• 13 protesters were arrested after barricading themselves in the office of Stanford's president.
• Participating pro-Palestinian students are suspended, and seniors won't graduate, Stanford said.
• A public safety officer was injured by protesters, according to the university.

Thirteen pro-Palestine protesters were arrested at Stanford University Wednesday after they barricaded themselves inside the school president's office building.

Protesters occupied Building 10 — where the offices of Stanford's president and provost are located — to demand the university divest from companies supporting Israel's war in Gaza, according to The New York Times.

Stanford President Richard Saller and Provost Jenny Martinez said in a statement that a public safety officer was injured by protesters. Damage was done inside the building, and graffiti outside conveyed "vile and hateful sentiments."

The statement said that arrested students will be immediately suspended, and seniors will not be allowed to graduate.

The Stanford Daily reported that one of its journalists covering the protest was among those arrested.

"We respect the rights of journalists at demonstrations under California Penal Code 409.7," a Stanford University spokesperson told Business Insider, "but those rights do not include trespassing in a locked building and being barricaded inside."

Saller and Martinez also said Wednesday that an encampment at Stanford protesting Israel's war had been removed.

"The situation on campus has now crossed the line from peaceful protest to actions that threaten the safety of our community," they wrote. While the university values "peaceful and reasoned debate," it condemns "any actions like those that were taken today."

Roughly 3,000 protesters have been arrested on US college campuses, according to the Times. The 13 arrests at Stanford are dwarfed by the upwards of 200 arrests that previously occurred at Columbia University and UCLA.

• This post originally appeared in the Insider Today newsletter.
• You can sign up for Business Insider's daily newsletter here.

Hello! Next time you shop at T.J. Maxx or Marshalls and speak to an employee, be sure to smile — you might be on camera. Some stores are having workers wear body cameras to deter shoplifters.

In today's big story, we're looking at why the US economy is on track (again) for a soft economic landing. (This time it might be for real.)

What's on deck:

• Markets: Another company just joined the $3 trillion club.
• Tech: Jack Dorsey gave $10 million to a Twitter alternative whose founder is devoted to a fascist "guru."
• Business: A new NBA deal could mean trouble for your favorite NBC and Peacock shows.

But first, we're cleared for landing.

If this was forwarded to you, sign up here.

The big story

Another economic turnaround

It took longer than expected, but the US economy is finally on track for a soft landing.

After a scary few months of economic data that had investors fearing a recession and stagflation, the tides have turned again.

Recent data showing inflation and the labor market cooling have given hope that a soft landing is in the cards — and may even be underway — for the US economy, writes Business Insider's Madison Hoff.

Before we get any further, I understand your hesitancy to buy into the economic predictions of an industry that has largely gotten it wrong.

The year started with optimism of more rate cuts than the Fed was projecting amid a Goldilocks economy. But those dreams were quickly dashed when inflation unexpectedly ticked up in the first quarter.

More recently, the data has been moving in the right direction again. Fears of an interest-rate hike, an absolute nightmare scenario for the market, have completely subsided. And the Fed's long-promised relief might finally be back on the menu.

But why does it still feel like the economy stinks?

Even though a recession hasn't materialized, a "vibecession" has had Americans feeling bummed for the past few years.

Inflation cooling should help with that. But it's still above pre-pandemic levels, which might be why many Americans aren't convinced things are getting better.

But a slowing job market is the real killer of people's perception of the economy. The shift is necessary for the Fed to consider rate cuts, but it poses a problem for Americans who feel their dollar doesn't go as far.

Yes, unemployment remains low, but people also don't have the opportunity to find new jobs that might pay better. The end result has plenty of people feeling trapped.

Interest-rate cuts, which could come as soon as September, could change that. The relief might make businesses feel more comfortable getting aggressive with hiring.

But there's no guarantee the habits picked up when times were tough — like Big Tech's "year of efficiency" — aren't here for good.

3 things in markets

1. So about that soft landing… Not everyone is convinced the US economy is heading in the right direction. The French bank SocGen is sticking to its recession prediction, pointing to slowing manufacturing activity as one sign of a potential downturn. UBS also sees plenty of red flags, like retail investors pushing into the market, as a sign of a stock market bubble.
2. Nvidia joins the $3 trillion club. The AI darling became the second-most-valuable company in the world, reaching a market valuation of $3.01 trillion. Meanwhile, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang is signing women's chests at tech events.
3. Why the Fed should cut rates in July. Prominent economist Mohamed El-Erian cited a slew of cooling indicators in support of why the Fed should — but probably won't — cut rates next month. "We've had nothing but negative surprises," he told Fox Business.

3 things in tech

1. Tim Cook is about to announce something big. At Apple's WWDC event on Monday, Cook is expected to unveil the company's newest plans to dominate the internet — this time through a partnership with OpenAI.
2. Jack Dorsey unwittingly funded a fascist guru's follower. Dorsey gave $10 million to a Twitter alternative, Nostr, and its anonymous founder. A BI investigation uncovered the founder's identity — and discovered he was a follower and student of well-known Brazilian fascist "guru."
3. How Apple helped Amazon. Apple alerted Amazon to unusual activity with its data-deletion process last year, according to internal docs obtained by BI. It led to an internal investigation which found that AWS was failing to delete data from closed cloud accounts.

