Crossing the Seine

WWII Home

The ETO

bigpigeon.us webpage WWII-Germany > The ETO > Liberation, © 2023 by Robert A. Christiansen, updated by RAC 26 December 2022.
​​In less than two months, from late July to mid September 1944, Allied forces broke out of the Normandy beachhead and liberated most of France and Belgium.

Links to Big Pigeon's The ETO > Liberation webpages: (these pages are nearly complete)​

• Operation Cobra, July 1944
• The ETO Order of Battle, 1 August 1944
• Brittany Liberated, August-September 1944
• Normandy Liberated, August 1944
• The ETO Order of Battle, 25 August 1944
• Northern France & Belgium Liberated, August-September 1944
• Southern France Liberated, August-September 1944

Liberation - Summary

• The Allied breakout began with the carpet bombing of German lines west of St. Lo on July  25.
• Progress was initially slow but picked up momentum in mid-August as Wehrmacht troops began to withdraw from most of France and Belgium.
• A second Allied invasion, in southern France in mid-August, accelerated German withdrawal from most of France.
• Most of Belgium and Luxembourg was liberated in a few days in early September.
• By early September Allied troops began outrunning their supply lines and by mid-September German resistance was stiffening.

Liberation - Overview of Operations

The quick liberation of France and Belgium in August and early September of 1944 resulted from two Allied drives that induced a long and quick German retreat:

• Four Allied armies advanced east and northeast from the Normandy breakout across northern France and through Belgium. 
• Two Allied armies advanced north from the southern France landing of August 15. 

In mid-September, US Third and Seventh Army troops met in the Dijon area. By then, the four German armies formerly in France had withdrawn to new defensive positions near or behind the German border.

France Liberated

Some areas of France were not liberated by mid-September

• The port of Brest did not fall until 19 September and Calais on 1 October. Dunkirk and some ports in the Bay of Biscay remained in German hands until the end of WWII.
• Most of eastern Lorraine wasn't liberated until November 1944.
• Alsace was mostly liberated in November 1944, but German troops remained in the Colmar Pocket in southern Alsace until February 1945 and in northern Alsace until after mid-March 1945.

Alsace and Lorraine in northeastern France

​Sources for Big Pigeon's The ETO > Liberation webpage:
Major Sources:

• Breakout and Pursuit, by Martin Blumenson, 1961, ~702 pp. [CMH #7-5]

Sources for webpage images: (C/O = courtesy of)

• The Seine, August 1944, webpage header photo, excerpted from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/291st_Engineer_Combat_Battalion_(United_States)#/media/File:3rd_Armored_Division_vehicles_cross_the_Seine_River.jpg. The 3rd Armored Division, VII Corps, First Army is crossing the Seine River south of Paris around 25 August 1944 on a treadway bridge erected by the 291st Engineer Combat Battalion. 
• France Liberated, map, C/O howstuffworks.com.
• Alsace and Lorraine in northeastern France, map - source is unknown.