Posted on 05/29/2014 4:44:08 AM PDT by Kaslin
Seventy years ago this June 6, the Americans, British and Canadians stormed the beaches of Normandy in the largest amphibious invasion of Europe since the Persian king Xerxes invaded Greece in 480 B.C.
About 160,000 troops landed on five Normandy beaches and linked up with airborne troops in a masterful display of planning and courage. Within a month almost a million Allied troops had landed in France and were heading eastward toward the German border. Within 11 months the war with Germany was over.
The western front required the diversion of hundreds of thousands of German troops. It weakened Nazi resistance to the Russians while robbing the Third Reich of its valuable occupied European territory.
The impatient and long-suffering Russians had demanded of their allies a second front commensurate with their own sacrifices. Their Herculean efforts by war's end would account for two out of every three dead German soldiers -- at a cost of 20 million Russian civilian and military casualties.
(Excerpt) Read more at townhall.com ...
Including starting the war when they agreed with Hitler to carve up Poland.
“..and in the end they ran out of gas.... literally.”
I recall my HS history teacher showing photos of mules taking the new German jets out on the runways so they wouldn’t waste fuel on the taxi way.
And I think it was some German that lamented something like “They shoot one of ours down and it is gone. We shoot one of theirs down and they replace it with ten more!”
They were so ham-strung with KGB types spying on officers, etc. that everyone in command was fighting the Germans and ALSO fighting to keep themselves out of the political jackpot, if the KGB types ran to Stalin with stories.
Over and above the expected and unavoidable problems with succeeding in combat, their whole command was poisoned with this bunker mentality!
I think you mean Gurkhas...not Sherpas. Sherpas are the guys helping climbers in the Himalayas. Both are from Nepal, but it's the Gurkhas who were the warriors. My wife's father was an airplane (aeroplane if you're British) mechanic with the RAF in Burma during WWII. He said the Gurkhas were the best soldiers he ever saw.
Right. MY mistake... That’s what he said.
My memory failed, because aren’t they from the same part of the world?
It was reported that, at the press conference after D-Day was successful, with tables displaying piles of books containing the invasion and logistics plans, a reporter asked something like: “You are displaying all of these books containing plans for the invasion. However, some of your paratroopers landed in the wrong place, some of your guys even landed on the wrong beach. What good are your plans now?”
The General answered: “You don’t understand. While we were preparing all of these plans, we were learning how to plan. Now that the boots are on the ground, we know we can plan for real.” ...and he smiled.
obama who was president at that time told the world our intentions of invading Europe on June 6 and then after heavy casualties started mounting up declared victory and left the men on the beach and went to a fund raiser then a vacation because he was exhausted.
Omaha Beach to central Germany was about the same distance as the Russian Front to Berlin. But the Western Allies covered the same approximate ground in about a quarter of the time as had the beleaguered Russians.
I never thought about the distance. I wonder how long the war would have been if the Russians had not been invaded and Germany could concentrate all it’s resources to the west.
I figure sometime in August 1945 it would have been over for the Germans.
Of course for Germans, surrendering to the Allies was much more preferable to surrendering to the Russians.
Which is one of my basic rules of war, “Make it easy for the enemy to surrender”.
To surrender to the Russians was virtually a death sentence for any German, so they had no choice but to fight.
I guarantee if it were the Western Allies that took Berlin, it would have been a short fight. But for the Russians, they lost 100,000 men just to take it.
Yes, both are from Nepal and the surrounding regions.
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