3 things in business

1. Why gentle parenting went bust. Gentle parenting was meant to replace an "authoritarian" form of child-rearing with one grounded in empathy and negotiation. But some parents are discovering the time- and energy-intensive method produces decidedly ambiguous outcomes.
2. The NBA's new streaming deal could affect your favorite shows. Even if you don't care about basketball, a new deal could bring some change. The Wall Street Journal reported Comcast will be making programming changes to accommodate, and pay for, the new $2.5 billion a year deal.
3. OpenAI's new deals could be a lifeline or a curse. Sam Altman's AI company has been making a slew of deals with publishers over the past few months, offering cash in exchange for their content. Critics and dealmakers say it could benefit publishers — or blow up in their faces.

In other news

• What Modi's narrow win means for India's future.
• Biden spoke so low during a key White House meeting that some attendees struggled to understand his words, report says.
• I'm always trying to save money, and I found a strategy that doesn't cost me joy.
• Apple TV+ is making a big brand partnerships hire as it warms up to advertising.
• Walmart is giving US hourly workers new bonuses that increase the longer they've been at the company.
• How Apple's efforts to dominate the AI arms race fell apart.
• Get ready to make less money off your investments, says a private equity executive.

What's happening today

• Novelis shares are expected to commence trading on the New York Stock Exchange.
• Today marks the 80th anniversary of D-Day.

The Insider Today team: Dan DeFrancesco, deputy editor and anchor, in New York. Jordan Parker Erb, editor, in New York. Jack Sommers, deputy editor, in London. George Glover, reporter, in London. Annie Smith, associate producer, in London.

• This year, Satya Nadella marks 10 years at the helm of Microsoft.
• He's previously been voted one of the top CEOs of his generation.
• Here are some of his principles for leading and managing a team and company.

Satya Nadella celebrates 10 years as CEO of Microsoft this year.

His leadership has been credited with revitalizing the company's culture, driving growth in partnerships, and even guiding the company in dethroning Apple as the world's most valuable public company earlier this year.

So what is his management approach that has helped him achieve such success?

Here are some of his best leadership and management advice over the years:

Create clarity

Nadella says being able to "create clarity when none exists" is the "most important attribute that any leader needs to have."

"You don't need a leader when everything is well-defined, and it's easy, and all you have got to do is follow a well-written plan," he said in a 2019 interview with Chicago Booth Magazine. "But in an ambiguous situation, where there cannot be complete information, that is when leadership will matter. Your ability to come into an uncertain time and an uncertain future and bring about clarity is key."

Energize people

Nadella also looks for job candidates who can "create energy."

"There is no simple thing that is always under your control, so the idea that you have got to create energy all around you is another element—you have got to really pick up the skills to do it," he also told the magazine. You have got to be at your evangelical best. You have got to have followership all around you."

"In the long run EQ trumps IQ," he also said on the subject in 2014. "Without being a source of energy for others very little can be accomplished."

Deliver success

A leader must also be able to "create success in what is an overconstrained space," he says.

"Life is an overconstraint problem," he said in the magazine interview. "So you can't say, 'You know what? I'm just waiting for you to remove all the constraints and I'll be perfect.' When leaders come in and say, 'I'm not able to do this or I'm not able to drive success or achieve success because of all these exogenous factors,' guess what? Everything is exogenous."

Listen in meetings — and be decisive

Nadella has also offered advice for running meetings.

"Listen more, talk less, and be decisive when the time comes," he said in a 2015 interview with The Wall Street Journal.

Foster psychological safety

Nadella says he's big on fostering psychological safety at work, which creates an environment where employees don't fear punishment for asking questions, sharing concerns, or making mistakes.

"The psychological safety that you create around you, especially the more senior you are, becomes super important," he said in an interview at the 2022 Wharton Future of Work Conference. "One technique of that is to share your own fallibility because that gives confidence to others."

Be empathetic

Nadella doesn't consider empathy a soft skill; in fact, he thinks it's "the hardest skill we learn," he said in a 2023 interview with Axel Springer CEO Mathias Döpfner.

"If you have empathy for your people, they will do their best work and you'll make progress," Nadella said in a 2020 episode of LinkedIn's "Hello Monday" podcast.

He added that empathy also helps foster innovation.

"Innovation is about meeting the unmet unarticulated needs of customers," he said on the podcast. "What's the source of it? You could say it's design thinking, but design thinking is empathy."

• Former Stanford undergraduate Molly Cantillon is the founder of NOX, a personalized AI assistant.
• The platform's goal is to understand its users and proactively execute tasks.
• Cantillon believes generative AI has broken down the barriers to who can disrupt the industry.

