Posted on 06/07/2019 6:20:54 AM PDT by Rummyfan
So this is one of those historic dates that seems to be slipping faster and faster out of sight, receding into a past at such a rate that we who were born afterwards, or long afterwards, can just barely see. But it was such an enormous, monumental enterprise – so longed looked for, so carefully planned and involved so many soldiers, sailors and airmen – of course the memory would linger long afterwards.
Think of looking down from the air, at that great metal armada, spilling out from every harbor, every estuary along England’s coast. Think of the sound of marching footsteps in a thousand encampments, and the silence left as the men marched away, counted out by squad, company and battalion, think of those great parks of tanks and vehicles, slowly emptying out, loaded into the holds of ships and onto the open decks of LSTs. Think of the roar of a thousand airplane engines, the sound of it rattling the china on the shelf, of white contrails scratching straight furrows across the moonless sky.
Think of the planners and architects of this enormous undertaking, the briefers and the specialists in all sorts of arcane specialties, most of whom would never set foot on Gold, Juno, Sword, Omaha or Utah Beach. Many of those in the know would spend the last few days or hours before D-day in guarded lock-down, to preserve security. Think of them pacing up and down, looking out of windows or at blank walls, wondering if there might be one more thing they might have done, or considered, knowing that lives depended upon every tiny minutiae, hoping that they had accounted for everything possible.
Think of the people in country villages, and port towns, seeing the marching soldiers, the grey ships sliding away from quays and wharves, hearing the airplanes, with their wings boldly striped with black and white paint – and knowing that something was up – But only knowing for a certainty that those men, those ships and those planes were heading towards France, and also knowing just as surely that many of them would not return.
Think of the commanders, of Eisenhower and his subordinates, as the minutes ticked slowly down to H-Hour, considering all that was at stake, all the lives that they were putting into this grand effort, this gamble that Europe could be liberated through a force landing from the West. Think of all the diversions and practices, the secrecy and the responsibility, the burden of lives which they carried along with the rank on their shoulders. Eisenhower had in his pocket the draft of an announcement, just in case the invasion failed and he had to break off the grand enterprise; a soldier and commander hoping for the best, but already prepared for the worst.
Think on this day, and how the might of the Nazi Reich was cast down. June 6th was for Hitler the crack of doom, although he would not know for sure for many more months. After this day, his armies only advanced once – everywhere else and at every other time, they fell back upon a Reich in ruins. Think on this while there are still those alive who remember it at first hand.
The introduction to this piece is about Churchill and Ike, but the bulk of it is about the epic human tragedy at Omaha Beach. Sober reading and something to reflect on for years to come.
“Unlike what happens to other great battles, the passing of the years and the retelling of the story have softened the horror of Omaha Beach on D Day.”
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-06-06/churchill-ike-epic-human-tragedy-first-wave-omaha
The men faced stiff odds and showed bravery —yuuuge bravery.
Still, I don’t understand why the US fought in the European theater, other than because Japan was an attacker was an ally of Germany.
Did we attack to keep Muzzies out of Europe?
Did we attack to prevent European countries from not being able to control their borders?
Did we attack to assure that votes taken in Europe would avoid becoming ceremonial decorations..?
Did we attack to assure democracy didn’t disappear in Europe..?
The USA fought and won yet EACH ONE of those things have come true during this peace; Europe is filled with Muslims, and elections don’t mean anything. No doors are being broken down in the middle of the night, but is there democracy..?
I don’t think so.
I was a little iffy on it 10 years ago, but now I’m not —we didn’t help ourselves by intervening and we didn’t help anyone. I’m not a pacifist and I’ve been accused of being a jingoist.
Extrapolating from current trends, how will it be in 20 years? Will girls be able to go to Euro beaches in bikinis..? Will Denmark have ham? Will France have wine..? What about the UK’s nukes..?
Our men were very brave, yes they were. The problem isn’t with the followers:
Our problem is with our leaders.
I want to keep the deaths of our men MEANINGFUL.
I can’t believe those men died for THIS Europe.
“....Still, I don’t understand why the US fought in the European theater, other than because Japan was an attacker was an ally of Germany.....”
Hitler declared war on the US December 11 1941.
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/germany-declares-war-on-the-united-states
This Europe is a complicated thing... This Europe resulted from two devastating twentieth-century wars (or one long war, with a twenty year interregnum). Millions dead... cities and some whole countries destroyed. Empires collapsed (British and French) and the rise of new ideologies - National Socialism and Communism, one more murderous than the other. The importation of labor to rebuild (at first... guest workers who are now never going to leave and now into the fourth and fifth generations...). The slow death of Christianity in Europe.... declining birth rates among native Europeans... The institution of quasi-socialism across the continent as a way to keep the masses happy. And finally the EU as some made up entity, with the elites - betters? - ruling over the prols and regulating everything from the size of bananas to cow flatulence. One can't predict the future. The Third Reich had to be defeated before it developed atomic weapons.
… and Austro-Hungarian, German, Russian, and the Ottoman Caliphate.
“...I don’t understand why the US fought in the European theater,...Did we attack...Did we attack...Did we attack...
Did we attack...?
The USA fought and won yet EACH ONE of those things have come true during this peace...we didn’t help ourselves by intervening and we didn’t help anyone...What about the UK’s nukes..?...I want to keep the deaths of our men MEANINGFUL.
I can’t believe those men died for THIS Europe.” [gaijin, post 3]
Factually incorrect. Also, intellectually dishonest at its core.
The Allies didn’t attack. They were attacked. Including the USSR. The Allied response - in Western Europe and elsewhere - was mounted to take back what had been taken by the Third Reich.
It’s artful, excessively coy perhaps, but the list of queries presupposes the future was both predetermined and knowable. Your unhappy litany implies that US intervention caused the current situation you deplore. None of those are true.
