What were the steps leading up to D-Day?

Over 160,000 troops from America, Britain, Canada, free France, Poland and other nations landed along a 50-mile stretch of the Normandy coast of France. It was the largest amphibious invasion force in world history, supported by 5,000 ships with 195,700 navy personnel and 13,000 aircraft.

On that day, the sea along the heavily fortified beaches of Omaha, Utah, Gold, Juno, Sword and Pointe du Hoc ran red with the blood of almost 9,000 killed or wounded. It was a significant turning point in World War II.

After World War I, Germany’s economy suffered from depression and a devaluation of their currency. On Jan. 30, 1933, Adolph Hitler was elected Chancellor of Germany by promising hope and universal healthcare. Less than a month later, on Feb. 27, 1933, a crisis occurred – the Rheichstag, Germany’s Capitol Building, was suspiciously set on fire. Hitler was quick to use this crisis as an opportunity to seize emergency powers, suspend basic rights, and accuse his political opponents of conspiracy.

He ordered mass arrests followed by executions, even ordering his SS and Gestapo secret police to murder rivals, as during the Night of the Long Knives. Hitler confiscated guns, forced old German military leaders to retire, and swayed the public with mesmerizing speeches.

I won’t understand why the US had a 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 be something other than 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.

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.

Extrapolating from current trends, how will I feel 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.

On a tangent...Imagine if Hitler didn't attack the other European countries when he did. But rather invaded the Soviet Union instead.

The U.S. and Brits would probably not have intervened militarily.

Would he have succeeded in conquering the USSR? Couple their land, oil, natural resources and labor capacities with the German military engineering superiority and he could have built a military that was far more massive and deadly.

After his scientist's perfect the V2, Messerschmitt Me 262 & others, he then turns his sights on the other European countries. He might have succeeded.

“...The steps which led up to D-Day deserve serious examination...” [original article, third paragraph]

Bill Feder conveniently ignored his own dictum, about examining steps.

The critical strategic moment occurred in early March 1936: Germany sent its still-embryonic military forces into the Rhineland. Hitler gambled and won; the Nazis could scarcely believe they had pulled it off. The Luftwaffe was then so small that one or two fighter squadrons flew themselves to exhaustion, overflying and re-overflying various important locations, to convey the false impression that German aircraft were darkening the sky with their numbers.

The French & British took no real action, at a time when a sharp jab with one elbow (metaphorically speaking) would have checked German expansionism and cooled their sense of injury & insult over the Versailles treaty. German public confidence in the Nazis would have been permanently, irretrievably undermined.

At a moment when sharp, confident action was possible at low cost, the United States did nothing. The greatest Allied mistake of the 20th century.

One of the many books by Rear Adm. Edward Ellsberg is "The far Shore"

He tells of one of the scariest "What If" scenarios in that invasion.

He was tasked on plans for a secondary invasion and kept running into an officer who was badgering anyone he could lay hands on that the Mulberry Project was going to fail. He was on the verge of being court-martialed because "The British Army engineers knew what they were doing".

As each Mulberry was built, they were taken to a shallow part of the English coast where they were temporary sunk and stored for the invasion. He kept saying the refloats wouldn't work.

The top brass asked Ellsberg to take a look and what he found horrified him. He asked the engineers there if they had ever tried to refloat one of the Mulberrys and got a blank stare - EVERYONE knew they could be refloated.

He told them, in effect, "Humor me." They did and found out they couldn't. The pumps they planned on using came from London's sewer system, which were built to handle a horizontal flow, not the up-and-over required.

There was a scramble (even Churchill came over to take a look) when Ellsberg recommended the U.S. Navy take over. They ended up bringing in the British Navy engineers, who fixed the problem in the nick of time.

Can you imagine on June 5th that you are told all those Mulberrys couldn't be raised? Jesu.

An interesting side note is that we also scuttled some old worn out ships as a breakwater. One of them was the WWI battleship "Centurion", manned by a skeleton crew of about 80 sailors. When they successfully scuttled her, the Germans gleefully reported that they had sunk a battle with "heavy loss, fewer than 100 survived."

An excellent read of a catastrophic event saved by an unsung hero, Captain Dayton Clark.

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