3. The Battle for France, 1944
By July 25, 1944, more than 1.5 million troops had landed in France. By the end of the following month their number exceeded 2 million. Additionally thousands of pieces of equipment, tanks and guns, motorized vehicles, and all the accouterments of a mechanized army were on the French coast. By August 1, the American Third Army under George Patton was moving to take Brittany and territory southward towards the Loire Valley. On the fifteenth of August the invasion of southern France was launched, and German troops which had occupied territories in the south of France since the invasion of North Africa began withdrawing eastward. The Americans pushed forward, encountering steady resistance from the Germans as they moved eastward, occasionally launching strong counterattacks as they withdrew.
On September first Eisenhower took direct command of all ground forces in Europe and directed a slowdown of the Allied advance. He continued the strategy of advancing on a broad front, rather than adopting single direct thrusts, as a means of containing German counterattacks and to conserve supplies. The battle across France had freed most of the country from German control by early September, at a heavy cost of life, including for the Americans. From July 25 through September 14, 1944, 17,844 Americans had lost their lives, a number which does not include the casualties from the invasion of Southern France in the Mediterranean. The liberation of most of France had taken just over six weeks of almost constant fighting with a determined enemy who as yet showed no inclination to give up the fight.