D-Day
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91 free D-Day trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
14 free D-Day trivia questions with answers. Test your knowledge of one of history's most pivotal military operations with our comprehensive D-Day trivia quiz. This 91-question challenge covers the strategic planning, key figures, and crucial details of the Normandy invasion on June 6, 1944. Whether you're a history enthusiast or just curious about WWII, see how well you understand this defining moment that changed the course of World War II.
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Q 01Which capital did the Allies liberate on 25 August 1944, eleven weeks after D-Day?
Paris
Paris was freed as the Battle of Normandy ended; five days later the last German units retreated east across the Seine, closing the campaign that D-Day had opened.
Q 02D-Day opened which codenamed Allied campaign, the Battle of Normandy, that ended with the Germans retreating across the Seine?
Operation Overlord
Operation Overlord was first drawn up as a three-division assault; in early 1944 its commanders widened it to five divisions on a broader front, and the wait for extra landing craft pushed the date back to June.
Q 03Which Allied leader kept pressing for a 'second front' to relieve his armies?
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Stalin began pressing for it after Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941; at Tehran in late 1943 he at last won a British and American promise to invade France by May 1944.
Q 04Who served as the Supreme Allied Commander overseeing the D-Day invasion?
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Dwight D. Eisenhower drafted, and never had to release, a note taking sole blame in case the landings failed.
Q 05The wooden poles planted in Normandy's fields to wreck Allied gliders were nicknamed Rommel's what?
Asparagus
Asparagus: on Rommel's orders the Rommelspargel went up in likely landing fields, often strung with tripwires and topped with mines, to deter paratroopers as well.
Q 06What was the specific code name for the naval assault phase of the D-Day landings?
Operation Neptune
Operation Neptune began with minesweepers clearing lanes across the Channel through the night, ahead of the bombardment ships and the landing craft that followed them in to the five beaches.
Q 07Operation Bodyguard took its name from Churchill's remark that wartime truth needs a 'bodyguard of' what?
Lies
Lies: 'In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies,' Churchill said at the Tehran Conference, and the D-Day deception plan took the phrase as its name.
Q 08Whose intervention finally kept Winston Churchill from sailing with the invasion fleet on D-Day?
King George VI
King George VI stepped in after the prime minister announced he would watch the landings from a warship; Churchill stayed ashore and first set foot in Normandy six days after D-Day.
Q 09American 'Rhino' tanks in Normandy were fitted with steel tusks to cut through what?
Hedgerows
Hedgerows: the banked, tangled bocage inland of the beaches bogged the Americans down, so crews welded on prongs cut from the Germans' own steel beach obstacles.
Q 10Which future Star Trek actor landed at Juno Beach on D-Day as a Canadian artillery officer?
James Doohan
James Doohan, later Scotty, led his men ashore and through a minefield; that night a nervous Canadian sentry hit him with six bullets, costing him the middle finger of his right hand.
Q 11Which unit scaled the cliffs of Pointe du Hoc under Lieutenant Colonel James Earl Rudder?
The US Army Rangers
The US Army Rangers of Rudder's 2nd Ranger Battalion climbed the Pointe du Hoc cliff with ropes and ladders; the battery's guns had been moved inland, where a Ranger patrol found and disabled them.
Q 12Fortitude South, the main deception under Plan Bodyguard, faked a threat to which stretch of coast?
Pas-de-Calais
Fortitude South pointed at the Pas-de-Calais, the shortest Channel crossing, using a fictitious First US Army Group in Kent; German reserves were held there for weeks after 6 June.
Q 13Which American offensive, launched seven weeks after D-Day, finally broke out of the Normandy beachhead?
Q 21Which Hollywood mogul produced The Longest Day, hiring three directors and an all-star international cast?
Darryl F. Zanuck
Darryl F. Zanuck had to talk a Fox board reeling from the runaway cost of Cleopatra into paying for his D-Day epic, and it became the box-office hit he had promised them.
Q 22Which town behind Utah Beach did American paratroopers free in the first hours of D-Day, among the first liberated in France?
Sainte-Mère-Église
Sainte-Mère-Église was taken by the 82nd Airborne; a fire in the town that night lit up the paratroopers as they came down, and many were shot in the air or caught in trees and on poles.
