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D-DAY - June 6, 1944: the greatest generation saved the world from the Nazis
dday dot org ^ | 6-5-07

Posted on 06/05/2007 8:57:58 AM PDT by doug from upland

D-DAY HISTORY AND LINKS

D-Day: It is hard to conceive the epic scope of this decisive battle that foreshadowed the end of Hitler's dream of Nazi domination. Overlord was the largest air, land, and sea operation undertaken before or since June 6, 1944. The landing included over 5,000 ships, 11,000 airplanes, and over 150,000 service men.

After years of meticulous planning and seemingly endless training, for the Allied Forces, it all came down to this: The boat ramp goes down, then jump, swim, run, and crawl to the cliffs. Many of the first young men (most not yet 20 years old) entered the surf carrying eighty pounds of equipment. They faced over 200 yards of beach before reaching the first natural feature offering any protection. Blanketed by small-arms fire and bracketed by artillery, they found themselves in hell.

When it was over, the Allied Forces had suffered nearly 10,000 casualties; more than 4,000 were dead. Yet somehow, due to planning and preparation, and due to the valor, fidelity, and sacrifice of the Allied Forces, Fortress Europe had been breached.

After you have finished reviewing this site, return to this page and click the links below to find out more about D-Day.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Foreign Affairs; Front Page News; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: dday; greatestgeneration; nazis; normandy
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To: doug from upland

Doh. I have been corrected and should have paid better attention. The archive site from which I pulled the photo said Ike was talking to the Brits before they took off. I accepted that without looking very carefully. Actually, it would not have even taken careful looking. That photo is indeed of Americans — the patch is the 101st Airborne. Sorry, guys. I should have done better.


61 posted on 06/05/2007 10:48:31 AM PDT by doug from upland (Stopping Hillary should be a FreeRepublic Manhattan Project)
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To: dfwgator
Yup. Not to engage in the millionth refighting of the war, but.... I've always wondered what would have happened if Patton and not Montgomery had gotten the supplies that Market Garden chewed up. Would the war ended earlier? Germany sued for peace? Or would we have wound up fighting the Russians in '45 and '46?

Market Garden never should have happened. It was a waste of good men. Montgomery was too timid - or war-weary - to take on an offensive like that.

I enjoyed BoB because of the accuracy. I watched the old 60s flick "Battle of the Bulge" with my Grandfather (who was actually there). I asked him what he thought and his comment was "It was a fine movie, but nobody looked cold enough". BoB got that part right, at least.

I still have a picture of Grandpa posing with his XO in thigh-high snow somewhere in the Ardennes. Both of the men have huge smiles on their faces, and I've always wondered what they were grinning about.

62 posted on 06/05/2007 10:50:46 AM PDT by wbill
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To: Borges
How did the Nazis know about the landing? They were there waiting weren’t they?

The New York Times?

63 posted on 06/05/2007 10:50:57 AM PDT by Corin Stormhands (http://wardsmythe.com)
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To: wbill
I asked him what he thought and his comment was "It was a fine movie, but nobody looked cold enough". BoB got that part right, at least.

And my favorite line of all from BoB, "How do I feel about being rescued by Patton? I'd feel real peachy about it, except for one thing. We didn't need to be f'ing rescued by Patton, you got that."

64 posted on 06/05/2007 10:53:02 AM PDT by dfwgator (The University of Florida - Still Championship U)
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To: dfwgator
The book talks about that too. Said that no one in the 101st agreed that they needed to be rescued.

I suspect that *might* be a little bit of bravado, though. :-) If nothing else, Patton's breakthrough allowed them to get the wounded evacuated.

65 posted on 06/05/2007 11:02:24 AM PDT by wbill
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To: wbill

The other great line, “We’re paratroopers. We’re supposed to be surrounded.”


66 posted on 06/05/2007 11:03:17 AM PDT by dfwgator (The University of Florida - Still Championship U)
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To: doug from upland
The price of freedom is a heavy price. Thank God for those who gave everything.