This is an as-told-to conversation with Molly Cantillon, a Stanford dropout and founder of NOX, a personalized AI assistant.

In the same way people cradled iPhones in their hands for the first time 17 years ago, this generation will never forget the first time they used ChatGPT — it felt like true magic.

It shattered the Silicon Valley tech barrier by bringing together people across cultures, occupations, and income levels with renewed optimism about the future. You can't go into a coffee shop without seeing it light up someone's screen.

I saw ChatGPT as a prologue to something more profound: A sophisticated personal assistant who understood me better than I understood myself.

People crave having someone they can consult before making big decisions, someone who replies on demand, coaches them from afar, and proactively completes tasks by considering important, forgotten details. It's the kind of companion Hollywood and sci-fi have always fantasized about but hadn't been possible before the generative AI revolution.

NOX, the personal AI assistant I built, was created to fill that void.

I'm building NOX to help people like me stay sane

I initially built NOX as a hardware solution in June 2023. I envisioned it as a wrist-worn recording device that would act as a second brain by capturing and recalling every detail of my daily interactions. It would store all my memorable conversations, action items, and even the small details I had noticed about a friend.

After that summer, I returned to Stanford with a box of jailbroken watches, distributed them to my friends, and waited for their feedback.

I would get texts throughout the day that their watch was overheating or had just died. As I troubleshot, I realized that the product's true value wasn't just in gathering data about its surroundings, but its ability to execute tasks proactively on behalf of the user.

With the help of OpenAI's models and tools, I pivoted NOX into a pure software solution that does exactly that. It integrates every stream of information and stimuli a person encounters, interprets them, resurfaces the most important details, and, most importantly, takes action.

So if you need an Uber to your next appointment NOX will book a trip. When you wake up in the morning, it'll give you a rundown of the meetings you have planned for the day. You can ask NOX to push one back if you have a conflict. It'll also call people on your behalf, book appointments, text your friends with updates on your life, and set goals and help you track them. The more memories and connections NOX accumulates about someone, the more it can refine its understanding of them and provide personalized insights.

We have over 500 users on the platform, including star athletes like professional Tennis player Reilly Opelka, and a waiting list of over 10,000.

It's us against the Goliaths.

I left Stanford in December to build full-time. I raised money a week after and have since landed checks from prominent angel investors and OpenAI's startup fund. I also assembled the most brilliant hackathoners worldwide by stalking sites like Github, ProductHunt, and Devpost (shoutout to our founding engineer, Aayush Pokharel). I convinced them to live with me on air mattresses in Palo Alto.

My life has been unstable throughout the process as I juggle commitments, hundreds of emails, and constant meetings. In some sense, I'm building NOX to help people like me stay sane. It reflects my attempts to balance my obsessive drive with genuine happiness — hacking until 3 a.m. and getting up for my 4-mile run at 8 a.m.

Some might say we're a group of college dropout nobodies gunning after a crown jewel: A personalized AI assistant. It's us against the Goliaths. How could we ever disrupt an industry and outpace major corporations?

But generative AI has made it easy to create something valuable fast. The rules are being rewritten at a breakneck pace, so the advantage has shifted toward the newcomers. After years of dreaming about building something big, the playing field feels level for the first time.

We're not making grand promises about the future. We're just focused on building something insanely cool and embracing imperfections.

Here's a closer look at NOX. You can sign up at heynox.com.

• Starbucks filed eight new trademark applications in Russia, according to reports.
• The company exited Russia in 2022 after it launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. 
• The move has fueled speculation, but it could simply be a strategy to safeguard expiring patents.

Starbucks has filed multiple trademark patents in Russia in an apparent attempt to protect its brand there, according to reports.

The coffee chain submitted eight new trademark applications on Russia's federal intellectual property service, Russian business news outlet Vedomosti reported.

These include a trademark on the company name itself, along with trademarks on the word Frappuccinos, its loyalty program, its instant coffee, and others related to the preparation of food and drinks, the Kyiv Post reported, citing Vedomosti.

The move has sparked speculation that the company may be considering re-entering the market, which it left following Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

However, it could simply be about protecting its global brand.

A spokesperson for Starbucks told Business Insider that the company "routinely files trademark applications around the world to protect its brand."

The Kyiv Post reported that several of Starbucks' patent protections in Russia are due to expire next year. In April, the Russian businesses that bought out the coffee chain's sites filed a lawsuit to terminate Starbucks' trademark, it said.

Along with other major international brands, Starbucks announced its intention to divest from the Russian market in March 2022, ultimately shutting 130 stores after Russian forces began their full-scale invasion.

"We condemn the unprovoked, unjust and horrific attacks on Ukraine by Russia," then-CEO Kevin Johnson said in a company update at the time.

By May 2022, the company said it would pull out of the country entirely — a move that opened the floodgates to local imitators calling themselves things like "Starducks" and "Stars Coffee."

The situation shows the difficulties for global brands when it comes to divesting from major markets.

