D-Day, 81 years later
[NOTE: The following is a slightly-edited version of a previous D-Day post.]
Today is the eighty-first anniversary of D-Day, the Normandy landings in WWII that led to Western Europe’s liberation.
I wonder how many people under forty, either here or in Europe, now know or care what happened there. The dog barks and the caravan moves on.
The world we now live in seems so vastly different, including the relationship between the US and western Europe. But make no mistake about it; if threatened in a way that finally gets their attention, Europeans would be counting on us again. And although until few years ago I still thought that our armed forces probably would be up to the task, I now have my doubts. Some of our administrations and especially our press would fail us.
About forty-five years ago I visited Omaha Beach, site of the worst of the carnage. A quieter place than that beach and those huge cemeteries, with their lines of crosses set down as though with a ruler, you never did see.
But the scene was quite different back in 1944. The D-day invasion marked the beginning of the end for the Germans.
The weather was a huge factor, and the Allied commanders had to make the decision knowing that the forecast for the day was iffy and the window of opportunity small. For reasons of visibility and navigation (maximum amount of moonlight and deepest water), the invasion needed to occur during a time of full moon and spring tides, and all the invasion forces had already been assembled and were at the ready. To postpone would have been hugely expensive and frustrating, but to go ahead in bad weather would have been suicidal.
This is how bad the weather looked, how difficult the decision was, and how much we owe to the meteorologists, who:
…were challenged to accurately predict a highly unstable and severe weather pattern. As [Eisenhower] indicated in the message to Marshall, “The weather yesterday which was [the] original date selected was impossible all along the target coast.” Eisenhower therefore was forced to make his decision to proceed with a June 6 invasion in the predawn blackness of June 5, while horizontal sheets of rain and gale force winds shuddered through the tent camp.
The initially bad weather ended up being an advantage in other ways, because the Germans were not expecting the invasion to occur yet for that reason:
Some [German] troops stood down, and many senior officers were away for the weekend. General Erwin Rommel, for example, took a few days’ leave to celebrate his wife’s birthday, while dozens of division, regimental, and battalion commanders were away from their posts at war games.
In addition, there was Hitler’s personality and his reluctance to give autonomy to his military commanders:
Hitler reserved to himself the authority to move the divisions in OKW Reserve, or commit them to action. On 6 June, many Panzer division commanders were unable to move because Hitler had not given the necessary authorization, and his staff refused to wake him upon news of the invasion.
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This didn’t mean that the beaches were not heavily fortified and manned, especially Omaha:
[The Germans] had large bunkers, sometimes intricate concrete ones containing machine guns and high caliber weapons. Their defense also integrated the cliffs and hills overlooking the beach. The defenses were all built and honed over a four year period.
The number of Allied casualties was enormous. Reading about it today makes one appreciate anew what these men faced, and how courageously they pressed on despite enormous difficulties. This is just a small sampler of what occurred on Omaha Beach at the outset; there was much more to come:
Despite these preparations, very little went according to plan. Ten landing craft were lost before they even reached the beach, swamped by the rough seas. Several other craft stayed afloat only because their passengers quickly bailed water with their helmets. Seasickness was also prevalent among the troops waiting offshore. On the 16th RCT front, the landing boats found themselves passing struggling men in life preservers, and on rafts, survivors of the DD tanks which had sunk. Navigation of the assault craft was made more difficult by the smoke and mist obscuring the landmarks they were to use in guiding themselves in, while a heavy current pushed them continually eastward.
As the boats approached within a few hundred yards of the shore, they came under increasingly heavy fire from automatic weapons and artillery. The force discovered only then the ineffectiveness of the pre-landing bombardment. Delayed by the weather, and attempting to avoid the landing craft as they ran in, the bombers had laid their ordnance too far inland, having no real effect on the coastal defenses.
These obstacles and unforeseen circumstances were extraordinarily costly in terms of the human sacrifice that occurred that day. Note that I use the word “obstacles and unforeseen circumstances” rather than “mistakes.” Today, if the same things had occurred (at least, while under the aegis of a Republican administration), they would be labeled unforgivable errors rather than the inevitable difficulties inherent in waging war, in which no battle plan survives contact with the enemy.
Another historical footnote is the following passage from Eisenhower’s message to the Allied Expeditionary Forces: You are about to embark upon the great crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. It’s another sign of how times have changed; the word “crusade” has become verboten.
