War on terrorism is an essential topic in the modern world because there exist some forces that can threaten international peace and security. That is why peaceful nations should consider these threats and develop plans of how to mitigate them jointly. The previous and most complex war operations are a useful source of this information, and Operation Overlord is among them. The Allied forces took the Battle of Normandy to start the successful invasion of German-occupied Europe during World War II. Following a set of challenges, the Allies decided that “D-Day would be 6 June.”
The military operation can only be successful when it follows all the principles of war. In Operation Overlord, the Allied forces managed to preserve all of them, including the principles of objective and simplicity, mass, surprise, security, the economy of force, offensive, maneuver, and the unity of command. Each of these principles is connected with essential phenomena that increase the probability that an operation will end successfully. Thus, the security principle stipulates that a military operation should begin at a specific time or place to catch the enemy at a weak moment. As for Operation Overlord, the Allies used numerous deception plans to confuse the Germans.
It is possible to conclude that Operation Overlord was successful because the Allies managed to follow all the principles above. In other words, additional problems could emerge if the Allied forces failed to follow any of the guidelines. The lesson to extract is that nations should take sufficient efforts to plan joint and coalition operations, and it is necessary to draw specific attention to the principles of war.
References
Hogg, Ian. Great Land Battles of World War II. New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 2002.
Marathon Music & Video. Special Edition, D-Day, Code Name: Overlord, The Build Up. Eugene: Entertainment Distributing, 1999. Videocassette.