Posted on 06/06/2018 4:17:29 PM PDT by John S Mosby
Thank you! Didn’t know that, will look for them.
“The Normandy invasion itself was Stalin’s plan. “
Hardly. Stalin wanted a western front launched long before Normandy. He wanted one in 1942. He didn’t care where the invasion was, he just wanted the Allies to take the pressure off of Russia by drawing away German divisions from the east.
But if you wanted to pick a campaign that was launched to mollify Stalin it was the very one that you like, the Italian campaign that began in 1943. It’s very point was to tie down German troops, there was not all that much strategic value to Italy.
And as for being a ‘success’, Italy was a much bloodier and costlier fight than “soft underbelly” enthusiasts like Churchill had predicted. Italy is perfect defensive terrain and the German army took full advantage of it. Once Rome was liberated and Normandy launched, the strategy in Italy was to simply keep German units pinned down and away from the main assault on Germany itself.
If Marshall and Eisenhower had gotten their way, the D-Day invasion would have happened in 1942.
My father was in the 29th Division, 116th Infantry Battalion, and was in the first wave of troops landing on Omaha Beach. He had served with the Virginia National Guard (Blue and Gray) before being conscripted into the regular Army. His commander was Gerhard. He was a Staff Sergeant, and led a light machine gun squad. He attributed one of the main factors in helping to save him was cutting off all the unnecessary weight of equipment he could as soon as he hit the water.
And it truly puts in perspective how small and pathetic the kneeling pro-sport primadonnas are.
Napolean said Italy is indeed like a boot - its best entered from the top
My wife and I started taking ballroom dance lessons in the early 90’s. Our instructors were a husband and wife team. We took two 6-week group lessons from them, and were passed on to a group of professional dance instructors.
Through the years we would go to many ballroom dances with them. About 15 years after our lessons with them, Owen told me, “I went in with the first wave at Utah Beach.” We talked a lot that night about his experiences on D-Day and the following days. He said the worst experience he had was cutting the dead paratroopers down. He was wounded 3 times. I asked Owen if he ever went back to Normandy for the D-Day remembrances. He told me he never wanted to see France again.
A few years ago Owen passed away. At his funeral I noticed he was bald. I never knew him t h at he didn’t have a full head of hair. I asked his son if that was a recent occurrence. His son said he wore a hairpiece to cover his head wound from Normandy.
Owen and his wife, Wanda were dear friends. God keep them close.
During the movie The Longest Day, Lord Lovat’s (Peter Lawford)personal bagpiper was played by Bill Millin. Millin had actually been Lord Lovat’s personal piper during the Normand Invasion. He was the only cast member of the movie to recreate his role during the invasion. The kilt he wore in the movie, he wore during the actual invasion. The kilt had been worn by is grand father during WWI.
You speak the truth about “The War to Save Joe Stalin.”
Thank you. 100% agree with you about Joseph McCarthy.
I will get a copy and read “Blacklisted by History.”
One of my favorite books is currently in my tagline. This opened my eyes like no other book of 20th century history, and I have read more than a few.
Ditto on “American Betrayal”
Sorry—We’ll have to disagree about Normandy. It was forced on the West by Stalin agent Harry Hopkins, and took Allies out of position to block Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe.
Many history books tell a false story about American involvement WWII. The fact that Soviet agents were at the top of U.S. government, and DEEPLY influenced FDR, was verified by Kremlin documents released by Yeltsin in the ‘90s, and was actually already known, but suppressed, in the Verona Papers—decoded Soviet messages—most of which are still classified! (but some have come out).
Incidentally, the Verona files were stopped in 1943 by Soviet agents who revealed to Stalin as soon as they discovered the USSR codes had been broken. These messages had already revealed hundreds of Soviet agents in U.S. government.
As you may be aware, FDR was accompanied at the disastrous Yalta Conference by three Soviet spies: Harry Hopkins, Harry Dexter White and Alger Hiss.
But that was FAR from the beginning of their influence on behalf of the USSR.
The history of USSR influence over the U.S., particularly from 1933 until somewhat exposed by Joe McCarthy, is spine-chilling. It needs to come out.
Or you can listen to it
http://www.wwiifoundation.org/students/real-time-radio-broadcasts-from-d-day-june-6-1944/
There is absolutely no doubt that a Mainland Europe Invasion (not Mediterranian) was being pushed to excess by Stalin in 1942, and there is also no question that we were not going to do it, because...we aren’t fools. We were in no way prepared. Even Marshall, who seemed at times to be in cahoots with the Soviets, only pushed it halfheartedly.
So we had to keep putting Stalin off. Remember, he was somewhat desperate at that time with the Nazis invading (eventually ending up at Stalingrad where we all know what happened after that) and was looking solidly at defeat, so he was screaming for something.
We kept saying no. There are a lot of revisionists who complain that we were happy to let the Soviets get slaughtered...and yes. That is true.
It is also true that the USA and England would have been slaughtered and defeated had we tried an invasion. So, too bad the Soviets got chewed up, they should have never jumped in bed with the Nazis to begin with. But no way should we have done it in 1942 at the bidding of the Soviets. No way.
At the same time, Churchill was pushing with all his might to come up in the “soft underbelly” from the Mediterranean and Balkans.
We would, no doubt, have done an invasion of mainland Europe in France eventually...where the hell else would we go in?
So, no. It wasn’t dictated by the Soviets, IMO. It was dictated by military readiness and terrain. France was pretty much the best place to go, and we weren’t ready until 1944. It really is that simple.
We can disagree on this, but this is how I see it.
LOL, you have no tagline!!!
ah...I saw it on another post. I’ll check it out.
I thought Ike did a fine job as a political general.
But the way he treated McCarthy, and the way Truman did as well but far worse, angers me even to consider.
