On D-Day, why was the invasion of gold beach relatively easy compared to omaha beach?
Neither was particularly easy as the troops on Gold took some pretty heavy casualties as well, however, Omaha was the toughest nut to crack because of three reasons IMO. One was that it was the most heavily fortified to begin with, additionally the Germans had replaced the rather low quality infantry division initially defending it (the 716th IIRC) with a much better trained and veteran unit in March and Allied intelligence was not aware of this change. So, you have the heaviest fortifications manned by one of the best trained units defending the beaches, plus it did not help matters at all that virtually none of the landings on that beach were where they were supposed to be so you had qutie a bit of additional confusion. I think those three factors are primarily why Omaha could be considered the more difficult of the two.
