D-Day: Extreme Basics Trivia Quiz

Answer: Normandy, Northern France

'The Invasion of Normandy' is another name for it. It was the largest amphibious invasion in the history of the world.

Answer: Dwight D. Eisenhower

Dwight D. Eisenhower was in charge of planning. He did not, however, actually fight on the beaches. The ground forces were under the command of Field Marshal Montgomery.

Answer: Omaha and Utah

Omaha and Utah were the American beaches, Gold, Juno, and Sword being the British and Canadian beaches. Omaha saw intense fighting, leading to the capture of the beachhead. After the beachhead was secured, corpses littered the beach and the death toll reached about 3,000 for the Americans. Unlike Omaha, resisteance on Utah was mild,, and the American forces had little trouble taking the beachhead from the Germans.
The remaining members from each beach met up with the Free French, Frenchman who had fled at Dunkirk, and marched to Paris, where it was liberated in August of 1944.

Answer: Juno

Juno was the Canadian beach, and the Canadians pushed farther in one day than any other beach, mainly because of the Canadian paratroopers, who did their jobs well.
Sword was a beach for British and Free French.
Gold was a beach for only British, their forces led by Graham.
Omaha was the bloodiest beach of them all. The beach had unexpectedly strong defenses and the Americans were caught off guard. With brave men, the Americans fought their way through to take Paris in the August of 1944.
Most of the German defenses were manned by young men, teens or early-twenties, though some were battle-hardened from the war on the Eastern Front (Russia). That and the machine guns made it difficult to capture.

Answer: 132,000

The Allied troops were dispersed thus: (approximately) 23,000 on Utah Beach, 34,000 on Omaha Beach, 25,000 on Gold Beach, 21,000 on Juno Beach, 29,000 on Sword Beach.

Answer: June 5, 1944

The day chosen for the D-Day landing was dependent on weather conditions and several possible dates were discussed. It was ultimately decided that the invasion would take place June 5, 1944, but it was pushed back because of atrocious weather issues.

Answer: June 6, 1944

It was postponed for a day, and the paratroopers were flown in cloudy darkness. On the beaches, the tides were far worse than the German MGs.

Answer: Erwin Rommel

Erwin Rommel, the desert fox, was possibly the only one who could've stopped the Allied invasion. He left for Germany on the 5th, the day before the Allies attacked. Also, the Luftwaffe had transferred most of the planes that were in Normandy to other various places, making the Allied invasion easier.
However, this was all coincidence.

Answer: Weather

The weather on June 5th, the original date, was horrendous, and the invasion ended up canceled and rescheduled for the next day. The Germans knew the Allies were going to invade, they even figured out the codes to tell the French Resistance that they were coming.

The radios played the poem, Chanson d'Automne, after Rommel had left for Germany. German suspicions were high, though they moved squadrons to protect German cities from Allied bombing. One of the pilots by the name of Josef Priller blew up, telling the commanders that if there was to be an invasion, they should be moving the squadrons toward the beachhead.

The commander laughed and said the weather was too bad. None of them knew the Allies were going to attack on a day with such bad weather. Like I said before, all of this was a coincidence. The other two answers are just random, by the way. Neither occurred.

Answer: Operation Overlord

The answer is Operation Overlord.
Operation Sealion, the German plan to invade Britain, was abandoned by the Germans when they failed to achieve air superiority over Britain.
Operation Market Garden was the invasion of The Netherlands from Belgium, and Operation Varsity was part of Operation Plunder. It was the biggest airborne attack ever, and was to cross the Rhine.