In his pocket, Eisenhower also kept another statement, one to activate in case the invasion failed. It read:
Our landings in the Cherbourg-Havre area have failed to gain a satisfactory foothold and I have withdrawn the troops. My decision to attack at this time and place was based upon the best information available. The troops, the air and the Navy did all that Bravery and devotion to duty could do. If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt it is mine alone.
The note was written in pencil on a simple piece of paper, and is housed in a special vault at the Dwight D. Eisenhower Library & Museum in Abilene, Kansas, a bit of thought-provoking fodder for an alternate history that never occurred.
I was born in June 80 years ago and 80 years before that was 1865 when the civil war ended and yes kids today probably don’t relate to the D-Day invasion because that was a long time ago. Our dads served in WWII and my dad had uncles and some of my great grandfathers were in the Civil War and that, to me was kind of ancient history.
The years keep on flying by and those of us who were in the military in the 1960’s are the old men veterans now as I have watched friends move on along who were WWII and Korean Veterans and still with us not that many years ago and as my generation heads on out to our new adventure leaving this life it will be the Sand War Vets turn to be the oldest Veterans.
It’s good to remember June 6, 1944 and the men and women who were there, I have an aunt who was an Army nurse who was in the immediate follow up on June 6 and she is buried at Arlington because she stayed in for Korea and Viet Nam when she retired as a Colonel in the Air Force medical corps. Thank you Neo for remembering today.
81 years before the Day of Days, Lee had broken contact with the Army of the Potomac on June 3rd and was on his way to Gettysburg.
Can you imagine what our lily-livered, pusillanimous “press” would do with the fact that twenty thousand innocent French citizens died during the Normandy invasion? We dropped bombs on them, shelled and shot them, all in the name of liberating them. Collateral damage, indeed. And yet, the survivors thanked us for invading. Because they knew there are something worse than death. But in today’s self-loathing, weak-minded, solipsistic world, the only thing that has value is me, me, me. The current crop of corporate media traitors takes to its fainting couch because Trump decides to deport the family of the wannabe islamic jihadi Jew immolator–all of whom are here ILEGALLLY and to add insult to injury, a “judge” (spits on ground) issues an order staying the process. It’s utter madness cloaked in faux virtue.
I have been there several times. You go out on the Beach at Omaha, turn around and you look up the bluffs. Oh My God! How did they do it?
If you go, visit Utah, Gold, Sword and Juno beaches as well. Stay in Bayeux, just a few miles back from the Beaches. I and my best friend did a 5 day historical tour several years ago with Stephen Ambrose Historical Tours.
Visit the Colleville sur Mer Cemetery. Walk among the markers, reading names, seeing where they were from. Seeing one lettered in Gold, Medal of Honor recipients. View the resting place of Theodore Roosevelt (Medal of Honor) and his Brother, Quentin. Quentin was Army Air Corp in WWI, killed July, 1918, aged 20. I have visited his crash site. At the entrance is a Memorial to the 8th Air Force. So many KIA/MIA.
The US Cemetery there is not the largest in France. That is Meuse-Argonne American Cemetery and Memorial, WWI. I have been there too.
I have also been to the War Room in the UK where Ike made his decision. The invasion map has been preserved.
OldTexan, I am 78 (soon 79) and I completely understand what you are saying. My Great Grandfather fought with his 3 Brothers for the South. Two died. Their Father was in the War of 1812.
I have BA/MA History ( when History was taught, often by WWII Vets). I have thought of History as a big river, flowing on, with smaller rivers joining in, causing ripples.
Related, with several valuable links:
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2025/06/ordeal-of-omaha-beach-3.php
@Steve (retired/recovering lawyer):twenty thousand innocent French citizens died during the Normandy invasion? Collateral damage, indeed. And yet, the survivors thanked us for invading.
Unfortunately the harm inflicted by Allied soldiers on French citizens or even British citizens–as happened to the wife of the author of “A Clockwork Orange”–was not limited to collateral damage. This did moderate the gratefulness of the French survivors somewhat and some of them have said so, both at the time and since then, but we’ve edited our collective memory of WWII quite a bit.
Allied military leadership did of course try to prevent and punish crimes against the civilian population, even in Germany; it’s not as though they turned a blind eye or had it as unofficial policy, and it doesn’t compare to anything perpetrated by our allies on the Eastern Front. To anyone who’s read much about wars through history, there’s nothing much to say about it that would stand out, nothing like October 7, but to contemporary eyes it would be pretty shocking and many Americans are not willing to even acknowledge it.
