What does the “D” in D-Day stand for? destruction day? death day? deutschland day? dumbkopf day? duhhhhhhhhhh day? what???
It’s a military thing, an event centric floating time referential, particularly when the exact date and time are not known at the point in time when the plans are drafted.
To put it simply D-Day and H-Hour respectively refer to the as-of-yet undetermined moment Shit is supposed to Go Down, while D/H minus X time refers to what preparations are to take place when in order to enable D-Day, and D/H plus X is used to assess how things are expected to progress from there on.
Nothing. It’s just a standard military term. A military operation is scheduled to start at H-Hour on D-Day. You can make your plans around this generic date and time and then fill in the specific date and time that will be used as the circumstances dictate.
For example, the cross-channel invasion was originally scheduled for June 5. At the last minute it was postponed for twenty-four hours due to bad weather. If they had based their plans around specific dates, this last minute change would have thrown everything off schedule. But because their plans were based on D-Day, D+1, D+2, etc they were able to keep their original plans intact.
You may be right. I’d like to read a book about the Canadian contributions, however, if anybody knows a good one.
And let’s not forget all the CIA heroics to get the American hostages out of Iran, as per the fiction of Argo.
… or you may have been a lousy student…
We are coming out of a long, self-serving time when Americans were educated that we won the war, with a little help from the oppressed nations we saved. While you’re correct about your points, I don’t think it hurts to serve up a little humility in these discussions.
Much in the spirit of the above comment, “Avro Arrow.” That is all.
They still made up the largest contingency. According to WIKIthere were 73,000 US troops and 61,715 British troops which would leave 21,400 Canadian troops.
A good read about the Normandy campaign is Keegan’s Six Armies in Normandy, with a detailed chapter on the Canadian Army.
By the way, a suggestion for the OP: I would take your questions much more seriously if you could phrase them without using every emoticon available, and invested in a keyboard that did not have a sticking ? key.
During the beach scene, I mean. Wasn’t speaking as to the whole movie. For some reason a common Canadian/British criticism of the beach scene (which is generally critically acclaimed), is that it doesn’t feature anything but Americans. But that’s actually how the beaches were, the landing forces for each beach were basically nation specific in most cases. Utah Beach was the U.S. Army VII Corps, 4 Infantry Divisions and 2 Airborne Divisions, Omaha Beach was VI Corps with 2 Infantry Divisions. Essentially no other Allied infantry forces were present at the two American beaches, and thus a movie that focuses on one of those (Omaha) in its opening scene is actually not being historically inaccurate by not showcasing British or Canadian forces. The one major omission in this area is the landing craft were piloted by Brits and there was British Naval support throughout all of the Normandy beaches. But given the focus of the camera is primarily on the infantry fighting this to me represents a minor omission.
I found another book called Fields of Fire, which sounds like it might be good. I’ve placed a hold on both at the local library.
Another good one, about the Dieppe Raid, is called Green Beach, by James Leasor.
It details one particular mission in the context of the raid. A young British radar expert participated in the raid, to gather information about the German radar capabilities.
Because of his technical expertise, he was assigned a bodyguard of 12 soldiers from the South Saskatchewan Regiment. Their orders were to protect him at all costs, but if they couldn’t get him back out, to kill him.
The largest unconscripted army in history, the British Indian Army. Not only fighting the Japanese in South East Asia and on the borders of India, but also garrisoning places like Aden, liberating Ethiopia from the Italians, teaming up with the Soviets to occupy Iran…
if the usa had lost ww2, would we all be speaking german or japanese now?
English.
Neither Germany nor Japan had any interest in invading the mainland US, which wasn’t exactly a superpower back then, or really a contender in anything. Up until 42, the US had been content to stew in dogged isolationism, give or take the Philippines - in fact, FDR had to work his ass off just to get y’all into the war in Europe. It’s only after WW2 that you guys started running the show and could corner every market because everywhere *else *was in smoking ruins.
Nor had either Axis power even close to the means of doing so. Germany couldn’t even invade the UK, you figure they were up to taking over a landmass hundred times the size, hundred times the distance ?
(scale pulled out of my ass, numbers given for mental picture purposes only)
barring total nuclear annihilation there wasn’t a viable way to occupy North America. The scale of production was simply too great.
You really should stop digging in this hole; you’re already down to bedrock.
better cameras a plus.
even if they did the conquering and split the country they wouldn’t have enough for an occupation force.
I actually thought that sidecar’s comment was /sarcasm. [And Cecil knows I now know about such (mis)readings.]
“El Al?”