SHAEF
Coalition headquarters as a political machine.
Darker cells mean a higher score for this topic on that metric.
Scale52
Intensity84
Duration18
Tech shift58
Political impact78
Cultural memory92
LessMore
Last reviewed Sources & creditsMedia creditsMethodology
Quick answers
Are the scores a ranking of nations or armies?
No. Scores are browsing aids inside an era-bounded atlas — not live league tables of countries.
How many died on 6 June?
Allied dead on D-Day are usually given in the thousands (often about 4,000+ killed, with wider casualty figures higher). German and French civilian deaths add more. Campaign totals are much larger.
Why Normandy, not Calais?
Calais was closer and more obvious -- hence Fortitude. Normandy offered space and a deception payoff.
What was Omaha?
The US beach under the highest bluffs, where the first waves took the worst punishment. It is not the whole of D-Day.
Who commanded?
Eisenhower (SHAEF), Montgomery (ground), Bradley (US First Army), Ramsay (navy), Leigh-Mallory (air) -- a coalition staff.
Did D-Day win the war?
It opened a Western Front that Germany could not resource beside the east. The war still had eleven months and a Soviet drive from the other side.
SHAEF coalition: US, British, Canadian ground; Allied navies and air forces; French SAS and later the 2e DB in the Paris story.
German static divisions, 21st Panzer, and later SS panzer -- a mixed, late-arriving counterforce.
Systems
Five beach forces
US/UK/CA as colour-coded armies.
Allied navies
Neptune's crossing.
Allied air
Prerequisite superiority.
German Army Group B
The defender, late and split.
French Resistance / FFI
A force in the rear and in Paris.
Meters
Anglophone memory
98
Coalition complexity
88
Amphibious engineering
90
Campaign duration
35
Civilian harm (Normandy)
70
Global scale vs Bagration
50
Hotspots
Omaha
The US icon beach.
Juno
The Canadian beach -- teach it.
Pegasus / Orne
British airborne flank.
Caen
The delayed city.
Falaise
The pocket of August.
Materials
Landing craft
The industrial object of Neptune -- named, not designed here.
Mulberry concrete
A harbour towed.
Hedgerow earth
Bocage as a material.
Fuel (PLUTO)
A pipeline under the ocean as a story, not a schematic to copy.
Historical Overlord forces, not a modern landing manual.
Mulberries and Gooseberries are engineering history.