The choice poses both ethical and operational headaches, and can open the brand up to a host of imitators, as Business Insider's Huileng Tan reported.

By August 2022, Starbucks' former locations had been bought up by Russian entrepreneur Anton Pinskiy, rapper Timur Yunusov, and retail property company Sindika Company. The stores reopened as "Stars Coffee."

Starbucks is not the only company affected by Russian copycats: Soon after the invasion of Ukraine, trademark applications were also filed for "Makdonalds," while the "Uncle Vanya" burger brand clearly aped the McDonald's golden arches logo.

• SpaceX's Starship rocket successfully completed its first full flight and ocean splashdown.
• Surviving the ultra-hot, high-stress plummet through Earth's atmosphere is a huge milestone.
• Starship is closer to realizing Elon Musk's dream of slashing spaceflight costs and settling Mars.

SpaceX's ambitious mega-rocket, Starship, just proved that it can not only fly into space but also survive the extreme plummet back to Earth mostly intact.

For the first time on Thursday, both stages of the rocket — the Super Heavy booster and Starship rocket — reached a major new reusability milestone when they both landed in the water after launch.

Super Heavy landed in the Gulf of Mexico minutes after lift-off. But Starship's splashdown is even more impressive. The rocket ship flew into space, briefly cruised above Earth, and screamed back through the atmosphere at about 17,000 mph, enduring ultra-heated plasma lashing it at temperatures up to 3,500 degrees Fahrenheit.

As it approached the Indian Ocean, Starship fired its engines in an effort to flip itself upright and slow itself down, practicing a controlled landing. It's not clear how soft the landing was, as the spaceship was clearly shredding pieces on the livestream and visibility became extremely poor as it approached the water.

Whatever happened, the ship completed its mission by sinking into the ocean.

Believe it or not, cannon-balling into the sea is a big deal for Starship. Last time it attempted the feat, in March, it disintegrated mid-fall.

Now Starship and its Super Heavy booster are one big step closer to fulfilling their revolutionary promise of being the first fully reusable rocket system capable of reaching orbit. If Starship can translate this ocean landing into a land landing, it could slash the cost of spaceflight tenfold.

Then, of course, there are Elon Musk's Mars ambitions. Starship is the vehicle that's supposed to build his city on the red planet, with a population of 1 million people.

"No rocket before this has had the potential to extend life to another planet," Musk, who founded SpaceX in 2002 for this very purpose, said in a speech standing before Starship at the company's Texas facilities in April.

Starship's 4th flight to space

The giant launch system, standing taller than the Statue of Liberty, fired its Raptor engines and roared past its Texas launchpad on Thursday morning.

The launch wasn't perfect — one engine failed to light. But the rocket still worked.

Just like on its last flight in March, the rocket's Super Heavy booster separated from the Starship rocket-ship high above Earth, allowing the winged spacecraft to continue into space.

The booster fell back to Earth, practiced firing its engines to lower itself as if it were landing on solid ground, and splash-landed in the Gulf of Mexico.

That checked off SpaceX's first vehicle-return goal for the flight. Next was Starship itself.

On its last plummet back to Earth, in March, Starship fell out of communications. SpaceX eventually declared it "lost," likely broken apart or blown up by the stress of reentering the atmosphere.

But on Thursday the rocket ship survived the fall, splashing into the ocean and completing its first full flight.

It wasn't unscathed, though. One of its flaps began to visibly rip off and shred mid-fall, and the camera offering the live view cracked.

Next step: catch the rocket with 'chopsticks'

No orbital launch system on Earth is fully reusable. SpaceX pioneered reusing the lower stage of a rocket — its booster — with the Falcon 9, the workhorse that takes NASA missions and Starlink satellites to orbit.

Starship-Super Heavy is poised to be the first system to also reuse the upper stage — the spaceship that enters orbit after the booster falls away.

Indeed, a Starship prototype already proved that it could lower itself to a soft landing from a flight six miles above Texas, albeit after several explosive failed attempts. But returning from orbital heights to land in one piece is another feat.

On its next flight, SpaceX might attempt to catch the Super Heavy booster with giant "chopsticks" on its Texas launch tower.

"I think the odds of actually catching the booster with the tower, probably like 80% or 90% this year," Musk said in his April speech. "Which is insane. Like actually, when we first talked about it, it sounded so batshit crazy."

As for Starship, the upper stage, it might not descend from space to an actual landing pad until next year, he said.

"We just need to be confident that we can get through the high heating portion of the reentry reliably, and then we will bring the ship back and we'll land on the tower as well," Musk said.

• The Fed's rate hikes have had "zero impact" on the job market, Barry Sternlicht said.
• The real estate mogul pointed to job growth in rate-sensitive areas of the economy.
• Job losses in the services sector could push the US into a swift recession, he warned.

The Federal Reserve's aggressive inflation fight hasn't worked to cool off the job market, and the central bank risks sparking a "serious" downturn for US consumers, according to real estate billionaire investor Barry Sternlicht.

