2013 Theses Bachelor's

The D-Day Series: Robert Capa and His Iconic Images of War

Brown, Hillary

From the outbreak of World War II, photographers, cameramen, and journalists flooded Europe in an effort to capture images of the ongoing battles. For many Americans, one particular battle has become an icon of the European theater: the invasion of D-Day. In the early morning hours of June 6, 1944, an armada of Ally ships made the turbulent journey across the English Channel to Normandy. Operation Overlord, as D-Day was formally called, was designed to open the western front and push the Germans out of France and back east. Due to the German machine guns strategically perched on the cliffs above, thousands of men died before they even made it onto the beaches. On one section of the coast, referred to as Omaha Beach, nothing seemed to go as planned. A LIFE magazine photographer named Robert Capa “managed to bring back from Omaha Beach the most frequently reproduced film of the D-Day landings.” His photographs are raw and expressive in their depiction of the extreme chaos of the invasion.