Posted on 09/28/2008 12:40:20 PM PDT by meandog
9:21 p.m. John McCain kicked the evening off with a wild exaggeration by describing the allied invasion of Normandy as "the greatest invasion" in history. Such historical comparisons are always dangerous. In scale, the D-Day landings were far exceeded by Operation Barbarossa, the Nazi attack on the Soviet Union, in June 1941, and the Soviet invasion of Germany at the end of World War II.
(Excerpt) Read more at blog.washingtonpost.com ...
You, sir, are not an @$$hat...!
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Thanks Perdogg. Lucky for us the Washington Post can't run for President. Unfortunately, they can run by proxy, and Obama is that proxy. |
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The D-Day Invasion was the largest seaborn invasion in History - PERIOD. End of discussion.
The idiots in the Washington COmpst have nothing better to do than parce statements by Republican political candidates on non-issues.
Barbarossa etc was a land based invasion.
I HOPE McCain FINALLY realizes the media, no matter how much they seemed to appreciate his suck-up actions in McCain-Feingold are the ENEMY.
The Normandy invasion was the greatest amphibious landing in world history and likely will never be rivaled.
It’s little surprise that the General Staff of the Washington Post thinks that Overlord and Barbarossa can be equated. What is a surprise is that they have heard of either one.
Maybe Dobbs can also find a vet who’s endured greater torture than McCain just to set McCain straight. /s
damn, I’m biting my tongue!
“So Operation Barbarossa was the greatest invasion in history. So how did THAT work out?”
The invasion smashed Russian defenses all the way to Moscow.
The ‘camping in Russian fields all winter long’ part didn’t work out as well.
There were some SS divisions, including armor, in the area. Allied deception had convinced the Germans that Normandy was a diversion, which served to keep much of the German defense north of the invasion beaches.
A book with a good description of Overlord and the overall war is Michael Korda’s ‘Ike: An American Hero’.
Many senior American officials were eager to invade as early as 1942. The British were already familiar with German combat power and thought that this was nuts. British opposition and the length of time needed to prepare a huge army with its landing craft delayed Overlord until 1944.
But you do make a valid point in that the eastern front consumed millions of Germany’s best troops and equipment. If the western allies had been opposed by the divisions gobbled up in Barbarossa there would have been no successful landing short of divine intervention.
Inchon.
Not all SS divisions were elite super-infantry as per reputation. By this point, the SS conscripted a lot of it’s members, and their combat skill and stamina varied from extremely crack to fairly mediocre...
Not all the German units in France then were crap. But most of the best were in the East...
I agree with you the Western Front was necessary for victory. Have these newly minted military historians heard of the Battle of the Bulge, where all that power that was thrown our way could have been thrown at the Russians if we hadn't invaded?
There’s a stereotype that the German Soldiers that fought on the Western Front were all old men and children to denegrate our fine troops. The Russians certainly said they were. It’s true the majority of the Wehrmacht was on the eastern front but some of their best divisions (especially Waffen-SS and Fallshirmjaeger units) were on the Western Front.
It’s true there were some good units in France, but it is a documented fact that most of the troops in France on D-Day were recuparatives from the Eastern front, with a few good units to stiffen them. The Nazis could not afford to put as many good troops in France because of commitments in the East and (to a lesser extent) in Italy.....
The Western Front was only neccessary in terms of stopping the Russians from overrunning the whole of Germany and possibly bringing France into it’s sphere of influence. By June 1944, The Soviets were simply too powerful for the Germans to ever have a hope of turning back. Nazi Germany was done for, but the USSR could have become more powerful than it bears thinking about without D-Day...
I agree the Western Front was needed for this, as well as influence in Germany. I think Germany could have made a much stronger attempt at defense of the homeland if they didn't have so many forces tied up in the West once the front constricted in length when Warsaw was taken. Instead of making their last push against us at the Bulge they could have tried it on the Eastern Front.
Hitler really blew it by pursuing a two front war, to state the obvious.
At most, the failure of D-Day would have slightly delayed the inevitable Soviet Victory. After the Soviet Victories at Stalingrad and Kursk in 1943, Germany had lost too much war material that it couldn’t replace anywhere near as quickly as the Soviets could and with the loss of the Romanian oilfields a couple of months after D-Day, the Germans lost their only major source of oil, which catastrophically limited their ability to move and provide air-cover....
Definitely, the Battle of the Bulge was a desperate gamble by Hitler, and probably brought the war to an end a year earlier than it might otherwise have been. Of course, there are those who argue that the Rhine wasn’t much of a barrier if the Channel wasn’t, but staging the cross-channel invasion took place more or less out of sight.
The Compost blogger should be publicly reprimanded, forced to post a retraction and refutation of his own hit piece, then kicked off their site for life.
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