps in North Africa and was one of Germany’s most famous generals. He was wounded in an air attack on 17 July 1944 and was later forced to take his own life after being implicated in the plot to assassinate Hitler on 20 July 1944.

General Leo Geyr von Schweppenburg (Germany). Commander of Panzer Group West, the German armoured reserve in Normandy. Geyr was dismissed by Hitler in July 1944 after disagreeing with him about the conduct of the battle.

SS-Obergruppenführer Sepp Dietrich (Germany). Commander of the I SS Panzer Corps, which included the 12th SS Panzer Division and the Panzer Lehr Division. Dietrich was a long-serving SS officer who had been with Hitler since the 1920s. His corps fought the hardest battles at Caen, and its divisions suffered heavily.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why was Caen so important?
Caen controlled the road network and the flat ground south of the city, the route to Paris and to Falaise. Whoever held Caen controlled the eastern flank of the Normandy beachhead and the open tank country beyond it.

Why did it take two months to capture Caen?
The Germans concentrated almost all of their panzer divisions around the city, fought from prepared positions in villages and on ridges, and were ordered by Hitler to hold Caen at all costs. The bocage and the rivers also favoured the defence.

What was Operation Goodwood?
Goodwood, launched on 18 July 1944, was the largest British armoured operation of the battle: three armoured divisions attacked east of Caen after a bombardment by more than 1,000 heavy bombers. It gained ground but did not break through, and the British lost about 400 tanks.

How many civilians died in Caen?
An estimated 2,000–3,000 civilians were killed in Caen during the battle, most of them by Allied bombing and shelling. The city was about 75 per cent destroyed.

Was Montgomery right to attack Caen frontally?
Historians still disagree. His defenders say the attacks pinned down the German armour and made the American breakout possible. His critics say the attacks were too costly and gained too little ground. Most historians now accept that the plan worked, but slowly and at a high price.

When was Caen finally captured?
The last German troops withdrew from the southern half of the city on 6 August 1944, two months after D-Day. The northern half had been taken on 9 July, in Operation Charnwood.

Sources

1. Wikipedia, “Battle for Caen” — dates, operations, casualty estimates and commanders.
2. Wikipedia, “Operation Goodwood” and “Operation Charnwood” — the July operations and their results.
3. Encyclopædia Britannica, “Caen, Battle of” — background and outcome.
4. US Army Center of Military History, The Breakout and Pursuit and Cross-Channel Attack — official histories of the Normandy campaign.
5. Stephen E. Ambrose, D-Day, June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War II (Simon & Schuster, 1994) — the D-Day landings and the failure to take Caen.
6. Max Hastings, Overlord: D-Day and the Battle for Normandy (Simon & Schuster, 1984) — the battle for Caen, Goodwood and the Montgomery controversy.
7. Memorial de Caen, official museum and memorial — the civilian cost and the destruction of the city.

Further reading

• Carlo D’Este, Decision in Normandy (HarperCollins, 1983).
• John Buckley, Monty’s Men: The British Army and the Liberation of Europe (Yale University Press, 2013).