The largest sea landing ever and nearly all of the participants are gone now.
Maybe the most important battle in history.
Some readings
Some of the notable actors and Celebs that were part of D-Day.
Google must know me, the first to are Yogi Berra (Hall of Fame Yankees Catcher) and James Doohan (Scotty of Star Trek), J.D. Salinger, David Niven, Alec Guinness, Charles Durning, Henry Fonda (I didn’t know that), Richard Todd, Bobby Jones (The Golfer),
As an aside, I went on a transatlantic crossing last week (New York to Southampton) and the ship had several men on board who were veterans of the D-Day landings and they gave talks on the ship. Very cool seeing them and listening to them. One was even a Medal of Honor recipient.
It was even more poignant to me when I realized that chances are there will be no living vets from that day left within the next few years. That made it even more cool being able to see them.
Note: I did not take the trip to see them. That was a surprise to me and a happy one. They were there, on this particular trip, because of this anniversary. AFAIK the ship sponsored the trip for them (at least as far as the voyage went).
The last Pearl Harbor survivor died just a few months ago. We are quickly losing the last of this generation. The youngest person there would be maybe 97 now.
Indeed. I did not see all of them (there were not many on the ship…maybe five or six…I didn’t see them all) but IIRC the ages of the three I did see were 97-104.
What a massive effort the D-Day landings were and how critical it was to succeed. Had the landings failed the war and maybe the world would be very different today. It was no small thing.
Not to yuck anyone’s yum, but I think it’s a stretch to call D-Day the most important battle in history. Heck, I don’t even think it was the most important battle in WWII. From everything I know about the war (mainly from listening to the We Have Ways podcast), the Axis was 100% going to lose by 1944. If a bunch of things go wrong and D-Day fails, all that does is delay Hitler’s inevitable downfall. (I mean, I guess you could argue that without D-Day, what ends up happening is that the Soviets end up getting to Germany way before the Western allies, and maybe they end up “liberating” much of Western Europe, with massive implications for the postwar years.)
I doubt D-Day was the “most important” battle in history (which I interpret as having the greatest impact on the how the world changed because of it). And, of course, we can only ever guess what might have happened had they failed.
Almost certainly the war is longer and more people will die as a result.
Enough that Germany can get a negotiated surrender instead of an unconditional one? What would that look like?
Would the Soviets have gotten Germany on their own and, with no US/GB presence taken the opportunity take Western Europe? It was Stalin and I see no reason why he would not try. They were on a roll at that point. Does the US/GB then continue a war against the Soviets? Imagine it goes on longer and we defeat the Soviets. No Cold War. The world would be very different now.
It was definitely a big deal battle. Certainly up there with other important ones.
No, that had been ruled out by all the Allies.
Quite possibly, as the quickest route to unconditional surrender, but they possibly wouldn’t have been able to maintain substantial control of much of western Europe, or not for long.
I’d opine that was Midway. The Japanese lost the war at that battle, but just didn’t know it.
We won’t forget the force that fought
To free foiled France from fascist heel.
Such sacrifice shan’t be for nought
Won’t win the war, but lose our zeal.
Something can be extremely important and momentous. It doesn’t have to be the most important thing to be appropriately remembered and to be an appreciative reminder. The values that triumphed after D-Day made our country strong. They must not be diminished or forgotten now.
Well, no, maybe not. D-Day and the Soviet 1944 summer offensive, Operation Bagration, were deliberately timed in the hope German formations would be taken away from the Eastern front immediately prior to the Soviets launching the attack. It worked.
If Operation Overlord is a failure - or doesn’t happen - Nazi Germany swings a huge amount of men and materiel back to the East.
It’s a bit incorrect to call the battle D-Day. D-Day was just the first day in Operation Overlord; that was the western offensive, the equivalent to Bagration, and to say it went badly for Germany would be a gross understatement.
I still have two commemorative “Debarquement 1944” bottles of wine from the 50th Anniversary. Wonder what they would taste like if I opened them,
Canadian D-Day vet dies the night before he was to leave for Normandy.
Here’s a gift link to today’s Washington Post article on the weather decisions made at the time. D-day might have been June 2nd, or ended with the fleet and soldiers lost in a huge storm. I found it an interesting read.
Yes, they’d have absolutely conquered Germany on their own. The Germans still had the bulk of their forces deployed eastward even after the Falaise pocket battle, and after the Battle of the Bulge. They fought like hell to slow the Russians, and while they fought the Allies, it wasn’t quite as vitriolic as the Eastern Front fighting.
I don’t know if they’d have gone on to occupy France and the Low Countries.
D-Day was definitely a big important battle, but hardly the most important one.
Many historian put Guadalcanal and the associated naval battles as the turning point of the Pacific War. That’s where the Allies started to go on the offense, and the attrition war really began.
I don’t know if you can pick just one battle or campaign as the most important of the whole war.
Some personal recollections. Gift link.
This has been playing on BBC TV this week:
From NPR: