WW II battle fields

We did this in October. It's a good time of year for it.

Buy a guidebook and study the section on Normandy to decide what you want to see.

Fly to Paris, take the train to Caen, rent a car at the train station, drive to Bayeux and stay somewhere near there.
Spend a couple of days driving to see all of the sites.

Return the car to Caen, take the train to Paris and fly home.

Recognizing that you are a DIY traveler, you might still get some ideas by looking at the many guided tours of WWII battlefields. Companies like Steve Ambrose, Band of Brothers, National WWII Museum, and many others that will pop up on a quick google show their itineraries on line. Those tour itineraries should give you a fast idea of the "major" sites/sights.

Arranging: Caen - as suggested above - is the obvious center for Normandy (my opinion). If you go into other areas, google map the battlefields and areas you want to explore and pick a central city/town from which to depart for explorations. Rental car would be helpful.

If you're on your own. I'd recommend adding Etretat and Fecamp to your Normandie itinerary. As I recall both towns have a church north/east of town on the cliffs above the coast. I went to Fecamp first. Above each town, you can park in the church parking lot for free and walk toward the cliff. Before you get to the cliff, there is a dirt trail that runs along the cliff. You won't walk far until you see the pill boxes that were built, by the Germans, to defend the coast. These weren't destroyed in battle. They're still in one piece but mostly filled with dirt. When the invasion came, down the coast, they were abandoned. Troops and artillery were pulled back to resist the Allied advance.

You won't find tourists, but the views, cliffs, and sea are all beautiful and the remains of German defenses are evocative.

Because World War Two was so different to World War One, there aren't really battlefields to visit apart from the landing beaches of Normandy and Côte d'Azur.

Having said that, just about all of France experienced the conflict in June, July l, and August 1944.

https://www.ricksteves.com/watch-read-listen/read/articles/oradour-sur-glane#

You really need to do some research and figure out what you want to see.

One imagines that battle sites and remnants of the biggest war would be all over, but that is just not the case. Life moved on, battlefields went back to farm fields, towns rebuilt. Rather than large parks with interpretive centers, you are more likely to find multiple small museums, some broken concrete, a few more intact structures, commemorative plaques, memorials, and cemeteries.

On a very high level, the Normandy Beaches (France), area around Bastogne (Battle of the Bulge, Belgium), and some sights associated with Market Garden (Belgium and Netherlands) are the most prominent.

You could easily travel between the major sites, do some on your own, but I would recommend considering a local guide in each area. The reason is, unless you are very knowledgeable about the battles, it is hard to imagine what went on. Some places are just a field or forest, or some concrete, a guide can bring that alive, and put it into context.

There’s a very good WWII museum in Turkheim, which is about 20 minutes by car, bus or train from Colmar if you happen to get to Alsace.

john.harrison,
Are you only interested in the Normandy/DDay beaches battlefields, or are you also interested in some of the other many battlefields in France?

WWII was very different than WWI, where the line of battle stayed the same for years, but there are a lot of places in France where you can visit the battlefields that most tourists just never consider. Nancy and Metz, for example, were heavily fought over for weeks. And there was a major armored fight at Arracourt; there's dozens of markers, you just have to look for them.

I have two references that I keep in the car. the first is "The World War II Museum Handbook; 1600 Musees 1939-1945 Guide Europe" by Editions-Klopp. It's available, but you have to look around. It's not in print.

The second is a series of bound books, derived from periodicals, called "Then and Now" with Simon Forty as the main author. Titles include "The Normandy Battlefields", "Race to the Rhine", and "From the Riviera to the Rhine". These books show all the little towns and cities with pictures of the battlefields from the 1940's and corresponding photos from more recent years taken from the same vantage points. The "Race to the Rhine is really handy for getting around the "Grand-Est" and looking for places that were fought over.

There was also a periodical, now out of print, called After the Battle that had very detailed articles of what most would consider just local fights, along with in-depth studies of all the major battlefields for WWII.

You can easily pick up some of these and plan a route.

I'll add that a great base to see the D-Day sites in Normandy is Bayeaux for a couple reasons.

You will able to see the Bayeaux Tapestry (https://www.bayeuxmuseum.com/en/the-bayeux-tapestry/), a great relic from the history of war. It's a 230-ft.-long embroidery created during the 11th century depicting the history of the Norman invasion of England. And there's a bit of World War II intrigue regarding the tapestry. Supposedly, Hitler and Himmler assigned SS men to steal it, but they didn't succeed.

Also, Bayeaux has a beautiful cathedral -- with the German-built pillbox still attached to the back of it -- great eateries and relaxed feel.

You can hire a guide to take you to the D-Day sites or see them on your own. I rented a car in Bayeaux and drove to the sites on my own with Rick's guidebook as my guide. (However, having been there, I wish I had joined an organized tour because of the richness of the history.) The sites that I found particularly memorial were the Pointe-du-Hoc battle site, the German gun emplacements and the museum in Arromanches that covers the logistics of landing hundreds of thousands of men. There are still pieces of the landing infrastructure still visible in the harbor off Arromanches.

BTW. Unfortunately the Bayeaux tapestry museum is closing September 2025 for renovation. Scheduled to reopen spring 2027.

I suggest Colmar and also Toulon to see Museum on the Landings and the Liberation of Provence., ie Operation Dragoon. I saw that in Toulon in 2001. Since then the museum has been expanded, updated, etc.

You may want to check with the U.S. World War 2 museum in New Orleans and its website to see if they have resources. They sometimes plan tours so you might be able to find descriptions of their itinerary.