67 posted on 06/05/2007 11:06:33 AM PDT by reagan_fanatic (Put illegals on ICE)
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To: dfwgator

DDay..was the key to the securing of Germany...It isn’t
reported as much, but the DDay in the Pacific was the same
date..June 6, 1944. The invasion of Saipan and the
beginning of those Island hoppings culminated by the last
one, Okinawa...then the “Bomb”..and total surrender by
the Japs.....JK


68 posted on 06/05/2007 11:10:39 AM PDT by sanjacjake
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To: All

November 14, 2006
The Smugness of the War’s Opponents
By Dennis Prager

In this week’s New York Times Book Review, a historian reviewing a major new work of 20th-century history, Oxford and Harvard Professor Niall Ferguson’s “The War of the World,” notes that “Ferguson argues that the Western powers should have gone to war in 1938, which would most likely have avoided much of the horror of World War II . . . . “

Imagine that. The New York Times publishes a favorable book review of a book arguing that a pre-emptive war in 1938 would have saved tens of millions of lives aside from preventing the Holocaust, “without parallel . . . the most wicked act in all history.”

You have to wonder if the Times’ editors and all their allies on the Left, who have spent the last four years mocking the very notion of pre-emptive war, read this review.

Whatever incapacity for self-doubt George W. Bush’s critics charge him with, it has been more than matched by his political enemies. They are as certain as human beings can be that the invasion of Iraq was wrong from the outset because no nation should ever engage in a pre-emptive war, since such wars, they contend, are inherently immoral, not to mention illegal.

They know that Saddam never had weapons of mass destruction, and they know that even if he were working on acquiring such weapons, he would never have used them or shared them with Islamic terrorists. They know this despite these facts:

Virtually every intelligence service believed that Saddam either had or was working on attaining WMD.

Saddam Hussein had already used biological weapons against his own people.

Saddam refused to allow UN inspectors unfettered access to Iraq, even when he had every reason to believe that America would attack him.

Saddam gave $25,000 to the families of Palestinian terrorists who blew up Israelis.

Saddam had already invaded two countries, attempting to eliminate one from the map (Kuwait) and killing a million in the other (Iran).

President Bush had very good reason to believe then, and we have very good reason to believe now, that Saddam was indeed seeking uranium from the African country of Niger.

Given these facts, George W. Bush believed that a pre-emptive strike was the moral thing to do, just as any moral person now understands it would have been moral to do against Hitler’s Germany in 1938.

Given the same facts, his critics were/are at least as certain that such a war has been wrong strategically and morally.

They now argue that obviously they are right.

But it is not so obvious. It is overwhelmingly likely that even if we had found WMD in Iraq, The New York Times, Michael Moore and nearly all college professors would have still opposed the invasion. After all, they would have argued, it was still a pre-emptive war and therefore wrong by definition; and besides, Saddam had nothing to do with 9/11.

Of course, the critics look right because we hardly seem to be winning the war in Iraq. But even here the critics are too smug. We have not won the war in Iraq because of something completely unforeseeable: widespread massacres of Iraqi civilians by other Iraqis and Muslims. We have never seen mass murder of fellow citizens in order to remove an outside occupier. No Japanese blew up Japanese temples in order to rid Japan of the American occupier. No Germans mass murdered German schoolchildren and teachers to rid Germany of the American, British, French and Soviet occupiers.

The level of cruelty and evil exhibited by those America is fighting in Iraq is new. Had Iraq followed any precedent in all the annals of resistance to occupation, America would likely have been victorious in Iraq. It may just be impossible, if one is morally bound not to kill large numbers of civilians, to fight those who target their own civilians and hide among them. But George W. Bush had no way to foresee such systematic cruelty.

