Did any Soviet military units ever take part in the Normandy Invasion (D-Day) in World War 2?
Soviet forces were too busy dealing with things on the Eastern Front.
There may have been some Soviet military observers of course, but as silenus says no units per se. What actually prompts your question, what’s the context?
Just curious!!
There was coordination between Soviet and Anglo-American forces, more often through the Big Three or as directed by them than voluntarily between the generals/marshals. I recall reading that Stalin agreed – effectively offered – to schedule a planned advance so it would be under way at the time of the Normandy Invasion; we scheduled bombing raids to coincide with Soviet advances
Almost the only case where Soviet and Anglo-American forces fought alongside each other was in northern Iran, which were small company-level forces but nonetheless comprised the good example of Allied cooperation at the fighting-force level.
The Soviets were at that time gearing up for Operation Bagration, which was deliberately timed to start a few weeks after D-Day (it commenced 16 days later, as it turned out) on the assumption that they would catch the Germans with some of their divisions in transit from east to west (and indeed they did.) So the two sides were in fact coordinating, but doing so in order to ttack Germany from opposite ends.
Bagration was the biggest Soviet victory of the war and, from the Axis perspective, one of the most catastrophic military reverses in the history of civilization.
If you haven’t read up on Bagration, you should. It was a work of remarkable genius on the part of the Soviets, and they killed, wounded or captured at least half a million Axis soldiers in eight weeks.
Well yes, but why? Have you come across anything that says there were or might have been? What prompted the thought that they could have been involved there at all?
Ike had a Soviet general officer as a liaison to the Supreme Staff. Where he was on the day is a minor mystery.
Well, if you MUST know…
I like to draw profiles of aircraft, and I’d just been thinking how a Soviet military aircraft would have looked like with D-Day identification markings on it.
I’m a member of an online forum called :
The What-If Modellers Forum
They can be found at:
www.whatifmodelers.com/index.php?action=forum
I’ve got several profiles of various aircraft in their Gallery section. (All I have to work with so far is Microsoft Paint), but it works for me.
I draw about an even number of both military and civilian aircraft.
Anyway, that’s ONE reason why I was asking about the Soviet Union and D-Day.
The OTHER reason??? I was just CURIOUS !!
There were troops form the USSR in Normandy on DDay. They were just wearing German uniforms though. Most of them were from the Georgian SSR. Their interest in fighting for Hitler was minimal of course. This helped the landings in some places, especially around Utah beach. There were also some at Omaha beach.
Good point!