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 ...
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.
“What was D-Day”......
Ask a WWII vet who crawled up Omaha Beach or any of the other beaches along the northern coast of France and you will find out. (My Bro-in law was one of them, God rest his soul). It was not a picnic.
Amazing that almost everyone under the age of 30 probably never heard the term, I would bet it is not, or has not, been taught in our schools.
Its time for some HISTORY LESSONS.
The first thing to go on that day was the official plan, and it was left up to these guys to improvise. And that they did.
Any military ops plan is scrapped when the first shot is fired...always has been, always will be..
I used to ask him about it and he would tell me his experiences.
I asked if he was afraid and he said that of course everyone was scared, BUT the trip over there across the Chanel was SO choppy and everyone was sea sick, so they were glad just to get off the craft.
Also, he said that by the time he arrived, the beach was more or less secure with a perfect SOB of a beachmaster walking around. But inland about a mile or so, ‘You'd better duck!’. There were lots of snipers and the hedge rows were killer.
He had to walk crouched over for a long time. He said he thought he'd never be able to stand up and walk again.
Amen. The reason why Russians suffered so many losses was because they purged all the good generals and replaced them with generals with the right mindset.
Sounds Familiar doesn’t it?
The Russians had a lot of great generals. But in the end the Germans defeated themselves. Hitler thought himself smarter than anyone else.
Again, sounds familiar.
We had a family friend who was in the second war too. He was in 4 campaigns and 3 invasions. (including, N. Africa and Italy-Anzio, Mt. Casino).
I asked him how the Germans lost.
HE said the Germans were SUPER TOUGH enemies and in the end they ran out of gas.... literally.
BTW, he said the British 8th Army (I guess it was) was partly made up of Sherpa's ... and THOSE guys were incredible. He said, at Casino they would go up the hill at night and return with prisoners, on demand.
And Canadians and Brits, and many other Allied soldiers from different nations.
True, but also the Americans made the biggest effort.
Well also consider our population and size relative to the other countries.
I mean the other countries helped too, and I am not belittleing them, but the Americans put the largest effort in, and suffered the most the lost of life and combat injuries.
I read that in the end marching into Berlin, Stalin insisted that the Russians march FIRST-because they did the most.
Eisenhower said, ‘The Americans will march last, since NO ONE can say we did the least.’
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