D-Day: the 75th anniversary
[NOTE: The following is a slightly-edited version of a previous D-Day post.]
Today is the 75th 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 I have little doubt that our armed forces would be up to the task; the question is whether our government and especially our press would.
About thirty-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.
.
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 (particularly if while under the aegis of the Bush W. Bush 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—fortunately for all of us.
I am an awful human being for saying so, but at this point, there are a lot of groups in this world which, if they were confronted by an existential threat, I would shrug and tell to go screw themselves. Depending on my mood, I might not even be that polite.
I wouldn’t cross the street to help these people, much less put my life – or the lives of somebody else’s children – at risk.
“…especially Omaha:…”
One can only imagine the horror and the heroism….
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-06-06/churchill-ike-epic-human-tragedy-first-wave-omaha
“…the beginning of the end for the Germans.”
And yet, and yet….
https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/06/angela-merkel-germany-anti-american-views/
The enormity of D-Day at Normandy has captured the imagination and is symbolic of the bravery and sacrifice that occurred all across the world.
Without resorting to hyperbole, President Trump summed it up accurately when he proclaimed that those who won those beaches preserved freedom and liberty for us all.**
I wonder if any man can view the photos and the film of that day, and and not imagine himself there and wonder, “could I have done as well?”.
** It should not be hard to imagine the massive Soviet Red Army, armed and provisioned largely by the United States, eventually over running a Germany weakened by our air campaign. In such a case, without and allied force on the ground, it would naive to believe that it would have stopped at the western German borders. With a Soviet Empire entrenched and uncontested throughout Europe, stemming the tide of communism would have been problematic.
One of the most compelling stories occurred a Pointe du Hoc. 190 members of the 2nd Ranger Battalion were tasked with scaling 100+ ft vertical cliff under intense fire to take out a German garrison and spike 5 artillery pieces. They were successful but after 2 days of continuous combat only 90 were still capable of fighting and ma
Oops… and many of them were wounded.
Western Europe is living on borrowed time, they’re dead men walking. In the aggregate, W. European’s embrace of multiculturalism ensures that any criticism of W. Europe’s Muslim ‘migrants’ culture will be demonized. Aka Tommy Robinson with even Nigel Farage patently afraid to step on that landmine.
As W. Europe becomes increasingly Islamized, accusations of Islamophobia will continue to deter any serious talk of external intervention.
They’ve made their bed and are determined that future generations will be forced to lie in it.
(Hope this is not considered an “extremist video” but here goes….)
https://twitter.com/i/status/1136577054806282240
(H/T Mollie Hemingway)
More regarding the meteorology of D-Day: http://www.mikesmithenterprisesblog.com/2019/06/when-meteorologists-saved-world.html
When I worked in Germany I visited the American cemetery in Luxembourg. The thousands of grave markers are awe inspiring. General Patton is buried here, up in front, still leading the troops.
https://www.abmc.gov/cemeteries-memorials/europe/luxembourg-american-cemetery
Excellent article, via Power Line.
https://www.lawliberty.org/2019/06/06/remembering-the-great-crusade/
I don’t want to minimize the deep sentiments expressed here and at the ceremonies – I’ve been to Normandy and felt them – but I noticed a couple of points in the newsreel of interest to military history buffs.
Notice at 0:46 – 0:58 the naval guns are horizontal; that is, in direct fire, shooting at targets they can see on the beach. That’s close!
Also, at 2:36 – 2:56, the bombs are falling more or less indiscriminately on French towns. Precision bombing for the U.S. Army Air Forces was defined as hitting within 1,000 feet of the target, but only 20% of bombs hit within that radius. Although precision has improved by orders of magnitude, it remains true that if the enemy is located in civilian areas, some civilian casualties are inevitable – a fact of which Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and others of that ilk, seem to be unaware.
You may find this interesting, in that it discusses one of the errors about the landings, using shipborn guns for fire coverage. Something the Canadians had but the Americans did not.
Before D-Day, There Was Dieppe
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/59911.html
a fact of which Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and others of that ilk, seem to be unaware.
No, they’re aware of it. They just don’t give a shit. They are PostModern Liberals. They want to tear down and destroy the West. They are a social cancer in the most literal sense of the term.
