Yep. And along with Potsdam allowed Uncle Joe to take it.
It was the day that the lefts forefathers, the European national socialists, realized hot tea was about to be served.
It was the day Europe was LIBERATED bigtime by the blood, sweet, and tears of the Americans.
The victors get to write history.
D-Day was a lot closer to being a defeat than is generally admitted. If Hitler had released the Panzer divisions at Calais, the Nazis might well have stopped the invasion on the beaches. Nearly all the paratroops missed their drop zones..often by miles. Some 90% of the bombs and naval artillery missed their targets by several miles. The pre-invasion bombardment was the original "shock and awe" and it didn't do a thing to the German defenses.
D-Day succeeded because the Allied command was willing to sacrifice the troops in order to gain a foothold. The correlation of forces was about 150,000 for the Allies, to 40,000 for the Germans. That's about what most military strategists suggest is the needed ratio of attackers against a well equipped and positioned defender. However, more than 75% of the Germans were positioned inland, well off the beaches...maybe 10,000 at best were on the water line. If you throw 150,000 men against 10,000, no matter how well positioned and equipped, the attackers will ultimately get through, and win the objective, as long as you are willing to accept the casualties as the necessary price for winning the battle. That's the cold, hard, calculus of war on this scale.
It had to be a real crap shoot.
Apart from the security, weather and logistics, I have never read of heard of any capabilities or plans for a ‘do over’
Failure could not be considered to any degree or in any form. Any effort after this kind of failure would smell of desperation. This attempt HAD to succeed no matter what.
What tremendous courage and confidence there had to be in the Allied command, to risk so much against SUCH odds and with no recourse in the case of failure.
Still gets me every time I see the Russians fought alone or some rubbish like that. That honor goes to the UK. The British were also fighting a second front in North Africa before the Germans invaded Russia not to mention their operations in the Med against Italy. This was before we came in.
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.