Isolationism is a fantasy. And it has been, since humans began trading with each other; at the very latest, since the Age of Discovery began.
The United States was founded as a trading nation, splitting off from an empire of trade and transportation. To assert that the USA can succeed in isolation is to misread everything that has happened since Euro explorers began appearing off the coasts of North America.
Suggesting that America should have declined to intervene in both World Wars (and later disputes, such as the Cold War, SEA, Middle East, etc) because the Allies failed to measure up to some moralistic yardstick is not merely unrealistic, it goes beyond hubris to megalomania. Quite apart from the risks to economic activity and national security, any such suggestion reeks of pride - used to be a sin, the sort of transgression so many American conservatives seem endlessly pleased to accuse the Europeans of committing.
So we’re too good for them?
After Nazi Germany’s Tripartite Pact partner, Japan, bombed Pearl Harbor on Dec 7th 1941, Adolph Hitler seized the opportunity to declare war on the US on December 11th, 1941. He knew that he was going to eventually fight the US at some point, and Japan had the world class surface Navy that he did not.
So at that point, a major world power like Nazi Germany, who possessed a significant submarine threat to US merchant shipping posed an existential threat to this nation’s continued economic existence. Declaring war on Nazi Germany was the only rational option.
Was going to happen anyway, since there were no longer restrictions on aiding Britain, because they had also declared war on Japan.
Pretty much after the sinking of The Reuben James a few months earlier, any illusions that we were going to avoid war with Germany were pretty much shattered.
Because Nazi Germany declared war on us.
I try to listen to Reagan’s great D-Day speech “The Boys of Point du Hoc every year. The excerpt talks about the failure of isolationism. He talks about the Soviet Union before and after this excerpt.
http://www.historyplace.com/speeches/reagan-d-day.htm
Excerpt:
Today, as 40 years ago, our armies are here [in Europe] for only one purpose — to protect and defend democracy. The only territories we hold are memorials like this one and graveyards where our heroes rest.
We in America have learned bitter lessons from two World Wars: It is better to be here ready to protect the peace, than to take blind shelter across the sea, rushing to respond only after freedom is lost. We’ve learned that isolationism never was and never will be an acceptable response to tyrannical governments with an expansionist intent.
” ‘...We’ve learned that isolationism never was and never will be an acceptable response to tyrannical governments with an expansionist intent.’ “ [21twelve, post 11, quoting from the Presidential address delivered 6 Jun 1984]
As conservatives, why do we honor the memory of President Reagan even as we shrink from acting on the truth of the words he spoke?
The greatest fallacy we cling to: that we can render ourselves so peaceful, so pleasant, so inoffensive, so lovable, that nobody will dislike us, nor attack us, nor steal our stuff. It isn’t true, and cannot be made to come true. To live is to have enemies.
Thanks for your reply. My favorite historical topic is the Second World War. The permutations and probabilities of this titanic, never before or since eclipsed struggle beggar belief, and are both endlessly fascinating and horrifying.
Hitler’s had a near schizophrenic image of America: America and Amerika. Hitler would maniacally denounce the United States as feeble, decadent nation while simultaneously referring to it as an industrial colossus worthy of imitation. Or he would belittle America in the vilest terms while at the same time looking at the latest photos from the United States, watching American films, and amusing himself with Mickey Mouse cartoons.
America was a place that Hitler admired—for the can-do spirit of the American people, which he attributed to their Nordic blood—and envied—for its enormous territorial size, abundant resources, and political power. He saw that the largest single ethnic group in the US was people of Germanic descent, and in his Aryan addled Darwinistic viewpoint, that very Germanic blood was comprised of the very best ethnic stock, German “pioneers” who were adventurous and daring enough to leave their country and forge a new destiny in a foreign nation that did not have a Bismarckian welfare state. I think that he saw this reality as an added threat from the US for his visions of world hegemony, even as he sought ways to harness this genetic/ethnic Volksdeutche resource toward German victory.
Given the proliferation of German descended command leadership (Nimitz, Eisenhower, King, Spaatz, Eaker, Arnold, Eichelburger, and the lists of awardees of the Medal of Honor of German descent), his fears were largely realized. .
Amerika, however, was to Hitler a mongrel nation, grown too rich too soon and governed by a capitalist elite with strong ties to the Jews, and infected with a mongrelized culture.
A nation with an international and mercantile trading foundation must be able to project power in order to protect those interests. We are not going to renounce international trade routes and commerce for isolationism.
One more thing, the western allies only had to face about 20% of the German Army in the West. I shudder to think what the casualty lists would have looked like if the US had to face just 50% of it. My father fought on the Gothic Line in Italy. Witness the slaughter of US troops at Kasserine, Salerno, the Rapido River, Anzio and Cisterna, the Gustav line, Omaha Beach, the Normandy hedgerows, the Huertgen Forest, the massacre of heavy bomber crews in the fight for air supremacy over the Reich, and the 1944 Ardennes offensive.
I do not think that I would be alive were it not for the Eastern front, where almost 80% of the German Army was engaged with the Soviets.
Hitler had that same schizophrenia towards Britain, on the one hand he saw that as fellow Anglo-Saxons, and greatly admired how they build the British Empire, and he wanted Germany to have the same qualities the Brits had to build that Empire.
He really felt Britain would be a natural ally when he took power, because Britain was no fan of Bolshevism, and would be happy to align with Germany against Russia.
When Britain refused, Hitler was so upset that he swore from that point to destroy Britain, or at least neutralize it.
To commemorate one of the most important events in history, liberals are comparing the brave Allied soldiers with the unemployed loser scumbags of the domestic terrorist group Antifa. The reason for this disgusting comparison is of course to
The Left perverts everything.
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