This one is also of interest:
The Failed Chicken Farmer Who Won D-Day without Firing a Shot
https://intellectualtakeout.org/blog/d-days-greatest-hero-agent-garbo
That Eisenhower had taken the time to write of note of failure tells us of the risk involved.
I remember my grandmother (born in 1903 and died in 1995) telling me how glued they all were to newspapers and radio throughout the war; but, especially as news of D-Day came through. And that so many houses in her neighborhood had a gold star in the front window.
On another note, she told me that she was convinced that nearly half the “beef” that she bought during the war was actually horse meat. Since she grew up on a farm I imagine that she would have known.
So, yep, that generation really truly gave a lot to us.
I was struck by Eisenhower’s prepared statement accepting the blame if the invasion had failed.
Considering how President Obama seemed to go out of his way to claim credit for the Bin Laden mission- if it had instead been a disaster, which it easily could have been, does anyone think that in a similar fashion, Obama would have issued a statement accepting the blame?
A rhetorical question.
Let us not forget, that at the same time as OPERATION OVERLORD, the USN was running OPERATION FORAGER, the liberation of Guam, and the taking of the Marianas. The 5th fleet set sail from Pearl on the 5th, to put 2 Marine and one Army divisions ashore, after sailing halfway across the Pacfic.
The reaction of the Nihon Kaigun, the Japanese Fleet, resulted in the Great Marianas Turkey Shoot, where we sank the carriers TAIHO, HIYO and SHOKAKU, and shot down over 400 Japanese aircraft. Another 250 planes were lost with the carriers, when they sank.
Taking the Marianas allowed us to turn Tinian into an airfield, that ENOLA GAY flew from.
Heroes. Willing to fight, and die, for their country, for their brothers in arms, for their families and ways of lives.
Willing to kill.
Could Hitler’s bunker near Berlin really survive a early atomic bomb? One of the alternative histories would be NOT to invade, but wait for a year to get an A bomb to kill Hitler, and maybe a few million Germans nearby. But save the lives of the Americans who died instead.
Truman was so absolutely right to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end to war without invading Japan.
Those “fighting for Democracy” did not win WW II with respect to gaining a democratic Poland after the war. Stalin was a bigger and worse tyrant, dictator, and megalomaniac than Hitler. Life for normal Russians was far worse under Stalin, before, during, and mostly after the War, than for normal non-targeted Germans, even those not Nazis; tho Hitler the efficient monster murdered 6 million Jews, plus another 4 million Gypsies, priests, and others who opposed the Nazis.
It was right to ally with the inefficient monster Stalin to stop Hitler. But Stalin, our ally, was also a monster — Western Civ was allied to a monster to stop another monster. The lesser evil. Reality often forces such a choice, and choosing the lesser evil is better.
“Modern” world geo-political history is hugely dominated by the results of WW II. Even today.
D-Day should rightly be celebrated for saving “Western” Civ — tho also creating the hate for war that animates so many pacifists who are too silly to understand that their freedom to be pacifist depends on Westerners willing to kill bad guys in order save their freedom.
The failure of Amnesty Int’l and HRW to more fully condemn Chi-comms and the Islamists for their barbarism remains a note of hypocrisy that stains them. “Human Rights” only exist in practice in the real world because of the real world actions of the USA.
https://libertyunyielding.com/2019/06/06/75-years-from-d-day-gratitude-and-renewed-purpose/
“I include his address also because Reagan’s characteristically uplifting, reassuring demeanor cues us to the good attitude we can aspire to in turmoil. So much of the turmoil we may perceive around us is fomented and even faked. It’s our choice whether to let it kill us, or renew in us the spirit of liberty and hope.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NSX7X4ynWKs&feature=youtu.be
Trump hails D-Day veterans as among the greatest Americans
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-06-06/churchill-ike-epic-human-tragedy-first-wave-omaha
includes a great anecdote (possibly apocryphal, but who cares?) and a link to the Atlantic article recommended at PowerLine
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1960/11/first-wave-at-omaha-beach/303365/
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/59979.html
Sgt. Mom reminds us …6 June 1944
When I was growing up, every dad on my block had either served in the armed forces or worked in a defense plant, as had almost every male teacher in junior high and high school (there were many male teachers at those levels back then). That had a tremendous impact on my life. I don’t think another generation will ever have that experience, and I think the behavior of the millennials shows it.