Truman knew damn well there were Soviet agents in the government, but he decided that Democrat party loyalty was far more important than the security of the nation.
I have lost a huge amount of respect for Harry Truman over the years.
Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt were Communist sympathizers, IMO. I have long wondered about the promotion of Marshall, who was a very intelligent man, over others far more accomplished than him was accomplished. I think Eleanor Roosevelt had something to do with that.
In the end, I have always felt that Roosevelt’s actions with the New Deal, Social Security and such have done far, FAR greater long term damage to this country than any Communist sympathies they may have had.
From Wikipedia, a leftist site if there ever was one:
...On November 7, 1945, defecting Soviet espionage courier Elizabeth Bentley told investigators of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) that in late 1942 or early 1943 she learned from Soviet spies Nathan Gregory Silvermaster and Ludwig Ullmann that one source of the government documents they were photographing and passing on to her and NKVD spymaster Jacob Golos was Harry Dexter White.[25]
The next day, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover sent a hand-delivered letter to Truman's Military Aide, Gen. Harry Vaughan, at the White House, reporting information that "a number of persons employed by the government of the United States have been furnishing data and information to persons outside the Federal Government, who are in turn transmitting this information to espionage agents of the Soviet government." The letter listed a dozen Bentley suspects, the second of whom was Harry Dexter White.[26]
The FBI summarized the Bentley information and in its follow-up investigation on the suspects she named, again including White,[27] in a report entitled 'Soviet Espionage in the United States',[28] which was sent to the White House, the Attorney General and the State Department on December 4, 1945.[29] Six weeks later, on January 23, 1946, Truman nominated White as U.S. Director of the International Monetary Fund. The FBI responded with a 28-page memo specifically on White and his contacts, received by the White House on February 4, 1946.[30] White's nomination was approved by the Senate, acting in ignorance of the allegations against White, on February 6, 1946.
Six years later, Truman would testify that White had been "separated from the Government service promptly" upon receipt of this information—first from the Treasury, and then from the IMF.[31] In fact, White was still at the IMF on June 19, 1947—more than two years after the FBI had alerted the White House about him—when he abruptly resigned (vacating his office the same day), after Attorney General Tom Clark ordered a Federal grand jury investigation of the Bentley charges..."
Grr. And Alger Hiss, if there was ever a scumbag who should have been hung with a black hood over his head, it was him. And even today, there are people who cling to the fantasy he was innocent. These are usually the same people who think the Rosenbergs are innocent too.
Agree with you on most points, except Marshall. Marshall was old school VMI graduate and West Point. The Marshall Plan provided the template to maintain anti-communist, anti-Stalinist (then former nazis— who had the networks— see Gehlen organization— over Stalin’s agents, whom the UK’s totally compromised MI5 riddled with anti-nazi communists, like Philby, accelerated post WWII in the ascending Labor party).
In a way Marshall Plan was like out spending the Soviets as we did with Star Wars, and driving their economy to ruin, fixed as it was on military/defense and not much else (similar to Uruguay’s world trade at the time). Lot of repubs of the day were not for this new globalism (which is understandable, and resembles the same things going on today) without grasping the game for control of Europe. On another level... the EU is the “dream” of the former Nazi goals: a unified, German socialist controlled State. Parallels are quite clear.
I’ve read some mainstream histories that indicate that there was serious consideration given to an early invasion- the Dieppe raid in August 1942 was a test and it went very badly. More cautious heads prevailed. It seems obvious to us now that an early invasion would have been disastrous but at the time there was some surprising enthusiasm for it.
I don’t have a problem with the Marshall Plan...I believe he originally wanted to give money to the USSR as well AND do the same with the nascent Red China as well as all the Eastern bloc countries, and the Soviets refused the aid. (with much the same dynamic as Trump cancelling the Philadelphia Eagles vist the other day-he knew he was being set up to be embarrassed because they sent a list with something like 80 names to be cleared, but only two or three were going to go in an attempt to embarrass Trump which the media would have gladly facilitated!)
The Soviets knew there was no chance the US government would approve money for them, or the Eastern bloc countries, so they refused it to avoid being spurned!
I have read (and own a copy of) McCarthy’s ghostwritten book “America’s Retreat from Victory The Story of George Catlett Marshall”. McCarthy’s mistake was in attacking someone like Marshall so soon after the war on grounds that were often circumstantial, but it was hard to refute all of the conclusions there.
Marshall was a very intelligent guy, but even though he was a West Point grad, he had, at best, performed poorly in his military assignments. He got posted to one of the most prestigious commands in the Army that any ambitious officer shooting for advancement would want (I think it may have been the Eighth Army Infantry Regiment) where he took a reasonably well running unit and ran it into the ground so badly his next command was in the Civilian Conservation Corps, where he was exposed to the Roosevelt circle, specifically Eleanor Roosevelt. Exactly one year later he was promoted to Colonel, and just a few years after that, to Brig. General. Just like that, over the heads of a lot of people who had far more experience, better performance, and way more time in grade.
Personally, I would like to think it may have been because he was a sharp guy. But I think it is at least possible with his CCC work where he was exposed to the Roosevelt inner circle who were touring these camps all the time, he focused on the political game and was able to leapfrog a lot of deserving men.
In the end, I think it was okay there.
But back to my main point...McCarthy should never have attacked him as he did, deserving or not. It was too close to the end of the war.
In general, McCarthy did not make the mistakes and blunders he has been accused of by history, not even close. It is all entirely slander except for a few mistakes he could have avoided.
But his attack on Marshall was a grave one he could have an should have avoided. In the book, he even says he was warned off by people, begging him not to do it to someone with the stature of Marshall.
But, as alway, McCarthy did what he thought was right, and shot himself in the foot.
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