Order of the Day, 6 June 1944

Summary

General Dwight D. Eisenhower's Order of the Day was the message issued by Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force, to the soldiers, sailors, and airmen about to land in Normandy on 6 June 1944. Printed copies were handed to the men of the assault forces on the eve of the invasion, after a day's delay for bad weather, and Eisenhower also recorded it for broadcast. The order is short, about two hundred and thirty words in five paragraphs after its salutation, and moves through a clear sequence. The first paragraph names the mission as the Great Crusade, tells the men that the eyes of the world are on them and that the prayers of liberty-loving people march with them, and sets out three aims: the destruction of the German war machine, the end of Nazi tyranny in occupied Europe, and security in a free world. The second paragraph is frank about the difficulty: the enemy is well trained, well equipped, battle-hardened, and will fight savagely. The third answers it with reasons for confidence: since the German victories of 1940-41 the Allies have won great battles, the air offensive has weakened the enemy, and the home fronts have supplied overwhelming superiority in arms and trained reserves; the tide has turned. The fourth expresses the commander's full confidence in the men's courage, devotion, and skill, and the fifth closes with good luck and a call to beseech the blessing of Almighty God upon the undertaking. The order was read in landing craft and camps across southern England. The same week Eisenhower privately wrote a brief note, to be released if the landings failed, accepting the blame himself. He later titled his war memoir Crusade in Europe (1948), taking the phrase from this order.

Top Lessons

• Honesty about the danger

  Eisenhower does not tell his men the landing will be easy. A full paragraph describes a skilled and savage enemy, and only then does the order give reasons for confidence. The sequence teaches that real encouragement names the difficulty before it answers it.

• A commander's confidence in his men

  The order says almost nothing about Eisenhower himself; its one first-person sentence expresses full confidence in the men's courage, devotion to duty, and skill. Leadership here consists in placing trust where the work will actually be done, in the landing craft and on the beaches.

• The language of crusade and blessing

  Eisenhower frames the invasion as a crusade for liberty and closes with a prayer for God's blessing. The order joins military planning to moral purpose and to humility before God, presenting the operation as a just cause whose outcome is not wholly in human hands.

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