With the election of a Democratic Congress and the reversion to the visionless “realists” of George W. Bush’s father’s administration, the critics are more certain than ever of their moral rectitude. But unless they disagree with Professor Ferguson’s assertion that a pre-emptive war in 1938 would have been the most moral thing the Western democracies could have done, they ought to show a little humility. Based on what was known at the time, George W. Bush made a moral choice. And he would have won were it not for something new in the annals of human depravity.


69 posted on 06/05/2007 11:16:49 AM PDT by doug from upland (Stopping Hillary should be a FreeRepublic Manhattan Project)
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To: doug from upland
Imagine that. The New York Times publishes a favorable book review of a book arguing that a pre-emptive war in 1938 would have saved tens of millions of lives aside from preventing the Holocaust, “without parallel . . . the most wicked act in all history.”

And would have helped their pal Uncle Joe dominate all of Europe.

70 posted on 06/05/2007 11:19:23 AM PDT by dfwgator (The University of Florida - Still Championship U)
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To: doug from upland

THANK YOU AMERICA! Free Europeans don’t forget the heroes buried at Coleville-sur-Meer and St.James.


71 posted on 06/05/2007 11:21:30 AM PDT by J Aguilar (Veritas vos liberabit)
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To: J Aguilar

Nor the British and Canadian troops (the majority) who went ashore that day


72 posted on 06/05/2007 12:17:08 PM PDT by weegie
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To: J Aguilar

Are you in France?


73 posted on 06/05/2007 12:26:05 PM PDT by doug from upland (Stopping Hillary should be a FreeRepublic Manhattan Project)
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To: doug from upland

As a big history nut, my kids know all about things like this. On behalf of my entire family to the greatest generation:

Thank you from the bottom of our hearts!


74 posted on 06/05/2007 12:28:17 PM PDT by rfreedom4u (My Freedom of speech trumps your feelings!)
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To: rfreedom4u

THANK YOU is never eought to the brave men who fought and died so we can live today.


75 posted on 06/05/2007 12:36:35 PM PDT by itsLUCKY2B (?Borders, Language, and Culture.?)
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To: All
Troops of the 2nd Infantry Division file up the bluff from Easy Red sector, Omaha Beach, on D-Day plus 1, June 7, 1944.


76 posted on 06/05/2007 1:25:58 PM PDT by doug from upland (Stopping Hillary should be a FreeRepublic Manhattan Project)
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To: All
Men of the 16th Infantry Regiment seek shelter from German machine-gun fire behind “Czech hedgehog” beach obstacles, Easy Red sector, Omaha Beach, on D-Day, June 6, 1944.


77 posted on 06/05/2007 1:30:40 PM PDT by doug from upland (Stopping Hillary should be a FreeRepublic Manhattan Project)
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To: wbill; dfwgator; GourmetDan

We just finished The “Longest Day”, and will watch “Saving Private Ryan” tomorrow. I will save ABTF and BoB for the weekend. Thanks for all the suggestions.


78 posted on 06/05/2007 5:17:49 PM PDT by ConservaTexan (February 6, 1911)
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To: Ghost of Philip Marlowe; doug from upland
But this country and the world will pay the price of self-centered Baby Boomers for generations to come.

That is definitely the dumbest sentence that's been posted on this forum all week (but that's OK - it's only Tuesday)....beyond stupid.

(OK guys...hit the abuse button on this one also, if you like....sheesh)

79 posted on 06/05/2007 8:05:03 PM PDT by ErnBatavia (...forward this to your 10 very best friends....)
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To: doug from upland

If I weren’t computer illiterate, and had a scanner, I’d try it.

One thing I forgot to mention that has some historical interest is a German officer’s parade sword my Pop got near Cherbourg. The blade is inscribed, and on one side it refers to the “Kaiser Nicklaus II von Russland Chev. Regt” of, I presume, the Imperial German Army.


80 posted on 06/05/2007 8:51:59 PM PDT by PzLdr ("The Emperor is not as forgiving as I am" - Darth Vader)
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