While we don’t like to think of the Greatest Generation that way, American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan seem to have behaved much better than their grandfathers did in France; although admittedly there has not been 80 years for everything to come out.
The Americans in Europe then were largely conscripts, not the professional soldiers of today, and so the proportion of bad actors was probably much higher.
after all; though that does not excuse what was done. And neither does it imply that France should have been left under German occupation, or that the Western Allies were as bad as the Germans, though I don’t doubt someone will accuse me of saying so.
Neptunus Lex: “The liberation of France started when each, individual man on those landing craft as the ramp came down each paratroop in his transport when the light turned green made the individual decision to step off with the only life he had and face the fire.”
D-Day plus 81 Years:
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/74276.html
“. . . .but to contemporary eyes it would be pretty shocking and many Americans are not willing to even acknowledge it.”
Oh, really? How many of those “many Americans” who are not willing to even acknowledge it” have you met, or conversed with on this issue? Who and how many have you met have pronounced themselves “shocked, shocked” by what happened? (You, of course, are not one of “them,” now are you).
Your point completely misses the point.
Steve…those 20,000 French civilians killed during the Normandy invasion and the immediate preparation for that invasion were only a portion of those killed by Allied bombing during the war, which has been estimated at 68,000.
One primary objective of the bombing in the run-up to D-day was to convert the relevant portion of France into a ‘railway desert’, thereby inhibiting the movement of troops, equipment, and especially heavy armor. If this had not been done, could the invasion have even succeeded at all?
There is an article written for The Atlantic Monthly in 1960, by a man named S.L.A. Marshall, called “First Wave at Omaha Beach.” It is the literary equivalent of the first 15 minutes of “Saving Private Ryan.”
Because he feared, only 16 years after the D-Day invasion, that Americans were forgetting how horrible Omaha Beach was, Marshall describes what it was like for the first rifle companies to hit the beach. It is harrowing, not the stuff of standard American war movies. “The Longest Day” doesn’t even come close, but how could it, considering the filming restrictions in 1960?
But still, near the end, there is the tale of success, of almost inhuman determination that led to Eisenhower being able to keep his note in his pocket.
I suggest you read it. I do. Every year.
Neo writes, “marked the beginning of the end for the Germans.”
My mother was German, God rest her. She was stuck there, being pregnant. She was not fond of the Nazi regime, and offered her abode to a US officer in the hope he would be less likely to rape her.
Perhaps Neo could rephrase that to “marked the beginning of the end for the German war machine”.
Cicero:
Obviously, in WWII phrases such “the Germans” and “the Japanese” refer to the enemies of the Allies. The Germans were the enemy in the war, notwithstanding the fact that plenty of Germans didn’t sympathize with the Nazis. Some were part of the German resistance (particularly in the Wehrmacht) and some even tried to assassinate Hitler, to no avail. Nevertheless, the German people were the enemy, were subject to massive bombings as the enemy, and lost the war. That’s obvious and I wouldn’t think it would need explaining.
By the way, I’ve written quite a few posts about the heroic Germans who resisted Hitler.
We should also remember the contributions of the members of the Resistance organizations and the British and American organizations that supported them. Leo Marks, who served as the Codemaster of Britain’s Special Operations Executive, knew many of these individuals and wrote about them in his memoir, Between Silk and Cyanide. I reviewed the book here:
https://ricochet.com/1371313/book-review-between-silk-and-cyanide-by-leo-marks/
Re: D-Day / American rapes
_____________________________
It took nearly half a century, and an entirely new understanding of rape as a war crime, for some aspects of the Allied war effort to get an airing; even then Taken By Force, American criminologist J. Robert Lilly’s study of the rapes of 14,000 British, French and German women by U.S. soldiers, first published in France in 2003, took until 2007 to find an American publisher.
–Mary Louise Roberts, author of “What Soldiers Do”
https://macleans.ca/culture/books/what-soldiers-do-sex-and-the-american-gi-in-world-war-ii-france/
_____________________________
It’s impossible to do an apples-apples comparison but by the end of WW II, there were over 12,000,000 American servicemen in the two theaters.