The Starwood Capital Group CEO pointed to the Fed's steep rate hikes in 2022 and 2023, which tightened financial conditions and helped lower high prices in the economy.

Sternlicht said high interest rates haven't loosened the job market even in the most rate-sensitive areas like construction. That growth poses a problem for central bankers, who are looking for more evidence of a cooling economy before easing monetary policy.

Jobs in the healthcare industry have climbed 1.4 million since March 2022, the month the Fed first began raising interest rates. Jobs in construction, meanwhile, grew by half a million in that time frame, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

"He's had zero impact," Sternlicht said of Fed Chair Jerome Powell, speaking to CNBC on Wednesday. "He's not getting layoffs in the parts of the market that are the most sensitive."

In aggregate, job growth has cooled since the hiring spree in 2023. The unemployment rate has ticked higher over the past year, clocking in at 3.9% in April, but is still at the lowest level in decades.

Job cut announcements also spiked at the start of the year, with plans to lay off working rising 136% over the month of January, according to a report from Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

The Fed keeping interest rates higher for longer risks further weakening the job market. If job losses begin to hit the services sector, that could easily push the US into a hard landing, given it's outsized impact on the economy, Sternlicht warned.

71% of non-farm employees in the US work in the services sector, according to the latest jobs report.

"If he hits that, he creates a great recession. If he's going to knock those jobs out, which is a big category, he's going to have to have a serious consumer recession, which I don't think he can stop," Sternlicht said, adding he foresaw "aggressive" Fed rate cuts.

Other Wall Street forecasters have been warning of the risk of recession, especially as interest rates look poised to stay higher for longer. Rates are hovering at their highest levels since 2001. Meanwhile, the New York Fed sees a 52% chance the US could enter a recession within the next 12 months.

• The D-Day invasion was the largest seaborne invasion in history and a turning point in World War II.
• By the end of the Normandy campaign, hundreds of thousands of soldiers and civilians had been killed or wounded.
• The greatest risks were borne by American troops who arrived in the first wave, seized clifftop artillery, and set up balloons to defend against aerial attacks.
• See more stories on Insider's business page.

"Your task will not be an easy one. Your enemy is well-trained, well-equipped and battle-hardened. He will fight savagely."

As the sun set on the blood-stained beaches of Normandy, France on June 6, 1944, Supreme Allied Commander Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower's message to the thousands of Allied troops dispatched to carry out the largest amphibious landing in military history rang true.

The invasion, codenamed Operation Neptune and remembered as D-Day, sent roughly 156,000 British, Canadian, and American troops to the Nazi-occupied French coast by air and sea, beginning the multi-month Battle of Normandy and the liberation of Western Europe from Hitler's Wehrmacht.

Read more: 3 unsung World War II female spies who helped make D-Day a victory

Four years ago, as millions gathered in Normandy to commemorate the 75th anniversary of D-Day, National WWII Museum senior historian Rob Citino emphasized that the impact of the landings came at a tremendous human toll. By the end of the Normandy campaign, hundreds of thousands of Allied and Axis soldiers and civilians had died and been wounded, with those involved in the initial landings suffering disproportionately.

"Certain sectors and certain minutes, casualties were 100 percent," Citino said.

Citino described the most perilous jobs American troops performed to help make the D-Day landings a World War II turning point. "It was bad enough but would have been worse," he says.

1. The Pathfinders

The earliest paratroopers of the US Army's 101st and 82nd Airborne Divisions jumped into enemy territory in the dark, facing unrelenting attacks with little back-up and a lot of pressure to light the way.

Strategy and scope: Upwards of 13,000 American paratroopers would jump in the early days of Operation Neptune, the Allied invasion of well-guarded Normandy.

Minutes after midnight on June 6, around 300 101st Pathfinders, nicknamed "the Screaming Eagles," went in first. Paratrooping in lean, highly-trained formations, the Pathfinders were not out to engage in combat. They were to quickly set up lights and flares to mark drop zones for paratroopers and landing paths for the gliders preparing to land.

General Eisenhower's advice to the 101st ahead of D-Day? "The trick is to keep moving."

The Pathfinders paved the way for waves of paratroopers to follow, but paid a heavy price.

Threats and losses: The equipment they carried — from parachutes and life jackets to lighting systems they were to set up once on the ground — made their packs so heavy that they had to be helped onto the planes.

Then there was the jump.

Amid the bad weather and limited visibility that night, some were blown wildly off course after leaping from the C-47 Skytrains. Even those who managed textbook landings into the intended locations were at risk.

"It's the loneliness — out there all by yourself with no one riding to your rescue in the next 10 minutes if you get in trouble. You're against all the elements," Citino said.

Impact: While the Pathfinders saw heavy losses, they ultimately enabled more accurate, effective landings and ability for Allied troops to withstand counterattacks.

