Seventy-two years ago Monday, nearly 160,000 Allied troops made the treacherous amphibious landing on the beaches of Normandy in France, under the command of American general Dwight D. Eisenhower. Their successful operation to take the 50 miles of beach from Nazi forces began in the early hours of June 6, 1944, and on that first day more than 4,000 Allied troops died. The invasion of Normandy by the Allies was the first into Nazi-occupied Western Europe and led to the eventual defeat of Hitler’s Germany and the Axis powers.