Currently in America the rape rate is 41 per 100,000 per year. That’s 160 over four years or 19,200 over four years for a population of 12,000,000. Which is in the ballpark of Roberts quote of 14,000 rapes.
Of course that’s strictly a back-of-the-envelope calculation, easily criticized from many vantages. It’s an overestimate considering there were two theaters and there were not always 12,000,000 servicemen in the war.
However, my point is that 14,000 rapes is not some monstrously high number compared to peace-time. (Yes, rapes are under-reported in peace-time too.) The takeaway IMO is that American military rapes in WW II were still rare, even in that moral madness.
And that’s without exploring what German soldiers did to Russian women and visa-versa.
By no means am I trying to ignore rape as a terrible crime. However, Roberts seems more intent on undermining the “myth” of those Greatest Generation patriots who fought that horrific war rather than providing context.
The naval and air bombardments did not accomplish what it had been hoped they would.
It was up to the Infantry. The Infantry prevailed..
A number of churches lost their stained glass windows that month. Some, when repaired, feature US paratroopers. Most famous is that of Ste. Mere Eglise. The Holy Mother and the Infant Jesus are flanked by American paratroopers. If you want to see whence cometh your deliverance….
They moved forward until they died.
David, thank you for the quote from Neptunus Lex, His was a great Blog. He died too soon.
On our first trip to France, my Wife and I were on a train from Paris to Bayeux. In our compartment was a Frenchman. We talked a little. He mentioned the deaths of French civilians. I did not respond, but I thought, next time we will leave you to the Germans. Yes, my thoughts were callous, but I was also thinking of the young men that gave their lives to liberate France.
I have heard about the rapes in France. OK, me being callous again. Are the numbers accurate? Are they made up to disparage the US? How did the numbers come about? Who did the report? I am not saying that rapes did not occur, just that I suspect the numbers. I think the US Military did its best to prosecute the rapist. Then, it meant the Firing Squad, or life in prison.
Cobi is a Polish toy company that makes LEGO like brick models.
Here is one of their D-Day sets.
https://www.buildcobi.com/cobi-building-block-sets-tanks-submarines-ships-battleships-world-of-wwii-small-army-tank-museum/p/cobi-sainte-mere-eglise-church-set-2299
I apologize for retelling an anecdote from my father an US army machine gunner wounded in France (mortar) in late August 1944. The mortar took a divot out his right calf so they turned him into a MP and after the war in Europe ended he was stationed at Fort Levineorth, KS. I asked him what were the soldiers in for. He replied, “murder, rape, black marketing.”. They executed soldiers by hanging, one for killing a MP, BTW, when he was stationed there.
His unit landed in France in July, 1944
A date to remember. Thanks to Neo and all commentors for contributing so much.
War is hell. Especially for those who at the tip of the spear. Killing other humans is not a glorious or uplifting experience. It is, unfortunately, the way tribes/nations have settled their differences for as long as we know.
Only by remembering how awful war is will we ever work our way to a more peaceful world. We can admire the courage that it took to step out of those landing craft onto Omaha Beach and be ever thankful that our side won. But until we grasp how horrible the carnage of war really is, we will never be able to end it. And that is probably far away.
Yes, there are things worse than death and losing freedom is one of them. We must be prepared to fight and thereby hope to prevent war. Peace through strength seems the best path in a world filled with dictatorships of various stripes looking to expand their power. Weakness seems to attract aggressors.
I read the book “D-Day” by Stephen E. Ambrose some years ago, and it was astounding. It seems to me that D-Day is one of the most dramatic, significant, and amazing events in history.
I find the prayer which FDR broadcast to the nation via radio on the eve of D-Day to be very moving.
This ^^
Fear not, Neo.
D-Day will not be forgotten. It will be remembered like Thermopylae.
And that was ~2,500 years ago!
Thoughts from J. E. Dyer.
https://theoptimisticconservative.wordpress.com/2025/06/06/climbing-the-cliffs-of-d-day-a-look-back-from-2025/
I read a very interesting book about four civilians who were recruited for a successful disinformation operation, which misled the Nazis re the location of the D-Day invasion, “Double Cross: The True Story of the D-Day Spies,” by Ben Macintyre.
Thanks for the J. E. Dyer link, AesopFan. The Boys of Point Du Hoc speech by Reagan is a classic. The Gipper knew that, though we won WWII, the struggle to preserve freedom is never ending. We must carry on as did the courageous men did on D-Day.