Read more: Here's what it took 79 years ago to pull off the biggest amphibious invasion in history

2. The Ranger Assault Group scaling Pointe du Hoc

Strategy and scope: Once dawn broke on June 6, 1944, a force of 225 US Army Rangers of the 2nd and 5th Ranger battalions began their attempts to seize Pointe du Hoc. Their mission: Scale the 100-foot rock and upon reaching the cliff top, destroy key German gun positions, clearing the way for the mass landings on Omaha and Utah beaches.

The multifaceted naval bombardment sent the highly trained climbers hauling themselves up the cliffs using ropes, hooks, and ladders. Two Allied destroyers would drop bombs onto the Germans in an attempt to limit the enemy's ability to simply shoot the Rangers off the cliffs.

The Rangers climbed the cliffs in sodden clothes while Germans above them shot at them and tried to cut their ropes.

Threats and losses: Beyond the challenging mountain climbing involved in getting into France via the cliffs along the English Channel, the Rangers faced choppy waters and delayed landings, which increased the formidable enemy opposition.

Nazi artillery fire sprayed at the naval bombardment. Landing crafts sank. Those who made it to the rocks were climbing under enemy fire, their uniforms and gear heavy and slippery from from mud and water. Germans started cutting their ropes. Rangers who reached the cliff top encountered more enemy fire, along with terrain that looked different from the aerial photographs they had studied, much of it reduced to rubble in the aftermath of recent aerial bombings. And they discovered that several of the guns they were out to destroy had been repositioned.

Impact: The Rangers located key German guns and disabled them with grenades. They also took out enemy observation posts and set up strategic roadblocks and communication lines on Pointe du Hoc. The 155mm artillery positions they destroyed could have compromised the forthcoming beach landings.

3. The first troops on Omaha Beach

Members of the 1st and 29th Infantry Divisions and the US Army Rangers stormed the beach codenamed "Omaha" in the earliest assaults. These were the bloodiest moments of D-Day.

Strategy and scope: Beyond enemy fire, the Allies were up against physical barricades installed to prevent landings onto the six-mile stretch of Hitler's "Atlantic Wall."

To break through, infantry divisions, Rangers, and specialist units arrived to carry out a series of coordinated attacks, blowing up and through obstacles in order to secure the five paths from the beach and move inland.

A fraction of the first assault troops ever reached the top of the bluff.

Threats and losses: In pre-invasion briefings, troops were told there would be Allied bombing power preceding them and that the Germans would be largely obliterated and washed ashore, Citino said.

While there were aerial bombings, the impact was not as planned. Some of the B-24s and B-17s flying overhead missed their targets. German troops sprayed guns and mortars with clear views of the soldiers, stevedores, porters, and technical support charging the narrow stretch of beach. Men waded through rough, cold water from Allied landing crafts under withering heavy fire. The dangers continued with mines in the sand.

The scene was similarly gruesome for combat engineers moving in with Bangalore torpedoes to blow up obstacles. Meanwhile, amphibious tank operators tried to shield Allied infantry and medics came ashore to try to administer emergency care while facing counterattacks and navigating around the dead and wounded.  

Impact: A fraction of those who landed reached the top of the bluff. Some company headcounts went to single digits. But the troops who helped secure Omaha and the five paths off the beach in the coming days cleared the way for massive tanks, fuel, food, and reinforcements important to the rest of the campaign.

4. The 320th Barrage Balloon Battalion

These combat troops landed on Utah Beach and set up key lines of defense to prevent Luftwaffe raiders from strafing the incoming army of troops and supplies.

Strategy and scope: The Allies knew that as soon as the landings began, German air attacks would present a major threat to the masses of troops arriving in thousands of landing crafts. To defend against air raids, they turned to defensive weaponry units, including the 621 African-American soldiers in the 320th Barrage Balloon Battalion, to land with 125-pound blimps and work in teams to anchor them to the ground. Each blimp was filled with hydrogen and connected to small bombs that could denote if enemy aircraft made contact with the cables.

Threats and losses: They came ashore on Utah Beach from some 150 landing crafts on the morning of June 6, facing the dangers of fellow infantry and the added threats that came with maneuvering heavy cables and balloon equipment on the beach under fire. They set up barrage balloons, digging trenches to take cover as waves of fellow soldiers landed.

The air cover allowed Allied troops to move inland with less threat of being bombed or strafed by German planes.

Impact: As landing craft after landing craft came ashore on and after D-Day, the 320th's balloons gave Allied troops and equipment some protection, allowing them to move inland with less threat of being blown into the sand by German fighters.

The hydrogen-filled balloons they deployed along the coast created barriers between the Allied troops and the enemy aircraft out to decimate them. Citino said that their actions setting up the defensive balloons under enemy fire were "as heroic as it gets."

• Women played key roles in D-Day, the Allied seaborne invasion of Nazi-held France.
• "Women are the hidden figures of D-Day," says journalist Sarah Rose.
• These are three of the British agents who contributed to the Allied victory in Normandy

It has been 80 years since upward of 150,000 Allied troops began storming the beaches of Normandy by air, land, and sea.