Q 23Private Bill Millin famously did what as Lord Lovat's commandos came ashore at Sword?
Operation Cobra
Operation Cobra opened on 25 July near Saint-Lô while British and Canadian attacks held German armour around Caen; within a week the Americans had reached Avranches, the gateway to Brittany.
Q 14Which British general commanded all Allied ground forces in the Normandy campaign until 1 September 1944?
Bernard Montgomery
Bernard Montgomery ran the land battle until the Supreme Commander took direct control on 1 September 1944; Churchill had him promoted to field marshal by way of compensation.
Q 15The Normandy landings hold what record in military history?
The largest seaborne invasion
The largest seaborne invasion in history put about 156,000 troops ashore in a day, yet none of the towns set as first-day objectives fell, and the five beachheads did not join up until 12 June.
Q 16Which deep-water port at the tip of the Cotentin peninsula did American troops capture three weeks after D-Day?
Cherbourg
Cherbourg's garrison wrecked the harbour so thoroughly before surrendering that the port took weeks to reopen, so supplies kept coming over the beaches.
Q 17The Supreme Commander's order of the day told D-Day troops they were about to embark upon the 'Great' what?
Crusade
Crusade: 'The eyes of the world are upon you,' the order went on; it was issued to the soldiers, sailors and airmen of the invasion force as they set out.
Q 18What were the mine-clearing, demolition and bridging tanks of Normandy nicknamed?
Hobart's Funnies
Hobart's Funnies took their name from Major-General Percy Hobart, who had been forced into retirement and was serving as a Home Guard lance corporal when Churchill had him recalled to train armoured divisions.
Q 19Group Captain James Stagg persuaded the Supreme Commander to delay D-Day by a day in what role?
Chief meteorologist
Chief meteorologist Stagg then forecast a brief lull for 6 June; had the fleet waited, the next suitable tides were two weeks away, without the full moon the airborne troops wanted.
Q 20Which British admiral, flag officer at Dover during Dunkirk, commanded the D-Day naval operations?
Bertram Ramsay
Bertram Ramsay had retired in 1938 and was coaxed back a year later; having brought the army home from Dunkirk in 1940, he planned and led the fleet that carried it back to France four years on.
Played the bagpipes
Played the bagpipes: Millin pointed out that regulations kept pipers out of the firing line, and Lovat answered that those were the English War Office's rules and the two of them were Scottish.
Q 24Which future baseball Hall of Famer crewed a Navy rocket boat off the Normandy beaches on D-Day?
Yogi Berra
Yogi Berra, a 19-year-old gunner's mate from the transport USS Bayfield, spent D-Day in a six-man boat firing rockets and machine guns at the German defences.
Q 25Which brigadier general at Utah Beach decided to 'start the war from right here' after the landings drifted?
Theodore Roosevelt Jr.
Theodore Roosevelt Jr., eldest son of President Theodore Roosevelt and assistant commander of the 4th Infantry Division, ordered later waves re-routed to the new spot; he received the Medal of Honor.
Q 26Which German formation, unexpectedly in position, opposed the American landings at Omaha?
352nd Infantry
The 352nd Infantry Division had moved into the coastal defences unnoticed, a rare breakdown of Allied intelligence; reports written after the battle still assumed it had arrived by chance days earlier, on an exercise.
Q 27Sergeant Major Stanley Hollis won the only D-Day Victoria Cross for actions on which beach?
Gold
Gold Beach: Hollis of the 6th Green Howards attacked two pillboxes at the Mont Fleury battery and later rescued trapped men at Crépon, the only Victoria Cross won on D-Day.
Q 28Which British formation was the assault force at Gold Beach?
50th (Northumbrian) Division
The 50th (Northumbrian) Division was given Gold as a veteran formation that had already fought in France, North Africa and Sicily; by evening its men had taken Arromanches on the western flank.
Q 29Where was Band, D-Day's unused sixth beach?
East of Sword
East of Sword: Band was considered for the far side of the Orne and never used, so Sword stayed the eastern end of the landings; British airborne troops held the ground beyond the river instead.
Q 30Which formation mounted the only German armoured counter-attack on D-Day, halting the advance on Caen?
21st Panzer
The 21st Panzer Division drove into the gap between Sword and Juno that afternoon and pulled back by nightfall; it was the day's only armoured counter-attack.