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Juno Beach was the only beach invasion that was done by the Canadians in the operation. The name of the beach was originally going to be "Jelly" based off of the Jellyfish just like the British beaches. The name was decided against by Churchill because it didn't seem appropriate to give that name to a beach where many men would die. Juno Beach was the easiest beach to take out of the five beaches just based off of the numbers. However, it still came at a great cost. The beach was disected into two sectors, Mike and Nan. Like the other landings, the invasion began with a Naval bombardment early in the morning and followed by waves of infantry hitting the beach.
Allied Casualties: 914
Axis Casualties: Unknown
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The Airborne landings were very important and crucial to our invasion of France and the overall success of the entire war. The 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions were the American units that landed behind Utah and Omaha Beach the night prior to the Invasion. The mini series on HBO called "Band of Brothers" shows this perfectly. It follows Easy Company of the 101st Airborne throughout the entire war. The Airborne was a great success even with the huge mistakes that were made in the execution of the plan. Winds and fog made all the planes get off course causing great confusion in the Americans. No one was on their objective and units got mixed up and stayed that way for a long time during the invasion. The Germans thought it was planned and thought they were surronded and were very confused, even though it was the exact opposite. The other Airborne unit that landed was a British one, codenamed Operation Tonga. It was completed by the British 6th Airborne Division. They landed right behind Sword Beach and were more organized than the Americans, but still met difficulties.
Allied Casualties: 1,003 killed, 2,657 wounded, 4,490 missing
Axis Casualties: 21,300
The entire war was completely gruesome not only for the militants, but for many of the citizens and regular civilians throughout the world. Over 80 MILLION people lost their lives about 50 million of those were civilians and non-combatants. Nothing like it has ever been seen in history before and hopefully will never been seen again. The sheer numbers are insane and hard to process.This is a jawdropping video that brings those numbers to life and really visually shows how catastrophic the war was.