As the anniversary of the largest amphibious assault in military history approaches, journalist Sarah Rose illuminated several less widely known combat heroes who fought for the liberation of Nazi-occupied Europe in Operation Overlord: Andrée Borrel, Lise de Baissac, and Odette Sansom. They are among the 39 female agents who served in the Special Operations Executive (SOE), British Prime Minister Winston Churchill's secret World War II intelligence agency created in 1940 to "set Europe ablaze."

"Women are the hidden figures of D-Day," says Rose, who started researching the history of women in combat and was surprised to learn that their roles dated back to World War II. "People tend to think women were 'just' secretarial couriers and messengers. No, there were female special forces agents on the ground and working to keep the Allies from being blown back into the water. They did what men did. They led men."

In her book, "D-Day Girls: The Spies Who Armed the Resistance, Sabotaged the Nazis, and Helped Win World War II," Rose chronicles three of these agents' contributions to the Allied victory in Normandy and the liberation of Western Europe.

Andrée Borrel, the first female combat paratrooper, fought for the liberation of France until Nazis executed her a month after D-Day.

Born to a working-class family on the outskirts of Paris after World War I, Borrel left school at 14. She had a job at a Paris bakery counter when World War II broke out.

Read more: 8 famous people who served on D-Day

Once the war began, Borrel left Paris and took a crash course in nursing with the Red Cross.

After a stint treating people wounded by the German Army, she joined a group of French Resistance operatives organizing and operating one of the country's largest underground escape networks, the Pat O'Leary line. She aided at least 65 Allied evaders (mainly British Royal Air Force airmen shot down over enemy territory) on their journeys out of France to Spain through the Pyrenees.

When she herself got ratted out, she escaped to Lisbon, Portugal. She then moved to London, eager to continue fighting for the liberation of France. In the spring of 1942, the SOE recruited her. She was trained not only to jump behind enemy lines, but also to spy on, sabotage, and kill Axis troops occupying her home country.

Borrel parachuted into France in September of 1942, becoming the first female combat agent to do so. She worked as a courier for the SOE network Physician (nicknamed "Prosper"), which raised bands of Resistance members in the north to carry out guerilla attacks against Nazi troops. Moving between Paris and the countryside, she coordinated aerial supply drops and recruited, armed, and trained Resistance members.

She rose to second in command of the network's Paris circuit, which was also funneling enemy intelligence back to the Allies in London. She was in the SOE's first training class for female agents, where she learned skills from hand-to-hand combat to Morse code. When asked, "How might you kill a Nazi using what you have on you?" she is said to have responded: "I would jam a pencil through his brain. And he'd deserve it."

Her commanding officer described her as "the best of us all."

Read more: Here's how the Allies began to reclaim Europe from the Nazis

The Nazis arrested Borrel in 1943 and sent her to a concentration camp.

Nazis, allegedly leveraging intelligence from a double agent, arrested Borrel and fellow Physician leaders in June 1943. After being interrogated and imprisoned around Paris, she was transferred to the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp in July 1944 with three other female SOE agents and executed a month after D-Day.

Even from prison, she is said to have continued fighting by inserting coded messages about her captors in several letters to her sister. She was 24.

Honors: Croix de Guerre, Medal of the Resistance, the King's Commendation for Brave Conduct

Lise de Baissac parachuted into France twice and became the No. 2 commander of a French Resistance group fighting Nazis during the Battle of Normandy.

Andrée Borrel was the first female SOE agent to parachute into France during World War II, but her jumping partner, 37-year-old Lise de Baissac, was right behind her. The daughter of a wealthy family in British-ruled Mauritius, de Baissac was in France when Hitler's troops moved into Paris in 1940. She fled to the south and then to London. When the SOE started recruiting multilingual women as agents, she joined the fight.

After parachuting into Central France with Borrel, de Baissac set up an Allied safe house for agents in the town of Poitiers in western France, selecting an apartment near Gestapo headquarters — a hiding-in-plain-sight strategy she felt would arouse less suspicion.

She bicycled around occupied territory as a liaison among different underground networks, often riding 60-70 kilometers a day and carrying contraband. On one occasion, a Nazi stopped her and her clandestine radio operator, patting them down. The officer searched them for guns, which they didn't have, so he let them go. She'd later report that a radio crystal fell out of her skirt as she was leaving but that she leaned over, grabbed the crystal off the ground, and pedaled on.

In August of 1943, when her network in Poitiers was blown, the SOE airlifted her back to England by Lysander aircraft. She trained new female SOE recruits in Scotland. In April of 1944, after recovering from a broken leg, she jumped back into occupied France. She made her way to Normandy, joining her brother, fellow SOE agent Claude de Baissac, in leading a network of Resistance fighters in Normandy. They carried out attacks to weaken Nazi communication and transportation circuits, strategically cutting phone lines and blowing up roads, railways, and bridges to hinder the movement of German reinforcements Hitler was ordering to the beaches.

De Baissac raced out of Paris to assist the allies when she learned D-Day was imminent.

