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Seventy-nine years ago last week, the Allies assaulted the Normandy beaches on D-Day, June 6, 1944.
Their invasion marked the largest amphibious landing since the Persians under Xerxes invaded the Greek mainland in 480 B.C.
Nearly 160,000 American, British, and Canadian soldiers stormed five beaches of Nazi-occupied France. The plan was to liberate western Europe after four years of occupation, push into Germany, and end the Nazi regime.
Less than a year later, the Allies from the West, and the Soviet Russians from the East, did just that, utterly destroying Hitler’s Third Reich.
Ostensibly, the assault seemed impossible even to attempt.
Germany had repulsed with heavy Canadian losses an earlier Normandy raid at Dieppe in August 1942.
The Germans also knew roughly when the Allies were coming. They placed their best general, Erwin Rommel, in charge of the Normandy defenses.
The huge D-Day force required enormous supplies of arms and provisions just to get off the beaches. Yet the Allies had no means of capturing even one port on the nearby heavily fortified French coast.
To land so many troops so quickly, the Allies would have to ensure complete naval and air supremacy.
They would have to tow over from Britain their own ports, lay their own gasoline pipeline across the English Channel, and invent novel ships and armored vehicles just to get onto and over the beaches.
More dangerous still, the invaders would ensure armor and tactical air dominance to avoid being cut off, surrounded, and annihilated once they went inland.
German Panzer units — battle-hardened troops in frightening Panther and Tiger tanks, with over three hard years of fighting experience on the Eastern Front — were confident they could annihilate in a matter of days the outnumbered lightly armed invaders.
Such a huge force required 50 miles of landing space on the beaches. That vast expanse ensured that some landing sites were less than ideal – Omaha Beach in particular.
No one quite knows how many Allied soldiers, airmen, and sailors were lost during D-Day’s 24 hours.
Some 10,000 casualties is a good guess, including nearly 4,500 dead. Well over 400 soldiers were killed, wounded, or captured every hour of the first day.
Most of the losses occurred at Omaha Beach, the riskiest landing area. Cliffs there offered perfect German lines of fire onto the landing craft below.
Concrete seawalls blocked access from the beaches. Crack German troops had recently beefed up the fortifications. Mined hedgerows blocked entry into the countryside.
A tragic paradox of D-Day was that Omaha Beach proved an ungodly nightmare, while the other four landing sites worked like clockwork with few casualties.
Nearly a quarter-million Allied soldiers were killed or wounded in “Operation Overlord” over the ensuing seven weeks of fighting in Normandy. Combined German and Allied casualties exceeded 400,000. Nearly 20,000 French civilians were killed as “collateral” damage.
The Allies did not secure Normandy until the end of July, when they finally broke out into the plains of France and began racing toward Germany.
Intelligence failures, poor coordination between airborne and infantry troops, and mediocre leadership all plagued the Allies for most of June and July.
Yet the Allies pulled off the impossible by surprising the Germans, securing a beachhead, supplying that toehold in western Europe, and then expanding the pocket into a vast 1,000-mile front that in less than a year shattered Hitler’s defenses.
How and why did the Americans on Omaha charge right off their landing craft into a hail of German machine gun and artillery fire, despite being mowed down in droves?
In a word, they “believed” in the United States.
That generation had emerged from the crushing poverty of the Great Depression to face the reality that the Axis powers wanted to destroy their civilization and their country.
They were confident in American know-how. They were convinced they were fighting for the right cause. They were not awed by traveling thousands of miles from home to face German technological wizardry, veterans with years of battle experience, and a ruthless martial code.
The men at Omaha did not believe America had to be perfect to be good — just far better than the alternative.
They understood, like their predecessors at Valley Forge, Gettysburg, and the Meuse-Argonne, that nothing in the United States was guaranteed.
They accepted that periodically some Americans — usually those in the prime of life with the greatest futures and the most to lose — would be asked to face certain death in nightmarish places like Omaha, in a B-17 over Berlin, or the horrid jungles in the Pacific.
The least our generation — affluent, leisured, and so often self-absorbed — can do is to remember who they were, what they did, and how much we owe them.
A beautiful tribute to the Greatest Generation. May they continue to be revered for their honor, self-sacrifice, and courage, and may their names never die. Would that we could raise up another generation like them again! Mothers of America, it’s up to you.
The mothers and FATHERS of the greatest generation believed in their nation and in themselves as a people. They believed their government existed to protect them, their land, culture and way of life. They were free to become a people who could pull off the impossible with their inventiveness, courage, energy and faith.
How many of their descendants will fight for the Reconquista, BLM, mandatory vaccines and lockdowns, trans rights, homosexual rights, pedophilia, the rule of men who hate and wish to destroy them, and the global “right” to migrating here (if your are not white) for all our economic benefits provided by the blood, treasure and inventiveness of our ancestors?
I’ll be more specific: They believed that WE were the government.
Many died on the Beaches of Normandy so us today can have Picnics Backyard BBQ,s and have fun on the Beaches without anyone to tell us what to do and we shouldn’t allow their sacrifice to go to waste to appease Big brother/UN. I had a Father and Three Uncles(Pacific Theater)who survived the war(Now Deceased)and one Resident(Deeeaced also)who was a survivor of the infamous Battan Dearth March
“…Nearly 160,000 American, British, and Canadian soldiers stormed five beaches of Nazi-occupied France….”
Or as Tucker Carlson might have said, US warmongers and and their allies were trying to start a world war.
Except Tucker didn’t say it. You did.
Sorry, but no sale on that one. Sending unaccountable billions to Ukraine to be pilfered by Biden’s corrupt partners has no relationship to the invasion of Normandy.
“Edward” – That type of fabricated leftist garbage, comes from the likes of democrat males that also believe men can give birth. What a staggeringly stupid comment.
My dad was a Merchant Marine and in the waters of Normandy that day. He said it was as though you could walk from ship to ship there were so many. I had an opportunity to visit Normandy before covid- it was hard to imagine how the allies pulled it off on such a massive coastline! The memorial is as breath-taking as the coastline. The people there are still grateful!
My dad risked his life for his country and his family and sadly, my brothers’ children are spoiled, entitled, ungrateful and wealthy because of my dad’s hard work and resilience! They cheer BLM and antifa from their mercedes suvs.
Egregious!
Shameful!
An embarassment!
VDH always presents accurate and relevant historical editorials. He failed to mention one aspect of Allied and American involvement in WWII. The US news media largely supported the war effort and did not try to second guess the American soldiers, airmen, Marines, & sailors or the military leadership in order to give the enemy aid and comfort. Since the Vietnam war, this has no longer been true. Today if a Third World War broke out under the same circumstance as happened in WWII, the news media would immediately start undermining the war effort by negative reporting on the battles, and adversely affecting the morale of the warfighters = giving aid & comfort to the enemy..
The Brits prevented a well trained fighting Force from invading Southern England but the generation of today cant stop some unarmed, low IQ morons carrying a $1000 Cell Phone on a leaky wee Boat from walking into Southern England and DEMANDING a Hotel Room and special food, what a difference a generation can make.
I have slept on that Beach way back in 1967 as a young 19 year old with no money heading back to the UK from France.
I have also slept on the Beaches at Dunkirk inside some of the old Bunkers that still stand there.