The destruction that followed D-Day: Stunning before and after images

The destruction that followed D-Day: Stunning before and after images show how northern France recovered from the months-long battle when the Allied bombardments and paratroopers forced the Nazis out

  • On June 6 1944, wave upon wave of Allied troops poured onto the beaches of Normandy to hails of Nazi fire
  • Bombers thundered through the sky to rain devastation on the towns and cities of Normandy in the attack
  • Hundreds of civilians were killed and ancient architecture destroyed by the infernos which lit up the night
  • And the settlements of northern France were further blown to pieces as battles raged in months of fighting
  • Seventy-five years on photos from then and now allow a glimpse into the violent liberation of Normandy 

Stunning before and after images show how northern France has recovered from the months-long battles which followed D-Day when Allied bombardments and paratroopers forced the Nazis out.

Warships, bombers, rubble, refugees. That was the Normandy landscape of 1944, as Allied forces fought to wrest France from Nazi control.

Today, the region’s towns and beaches are startlingly calm, as still-grateful residents prepare to welcome veterans commemorating 75 years since D-Day. 

On Omaha Beach on June 6, 1944 , layer upon layer of U.S., British and Canadian warships lined up along the Normandy shore. German anti-tank obstacles packed the broad beaches. Lethal aircraft dotted the sky.

Today, a grassy knoll blends gently into the wide beach, small waves lapping at the shore. Two tourists stand alone on the vast expanse.

But D-Day was just Day One. The battle for Normandy took two-and-a-half more months, levelling near-entire towns, and gutting medieval monuments. 


Omaha Beach in June 1944, during Operation Overlord, the code name for the Allied invasion at the Normandy coast in France during WWII. The operation divided the Normandy beaches into five sections for their landings on June 6. Opposing the landings were 12,000 German soldiers who inflicted heavy casualties on the Americans landing their. Heavier than expected defences caused severe difficulties at Omaha and surviving bands of men were only able to penetrate by improvised assaults in scaling the bluffs.


The ruins in the town of Valognes on October 7, 1944. The townspeople were woken by the thunder of aircraft on the night of June 5 as bombs began to rain down. It was considered a vital position for the advancing troops to take out on their way to the strategic site of Cherbourg. When it was liberated at the end of the month it had been reduced to rubble and hundreds lost their lives


The twin steeples of St. Hilaire Du Harcouet’s church in Normandy, France, on August 13, 1944. The town was horrifically damaged in the fighting which took place in the Allied assault. Much of the town caught fire marking out the town brightly for the descending paratroopers, but some were caught in the flames while others were ripped apart by bullets when their parachutes were tangled in trees and poles. The incident was portrayed in the film ‘The Longest Day’


U.S. troops passing through the town of Sainte-Marie-du-Mont as they push forward in France, June 1944 – the town was the scene of a ferocious engagement between the American 101st Airborne Division and the German Wehrmacht on D-Day. Sixty German soldiers from the 191 Artillery Regiment used the church as an observation tower. The Airborne Division parachuted in to clear the way for the advancement from Utah Beach, many faces bullets as soon as they touched the ground when they parachuted directly into the town centre.


An American soldier and a French civilian speaking on the causeway leading from the mainland of Brittany to the famous tourist resort of Mont-St-Michel in Normandy – as the allies poured onto the beaches they squeezed the Germans into Brittany, with some showing up in bare feet at Mont-St-Michel. Germans who remained their became trapped and with the arrival of American tanks they stood no chance. In August the Americans rolled in and the SS paratroopers walked out with their hands on their helmets

Putrefied corpses once scattered the streets of the town of Saint-Lo. Helmeted U.S. soldiers watched out from a makeshift trench, a mountain of crumbled stone behind them. Today, that rubble is the rebuilt Saint-Lo Church.

The Allies liberated one of France’s most striking monuments, the Mont-Saint-Michel peninsula monastery, from Nazi rule in the weeks after D-Day. It now sees 2 million tourists a year.

Much of the architectural damage to Normandy came not from Nazi occupation but from Allied bombings.

Soldiers placed a steel beam across a ditch in Pont-L’Eveque to walk past the 15th century St. Michel Church, its lonely arches leading to nowhere after their surrounding walls collapsed. Now, neatly trimmed hedges line the polished stone walls of the restored monument.   


The flag-covered body of an officer identified only as ‘Major Aowie’ resting amid the ruins of St. Croix Church as two of his men man a machine gun in a bomb crater in the foreground, in St. Lo, France, July 23, 1944. The first airstrikes on the town killed as many as 800 civilians and the bombardments continued for weeks in taking out the power plant and rail station. It was a major hub for transport and also suffered German air raids after the Americans moved in. The Irish novelist Samuel Beckett called it ‘The Capital of Ruins’


A British soldier walking in the streets of captured Argentan, in Normandy, France on September 11, 1944. The city was almost completely destroyed during the battle. It was battered by bombing raids by B-17 and B-24 bombers of the US Eighth Air Force who took out its train station. After being left in ruins it was further destroyed by the battle of the Argentan-Falaise Pocket two months later, but the Americans were successful in liberating the city


British soldiers marching past the ruins of a church as they follow the retreating German forces through the war-damaged town of Pont-L’Eveque. The 13th (Lancashire) Parachute Regiment had speedily capture their objectives in the town on landing but eventually became entrenched. On August 23, the regiment were ordered to force their way through the and cross the River Touques on the outskirts of town. They had been halted by a fire raging through the town and when it died down they made their move, under mortar and sniper fire. In the end they were forced to withdraw and commended for their abilities in using a single rope to cross over a river out of the city and eventually rejoin the advance to the Seine


Inhabitants of La Haye Du Puits in Normandy, France, on July 14, 1944. The important inland crossroads town was surrounded by the American VIII Corps in a 15-mile arc from the hills surrounding it. It held for five days and managed to retain its old medieval keep in the bombardments. But the church, which was draped with swastika flag, was heavily damaged

In Saint-Hilaire-du-Harcouet, the twin-towered St. Hilaire Church was among the only buildings left standing. The surrounding neighbourhood has since revived, with tidy brick homes and an insurance office boasting a sign saying ‘English spoken.’

The bombings sent thousands of residents into hiding . After the Nazis were pushed out of La Haye-du-Puits in July 1944, residents cautiously walked home, pushing their belongings in wheelbarrows past the blown-out rose windows of the St. Jean Church. The church shows little hint of the damage today, and well-tended orange and yellow flowers grow along its facade.

Normandy has been buffeted by battles since Roman times, and soldiers marching through Sainte-Marie-du-Mont in 1944 saw a reminder of that troubled past: a monument to townsmen killed in World War I.

Today, the monument has been updated to honour those killed in the Second World War, which the town hopes will be its last.

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