why did the allied forces landed in France during d-day invasion?

Question

they should have landed in spain instead.to minimize casualty.i dont think spain is in position to oppose any allied invasion of its beaches.i think 100,000 soldiers died on the first day itself.what a sily idea to land in omaha or any where there is heavily fortified atlantic wall.

Answer 1

Even if the Allied Forces had wanted to imitate Germany and invade a neutral country :

From France to Germany : shortest route, good roads, and flat country

From Spain : looooong way, and big mountains in the way (the Pyrenees). Lovely things, mountains. Small bad roads crumbling under your heavy vehicles, plenty of narrow places to be blown up by the Luftwaffe without being able to dodge, so easy to destroy passes (not that there's many of them in the Pyrenees) by blowing them up - especially with plenty of your troupes gathered there... - The casualties saved on the beaches would have been lost there.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrenees

just to give you an idea

Answer 2

No, Spain was definitely not in a position to oppose any sort of allied invasion at the time because they were just recovering from a civil war that had ravished them as badly as any other country in Europe. Spain remained neutral, even though Francisco Franko was a fascist and could have easily sided with Hitler and Mussolini.

Could lives have been saved if Spain was invaded instead of France? Maybe. . . or maybe not. . . If the allies had invaded Spain they would have basically been making an enemy where none had existed before, and they would have had to bring 3 enemy countries into subjection instead of 2. Hindsight may be 20/20, but in this case, I'm not so sure that the lives saved on D-Day would be any less than the lives lost from invading Spain as well as Germany and Italy.

Answer 3

1. Spain, although technically neutral, yet with a past history involving Italy and Germany, did not need to be conquerored. i don't think the government of spain would have gone for it.

2. if the allies had landed in spain or portugal, it would have been bad in the long run. you see, once germany knew that the allies had put everything they had into one area like spain, all they had to do was pull every single man and tank and artillery to Vichy France or the border of Spain and France and wait to gun down anything that moved it's way. you see, before the invasion of normandy, Germany had no clue to where the Allies were going to land and attack. they had ideas, but no specific place. that's why they had spread out their military throughout the European coastlines in order to hedge their bets and provide some sort of resistance to any possible invasion point.

3. If you haven't looked at a map, Spain is quite far away from England in terms of sending a massive armada to land there.

4. nazi submarines and marine vessels would have spotted the massive allie armada sailing toward spain. normandy, france is very close to england itself. also, the english channel, at the time of the invasion was completely under the control of the English Navy and airforce. there were no German naval boats or submarines there. that's why no german naval vessel tipped off the commanders in berlin that there was a massive invasion heading to north france beaches.

Answer 4

You seem to have a poor knowledge of geography.
Spain is too far for an invasion force from England to reach and still keep its approach secret. Even if it did manage to land it would have been very difficult to keep it supplied and would have been at the mercy of U-Boats operating out of La Pallice.
Spain was also too far to enable the R.A.F. to keep up continuous air cover over the beachhead.
The landing in France was a success and your figure of 100,000 dead on the first day is wildly inaccurate. Far fewer died in the whole of the Normandy campaign.
Apart from all that Spain was a neutral country and that factor was useful to the Allies.

Answer 5

The well-loved Bayeux tapestries are in cathedral in that city, which replaced into basically inland from Gold coastline and between the first cities in Normandy to fall to Allied troops. Operation Neptune 6 June 1944 replaced into component of the better Operation Overlord which placed troops ashore in Normandy to attack in route of the Ruhr Valley, Germany's commercial heartland.

Answer 6

We generally don't go around invading neutral countries. At any rate, your casualty figures are inflated, and war is a matter of logistics. It's just plain geography, for instance, that the Ruhr river valley, where Germany's industrial capability was concentrated, is closer to Caen than to Berlin, and Normandy is not a long way from England when it comes to ferrying supplies and equipment.

Answer 7

Spain was neutral, and they had already landed in Italy. Normandy is a lot closer to Germany. Getting to Germany was the object of the exercise.

But I may have fallen for a stupid con by giving a serious answer.