Posted on 06/11/2007 3:58:55 PM PDT by George - the Other
Edited on 06/12/2007 4:48:27 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
The Washington Times | June 11, 2007 Sixty-three years ago this week, we landed on the Normandy beaches. As on each anniversary of June 6, 1944, much has been written to commemorate the bravery and competence of the victorious Anglo-American forces.
VDH is great - should be required reading in every statist school.
Maybe.
VDH Bump!
The Fifth estate wasn’t the Fifth column in those days.
Thanks for the post. We all know war is hell, but sometimes necessary.
bump
I am saving this snippet from him.
It is an absolutely perfect summation, in my opinion!
And this was the answer to the Wermacht. The Republic P-47 Thunderbolt shown here firing rockets. Probably no better named weapon for this website than this one. It carried 8 50 mm machine guns and could carry bonbs and rockets. From the invasion of Europe on June 6, 1944, to VE day on May 7, 1945, the Thunderbolt destroyed 86,000 railway cars, 9,000 locomotives, 6,000 armored fighting vehicles, and 68,000 trucks.
Oh, please. Only its own refusal to commit to victory could have beaten the US. The numbers were always going to be in its favor.
The difference is that in WW II we had some 15,000,000 military most of which were draftees. This was more than enough to compensate for mistakes but also sufficient to win, occupy and completely control the enemy. It was the formula for winning.
Oh, Please?
I am not sure if I am misinterpreting your tone or not, but I don’t appreciate the dismissive tone.
Too many people take the victory in WWII as a given thing. It was NEVER a given thing at the time. It is always easy to look back and say that.
Sorry, but I just don’t think that Japan and Germany would have taken an indefinite number of nuclear strikes.
I understand that viewpoint, but on June 6th, 1944, there were no nuclear weapons to use, and we did not even have a functioning nuclear weapon to test until over an entire year later (July 16, 1945)
On D-Day, we had no idea if those nuclear weapons we were trying to develop were even going to work. We had a lot of concerns regarding what to expect when it did go off. Out at Los Alamos, there were nervous discussions about setting off a chain reaction through the entire atmosphere. They eventually decided it would not happen, but people DID seriously discuss it. The point is, we had no idea. At 05:29:45 Mountain Time on 7/16/1945, they could have pushed the button, and then all stood there looking stupidly at each other when nothing happened.
Given what we know now, sure...there would have been no need to go into Normandy...or Iwo Jima...or Okinawa. Heck, we could have just said right after Pearl Harbor: “Okay, Japan, you just wait. We are going to clean your clock in the late summer of 1945...”
You can only fight with the resources you have at the time you are required to fight. If we had the B-29 earlier in the war in the European theatre...if we had better tanks...if we had the Iowa class battleships at Savo Island...and so on.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.