American soldiers, as they leave the ramp of a Coast Guard landing boat on the coast of France, face heavy Nazi machine gun fire, June 6, 1944.

Code named Operation Overlord, D-Day was the largest amphibious military assaults in history and led to the liberation of France and the end of World War II.

"In the gray light of a summer dawn General Dwight D. Eisenhower threw his great Anglo-American forces into action today for the liberation of the continent," The Times reported on June 6th, 1944, later known as D-Day, "the first Allied landing made on the shores of western Europe."