The second weapon in the hands of the Anglo-Americans was one of the most extraordinary intelligence operations ever carried out, also born, however, of the monopoly of the air: the goal, achieved, was to make the Germans believe that the real landing would be in the area of the Pas de Calais, the narrowest point in the English Channel, and that any other landing would be just a diversion to divert attention from the real landing. To this end, a fake army group was formed in the Kent area, ostensibly commanded by General George Patton (the most well-known among the Allied commanders), with its own radio traffic, huge tank parks, barracks, and landing craft at anchor. All fake: the tanks and ships were inflatables or wooden and canvas dummies, the radio traffic was fictitious. German reconnaissance flights were allowed only in southeastern England, while the sky over the southwestern and western ports, where the real invasion fleet was anchored, was made impenetrable. All German secret agents in Great Britain, who were actually playing a double game for the British services, were instructed to report to Berlin that the army commanded by Patton was the one destined for the real invasion. The Allies were facilitated in the enterprise by the fact that the Germans were already convinced on their own that the landing would take place in Calais (aside from an intuition by Hitler for Normandy, which the Führer himself did not follow up on), and therefore every clue was interpreted in this sense. So, for much of the battle, while the 7th German Army defending Normandy fought to survive, the 15th Army, deployed in Calais, remained stationary and intact, with its tactical reserves available, waiting for a landing that would never happen. However, despite all this deployment of means and capabilities by the Allies, destiny was still momentarily balanced. The landings were launched on 5 beaches over a front of 80 kilometers: from west to east, according to the code adopted by the Allies, Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno, and Sword, the first two destined for the Americans, the other three for the British and Canadians. In Utah, the landing succeeded without too much difficulty (the losses were 197), facilitated also by the drop on the back of the beach of two American airborne divisions. The same happened, overall, at Gold, Juno, and Sword, although in some areas, the resistance was fierce, and the losses were high. But it was at Omaha that the bloodbath occurred (the first 25, shocking, minutes of Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan are set here): the beach, eight kilometers long, ended with a shingle and a breakwater, and the only exits were flanked by fortified cliffs. Three thousand American soldiers were killed or wounded at Omaha, and by evening, the beachhead was only a maximum of one and a half kilometers deep. In short, at Omaha, the Atlantic Wall had done its job, slowing down the invaders enough to allow a night counterattack that might have thrown them back into the sea, opening a gigantic breach between Utah and the English beaches, a breach that perhaps would have been impossible to fill. But the troops for the counterattack were not there; the regiment that had this task had been sent to hunt paratroopers and then to counter the landing of the US Rangers at Pointe du Hoc, a rocky promontory on which there was a battery of cannons (which, however, were not yet installed, it was later discovered) that could have posed a threat to the beaches. But the landing at Pointe was an absolutely tactical episode that could never have threatened the German front in Normandy, while the missed opportunity at Omaha had enormous strategic significance. The landing, therefore, succeeded (at the cost of 10,300 casualties for the Allies - including 4,400 deaths, source: Wikipedia - and 9,000 for the Germans), and the battle of Normandy lasted until the end of August, with very tough clashes and bloodbaths reminiscent of those of World War I, on the Karst or in Flanders. The Germans, hammered from the sky and the sea, tried in every way to confine the opponents to the beachhead, which, however, was slowly widening, always stretching the Nazi defensive apparatus. In the end, the Americans broke through at the base of the Cotentin Peninsula and flooded into central France until they closed in a gigantic pocket the German forces defending Normandy, which were subjected, in the long summer days, to continuous bombardment by aviation and artillery. The German army in France emerged destroyed from the ordeal: 450,000 men were lost (240,000 killed or wounded), along with 1,500 tanks, 3,500 cannons, and 20,000 vehicles. On August 25, Paris was liberated, on September 3, Brussels, on September 4, Antwerp with its intact port. But the British did not immediately think of clearing the Scheldt estuary from German forces, and the port remained unusable for months because the ships in transit would have come under fire from German batteries. Meanwhile, the supplies of the Allies, which still came from the Norman beaches, began to run low, and the offensive bogged down. The Wehrmacht gave proof once again of its extraordinary recovery capabilities, until it unleashed the Ardennes Offensive on December 16, 1944, against the Allies, while at the same time, in the East, it tried to resist the rising tide of the Red Army. The war lasted another bitter 8 months, from which Germany emerged destroyed and divided in two between the Allies and the Soviets, a scenario ready for a new war, the "cold" one between Moscow and Washington.