On June 5, 1944, de Baissac was in Paris recruiting when she learned D-Day was imminent. She biked for three days, speeding through Nazi formations, sleeping in ditches, and reaching her brother and their Resistance circuit headquarters in Normandy.

As the bloody Normandy campaign raged and the Allies struggled to penetrate the Axis front, the de Baissacs continued leading espionage and sabotage operations. They gathered intelligence on enemy positions and transmitted messages back to England, helping lay the groundwork for Operation Cobra, the Allied breakout in which U.S. Army forces came out of the peninsula and pierced Hitler's front line seven weeks after D-Day.

After the war, she worked for the BBC.

Honors: MBE, Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur Croix de Guerre avec Palme

Odette Sansom blew up Nazi train lines and, upon being arrested and tortured, told Gestapo officers: “I have nothing to say.”

Odette Sansom was a 28-year-old homemaker in Somerset, England when she answered the British War Office's call for images of the French coastline, offering photographs she had from her childhood. Born in France as "Odette Brailly" in 1912, she had lost her father in the final months of the World War I. With World War II raging and her English husband already away fighting in the British Army, she didn't take lightly the decision to leave her three young daughters. But with Hitler already occupying her old homeland and threatening her new one, she felt compelled to join the fight.

She was tough, determined, and persistent. When a concussion during parachute training left her unable to jump into France, she docked in Gibraltar on a gunrunner disguised as a sardine fishing boat, only to arrive in France's "free" zone the same week in November 1942 that Hitler's forces began occupying the region. So began several months working as a courier in SOE agent Capt. Peter Churchill's network, Spindle. Churchill relied heavily on her to set up clandestine radio networks, coordinate parachute drops, and arm Resistance fighters in the Rhône Alps in preparation for D-Day.

She and Churchill fell in love and continued working together mobilizing Resistance members in southeast France until April 1943, when the Gestapo arrested them. Knowing that they were at risk of being executed as spies, she convinced their captors that her commanding officer was a relative of UK Prime Minister Winston Churchill and that she was his wife and only in France at her urging. Peter Churchill was not, in fact, related to Britain's prime minister, but Sansom figured that if she could trick the Germans into thinking they were VIPs, there would be incentive to keep them alive.

Sansom emerged from the largest, most lethal women’s concentration camp in history with evidence used to convict its leaders of war crimes.

While Sansom was imprisoned around France and then at Ravensbrück concentration camp, enduring solitary confinement and somewhere between 10-14 torture sessions – she survived.

By the time Ravensbrück was evacuated in the spring of 1945, Sansom's back was broken, and she had been starved and beaten, with her toenails pulled out and her body burned in attempts to get her to reveal information about her fellow agents. She is said to have revealed nothing.

In the years after the war, Sansom's testimony was later to convict Ravensbrück camp commandant Fritz Suhren, as well as other SS officers, of war crimes. Nazi Germany's unconditional surrender on May 8, 1945 came less than a year after the sweeping invasions that began the Battle of Normandy, now memorialized as "D-Day."

Honors: George Cross, Member of the Order of the British Empire, Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur

 

 

 

Editor's Note: This post was initially published on June 5, 2019.

• The invasion of Normandy, France, on D-Day was a massive and complex military operation involving hundreds of thousands of military personnel.
• Allied war planners spent months preparing for the assault, drafting up numerous plans for the spearhead into German-occupied northwestern Europe.
• One commanding general, Britain's Gen. Bernard Montgomery, kept it simple, scribbling out his plans for the largest land, air, and sea operation in military history on a single sheet of paper.

The Allied invasion of the Nazi-occupied French coast of Normandy on D-Day was one of the most complex military operations ever undertaken, but amid the intense preparation and planning for history's largest combined land, air, and sea operation, one commanding general kept it simple, scribbling out his war plans on a single piece of paper.

Nearly 160,000 Allied troops, supported by thousands of ships and aircraft, either parachuted into France or stormed its beaches beginning on June 6, 1944. Allied war planners spent months planning the invasion, the beginning of the Allied spearhead into German-occupied Europe known as Operation Overlord.

Read more: D-Day by the numbers: Here's what it took 75 years ago to pull off the biggest amphibious invasion in history

British Gen. Bernard "Monty" Montgomery served as a ground commander for Anglo-American forces under Supreme Allied Commander Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower.

His penciled battle plan for D-Day took up no more than one piece of paper and included a note that said: "The key note of everything to be SIMPLICITY."

Montgomery's plans, which were labeled "Most Secret," were released for the first time in 2016 by the Imperial War Museums for the 72nd anniversary of the invasion.

The museum also released a handwritten draft of the general's speech to Allied troops, which officers read aloud to the invading forces just before the assault began.

"The time has come to deal the enemy a terrific blow in Western Europe," the speech said. "The blow will be struck by the combined sea, land, and air forces of the Allies."

"Good luck to each one of you," Montgomery concluded his message. "And good hunting on the mainland of Europe."